Postmark Murder by Mignon G. Eberhart Read Free Book Online Page A

flashed sickeningly through her mind. They would tell her to wait, of course. They would arrive, squad cars hurtling through the night. They would take her and Jonny back to the silent, terrible rooming house. They would ask them questions. They would question her—but they would question Jonny, too.
    Jonny would understand too much—too much to forget.
    Get Jonny out of here, Laura thought, imperatively. There was nothing else to do. Telephone the police later—tell Matt, tell everybody later, but take Jonny to a safe place first. She left the hot telephone booth with its fugitive trace of the fragrance of carnations, and again taking Jonny by the hand, led her out of the lighted, pleasant, welcoming store, and onto the street. They stood at the curb, and after a moment a taxicab came around the corner.
    It seemed a long drive back through crowded streets. Eastward and farther eastward, across the river again, with its misty dark expanse below and the great girders of the bridge looming ghostily up into the sky above them. It was dark by now, yet the lights of the Loop reflected themselves in the fog so a kind of golden cloud, tinged with orange, seemed to hover over the city. They turned again on Wacker Drive, slippery now from the fog. This time as they crept along Michigan Boulevard, the bridge was up and they waited five minutes or so along with other cars, their engines throbbing, hooting occasionally with impatience. Eventually the great twin bulks of the bridge lowered and traffic resumed. Lighted store windows shone out on either hand, gay and frivolous, filled with luxury goods, decorated in red and green and tinsel. They went on and into Lake Shore Drive and stopped at last at the lighted entrance of the apartment house where she lived.
    It was in a curious way like a nightmare in which one tries and tries to run, and cannot escape; she hurried Jonny through the lighted foyer, back to the bank of elevators. Yet she felt as if she took the image of a bare little room, in a silent, brown, rooming house away out on the west side, and a man staring at the light with eyes that did not see it, along with her at every step.
    The elevators were self-operated. One or two other residents entered the same elevator and Laura was queerly grateful for their presence. One got off on the sixth floor; the other, a woman carrying packages wrapped in Christmas paper, nodded at Laura and said she lived on the top floor. Her nod, her voice were pleasant and matter-of-fact. For a strange second it seemed remarkable that she did not also see the image that accompanied Laura so stubbornly. And at that, Laura caught back her own frightened, racing fancy. She must keep her head; she must see to Jonny. Laura stopped the elevator at her own floor, the ninth. She and Jonny walked along the carpeted corridor and she got out her key. Once inside the door, warmth and safety surrounded them.
    She bolted the door; it was an instinctive act. No one had followed them all the way from the silent rooming house. She took a long, steadying breath.
    Trying to keep her voice easy and calm she talked, as she always did with Jonny—a little running accompaniment to action. They would put away coats and hats; then Jonny would have some milk. Jonny with her customary and rather touching self-reliance put her bright red coat neatly on a hanger, standing on tiptoes, stretching the length of her sturdy little legs.
    She seemed tired, Laura thought, watching her, as they went back to the kitchen and got out milk and cookies, tired and perhaps still a little puzzled, but that was all. Suki heard them from Jonny’s bedroom and came in, meowing hoarsely in greeting, and eyed the milk with interest. She left Jonny pouring milk into a saucer for Suki, smiling at Suki who in the frantically voracious way of a Siamese kitten dove into the milk, sputtering it widely as he lapped. So that was all right, Laura thought; she was certain that Jonny was not aware of the