The Door Between by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

out. But it was the oddest-looking scissors she …
    Eva almost screamed this time. That blade, that sharp wicked point … the weapon, the weapon that had killed Karen! Someone had killed Karen with half a scissors and wiped the blade off and – and left it! Her hand jerked again, and the metal thing fell, striking the edge of the writing-desk and slithering off into a little waste-basket half-full of paper debris to the right of the chair. Unconsciously Eva passed her fingers over her skirt, but the cold and evil feel of the thing remained.
    She tottered around the desk and dropped to her knees on the dais beside Karen’s body. Karen, Karen, she thought wildly; such a queer and pretty thing, so terribly happy after so many shut-in years, and now so horribly dead. Eva felt herself go weak and put out her hand to steady herself on the dais floor. And this time her fingers touched something like tepid jelly, and she did scream – a formless, almost voiceless scream that whispered in the silent room.
    It was Karen’s coagulating blood, and it was all over her hand.
    She jumped to her feet and retreated blindly, half-mad with nausea and horror. Her handkerchief, she must wipe … She fumbled in the waistband of her skirt, ridiculously careful not to get a spot of the sticky red stuff on her skirt or waist. She found the handkerchief and wiped and wiped, as if she could never get herself clean; wiped her fingers and smeared the handkerchief with jelly-red smears and kept staring blindly at Karen’s bluing face.
    Then her heart stopped beating. Someone was chuckling without amusement, dryly, behind her.
    Eva whirled so fast she almost fell. She did fall back against the desk, the bloody handkerchief clutched to her breast.
    A man was leaning in the open doorway of the bedroom, leaning and chuckling in that dry and humorless way.
    But his eyes were not chuckling at all. They were very cold gray eyes, and they were watching not her face but her hands.
    And the man said in a low, slow voice: “Stand still, gorgeous.”
6
    The man heaved against the jamb, came straight, and walked into the room on the balls of his feet. He walked so carefully that Eva felt a hysterical impulse to laugh. But she did not, for it struck her remotely that there was grace in the way he walked on the balls of his feet, as if he had done it many times before.
    The man refused to look at her face; all his attention coldly persisted in centering on her hands. The bloody handkerchief, thought Eva in a dim horror … She dropped the hateful thing on the floor and started to push away from the desk.
    “I said stand still.”
    She stood still. The man stopped, his eyes flickered, and still looking at her he walked backwards until he came to the door, and then he found it by groping for it.
    “I – She’s –” began Eva, gesturing in a fluttery way over her shoulder. But her mouth was so dry she had to stop.
    “Shut up.”
    He was a young man with a bleak brown face, as crisp and seared as autumn leaves. The words came out of his mouth like drops of ice-water through lips that barely parted.
    “Park it right where you are. Against the desk. And keep those hands of yours where I can see them.”
    The room spun. Eva closed her eyes, dizzy. Keep those hands of yours … Her legs were frozen, but her brain was going like a machine. The words didn’t make sense. Keep those hands of yours …
    When she looked again he was standing in front of her with a trace of puzzlement in the gray diamonds of his eyes. And now he was not looking at her hands, which were spread beside her on the desk, but at her face. He was reading her face. He was taking it in, feature by feature – her brow, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her chin – going over them one by one, like an accountant taking inventory. Eva tried to make sense out of chaos, but nothing clicked into place. She thought it might be a dream, then hoped it might be a dream. She almost convinced herself it was