The Venus Death: A Ralph Lindsay Mystery. Ben Benson

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СКАЧАТЬ girl’s crazy,” he said, subsiding again. “A real psycho.”

      “Listen,” I said. “There’s something funny about it. She acted a little strange–” But his breathing had become deep and steady. I let him lie there. I went into the bathroom and washed up. Then I came back, undressed, locked my gun in the closet, and put out the light. I got into the hard narrow bed and lay there looking out across the dark fields. I could see the shortwave radio tower and the blinking red lights on top of it. I kept looking at them until I fell asleep.

      CHAPTER 2 _______________

      SHE phoned me at the barracks the next evening, Thursday, just after I had come in from a larceny investigation. There was to be a Signal Nineteen, a gambling raid in Lincolnshire, and her call came in as we were getting ready.

      She had a hauntingly husky voice over the telephone. She asked if I wanted to see her that evening. I told her I would have liked nothing better, but I was on duty. I did say I would ride by Staley Woolen the next morning before noon.

      And I did, too. At 11:45 Friday morning I came off Route 138, moved down the valley and into Staleyville. I was driving cruiser 56, a new one, nicely polished and shiny, with a long buggy-whip antenna in the rear. I went past the old white church in the center of Staleyville, over the stone bridge and the mill dam, and onto the two-lane road that led to the factory. Ahead of me I could see the tall smokestacks with their drifting gray plumes, and the moss-covered, ancient, red-brick buildings of the Staley Woolen Company. There was a tall, chain-link cyclone fence, the top of it carrying three strands of barbed wire. I came up slowly. An armored truck emerged from the gate and turned onto the road. As it passed me, the driver blew his horn twice and waved. I waved back. It meant the weekly payroll at Staley had been delivered without incident.

      As I came to the gate, the guard walked out of his glassed-in booth. He was a gray old man in a gray old uniform. He grinned at me and shouted something I couldn’t hear. I waved to him. I was driving by the factory in low gear, at three miles per hour. I looked up at the office building, a two-story structure directly inside the gate. The sun was high in the sky and the windows were shadowed. I didn’t see her.

      I went on ahead, turned onto Route 116 and finished my morning patrol. I kept thinking it was a long time until Sunday.

      But I saw her before Sunday. On Saturday morning I had a routine traffic patrol. I moved out of the driveway of Troop E Headquarters and stopped at the turnpike to let the cars go by. I looked back at the wide, velvet-green lawn. In the center of it were the tall twin flagpoles, the American flag and the white-and-blue Commonwealth flag billowing out in the soft warm October breeze. Beyond was the red-brick Colonial barracks, the high steel radio tower behind it, the evergreen shrubs banked in front of it. I could feel the pleasantness of the warm sun on the back of my neck.

      I turned the cruiser out onto the turnpike. Ahead of me a small gray convertible was parked on the shoulder of the road. Somebody inside it blew the horn three times. I passed it, stopped the cruiser, and walked back. I had already seen who was inside the car. It was Manette Venus and she was alone.

      “Hi.” I grinned at her. “I didn’t know you had a car.”

      “It’s not mine,” she said. “I borrowed it from a friend.”

      “And I thought you had no friends in Danford.”

      “It belongs to a girl in my office. I don’t work today and she let me borrow it for a few hours.” Her eyes swept over me. “I’ve never seen you in uniform. You’re positively striking. But isn’t that an awfully big gun to be carrying? It’s not the same as the other night.”

      “No, this is the regulation, long-barreled service revolver.”

      “And what’s in that little black leather case on your belt? A hand grenade?”

      I laughed. “No, my handcuffs.”

      “And that long leather pouch on your belt?”

      “The ammunition carrier. It holds twenty-four rounds.”

      “All that? And do you carry a machine gun or a rifle in the car?”

      “Sometimes.”

      “What do you keep in the trunk of the car?”

      “A spare tire.”

      She made a face at me. “Everybody carries a spare tire. What else?”

      “The two-way radio is in there. Also a folded emergency stretcher.” I smiled at her. “Why so curious, Manette?”

      “Does it bother you, Ralph?”

      “Yes. It bothers me a little.”

      “Did you ever know a girl who wasn’t curious?”

      “I never knew many girls.”

      “Then you’ll learn. Females have a terrible sense of curiosity. Especially me.” She studied my uniform again. “I like the breeches and the black leather puttees.”

      “I don’t. They chafe my legs.”

      “But if you didn’t wear them you wouldn’t look so distinctive.”

      “That’s what they keep telling us,” I said. “By the way, I drove by the factory yesterday. I didn’t see you.”

      “I was making an entry with Mr. Reece, the office manager. I just couldn’t get away. Which way did you come?”

      “Through Staleyville, driving south.”

      “Do you always come that way?”

      “Not always, no.”

      She looked at a tiny wrist watch. “I mustn’t keep you, Ralph. See you tomorrow?”

      “I’ll be parked on your doorstep.”

      She smiled softly, put the gray convertible in gear, and said good-by. She drove off. I watched the car as it went down the turnpike and disappeared around the bend. There was something exotic about her and I wanted to see her again, to be near her. Yet there was a vague uneasy feeling in me. She had asked too many, not-so-innocent questions.

      I dressed carefully Sunday. I put on my brown whipcord slacks, brown suède shoes, a green woolen sport shirt and my hound’s-tooth sports jacket. I had trouble combing my hair. It was cut so short that no matter how hard I brushed it, it stood up like bristles.

      Manette was waiting for me in the living room of the old house on Glen Road. She introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Fulton Reece, the people she lived with, and she told me Mr. Reece was her office manager at Staley Woolen. Mrs. Reece was quiet, prim and white-haired, with a sickly narrow face and a small, dry-lipped mouth. Mr. Reece was pasty and flabby-faced, quiet and untidy. He was past middle age, but his sparse gray hair was combed crosswise over his skull and seemed artificially waved. He had a remote expression in his eyes. His lips were wet, loose and purplish, and his jaw was slack.

      We chitchatted for a moment in the living room. I stood there stiffly and uncomfortably while Mr. and Mrs. Reece sat on the damask-covered divan. The inside of the house СКАЧАТЬ