Death-Watch by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

Steffins in one tone, and then, with an entirely different expression she looked over her shoulder at Eleanor—a kind of beckoning triumph, with one eyebrow raised.
    Lucia Handreth also looked at Eleanor. “I’m sorry,” she told her quietly. “I’d have concealed it, only he’s hurt. And they’d be bound to find out, anyway. It’s Donald.”
    “Oh, dear me!” said Mrs. Steffins. “And are you entertaining Donald now, my dear?”
    Her triumphant ha-ha’s were almost a burlesque, gurgling queerly as she wagged her head and patted her hands together. Eleanor was staring, very pale, and Lucia breathing hard. With an effort she added:
    “He seems to have had a bad fall—hurt round the head or something—and I can’t quite bring him round. I heard him moaning in the back yard and dragging himself along. I dragged him in. Naturally, I didn’t want to arouse … Oh, can’t anybody do anything?”
    “This is important, Hadley,” Dr. Fell muttered. “Get Watson. At once. The other can wait. Will you take us in, Miss Handreth?”
    He gestured fiercely to Hadley, who nodded and hurried for the stairs. Snapping on the light, Lucia Handreth led them through a little sitting-room to a bedroom behind. The shade had been removed from the bright electric lamp beside the bed, and made a naked glare. Sprawled out on the yellow silk counterpane, a figure lay face downwards, twitching a little. A towel, wet and streaked red, had slipped round the corner of his head and half displaced a brownish bandage fixed with sticking-plaster; there were more towels, a bottle of iodine, and a bowl of water tinged with blood on a chair by the bed.
    Eleanor Carver ran to him. He muttered something in a hoarse voice as she tried to lift him up, and suddenly began to fight.
    “Steady,” said Dr. Fell, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Watson will be here in two ticks. He’ll have him round—”
    “He kept on bleeding so at the nose,” Lucia Handreth appealed to him, in a breathless voice. “I didn’t know what to do. I—”
    The figure on the bed ceased struggling. Only a faint creaking of springs disturbed the silence in that harsh-lit room; a scratching of clothes, as of someone crawling, against the yellow silk, or they might have thought life had gone. The clothes were grimy and ripped down from one shoulder; and red abrasions showed up bluish points along one wrist. Then even the creaking stopped, so that they could hear a clock tick. Eleanor Carver screamed, and Mrs. Steffins walked over and struck her across the mouth.
    Then the man on the bed spoke.
    “ It looked round the corner of the chimney ,” he said, clearly, as though obeying a prompting. The words startled them as though a dead man had spoken. “ It had gilt paint on its hands. ”
    There was an intrinsic horror in those unemotional words which seemed to affect even the man on the bed. One of his legs straightened out and struck the chair. The bowl of stained water crashed and broke on the floor like spilled blood.
    A sane and very testy voice spoke from the door as Eleanor whirled round on Mrs. Steffins.
    “All right, now; all right,” squeaked Dr. Watson. “Out of here, now, all of you. None o’ my business, but if you will order me about
    … Harrumph. Warm water.”
    Then Melson found himself standing in the cool of the outer hall. The police surgeon, naturally, did not get rid of the women. Both Eleanor and Mrs. Steffins went hurrying to Lucia Handreth’s bathroom for the warm water; in a crazy scramble which looked ludicrously like a fight; and Mrs. Steffins was smiling over her shoulder at an unobserving Dr. Watson. Lucia Handreth began quietly to pick up the fragments of the bowl and mop up the spilled water with a towel. And in the outer hall, with a banged door behind them, Dr. Fell faced an irascible Hadley.
    “Now would you mind explaining to me,” said the latter, “what all this row is about?”
    Dr. Fell took out a violently coloured