Free Dead or Alive by Patricia Wentworth

You’ve probably made a mistake, and we shan’t get anything out of it, but we’ll try a cast or two. Good-bye—I’m going out.”
    Bill laughed again.
    â€œI’d hate to keep you, but it might interest you to know that I was shot at last night.”
    On his way to the door Garratt stopped and came about with a jerk.
    â€œYou were what ?”
    â€œOh, just shot at—on my way home—in a nice convenient backwater where the local inhabitant is warranted to sleep through anything from an air raid to the day of judgment.”
    Garratt came back with a scowl on his face.
    â€œAre you fooling?”
    Bill looked mildly innocent.
    â€œCertainly not.”
    â€œThen tell me in plain English what happened.”
    Bill told him. Before he got very far Garratt produced a map, and he had to start again and trace the way he had taken step by step.
    â€œMinnett’s Row—” Garratt jabbed with his thumbnail at the thin black line which represented the lane of crowding houses where Bill had stood to see who would come out of the darkness of the alley-way. “Morton’s Alley, and Minnett’s Row.” Garratt jabbed again.
    â€œIt hadn’t anything to do with the street,” said Bill. “I cut up the alley because I thought I was being followed, and I wanted to know who was after me. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I’d been followed all the way from the flat.”
    Garratt snapped out a single word—“Why?”
    â€œWell, I was about here”—it was Bill’s turn to put a finger on the map—“when I began to think someone was trailing me, and the minute I began to think about it I felt pretty sure I’d been hearing him behind me all the time.”
    â€œAnd the footstep came after you through the alley into the row, and then fired a pistol at you point blank and missed you clean? You weren’t drunk, I suppose?” Garratt’s tone was in the last degree offensive.
    â€œI was not—I hadn’t even taken a drink. And you’ve got it all wrong. He didn’t miss me clean—he took the skin of the top of my ear, and I walked home bleeding like a pig.”
    Garratt cast an unsympathetic eye upon the wound.
    â€œThe fellow must be a damn bad shot. Sure you didn’t cut yourself shaving?”
    Bill Coverdale straightened up and went back to the hearth.
    â€œHave it your own way,” he said. “I thought I’d just tell you—that’s all.”
    Garratt glared at the map for a moment, and then gave it a shove which sent it off on to the floor.
    â€œAny idea who it could have been?” he said.
    â€œNone.”
    â€œNo one with a grudge against you?”
    Bill shook his head.
    â€œNot that sort of grudge.”
    â€œYou didn’t get into a mess in Chile?”
    Bill laughed.
    â€œNo good trying to drag Chile in.”
    Garratt walked round the table, picked up the map, folded it with a ruthless disregard for the way in which it was meant to be folded, and banged it down upon his blotting-pad. Then he came over to Bill and prodded him in the chest with a nubbly forefinger which felt exactly like a piece of an iron gas-pipe.
    â€œWho was it? Who do you think it was? You were thinking of someone when you were telling me. Who was it?”
    Bill made a slight movement of the shoulders which could not have been called a shrug.
    â€œI thought about O’Hara, but it couldn’t have been O’Hara.”
    â€œO’Hara ?” said Garratt explosively. “Damned nonsense!” He went over to where he had left the map, took it across to a book-case at the far side of the room, and jammed it in between a Who’s Who and a Burke’s Peerage . Then he looked over his shoulder with a scowl and said sharply, “ Damned nonsense! O’Hara’s dead!”

IX
    Bill had a day before him. When he had interviewed Garratt he walked round