Sing a Song of Murder by Peter Drax

Author:Peter Drax
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2017-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

Louie Patra was uneasy. It was not the killing of the Rigger that worried him; that had been squared off, and even if the police became suspicious there was no reason why they should bother him. Tooley would be the man to take the can back.

Reason bade him go ahead with the new job Zimmermann had put up. There would be no risk if it were worked properly. He had it all worked out. His only worry was the state of Tooley’s nerves.

That is what Louie told himself, as he stood staring with unfocused eyes at the calendar hanging crookedly on the wall. But something was wrong. He had had that uneasy feeling once before, when he was planning a big smash, and things had come unstuck. A car had broken down and he had been lucky to get away clear, but without the swag.

Perhaps Benny might know something. Louie switched out the light before he unlocked the door which opened on to the outside stairs, and stood for a minute in the darkness, listening. There was a glint of light in one of the windows of the chapel. He went down the wooden stairs, his weight poised on the balls of his feet, silently, smoothly, for somewhere ahead of him in the darkness there was a man.

The scuffle of a foot against a scrap of paper, the creak of leather or the sharp sound of a steel-shod boot on stone; what it was that had betrayed the trespassing man to Louie’s ears only Louie himself knew. He possessed the senses of a wild cat allied to a brain which interpreted every sound, without pause for puzzled thought.

He reached the lowest tread of the ladder, saw a moving shadow on the other side of the roadway and followed it, keeping a parallel line close to the wall.

His eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness now and he could see the shape of the man as he stepped from the shadows and walked across the open space in front of the chapel. He saw him approach the window through which light showed and remain quite still.

Cold hatred, tantamount to the lust of killing, was in Louie’s heart as he crept forward, his hands half clenched and fingers moving in anticipation of the grip which had already destroyed one life, and sought yet another.

In his very eagerness to conceal his approach Louie betrayed his presence, for, as he slid into a shadow, his foot struck a spanner lying unseen on the cobbles.

The man at the window turned a frightened face and Louie saw that it was Spider. Louie’s suspicions were confirmed. Spider was a squealer—and a spy. It was incredible that he should come back for more after the lesson Louie had given him that very afternoon. But it just showed how dangerous the little rat was. A beating was not enough. . . . One split second later there was no Spider at the window. Running footsteps up the narrow

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