Curtain for a Jester by Frances Lockridge Read Free Book Online Page B

the room. He had not seen her. (But the room was full of light.) Or—or he had gone to another door, he would come to her, tell why he had come to the penthouse, how he had found—
    She waited. It seemed she waited for a long time, and as she waited her body shook. And John Baker did not come.
    When she turned, the movement was almost convulsive in its quickness. But it seemed to her that the foyer was dark, and that she groped through it to the closet, then to the door, and that the hall outside was darker still. She stumbled on the stairs, and caught herself, and when she reached the elevator she pressed the bell and kept her finger on it long after the car had started up—kept pressing it with a kind of desperation.
    John Baker swore to himself. Martha had not told him she was coming there that morning. Not, of course, that it would have made any real difference if she had, although he might somehow have stopped her. The other, he had not been able to stop. Things had got out of hand.
    That she had seen him, he was almost certain, although she had looked so shocked standing there, so shaken, that it was hard to tell how much she had seen and taken in. It was, all around, a bad mixup. She would, of course, get onto the police before—well, before it was time for the police.
    The whole thing had gone haywire. There wasn’t much to be done about it. He watched, out of sight, until Martha had gone through the foyer and he waited, after that, for a few minutes longer. Then he went into the living room and began to work. He worked fast, and as he worked he listened.
    He had had some five minutes, which was more time than he had counted on, when he heard someone at the foyer door. He had expected more warning than that. It was a near thing. But he was on the terrace, looking in, when Sylvester Frank entered the living room.
    The butler—who now was only a slight man in his thirties, wearing a business suit—stopped, too, as if he had run into something. But his face, from the distance at which John Baker stood, did not appear to change. He stopped; he looked at the body of his employer. There was, to be sure, a slight tremor of his body. It looked uncommonly like a shrug.
    He stood for a moment, looking at the body. He walked around it, skirting the spreading blood. He stopped and looked around the room, and out through the doors, and Baker was out of sight, he hoped quickly enough. But he could not see without being seen. He waited a moment, and risked a quick look. Frank was at the telephone.
    Whether Frank was calling the police or not—and Baker could only guess and wonder—there was at the moment nothing more to be done at the penthouse. Baker had done what he could; things had gone haywire. There was no immediate help for that.
    There were more ways than one off the penthouse roof. Baker took one little frequented.
    Pamela North had been sure there was another can of coffee. She had remembered distinctly that there was another can of coffee. She had known precisely where it was; it was where the coffee always was. It wasn’t.
    Jerry awakened to hear the news. Jerry groaned. He reported a headache.
    â€œIt’s the most mysterious thing,” Pam said. “I can just see it there. Yesterday afternoon.”
    â€œOh no! ” Jerry said.
    She would, Pam North said, just go around the corner. It wouldn’t take a minute.
    â€œI’ll get some clothes on,” Pam said, and started to. For a time, Jerry watched her, gloomily. Then he groaned again, but with less assurance—this was a reminiscent groan. He swung out of bed, said, “Ouch!” and then that they might as well both go. They could drink their coffee and buy it too. In due course they went, sat at a counter, drank coffee and ate eggs. Jerry revived, but not excessively.
    â€œI suppose,” he said, after the second cup, “that you feel fine?”
    â€œYes,” Pam said, simply.
    Jerry