The Tenth Commandment by Lawrence Sanders

Author:Lawrence Sanders [Sanders, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781453298435
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1960-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I knew what she meant, and I thought she might be right. If Tippi and Knurr were beginning to look at each other with “new eyes,” it might be the chink I could widen, an opportunity I could exploit.

I called Percy Stilton. The officer who answered said formally, “Detective Stilton is not available.” I gave my name and requested that he ask Detective Stilton to call me as soon as possible.

My second call was to Mrs. Effie Dark. I chatted awhile with that pleasant, comfortable lady, and she volunteered the information I sought.

“Mr. Bigg,” she said, “I checked my liquor store bills, and Professor Stonehouse didn’t order any Rémy Martin for almost two months before he disappeared. I don’t know why, but he didn’t.”

“Thank you, Effie,” I said gratefully. “Just another brick in the wall, but an important one.”

We exchanged farewells and hung up. It was then late Friday afternoon, the business world slowing, running down. There is a late Friday afternoon mood in winter in New York. Early twilight. Early quiet. Everything fades. Melancholy sweeps in. One remembers lost chances.

I sat there in my broom-closet office, the files of the Kipper and Stonehouse cases on my desk, and stared at them with sad, glazed eyes. So much passion and turbulence. I could not encompass it. Worse, I seemed to have been leached dry of inspiration and vigor. All those people involved in those desperate plots. What were they to me, or I to them? It was a nonesuch with which I could not cope, something foreign to my nature.

Me, a small, quiet, indwelling, nonviolent man. Suddenly, by the luck and accident that govern life, plunged into this foreign land, this terra incognita. What troubled me most, I think, was that I had no compass for this terrain. I was blundering about, lurching, and more than discovering the truth, I wanted most to know what drove me and would not let me put all this nastiness aside.

Finally, forcing myself up from the despair toward which I was fast plummeting, I packed the Kipper and Stonehouse folders into my briefcase, dressed in coat, scarf, hat, turned off the lights, and plodded away from the TORT building, the darkness outside seeming not half as black as that inside, not as forbidding, foreboding.

I did arrive home safely. I changed to casual clothes, then built a small blaze in the fireplace. After that luncheon, I was not hungry, but I had a cup of coffee and a wedge of pecan coffee ring. I sat there, staring into the flames. The file folders on the Kipper and Stonehouse cases were piled on the floor at my feet. My depression was again beginning to overwhelm me. I was nowhere with my first big investigation. I was a mild, out-of-place midget in a world of pushers and shovers. And I was alone.

I was alone, late on a Friday evening, wondering as we all must, who I was and what I was, when there came a hesitant tapping at my door.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.