The Devastators by Donald Hamilton

Author:Donald Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

12

It went as smoothly as if we’d rehearsed it for hours. I heard our visitor enter and lock the door again and come forward. I heard him set something on the table. He paused briefly by Nancy’s body, and came over to me. I had placed myself so that, because of the table and chair, he had to make his approach from the bathroom side. As he stopped above me, in approximately the right position, I stirred very slightly and let out a feeble moan.

I heard him jump back, startled. There was a quick, predatory movement beyond him, a faint scuffle, a choked-off gasp, and some ugly, muffled, cracking and snapping sounds, followed by a kind of expiring sigh and the sound of a body slumping to the floor.

I heard Vadya’s voice: “You can get up now, Matthew.”

I rose and brushed myself off. She was calmly putting her pumps back on. The scarf she’d worn about her shoulders now hung from her hand, twisted into a kind of rope. Obviously, it wasn’t as fragile as it looked. A man in a dark suit lay face down on the rug between us with a broken neck. He looked very dead. It seemed unnecessarily drastic, but I made no complaint. It wasn’t as if the guy had been a particular friend of mine. I did, however, wonder briefly if she’d had some reason for silencing him permanently—or maybe it was just an object lesson to show me that, when it came to garottes, two could play.

I glanced toward the table. A bottle stood there, identical with the one on the dresser except that, presumably, the contents were safe to drink.

I said, “My apologies, ma’am. This character seems to have come to do the switch job I accused you of. Do you know him?”

She rolled him over with her toe, looked at him, and shook her head. “No, do you?”

Her denial sounded convincing, but then, I reminded myself, her denials always did. I regarded our visitor—well, to be accurate, Nancy Glenmore’s visitor. He was a big, dark man with a broad, Slavic face. I had seen the face before.

“I won’t say I know him,” I said, “but I saw him this afternoon. He’s the guy who was tailing us in a souped-up Mini when we went for that little spin in Crowe-Barham’s Rolls.”

Vadya was touching her hair into place. She shook the creases out of her scarf and draped it gracefully about her shoulders again, frowning at the man on the floor. “When you saw him, was he alone?”

“No, but I didn’t get a good look at the man with him.”

“That means there may still be another nearby. We must watch for him as we leave. But first I think we should take a quick look around.”

I made my voice casual: “For what?”

Vadya glanced at me. “Don’t be stupid, darling. Maybe this one did come only to switch bottles, but maybe he came to find something, also. He must have had some motive for poisoning the girl, must he not? You search the room and check that purse, there’s a good boy.

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.