Free Killing the Goose by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page B

perfect door. Weigand pressed a white button near it and chimes played within. He had an instant’s feeling that they should play “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
    But the woman in black who answered the door was motherly. Weigand did not know what he had expected, but it was not this. She was not tall and she was comfortably round; she had white hair which looked as if it deserved a bonnet. Her face was round and pink and a little wrinkled; she had blue eyes and was guileless. It was an odd place to find her; here and not comfortably rocking on a front porch, behind the green lawn and—yes, certainly—rambler roses. If Weigand, or another, came armed, he should be disarmed at this gently guarded threshold.
    â€œMr. Beck?” Bill said, and was surprised at the gentleness in his voice.
    â€œYes,” she said. “Please. Is it Lieutenant Weigand?”
    Bill admitted it was.
    â€œMr. Beck is expecting you,” she said. “Please.”
    The “Please” meant to enter. Bill Weigand entered. The foyer was as large as a waiting room. Apparently, as the woman—“the lady,” Weigand corrected himself—murmurously brushed him toward a chair, it was a waiting room.
    â€œIf you will wait a moment,” she said, smiling at him. She did not smile anxiously. She smiled hopefully. It would, her attitude conveyed, be pleasant if Mr. Weigand, visiting simple people from a world of great affairs, would consent to feel momentarily at home. Bill Weigand smiled back at her and sat.
    â€œI’ll tell Mr. Beck that you are here, sir,” she said.
    The sir was anomalous. She should, Weigand thought, have called him “William.” At the least. Or possibly “son.”
    She went through a door at the right. There was a pause. Then a man appeared through the door at the left. He was not Beck; he was evidently a butler.
    He was about the age of the woman. He was taller. Very pink scalp showed through the very white, not very thick, hair which marked the upper limit of a pink and comfortable face. His voice was respectful without unction. It said that if Lieutenant Weigand would come this way, Mr. Beck would see him. He trusted that Lieutenant Weigand had not been kept waiting unduly.
    â€œI was attending Mr. Beck when you rang, sir,” the butler said. “That was why Mary admitted you. Mary is the housekeeper, sir.”
    It was, apparently, merely friendly explanation. Or perhaps dignified apology at a tiny irregularity in procedure.
    â€œMy wife, sir,” the butler presently added, “the housekeeper for Mr. Beck.”
    That, Bill decided, made it perfect. A charming and devoted couple, devotedly in attendance on the adored master. Weigand said, for no particular reason, “certainly,” and got up. He followed the butler through the door on the left. It opened on a hall, wide and deeply carpeted. It ended in a wide room. Almost all the side of the room which you faced on entering was of windows and beyond the windows lay the city, misty in falling snow, dim in its shrouded lights. At the doorway the butler paused and made a small sound of being present—something which might have been a cough, if it had not been a murmur.
    â€œMr. Beck, sir,” the butler said, with this preliminary accomplished. “Lieutenant Weigand to see you, sir.”
    The man standing in front of the windows, looking out, was short and square. He turned. He had a large, handsome face. He was short, Weigand noticed, in the noticing way of a man trained to remember, because his legs were short. His torso was substantial and imposing. Seated, as at a speaker’s table, Mr. Dan Beck would loom as magnificently as any. Unseated he was, it was evident, a little at a disadvantage.
    The voice of Mr. Beck betrayed no recognition of disadvantage. As he heard it, Bill realized that, in its presence, no disadvantage could exist. It was an amazing voice; it was a voice