The Devil To Pay by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

sofa and sat down to light a cigaret. “Funny thing. He’s just come to the Coast on a movie-writing contract—he’s a writer as well as a detective, you know—and an old school chum of mine in New York told him to look me up. So I asked him to act as my proxy. He did it well, don’t you think?”
    “But, Walter, why?” asked Rhys gently.
    Walter scowled at his smoke. “Well… I know how stiff your neck is. You wouldn’t have accepted money. So to avoid arguments…”
    Jardin rose and went to the window and pulled up the Venetian blinds and threw the windows open; the drizzle had stopped and the sun was trying to shine again. Traffic noises roared into the room from the rear street below. He closed the windows at once and turned around, a little shrunken. “It’s wonderfully decent of you, Walter. But I simply can’t accept it. Besides, Val has told me about your father cutting you out of his will.”
    “I’ve some money of my own from my mother’s father—plenty more left.”
    Rhys smiled sadly. “I’ve deposited the cash, and it’s too late today to draw it out again. But, Walter, the first thing—”
    “Forget it.”
    “Walter, you make it awfully difficult.”
    They eyed each other in silence, at an impasse. Then Val sobbed from the bedroom: “The least you could do, you swine, is come in here and console me!”
    Walter rose with a foolish grin. “I think,” murmured Rhys, “I’ll go out for some air.” He picked up his hat and left as Walter went into the bedroom.
    A little later the telephone rang and Val ran into the living-room, fussing with her hair, to answer it. All trace of tears had vanished. Walter followed, looking even more foolish, if that was possible, than before. “Yes,” said Val. “Just a moment. It’s for you, Walter. The telephone operator wants to know if you’re up here.”
    Walter said: “Hullo,” still looking foolish, then he said nothing at all as he listened to a voice, the foolish look slowly turning grim. Finally he muttered: “I’ll be right over,” and hung up.
    “What’s wrong?”
    Walter reached for his hat and coat. “My father.”
    Valerie went cold. “Don’t go, Walter.”
    “I’ve got to settle this thing once and for all.”
    She flew to him, clinging. “Please, Walter!”
    Walter said gently: “Wait for me. I’ll be back in half an hour and we’ll drive out Wilshire to the beach for dinner.” And he pushed her away and went out.
    Val stood still for a long minute. The old half-quenched fears began to burn brightly again. She picked up the coat left on the sofa and took it into the foyer, hardly aware of what she was doing. But as she was hanging the coat in the foyer closet awareness returned. She held the coat up and looked at it more closely. It was Walters! He had taken Rhys’s by mistake—they were both tan camel’s-hair of the same belted style, of a size. And as she turned the coat over in her hands, something fell out of one of the pockets and struck her foot. It was an automatic, very black and shiny.
    Val recoiled in instant reflex. But after the first horrible moment she pounced on it and thrust it hastily back into Walter’s coat, unreasonably glad her father was not there to see it. Then she took it out of the pocket and, handling it as if it were a scorpion, carried it into her bedroom and buried it in the deepest bureau drawer, her heart pounding. A gun, Walter. … She was so frightened she sat down on her bed to keep from recognizing the weakness in her knees. Walter had never had a gun. Walter hated guns, as he hated war, and poverty, and injustice. … She rose a little later and began to unpack her trunks, trying not to think.
    Rhys returned in ten minutes, smoking a cigar and looking calmer. He called out to Val: “Where’s everybody?”
    “Walter’s had a call from his father,” said Val in a muffled voice from the bedroom.
    “Oh. … Where do I put my hat?”
    “In the foyer closet, silly. And be