Free The Four Johns by Ellery Queen Page B

present moment. Mary Hazelwood in a rumpled blue suit, stiff, contorted, life gone. He saw again the area of the blow, the odd semicircular contusion. And suddenly, heart pounding, he jumped up and ran into his bedroom and yanked his wardrobe open and snatched from its top shelf his ski boots. He took one of the boots by the toe and dashed over to his bed and swung the boot viciously. The heel struck the white spread with great force, leaving a crescent-shaped indentation in the spread.… He thought he would faint. But he nerved himself and examined the heel of the boot closely. He could find nothing, and he tossed it aside and peered at the heel of the other boot, the left one. Was that a dark stain on the cogs? Yes! And a wisp of blond hair caught in a roughened cut mark. A blond hair … like Mary’s.
    Mervyn ran back through the living room to his kitchen, carrying both ski boots. His head was a jumble of thoughts: That stain … blood … must be blood … hair … Mary’s … maybe others they’ll find under a microscope … they can test for blood … establish blood type … test for hair … identify …
    At the kitchen sink, he washed and washed and washed the heel of the left boot. He used scouring powder, he scrubbed, he polished, he rinsed. Then he rubbed with vinegar. Then he rubbed with salt. Then he rubbed with more scouring powder. Then he dipped the heel in ammonia, rinsed again. But those police-laboratory tests were fantastically sensitive, he told himself. He turned on one of the burners of his range; he held the heel over the clean blue flame and scorched it over and over. And then, once more, he scoured the heel and rinsed it; and finally he dried it.
    And then, for good measure, went through the entire process again with the right ski boot. Just in case, he told himself.
    He was gasping when he returned to the living room, as if he had run five miles. His eyes felt as if they were full of hot sand.
    Sleep was out of the question.
    He dropped like a sack of feed on the couch.
    So he had caught and balked another trap laid by his enemy. Were there others? There must be others.…
    And suddenly his neck prickled, at the nape.
    He was being watched! He knew it.… There! Wasn’t that a slight sound?
    Mervyn slewed about on the couch, glaring at his front door, biting his lower lip, flexing his fingers, scarcely breathing. You damn patsy, he said to himself, get up and go over to that door and open it and find out once for all.… Suddenly he was in a rage. He jumped off the couch, dashed to the door, jerked it open.…
    No one.
    He peered out, right, left.
    No one.
    He actually stepped out into the court and took a deliberate look around. Nothing stirred. The fountain tumbled in the slanting moonlight.
    Mervyn stood stock still, listening. All he heard was the fountain and his own râling breath.
    So he went back into his apartment and locked his door and snapped off the living-room light and went into his bedroom and undressed quickly in the dark and crept into his bed and pulled the sheet over his head, like a child.
    And presently he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 5
    Mervyn drove the convertible around to the front. He brought a hose out from the court, thoroughly soused the interior of the trunk, scrubbed it with a bristle brush and hosed it down again. Then he went over it inch by inch. He was satisfied at last that not even the most assiduous technician could find specks of sky-blue wool or blond hairs. Or blood.
    John Boce came sauntering out of the court. Mervyn looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were a working man.”
    The accountant teetered jauntily on his heels. “A man like me is paid for what he knows.” He strolled around the car critically. “Looks pretty nice, Mervyn. Considering what the old bucket’s been through, the paint job has held up. Too bad the chrome’s so pitted.”
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