Read Online And So To Murder by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online Page A

of her lungs. ‘ Who is it? Where are you ?’
    Across the room, the speaking-tube whistled.
    So it was a joke. A damnable and detestable piece of clowning on somebody’s part.
    ‘I can hear you up there!’ she shouted. ‘Come down! I know you’re there.’
    The speaking-tube whistled again.
    It could no more be ignored than a ringing telephone. It stung her and drew her from mingled curiosity and rage. She flew at it.
    ‘If you think this is funny,’ she said into the mouth of the tube, ‘just come down here and I’ll tell you different. Who are you? What do you want?’
    She bent her cheek to the mouth of the tube to listen for an answer. And in the same moment she became aware of two things.
    Standing sideways to the mouth of the tube, she was looking obliquely out of the large rear window. Even in the dim, flickering pin-point of the gas-jet, she could see William Cartwright outside. He was standing, motionless, looking straight into her eyes from a distance of fifteen feet away, and on his face there was a look of horror. In the same instant, coming to life, Cartwright flung back his arm and threw something straight at her face.
    Monica’s movement was instinctive. She leaped back, dodging and crying out. A lump of putty, weighing perhaps a quarter of a pound, smashed the window-pane with a bursting crash, thudded against the side wall, and ricochetted among bottles. As Monica jumped back, something happened to the speaking-tube.
    Something which looked like water, but was not water, spurted in a jet from the mouth of the tube. It passed exactly across the place where Monica’s cheek and eyes had been pressed half a second before. The first jet splashed across the linoleum; the speaking-tube gurgled like a pipe, sputtered, and gushed again.
    A pungent odour scraped the nostrils in that hot room. Smoke, light and acrid, blossomed in little white dots on the linoleum; and there was a hissing, sizzling noise as half a pint of vitriol, poured down a speaking-tube as though down a large pipe, began to eat into the surface of the floor.
    The footsteps in the room above began to run.
    3
    Monica was not sick.
    She thought she was going to be, but she was not. It was perhaps twenty seconds before she realized what had happened, and by that time Cartwright was with her.
    Cartwright, his face as white as paper, reached through the broken window, caught hold of the sash and pushed it up. His hand was shaking so much that he cut it on ragged glass, but he did not notice this. Hauling himself up with easy agility, he swung himself into the room; slipped, and almost fell forward into the smoking pool.
    ‘Did it touch you?’ she heard his voice saying. It sounded very far away. ‘Any of it? A drop, even?’
    Monica shook her head.
    ‘Are you sure? Not a drop? Look out! – don’t step in it! Sure?’
    Monica nodded violently.
    ‘Move over here. God, I’ll kill somebody for this! Easy, now. What happened?’
    ‘U-upstairs,’ said Monica. ‘He poured it –’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You know? No, don’t go up there!’ She was clinging to his sleeve. She felt her finger-nails scrape on the rough cloth. Though she had said no acid had touched her, she was terrified for fear it had after all; momentarily she expected to feel the bite and burn of it on her body. ‘Don’t, please don’t!’
    He shook off her hand and ran for the door opening from the office into the hall. Footsteps, at a running tiptoe, went stealthily down the staircase out in the hall. Outside, only a few yards away, ran the person who had poured the acid. And the office door was locked on the outside.
    Cartwright turned and plunged into the dark front room. As he did so the outer door of the doctor’s house closed softly. With Monica following him in a state close to hysteria, he reached the front door and stared up and down the mimic street.
    It was empty.

V
The Incredible Summons of a Blackboard
    1
    W ILLIAM C ARTWRIGHT walked slowly back to the