The Spook Lights Affair by Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller Read Free Book Online Page A

robbery?”
    Another head wag. In the lamplight Cantwell’s face was the color of clabbered milk.
    Quincannon said, “If that were his intention you’d already be dead. Travers was shot three or four days ago—”
    But Cantwell wasn’t listening. A surge of panic had him in its grip, and it served to double his strength. He struggled mightily, managed to break loose from the tight-fingered grip on his arm. Quincannon clutched at him, caught the tail of his coat as he turned away, but couldn’t hold it; Cantwell twisted away and ran for the front door.
    In the darkness and his haste to give chase, Quincannon stumbled over a fold in the threadbare carpet and banged into and upset a table. By the time he regained his balance Cantwell was out the door and gone. The noise caused by the falling table woke the parrot, which began screeching maniacally in its cage. This in turn woke some of the house’s other residents; angry cries followed Quincannon as he lurched outside.
    It took him a few seconds to locate Cantwell in the foggy darkness. The youth was twenty rods distant, fleeing in a spindle-legged run along the sidewalk. “Stop!” Quincannon yelled. “Come back here, you damned young scruff!”
    The shout had no effect. Cantwell didn’t even break stride, running head down as if a demon from hell were breathing fire on his backside. Quincannon gave chase, but couldn’t catch him. It was all he could do to maintain enough speed to keep him in sight.
    Cantwell dashed diagonally across the empty street in mid-block, casting a brief look back over his shoulder. The nearness of Quincannon’s pursuit spurred him past the darkened front of a warehouse and into an alley beyond its board-fenced side yard. The fog not only hid him then, but deadened the pound of his footsteps. Furious now, Quincannon charged around the corner of the fence without slowing. It was like hurling himself into a vat of India ink; wet black closed around him and he could see nothing but vague shapes through the ragged coils and streamers of mist. He slowed, heard only silence, plunged ahead—
    Something swung out of the murk, struck him squarely across the left temple, and knocked him over like a ninepin.
    It was not the first time he had been hit on or about the head, and his skull had withstood harder blows without serious damage or loss of consciousness. He didn’t lose consciousness now, though for a few seconds his thoughts rattled around like pebbles in a tin can. Through a faint ringing in his ears he heard Cantwell’s frightened voice cry something unintelligible, then a clatter on the cobbles nearby—a board or whatever it was that had been used to bludgeon him. He rolled over onto his knees and forearms, hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet. Fresh pain throbbed in his temple. Somewhere in the darkness ahead there was again the faint beat of receding footfalls.
    A multijointed oath swelled his throat. He bit it back and plunged onward, shaking his head to clear it, using the fence to guide him and heedless of obstacles. Blood trickled warm and sticky down his right cheek, adding fuel to his outrage.
    The fog-softened steps veered off to the right, were replaced by scraping sounds, resumed dimly at a greater distance. Quincannon’s mental processes steadied. There must be a second alley that crossed this one through the middle of the block. He slowed, saw the intersection materialize through the gray vapors, and swung himself around into the new passage.
    Where, after half a dozen paces, he ran into another wooden fence.
    He caromed off, staggering. The multijointed oath once more swelled his throat and this time two of the smokier words slipped out. He threw himself back to the fence, caught the top and scaled its six-foot height. When he dropped down on the far side he could hear Cantwell’s steps a little more clearly. The fog was patchier here; he was able to see all the way to the dull shine of an electric streetlamp on Howard