Read Online Murder in a Hurry by Frances and Richard Lockridge - Free Book Online Page A

them, feeling included among them. Then Brian’s hand was on her arm, he was guiding her to a chair, he was sitting beside her on the arm of the chair. Weigand looked from one to another of the group.
    â€œI think I have you straight,” he said. “Let me see. Mr. Halder—J. K. Halder, Junior?” He nodded to Halder, who mirrored Weigand’s nod. “And Mrs. Halder, Junior? Mrs. Whiteside—you’re Mr. Halder’s daughter, this Mr. Halder is your brother?”
    â€œCertainly,” Mrs. Whiteside said.
    â€œRight,” Weigand said, and he was unperturbed although, Liza thought, he was supposed to have been perturbed, put somehow in his place.
    â€œColonel Whiteside? That’s right?”
    â€œWell,” Whiteside said, “lieutenant colonel, actually.”
    Weigand nodded. He went on. But he did not speak Mary Halder’s name, or Brian’s or, finally, Liza’s own. He merely nodded at them. But his eyes stopped on Sherman Pine.
    â€œMr. Pine’s a friend of mine,” Mary Halder said. “We’ve been—we were going on to dinner. But we heard the news.” She paused momentarily. “On the radio,” she said.
    Bill Weigand nodded.
    â€œSome time last night,” Weigand said, then, “Mr. Halder died in his shop, of strychnine poisoning. The poison had been administered hypodermically. Although it means a very painful death, and not as quick as is generally supposed, strychnine is often used by suicides. We may have been supposed to think that Mr. Halder was a suicide—that he had decided to end his life in a bizarre fashion. His reputation for eccentricity—the very fact that, as a rich man, he chose to live in this out-of-the-way shop, change all his normal habits—that reputation was supposed to make the suicide theory attractive to the police. And—the theory cannot be dismissed. The hypodermic used may have been his; so may the poison. He could have injected the poison, put the hypodermic back in the cupboard where we found it, in a box with the poison, walked to the pen in which he died and—well, merely waited to die. It would have been fifteen minutes to half an hour before the symptoms began. It could have been that way.”
    He looked around at them, slowly.
    â€œBut,” he said, “I may as well tell you I don’t think it was that way. I think someone stronger than he held him, just long enough to inject the poison, kept him—again by superior strength—from summoning help, watched him die, put him in the pen before the body began to stiffen. I think somebody did this last night—say between eleven and two o’clock. And—I don’t think that person needed to be very strong, because Mr. Halder was a fairly old man, and not a particularly strong man.” He looked around at them, giving them a chance to comment.
    â€œDreadful,” Jennifer Halder said, and the others slowly, speculatively, looked at her, then looked back at Weigand.
    â€œNow—” Weigand began, and then stopped and looked at the spiral staircase. Everybody looked at the staircase, down which a black Scottie was scrambling, scratching, making noise enough for a great Dane. The Scottie reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped abruptly, looked around in surprise. The number of people in the room seemed momentarily to baffle the Scottie, and he considered sitting down. But he abandoned this intention even before he started to put it into effect. He walked to Jennifer Halder, who was nearest, and smelled her briefly; he ignored Jasper Halder, greeted Colonel Whiteside, but only in passing and made a slight detour around Mrs. Whiteside.
    â€œAegisthus!” Mary Halder said. “Here I am, Aegisthus.”
    The little black Scottie, who had hesitated to sniff Brian’s shoes, to look up with interest—and with apparent surprise—into Brian’s face, turned toward the