| OCR Text |
Show IfSjflhAU Over But the Wg H;:! ' ,RicKui:d i'owii Shooting Jf S mltL'" AN lrJ,s,ER SANCTUM MYSTERY mM vmC STARRING ARAB ANDY BLAKE wu atuw AM? THB STORY THUS FAR: Lt. Andy Blake ol Operation! was Joined by his wife, Arab, who started to work with Ordnance. On a bus looking for living quarter!, Arab started to write down the loose talk she overheard. She was soon spotted and a cry ol "Spy" went np. Arab and Andy Jumped off the bus, bnt Andy soon tripped, fell striking his head and woke np In bed. After felling the FBI what Arab was np to, he lett the hospital and went with her to the rooming room-ing house. He got into a fight with one of the guests and met the landlady, whom he had known In Paris, Arab and Andy were convinced that something some-thing was wrong In that house. Andy then started to drive home. CHAPTER IV "Wait a minute," Arab said. "I want to write down my phone number num-ber for you." Arab came back and handed me a slip of paper. "See you tomorrow tomor-row night," she said. I got in the car and drove away and forgot to look at Arab's slip of paper for several blocks. When I did, I stopped the car so fast that I almost scraped the tires down to the rims. I had almost forgotten that there was something terribly wrong with the house on Q Street. Arab had given me a page torn from the notebook she had used on the bus. There were the absurd chicken tracks of the Arabella Blake Shorthand System. Above them she had written the translation. It was the section she had skipped when she had read her notes to me. It was the section which had brought her to the house on Q Street, and had made her a candidate for the lead story In the obituary columns. A man on the bus had said softly to a companion, "There is a room vacant at 5797 Q Street, Northwest. It could not be helped. The girl saw too much." I swung the car around and started start-ed back and then changed my mind. Arguing with Arab would get me nothing but a sore throat. This called for action Instead of argument. For one thing, I could help her find out what was wrong with the house on Q Street I stopped at a drugstore and coaxed a clerk to let me look through all the Washington papers he had. I went through the preceding day's editions without finding anything. I double-checked on that day's Washington Wash-ington Post. Then, in the Star's rooms-for-rent section, I spotted it. Buried treasure couldn't have made me happier. The ad announced: ROOM FOR RENT Furnished room, bkfst. and dinner optional, ' In fine old house 5797 Q St., NW. Govt, girls only. Must be cultured, cul-tured, pref. college or bus. sch. grad. Call or write giving full details. Mrs. R. Fielding. Apparently . Renee Fielding believed be-lieved in picking and choosing, and of course in wartime Washington she could get away with it. I went to the phone, dialed the Wisconsin number num-ber given in the ad, and asked for Miss Arabella Reynolds. When I heard her voice, I growled, "Hope I didn't break up a date with Joey." She giggled. "Were you worried? Goody." ' "Not about him. Listen, how did you explain that you knew a room was vacant?" .' "Why . . . why, I just said I saw an ad in the Post. Ooooh, and you said tonight there wasn't any!" "It's O. K. One was in the Star. Anybody would have thought you just got the papers mixed up." I read lt to her, and added, "You must have been born with a silver horseshoe horse-shoe in your mouth. Suppose there hadn't been any ad?" She said softly,. "You take awfully good care of me. Thank you, Andy." "You'd better thank me. Taking care of you is a tough job. It's like being night watchman of a TNT plant Take it easy. Try to stay alive until lunch tomorrow, and I'll buy you one." I didn't have much hope of getting time off the next day to hunt apartments, apart-ments, and it turned out that I was right. My Middle Eastern theater was getting hot what with the British Brit-ish Eighth Army getting ready to tangle with Rommel at El Alamein. It was nearly seven when I got away. I grabbed a sandwich and milk at one of the beverage bars in The Pentagon. I took a bus into Washington, remembered that I was supposed to be starting a courtship, and bought some candy and flowers, tt was silly, of course. If a guy really wanted to make a hit with Arab he'd bring land mines. Three other men were waiting in the room: a big Marine in dress blues, a Navy lieutenant (j.g.), and a civilian. We exchanged nods and I sat down. We waited. We smoked cigarettes and tried not to let our glances meet and studied our fingernails. finger-nails. There might be eight girls to every man in Washington, but we were being treated the way women have always treated men. The jaygee lieutenant was claimed first A brunette trick came in and the Navy jumped up, almost wagging wag-ging himself. The Marine and civilian civil-ian went off on leashes next, and finally Arab appeared and looked around and decided I'd do. I babbled bab-bled about how nice she looked and how I hadn't been waiting long at all and gave her the candy and flowers flow-ers as hopefully as a puppy bringing a rubber ball. I guess I have no pride. Arab took the flowers and candy, and murmured, "For me? How lovelyl But of course you shouldn't have done it." "If you feel that way," I said, "maybe I could get a refund." "Try to get them back. Come on upstairs and I'll let you eat all the marshmallow centers and you can tell me what's wrong with the way I'm fixing the room." We went upstairs. At the head of the steps a painted sign hung down from an old-fashioned ceiling fixture. It announced: VISITOR. The totem pole who acted as colored col-ored maid was planted beside the door of a lighted room. "Sadie," Arab said, "do you think I could get a vase for these lovely flowers?" "Yes'm," Sadie admitted. She followed us Into the room, and announced, an-nounced, "Did Mis' Fielding tell you 'bout leaving the do' open part way. Mis" Reynolds?" "Yes, she did, Sadie." The maid nodded and went out, leaving the door ajar eight inches. A moment later her head popped back In the opening. She stared at me, opened the door four inches wider, wid-er, and vanished. Arab looked at me and her face wrinkled in crying lines and she flung herself into my arms. Her breath came in warm little gasps against my lips. Her slim legs "I think that you will like each other." trembled against mine. I could feel my heart rattling around like a cocktail cock-tail shaker and my vertebrae playing play-ing leapfrog up and down my back. "This isn't any easier for me than lt is for you," she sobbed. "Then let's stop this nonsense and " "Andy, we've got to find out what's wrong here!" I groaned. "Just for once," I said, "couldn't we find out what's right? Let's find that the body in the bathtub bath-tub is only a guy who couldn't find any other place to sleep in Washington Washing-ton and that the plot concerns a pound of unrationed sugar and that the missing heiress eloped with 4-F Freddie." Arab drew back and looked at me queerly. "How did you know?" "Know what?" "About the girl who had this room. She eloped. Three nights ago." "Swell. Then there's nothing wrong. I like that girl. I never met her but I like her. Count me in on the monogrammed linen. A good sensible girl. Goes off and gets married instead of murdered. I like that girl." "She'll need more than monogrammed mono-grammed linen," Arab said. "She eloped from here without taking even a toothbrush or nightie." My stomach dropped out of formation forma-tion with the rest of my insides, went into a half-loop, and then fell off in a spin. I said feebly, "Lots of girls" "Please listen, Andy. I want you to hear the whole story." "Go ahead," I said gloomily. "But if this is one of those stories that ends by the teller shouting Boo, we'll save time if I pass out right now." "Well." Arab said, "her name was Paula Thompson." "Stop it! Her name Is Paula Thompson." "All right. Paula came here last spring from Indiana. She's twenty. She'd been brought up by an aunt who died last winter. Paula worked for five months for the Office of Censorship. Cen-sorship. Off and on she had dates with a man named Bill McAdams. Nobody thought he was really interested in-terested in her." "I get the picture," I said. "A quiet little girl. Not too attractive. Everybody watched and said, 'What can he see in her?' and made eyes at Bill." "You have a mean nature, Andy. Now, listen. Three nights ago they had a date. According to the official story, Bill told her he had a swell job offered him in a war plant near New Orleans, and wanted her to marry him and go along. Paula couldn't quite make up her mind. She came back here, decided she would, telephoned Bill, met him outside, out-side, and drove away. All in a few hours." "Who's authority for the story?" "Paula. She telephoned here from West Virginia the next morning." "Good old Paula. I knew she'd come through. I like' that girl. So now we can forget It, huh?" Arab glared at me. "A fine detective de-tective you make," she snapped. "Always taking things at face value." "I don't want to be a fine detective. detec-tive. I'm not the detective type. I got a hunch I'm more the victim type." "Can't you see she might have been forced to make that phone call? She didn't give any Information that would make her easy to trace. Just that they'd been married hi a West Virginia town and to please send her things to New Orleans to Railway Express and to address any mail to General Delivery. The girls who talked with her admit she sounded very queer and strained." I Joined her at the window, and peered out. Our game was a lot of nonsense, of course, but I found my pulse shifting from second into high. I don't know what I expected to see. Something startling, probably. I was in the spirit of the game and ready for .anything. Anything, that Is, except ex-cept what was there. Because nothing was there. You looked out and saw a tree. A common ordinary pin oak. Oaks don't shed their leaves early and this one was well equipped. The leaves and branches blotted out any possible pos-sible view. "What do you make of it?" Arab asked. I growled, "She looked out and saw a Nazi parachutist on the lower branch. On the next one a gorilla was practicing nip-ups. And just above that big crotch was a raven quoting Edgar Allan Poe to beat the devil." "Ravens," she murmured. "But that birdhouse isn't big enough for ravens." "What birdhouse?'.' "In that crotch." It's odd how you can miss things. There was a birdhouse in the crotch. Enough starlight filtered down through the leaves to show it rather plainly. Most people would have been satisfied now, but not Arab. She got a flashlight from a bureau drawer and flicked it over the tree. The beam centered for a moment on the birdhouse, then went out. "Did you see what I saw?" Arab asked quietly. 'Yeah. It's new. The paint isn't spotted. I saw a couple of bright nail heads. But listen, Arab, that doesn't mean anything." "Darling, do people put up bird-houses bird-houses around here in October?" "Sure, all the- best people. And furthermore " . "Do they put them up facing north? I always understood that birds liked a southern exposure." "These birds are different. They don't like the sun shining in and fading fad-ing the wallpaper. They " "Andy Blake!" I sighed. "Yes?" What do you see over the top of that birdhouse?" "Nothing. Now listen, Arab " "You do so see something! You see the roof of the house down the street. What would happen if that birdhouse weren't there?" "The birds would have to get out and look for a place like the rest of us. They " "Andy Blake, it won't do you any good to act like this. II that new birdhouse weren't there you would be looking at the second-floor windows win-dows of the house down the street. And I'll bet that crotch of the tree lines up a window like a gun sight. Somebody put up that birdhouse within the past twg days. He put it up to hide the window of the next house so that, if anyone re-enacted Paula's going-to-bed routine, they wouldn't look out of the window and get suspicious of the .place next door." "The next house is fifty yards away," I objected. "What could you see that would make you dangerous to the neighbors?" "It doesn't matter what I saw. It could have been a murder or a man in a Jap uniform or " "And why didn't you call the cops?" ' "Because, darling, I'd have to tell the whole story over the downstairs phone. Because what I'd seen involved in-volved somebody who lives here. Because Be-cause the wrong person might hear what I said. So I called good old Bill and just asked him to drive around for me and said it was awful urgent. I was going to get him to take me to a drugstore phone or to a police station. And . . . and Bill was the wrong person." "I don't think I like this game." "Please, Andy, try to think. It all fits, doesn't it?" I got outside without seeing anybody, any-body, although I could fee! stares warming the back of my neck and hear twittering laughs. I walked halfway to the bus stop and theo something made me turn back. (TO BE CONTINUED) |
