Calling the Ghost by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Ghost
Published: 1940-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

Joe dropped the match, pivoted on the balls of his feet, lashed out with his fist. The blow didn’t connect. The man who had come up from behind moved fast to slice the air with his gun and bring the muzzle down on Joe’s forehead.

Chapter 18

Death at My Elbow

Piercing the scintillating explosion of lights in front of his eyes, Joe glimpsed the man’s face. And what he saw was more of a shock than the blow on the head; though the blow brought him down to his knees. And there was another man in the room—somebody with a black cloth tied over his face. Nothing about the man’s face stuck with Joe except the eyes. The eyes were somehow relentless, stabbing, and infinitely cruel.

“Finish him off!” the masked man said.

The gun raised again above Joe’s head. Joe fell backward from his kneeling position, legs doubled under him. Then he remembered that Patsy Moore’s revolver was still in his possession, the pearl butt of it sticking out of the slit of his pants pocket. He pulled the gun, fired, got the man through the arm somewhere because the man dropped his gun, ducked to retrieve it with his left hand.

Joe got to his feet. Somewhere sounded the chill skirl of a police whistle. On the other side of the room, through the red haze that swirled over Joe’s eyes, Joe saw the man with the mask kick out a window with the heel of his shoe. The masked man had the Gladstone in his hand. He tossed it ahead of him and was going through the window when Joe turned the revolver on him and let loose a pair of shots. He didn’t know whether it was a hit or a miss. The masked man was gone.

Joe reeled across the room. The other man, who had surprised Joe in the closet, had picked up his gun and started to follow the masked man through the window. Patsy—Joe didn’t know where Patsy was. He didn’t care. Because coming through the door of the living room was a cop.

Joe swung to the right, blundered through the kitchen door. The cop warned and then fired high over Joe’s head. Joe went through the back door, running. He didn’t know exactly where he was running. He didn’t know how long he could keep those leaden legs working up and down. Somewhere in the backyard he fell over an ash can, didn’t think he could get up. But he got up just the same and kept running…

“And that,” Joe Harper concluded, “is about all there is to it. I made a fizz out of the whole business, maybe. But here’s this.”

He reached into his pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of pasteboard—a calling card. He handed it to me.

Demarest and I had listened closely to Joe’s narrative. When he had mentioned the match pocket in the coat of the suit he found in the closet, Demarest and I had exchanged significant glances. I looked now at the calling card.

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