Free Wolf in Man's Clothing by Mignon G. Eberhart Page B

however he had died, it was due in the end to an acute heart block. His face was ashy gray, with a tinge of blue in the lips—what is called cyanosis. He still wore dinner clothes, except he had taken off his dinner jacket and replaced it with a short, brown velvet lounge coat; his black tie hung in strings, and his collar was open. I was looking at that when without any warning at all the entire Japanese army began to drop bombs on the house.
    At least, it sounded like it. For all at once somewhere in the house there was a thud, a series of loud thumps and then a clatter as of shattering glass. I ran to the door of the library and flung it open. The noise stopped as suddenly as it began, except it seemed to me there were echoes all through the house. No one was in the hall, and I had started toward the stairs when Peter Huber came running from the end of the hall, beyond the stairs, gave a wild look around the great empty hall, saw me and shouted, “What was that?”
    He didn’t wait for an answer but ran up the stairs taking the steps three at a time and I ran after him. The noise seemed to come from the second floor and Drue was up there alone with Craig. Craig—who had been the victim of one attempt at murder the previous night.
    Anyway, there was certainly nothing that I, or anyone, could do now for the man who lay in the study.
    Well, I’m not too fleet on my feet, although I took the stairs at what amounted to a gallop. When I reached the hall above Peter Huber had disappeared. The main, wide part of the corridor stretched dimly away ahead of me and behind me; there were two or three night lights along it; they were not bright and the shapes of occasional chairs ranged against the walls loomed up like clumsy dark creatures waiting there for prey, but did not move. In fact nothing moved.
    A narrow corridor crossed the main one just on the other side of the stairwell and appeared to lead toward the servants’ wing and backstairs; Peter Huber must have turned into that or into some room. I didn’t stop to look for him. As I ran along that dim, wide corridor, my starched, white skirt rustling and whispering against the shadowy walls, the house began to stir. Someone rang a bell somewhere, so its distant peal was audible even there. Someone flung open a door. Then I reached my patient’s room.
    It was lighted as I had left it. But the bed was empty. The room was empty. Craig Brent was gone and so was Drue.
    I must have gone into the room and searched it a little frenziedly; I remember looking under the bed and pulling out the heavy red curtains and looking behind them, though not even a cat could have hidden successfully there. The cat—but the cat was gone, too. No one was in the bathroom, no one in the little dressing room. As I came out of it, hurrying, Maud Chivery, in a voluminous, flowered dressing gown came sweeping into the bedroom and aimed a flashlight directly into my eyes. “What was that noise? What happened?” she cried. Then she saw the bed and squealed, “What have you done with Craig?”
    What had I done with Craig!
    â€œConrad Brent is dead. He’s in the library. You’d better call the doctor.” I snatched the flashlight from her hand. Her face turned waxy and her bright eyes became two sharp points of light; I thought she was going to faint, for she said, “O-o-o-oh,” in a kind of whistle from utterly blanched lips. So I gave her a push toward a chair and turned to the door.
    Alexia was standing there in the door; a crimson dressing gown clung to her lovely, curved body and fell, trailing, around her feet; her small, pointed face loomed from a cloud of fine black hair.
    â€œ Conrad … ” she said in a kind of whisper. “ Conrad. ” And then, as I made to pass her, she clutched at me. “ Where is Craig ? What has happened to him … ?”
    â€œIt’s what I’m trying to find out.” I unloosed