The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [189]
“Miss Malcom . . . ?”
“Is all right,” I answered. “She just got a good scare, that’s all.” I didn’t want to frighten him any more than he was. “Did someone come in here?”
He squeezed my hand. “No . . . there was a noise, and Miss Malcom screamed. Mike, I’m not very brave at all. I’m scared.”
The kid had a right to be. “It was nothing. Cover up and be still. I’ll be in the next room. Want me to leave the door open?”
“Please, Mike.”
I left the light on and put a rubber wedge under the door to keep it open. Billy was standing by the bed holding a handkerchief to Roxy’s shoulder. I took it away and looked at it. Not much of a wound, the bullet was of small caliber and had gone in and come out clean. Billy poked me and pointed to the window. The pane had spiderwebbed into a thousand cracks with a neat hole at the bottom a few inches above the sill. Tiny glass fragments winked up from the floor. The shot had come in from below, traveling upward. Behind me in the wall was the bullet hole, a small puncture head high. I dug out the slug from the plaster and rolled it over in my hand. A neat piece of lead whose shape had hardly been deformed by the wall, caliber .32. York’s gun had found its way home.
I tucked it in my watch pocket. “Stay here, Billy, I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” He didn’t like me to leave.
“I got a friend downstairs.”
Junior was struggling to his feet when I reached him. I helped him with a fist in his collar. This little twerp had a lot of explaining to do. He was a sorry-looking sight. Pieces of gravel were imbedded in the flesh of his face and blood matted the hair of his scalp. One lens of his specs was smashed. I watched him while he detached his lower lip from his teeth, swearing incoherently. The belting he took had left him half dazed, and he didn’t try to resist at all when I walked him toward the house.
When I sat him in a chair he shook his head, touching the cut on his temple. He kept repeating a four-letter word over and over until realization of what had happened hit him. His head came up and I thought he was going to spit at me.
“You got it!” he said accusingly on the verge of tears now.
“Got what?” I leaned forward to get every word. His eyes narrowed.
Junior said sullenly, “Nothing.”
Very deliberately I took his tie in my hand and pulled it. He tried to draw back, but I held him close. “Little chum,” I said, “you are in a bad spot, very bad. You’ve been caught breaking and entering. You stole something from York’s private hideaway and Miss Malcom has been shot. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll talk.”
“Shot . . . killed?”
There was no sense letting him know the truth. “She’s not dead yet. If she dies you’re liable to face a murder charge.”
“No. No. I didn’t do it. I admit I was in the laboratory, but I didn’t shoot her. I . . . I didn’t get a chance to. Those men jumped on me. I fought for my life.”
“Did you? Were you really unconscious? Maybe. I went after them until I heard Miss Malcom scream. Did she scream because you shot her, then faked being knocked out all the while?”
He turned white. A little vein in his forehead throbbed, his hands tightened until his nails drew blood from the palms. “You can’t pin it on me,” he said. “I didn’t do it, I swear.”
“No? What did you take from the room back there?”
A pause, then, “Nothing.”
I reached for his pockets, daring him to move. Each one I turned inside out, dumping their contents around the bottom of the chair. A wallet, theater stubs, two old letters, some keys and fifty-five cents in change. That was all.
“So somebody else wanted what you found, didn’t they?” He didn’t answer. “They got it, too.”
“I didn’t have anything,” he repeated.
He was lying through his teeth. “Then why did they wait for you and beat your brains out? Answer that one.” He was quiet. I took the will out and waved it at him. “It went with this. It was more important than this, though. But what would be more important to you than a will? You’re stupid, Junior. You aren’t in this at all, are you? If