RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK by Max Gilbert Read Free Book Online

his arm impatiently.
    "Oh, don't give me any more about that note! Every time we have a homicide on our hands, about eighty-five people write in claiming that they did it, you ought to know that yourself. The people that really do these things are the ones that don't write in and claim the credit. I told you she died of lockjaw. What more is there? Now report to--"
    "Yes sir. But she could have been murdered by lockjaw. There can be two kinds of lockjaw, the accidentally-contracted and the purposely-contracted. Lockjaw could have been the weapon, just as a gun or a knife or an axe is the weapon."
    His chief's voice became very subdued. He pronounced each word very slowly, very distinctly. There were red flags out all over them.
    "I--told--you, drop--the--investigation. That's an order."
    There was only one answer Cameron could make to that. And stay on the force. "Yes sir," he said quietly.

    Garrison came heavily down the stairs, all the spring gone from him. He sat down at the breakfast table. Morgan brought in a half grapefruit bedded in ice, set it down before him. He placed the morning's mail to one side of him.
    After awhile Garrison turned to it, began listlessly going through it piece by piece.
    It was the third one he came to. It said, "Now how do you like it, Mr. Garrison?"
    It had no signature.
    For a moment, a moment only, he roused slightly from his lethargy. He turned his head and looked toward the door, and beyond it, where the telephone was. He even seemed to be on the point of leaving his chair, getting up and going out there.
    Then a look of wearied wisdom crept into his eyes. He stayed where he was. He pursed his lips. He shook his head slightly, to himself. As if to say, "I let myself be fooled once, by one of these. I won't let myself be fooled a second time."
    He crumpled it, threw it under the table, away from sight. He went back to his grapefruit.

3. The Second Rendezvous

    THE TELEPHONE CALL came at a fiendishly inopportune moment.
    They were both together in the room there.
    Florence was dressed before him; the hostess usually is dressed sooner than the host. She should have been downstairs seeing to the last-minute arrangements. She would have been, in all probability, by then. Something about a bracelet had kept her in the room. The catch balked, it took her several moments to get it to work right.
    They had an extension there in their mutual bedroom. His blood froze, afterwards, to think how narrowly the call had escaped being intercepted by her. She was even standing closer to the instrument than he was at the moment, within arm's reach. If it hadn't been for that bracelet-catch, occupying both her hands. . . .
    "Hugh," she said, indicating it with a nod of her head. "I hope it's no one calling up with a last-minute refusal, after my arrangements have all been made."
    He was preoccupied with his bow tie. "Let them get it from downstairs," he said.
    It rang again. "You'll only make one of them come all the way up here, when they're needed down there every moment of the time tonight." If she had released the bracelet, it would have slipped from her arm to the floor; she hadn't been able to succeed in joining it yet.
    It had stopped.
    A maid knocked on the door. "Telephone for Mr. Strickland."
    The bracelet was bringing out all the latent stubbornness in Florence's nature now. She sat down at her vanity table with it. She took a hairpin to the catch and worked on it, like an expert repairing a watch.
    "Party or no party, I'm going to sit here until I can get this to work. I planned on wearing it and I won't go down without it. You really should take it back and have them fix it for me, Hugh; I had this same trouble last time."
    He was already at the telephone.
    "Hello?" he said incautiously.
    "Hello," a mocking soprano echoed.
    The shock was like a pailful of icy water dashed full into his face.
    Luckily she wasn't looking at him just then, only had eyes for the catch. He turned sharply the other