Free Even the Butler Was Poor by Ron Goulart Page B

her head cautiously out, she surveyed things. Nobody was stationed in front of the place, there was no sign of a car parked out on the road.
    Taking another deep breath, she climbed out of the bedroom and made her way on hands and knees down across the shingled roof. She had the impression she heard someone coming up the stairs in the house she was abandoning. Not waiting to confirm that, she rolled over the edge of the roof and held onto it with both hands, dangling about ten feet above the side lawn.
    Okay, Geronimo or whatever , she said to herself, letting go.
    She hit hard, jangling her teeth. As she fell over, her right knee slammed into the ground. Making a sighing, unhappy sound, she scrambled to her feet and started running.
    "I seem to be doing a hell of a lot of limping lately," she observed as she hobbled rapidly into the surrounding woodlands.
    After a few minutes of running and stumbling, H.J. found a dark, shadowy spot rich in high, concealing brush. She hunkered down amidst the bushes with her back pressed against a tree trunk. Not once during the long uncomfortable hour that the men ransacked Ben's house did she consider calling the police.
    Â 
    H. J. was alone in the house, her auburn hair tied back with one of Ben's paisley ties, when Joe Sankowitz arrived a few minutes after eight that night. She opened the door holding a broom in her left hand. "You got them?"
    Narrowing his left eye, Sankowitz inquired, "Am I interrupting your spring cleaning, Helen?"
    "Come on in," she invited. "We had sort of an incident here this afternoon."
    He followed her into the living room, tapping a large manila envelope against his leg. "Jesus, what went on?"
    "Housebreakers."
    She had all the furniture put back pretty much where it had been, but several hundred books, hardcover and paperback, were scattered around the carpet in disorderly heaps. "What did the police say about—"
    "I didn't call them."
    Sankowitz studied her face for a few silent seconds. "Meaning this is all part of the same general calamity that you've dragged Ben into?"
    H. J. smiled. "He volunteered to help me out a little, Joe."
    "Any idea who did this?"
    "I got a distant glimpse of them when they took off," she replied, leaning her broom against the wall. "It was two big lunks with ski masks or maybe stocking masks over their thick heads."
    "Where were you while they—"
    "Hiding in the woods out there most of the time," she said. "I was here—upstairs—when they first broke in. But I jumped out a window and they didn't spot me."
    "Me, I'd have run further than just these woods."
    "You're into jogging."
    "But they might have come hunting for you. You should have, Helen, put a few miles between you and them."
    "No, I wanted to stay in the vicinity."
    "Why?"
    "Well, for one thing I wanted to be here when you showed up."
    Sankowitz shook his head. "Ben isn't back from New York yet, huh?"
    "Any minute, though. He phoned from Grand Central to tell me he was catching the 7:07."
    "How'd he take the news of the break-in?"
    "I didn't tell him. No use his worrying and fretting all the way home," she said. "Anyway, I've managed to get most of the damage cleaned up—except for all these damn books."
    "I'll help you with those while were waiting for Ben," offered the cartoonist.
    "Before we do that, what about the film?"
    Sankowitz walked away from her to sit on the sofa. "It turned out to be. . . very upsetting stuff." He placed the envelope on the cushion next to him and kept hold of it.
    "But there were pictures, something came out?"
    "Yes, there are nineteen shots."
    She crossed over to him, undoing the necktie that was holding her hair. "Showing what?"
    "I'm afraid it must be the aftermath of a killing."
    She shook her head, causing her hair to fall to her shoulders. "Okay, let me see."
    "I think we better wait until Ben gets here, because there are some very serious—"
    "The pictures were, more or less, willed to me." Leaning closer, she