Read Online Assignment — Stella Marni by Edward S. Aarons - Free Book Online Page B

break the door lock. The double-leafed, old-fashioned door with frosted-glass panes was suddenly yanked inward. Light streamed around Harry Blossom's gaunt figure. He was in his shirt sleeves; his long yellow hair looped down over his forehead, and there was no surprise on his thin, bony face.
    "Come in, Durell." He grinned suddenly. "I've been expecting you."
    "You might have left a note and saved my time," Durell said.
    "I knew you'd be here. Come in. It's cold out."
    Durell moved inside with a feeling of wariness. Blossom's regulation gun was in an underarm holster, and the agent looked capable of using it despite his words and manner. He looked curiously around the wide central hallway. Blossom was a bachelor, and the place was kept as tidy and as meticulously as if his mother were still alive. There was a smell of mildew in the house, but the place was free of dust, comfortably furnished in the Victorian style his parents had chosen.
    "Is Stella Marni here?" Durell asked.
    "Straight ahead. Second door to your left."
    Durell looked at Blossom's pale yellow eyes. The man breathed heavily, as if he had just finished a sudden sprint. "Go on," Blossom said. "She's all right. You don't think I'd be fool enough to hurt her, do you?"
    The room Durell entered was furnished as a small sitting room, with Queen Anne chairs, a Victorian love seat, a small Sarouk rug, heavy plush draperies on the tall windows. Sight and sound of the marsh wilderness outside were abruptly cut off. A small fire burned in a fireplace with an arched marble mantel above it. There was a smell of fear in the room.
    "Hello, Stella," he said quietly.
    She sat stiffly in one of the Queen Anne chairs near the draped windows. Her hair had ruddy glints, stolen from the crackling fire. She looked briefly at him and then at Blossom and then considered her hands, folded in her lap. There was a mark on her left cheek, as if Blossom had slapped her. Durell had no doubt that he had. Yet he was conscious of deep relief at finding her here, seeing she was safe, with nothing drastic having happened to her. He heard a small gilt and cloisonné clock ticking busily on the mantel in its mounting between two bronze cupids. It was two-thirty in the morning and there were faint violet shadows under the girl's eyes. Her green skirt and sweater modeled her long, perfect figure in classic lines as she sat on the chair.
    "Go on, Stella," Blossom urged. "Say hello to your friend."
    "I shouldn't have believed you," she said to Durell "You tricked me. You're all — alike, aren't you?"
    "Tricked you?"
    "You asked me to wait in your room so Blossom could pick me up," she said.
    "That isn't true."
    "He said he wanted to ask a few more questions," she went on in a flat, expressionless voice. Her fingers, trembling slightly, betrayed her. "I've grown accustomed to his persecution. He said he had a lead as to where my father might be, and that's why I went with him, even when we didn't go downtown to the office where he questioned me before, even when we drove all the way out here. He gave me hope. I actually began to believe he was taking me to my father. But we came here instead."
    "Are you all right?" Durell asked. "You're not hurt?"
    She shook her head. "How could I be all right? I trusted you. I thought at last — foolishly — that someone was really going to help me."
    Durell swung back to Blossom. "If she's under arrest, she doesn't belong here. What are you up to, Harry?"
    "My own game. And I told you to stay out of it."
    "You dealt the hand and I'm in. If you think Miss Marni had anything to do with the Greenwald murder, you should have taken her downtown, not here."
    "I have my own methods." Blossom was undisturbed. "Sit down, Sam. I have no beef with you any more. I've got you boxed now, you know. You're in trouble. I warned you. You can't say I didn't give you a chance to step aside, but no, you had to keep meddling. Stella was at that studio tonight. I'm not a fool, I know she