Read Online Beware the Young Stranger by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page A

passes with the top down.”
    â€œDid you see the cashbox?”
    â€œNo, John, I think there was a coat or jacket lying on the seat. Trenchcoat, maybe.”
    â€œThe cashbox might have been under the coat,” Hibbs said. “Anyway, the police can lift fingerprints from the box and determine if it really is … was Dorcas’s.”
    â€œYes,” Vallancourt said, “I’m sure they can. I’m sure they will.”
    I’m equally sure, he thought, that Keith didn’t have the cashbox with him when he went out the window of the Ferguson living room. He was in there with a murdered woman, and the box was outside, in his car.
    Why didn’t he keep going when he carried the box out? Why should he return to her lifeless body?

9.
    From the advantage of the cottage porch, Keith watched Nancy’s sedan crawl along the lake and disappear into the distant woodland.
    It would be getting dark soon now. The lake was as peaceful as a church.
    Keith told himself he should be feeling better. He knew the worst now. He knew what he had to do. Always in the past, when he realized the full extent of his predicament, a strange calm had come over him, an ability to crouch down within himself, watchful, ready.
    The old man used to say he had a streak of bulldog in him.
    Maybe I do have, Keith thought.
    He scuffed at the porch floor with his toe, remembering.
    It was some consolation to know how many times he had denied his father victory. The experiences went as far back as Keith could recall. The old man would freeze him out, cut his allowance, humiliate him, pile ridiculous chores on him. Like the time he’d made Keith spend a Saturday carrying leaves from the front yard a bucketful at a time.
    And then the resort to physical violence. Keith would vomit in private, but facing his father he was stolid, prepared for pain, knowing whose endurance was the greater. The ending was always the same, with his father sweating, backing away finally with a curse. And the boy carrying a heavier load of hatred and contempt.
    Keith walked to the top of the porch steps and sat down.
    Of course, it hadn’t been uninterrupted war between him and the old man. Mother was an angel, he thought. Vague, helpless, unable to cope with the old man; but she was jake, george, and number one, all put indefinitely together in a little woman everybody called Maggie.
    Elbows on knees, hands knotted, he rubbed his forehead against his knuckles.
    Mom, I’m glad you don’t have to wonder and worry. About this thing now … and that Cheryl Pemberton mess in Florida.
    They thought they had me. But I knew I could stand it. The nerves all dissolved, leaving nothing for them to get to. Like with the old man. Sixty hours of it. One after another of them. I worked them in shifts, Mom. And there weren’t enough of them …
    He jerked his head up, jumped to his feet, grabbed the porch post. A fluttering went through his chest. Too soon for Nancy. She hadn’t had time to get to the drive-in and back.
    He stood listening. He was certain the breeze had carried the faintest sound of a car down the trough of the long, shallow valley.
    He vaulted the porch rail, dropping like a cat to the yard. After a moment’s hesitation, he ran toward the lake.
    They’ve got her, he thought. They’ve made her talk. I should have gone myself, the way I wanted to. Why did I let her talk me into her going?
    Far down the lake, twin shafts of light stabbed across the water.
    Keith faded across the road into the shadows. He stood breathing hard, studying the dark hills behind him, the road ahead.
    He had to decide quickly.
    He jumped a drainage ditch with an easy flow of movement and started dog-padding parallel to the road, in the direction from which the car was coming.
    He could hear it quite clearly now. Far ahead of him, the car’s lights danced, closing the distance rapidly.
    He reached a cave of darkness beneath a