Nipped in the Bud by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

the little automatic elevator to the eighth floor she went down the hall to the Joris apartment—and then ran bump up against a stone wall, for nobody answered the bell. “Tarnation,” murmured Miss Withers. She was about to turn away, somewhat more than baffled, when she remembered that she must be standing at this particular moment only a few feet from the actual scene of the murder. From this doorway Ina Kell must have peeked out and seen—it could only have been the door of the farther apartment, the door on which the corridor ended. And the door held on its upper panel a small brass frame and a card….
    Surprisingly enough, the card was lettered “Fagan.” Miss Hildegarde Withers nodded sagely. She had had a hunch that something would come of this, and her hunches were of iron. “‘There is a destiny …’” she quoted to herself happily. It was time she had a break. Somehow the murder apartment had been kept vacant all this time. It couldn’t have been at the behest of the inspector or of any authorities; not this long. Possibly the place had been tied up in litigation, or else it might have been proved unrentable because of the tragedy.
    The schoolteacher could not have explained, if pressed, just what she hoped to find out on a trail so cold. But all the same she listened outside the door of the Fagan apartment for a moment, just in case. Everything was as still as death inside.
    Miss Withers gave a furtive look behind her, making sure that for the moment the long corridor was deserted, and when she found that she was really alone the impulse to have a quiet peek at the murder scene was too great to be resisted. She felt in the recesses of her capacious handbag and came up with a bit of metal, her mouth set in a grim line of satisfaction. Oscar Piper was always ribbing her about trying to open locks with a hairpin, but this flattened, slightly straightened-out button-hookish device had once been the property of a professional thief. The inspector had made the mistake of showing it to her and explaining its purpose, then leaving it unguarded on top of his desk.
    Miss Withers had practiced with the gadget and read up on the subject. There was really nothing to picking the average lock. All one had to do was to line up the tumbrels, or whatever they were. The maiden schoolteacher worked busily, making soft, clicking noises like the romping of a dozen or so metal mice, yet in spite of her best efforts the lock refused to cooperate. “Drat it all,” vented Miss Withers in an angry whisper. “One might as well try saying ‘Open sesame’!”
    And the door opened.

5
“The third day comes a frost, a killing frost …”
    —Henry VIII
    T HE DOOR OPENED, AS Miss Withers immediately realized, not from her success with the picklock nor as a result of any supernormal forces invoked by Ali Baba’s ancient gibberish, but simply because the knob had been turned from the inside. It was a comely young woman of about thirty wearing pajamas obviously designed to be slept in rather than admired. Her hair had been arranged for the night in two flaxen braids the color of oleomargarine, she wore no makeup whatever, but still there was something about her.
    Frankness, perhaps. “You didn’t need to go to all that bother,” she was saying. “You could have just knocked.”
    The best defense is a good offense, or so the schoolteacher had always heard. She pointed an accusing finger and said, “Then you must be Ruth Fagan!”
    “Of course.” The voice was a little nervous, but not very. Miss Withers elbowed her way forward into the foyer, a small bare room whose floor was covered with a fine Kermanshah rug. A moment later she was seated on a large and almost too comfortable divan in a heavily overfurnished room; a man’s room filled with knickknacks, oddments, strange weapons, curios, pictures, objets d’art—a jumble of types and periods and schools. Tony Fagan, the schoolteacher thought, must have been the sort of