Read Online The Wrong Way Down by Elizabeth Daly - Free Book Online Page B

Miss Vance. How can I drop it?”
    She made a resigned gesture with both hands. “It’s all my fault. I made a bad impression on you. If I hadn’t been a fool I’d have seen you alone.”
    Gamadge smiled and shook his head. She opened the outer door, and he went out and down the stairs.

CHAPTER SIX
Escape For One
    T HE STAIRS WERE slippery old waxed stairs that had never been carpeted; Gamadge went down them carefully, his parcel under his right arm and his left hand on the rail. He asked himself questions to which he could find no answer.
    These friends that had dropped in on Miss Iris Vance were an ill-assorted group, but they seemed to know one another well and to have an understanding. What were two toughs like Mrs. Spiker and Mr. Bowles doing in a circle that included Miss Higgs and Mr. Simpson? Miss Vance might have acquaintances in two worlds, but how had she managed to bring them together in amity?
    Miss Higgs and Mr. Simpson were not toughs in the same sense that Mr. Bowles and Mrs. Spiker were toughs, but in their own way they were cool propositions; knew their way about, young as they were. Nothing soft or meek about Miss Higgs and Mr. Simpson, and Miss Higgs really seemed to think that Iris Vance had stolen the Audley portrait. Yet how meek, comparatively speaking, they had all been—even Mrs. Spiker. They had repressed themselves. Simpson was in love with Miss Vance, so far as Gamadge could tell, but his interference had been almost perfunctory, and the tough Bowles had quelled it. What were they afraid of?
    Gamadge thought that they were afraid of something apart from the discovery that the picture had been changed; he was almost sure that none of them except Miss Vance had ever heard of the picture before that evening. What had worried them about it was simply that it was making trouble.
    They couldn’t afford trouble. Well, people who went about under false names seldom could afford it. Gamadge was reasonably certain that Miss Vance had introduced all of her friends to him by false names.
    He had reached the middle of the next flight when he came to this conclusion, but at that point his thoughts were interrupted. A roar and a crash seemed to echo all around him. Startled out of his wits, he lost his footing; his feet flew out in front of him, and he came down on the edge of a step with a jar that all but dislocated his spine. The picture shot from under his arm, bounded all the way to the landing below, and unrolled itself. His dazed eye caught Lady Audley’s, and to his shattered imagination she seemed to gaze at him with even more than her usual reserve.
    He was dimly aware that something had hit the wainscot a little above and behind him. He turned his head, and at sight of a small splintered hole in the woodwork struggled to his feet. Harold dashed along the landing below, rounded the turn of the stair rail, and came to a stop, breathing hard. His Colt automatic was in his hand.
    He asked: “Are you shot?”
    â€œBy you?” Gamadge, a hand pressed to his injured vertebrae, glared at him.
    â€œMe? How would I hit you?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Gamadge turned again to look at the hole in the woodwork.
    â€œThat wasn’t me,” said Harold. “I was shooting straight up from the lower hall. This place is built like a birdcage; you can see straight up to the top floor.”
    Gamadge was still confused; he stood rubbing his spine and staring.
    The door of the apartment at that end of the lower landing opened, and an old gentleman looked out into the hall, and then at the two on the stairs above him. Harold’s pistol was now not in evidence.
    The old gentleman came out. He wore an ancient claret-colored smoking jacket, and he had a pipe in his hand. He asked: “What was that noise?”
    Harold said: “My friend fell downstairs.”
    The old gentleman looked at Gamadge. “Injured?”
    â€œNot permanently, I