The Chinese Doll полностью

It may have been silly to someone watching, but I entered my office on hands and knees, putting my left hand down easily to prevent the plaster cast from bumping the floor. No one would think of shooting that low if he were inside waiting for me. No one shot at all, high or low.

I got up, walked over to the desk, opened the lower drawer where I kept the gun, struck a match and carefully cupped the flame from reflecting on the windows. The flare of the shielded match showed gun and holster in the drawer where I had left them, showed several stacks of Atlantis manuscript lying on the floor as I had left them, and showed some brownish spots of blood on the typed pages. As I had not left them.

I snapped out the match and reached for the gun. Holding it in my right hand, which was awkward, I put out my left hand and touched the blood spots with a forefinger. They were dry. So I simply squatted there for many minutes, wondering what to do next.

While I waited, the dull and throbbing headache started in again. The exertion probably caused it. I loosened my hat to see if it helped any. It didn’t. But with the headache came sudden awareness that all wasn’t what it should have been. Sudden awareness that something indefinable I had been expecting failed to show. Nothing spectacular, only an insignificant, probably subconscious something that should have happened, but hadn’t.

I glanced around the darkened room.

The office door. If it had had eyes, they would have stared back at me. It had failed to hit the wall with the usual thud. I had given it a hearty inward shove and jumped back out of the opening, just in case there were visitors. There were no visitors, but the door hadn’t banged against the wall.

Again on hands and knees, no easy feat when one hand is partly cased in a plaster cast and the other is curled around the butt of a gun, I crawled over to the door and partly around it. The gently prodding barrel of the gun melted into something soft and yielding, something that gave out a whimper.

On my knees, I put out my left hand and followed the pointing barrel. And found a body. There was another response, more moan than whimper. My searching fingers discovered a heavy coat, and beneath the coat a dress and a woman’s breast. I fingered upwards towards the face, followed the soft undercurve of the chin and at the back of her neck found a tight knot of hair.

Eleanor.

The light of a second match showed her to me. She was lying on her back, her attractive, Oriental face now a pasty white. A slug had ripped away the padded shoulder of the coat she was wearing, biting through her shoulder and spilling a great deal of blood. The torn dress and coat were clogged with dried rivulets.

Eleanor rolled her head and cried out feverishly.

I doused the match, pocketed the gun and put my lips to her ear.

“Eleanor... Eleanor... come out of it.” A couple of gentle slaps in the face brought movement to her body. “Eleanor... do you hear me?”

“Please... don’t!” She tried to roll away.

“Eleanor — snap out of it!”

“Who... is it?”

“This is Chuck, Eleanor. Charles Horne.”

In ten minutes I had her sitting upright, in five more her eyes opened and she tried to see me in the dark.

I said, “I’m Chuck, remember?”

She nodded weakly. Frightened, ill, she clung to me. I slipped a clean handkerchief over the wound and pulled her coat about her shoulders.

“Don’t try to talk, Eleanor. I’ll call a doctor.”

“Oh, no...!” She tried to scream, pitifully.

“Take it easy, kid. I’m getting a good doctor. He’s okay; he can be trusted. Can you sit there alone? Now don’t fall over again. I’ll get a cab.”

I phoned Milkshake Mike and asked him if there was a cab in front of his place. He replied that there was, and that the Sultan was now enjoying a cup of coffee not ten feet from him as he spoke. I gave instructions to get the Sultan to my office in a rush. He informed me the Sultan said he would be delighted, after he finished his cuppacoffee.

We had to wait two or three minutes. It seemed like ten or fifteen.

I helped Eleanor to her feet and we waited just inside the doorway at the foot of the stairs for the cab. The cops and their white car had gone.

The cab pulled up to the curb and the Sultan stuck out his head to stare at us.

“Come here and help me,” I called across the sidewalk. To Eleanor I whispered, “Pretend you’re drunk.” She dropped her head on my shoulder, her hair concealing the tom coat.

The Sultan advanced across the sidewalk.

“Dames is always doing that,” he summed up.

“Take a look to see if anyone’s around,” I cautioned. “Don’t want to give the girl a bad name.”

He gave the street a sweeping, comprehensive glance in all directions without seeming to be looking at anything, and reported all clear. Between us we got Eleanor into the cab.

“Wheretobud?”

“Doc Burbee... the coroner. Do you know his place?”

The Sultan whirled around in the seat. “Hellsfire. She ain’t dead already?”

“Of course not. She lives there.”

“Okay. Do it in fiveorsix minutes.”