Terror comes creeping Read online

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  **I THINK he's already MURDERED MY BROTHER," SHE

  said in a low-pitched voice. "Now he's planning to murder my sister. You have to stop it, Mr. Boyd!"

  I looked around the comfortable, air-conditioned, dimly lit bar. The Madison Avenue buccaneer at the next table was complaining bitterly that nothing came higher on his expense account than free love. I figured if I could hear him right, I must have heard her right.

  She hadn't wanted to come to my office, she'd told me over the phone, so could we meet ia a bar. From the tense, watchful expression on her face, she wasn't enjoying either the atmosphere or her driuk.

  "Something in back of me bother you?" I asked.

  "I know he has me followed the whole time," she said. "I can feel it."

  Her legs were beautiful, and crossed casually to show the dimpled knees, but no more. She was tall and slender, with dark hair and eyes. Her face was beautiful, elegant and arrogant. Any guy in his right mind could follow her around all day. Given a ten degree drop in the outside temperature, I'd do the same myself.

  "I bet you had a college education," I said.

  "A brilliant deduction!" Her voice was cold. "What's that got to do with—"

  "Radclilfe, or Bryn Mawr?" I interrupted.

  "Radcliffe, but—"

  "And 1 bet you wear plain white underwear and think all men are beasts, really," I pushed my hunch.

  Her lips tightened. "Don't make me a target for your sexual frustrations, Mr. Boyd," she said. "If you're not interested in working for me—"

  "I'm interested," I said truthfully. "If it pays enough." "That's what I heard," her smile was a half sneer. "See Danny Boyd if your problem is delicate, and worth a lot of money to have fixed."

  "From what you said about your brother and sister you've got a problem all right," I agreed. "It doesn't sound delicate—it sounds more like dynamite." "Then you're interested?"

  "Maybe," I said cautiously. "Tell me some more first. Like am I right about the white underwear?"

  The look on her face said I was something that had just crawled out from under a rock which hadn't been moved in the last ten years.

  "My name is Martha Hazelton," she said crisply. "My sister's name is Clemmie, my brother's name is Philip He's been missing for the last three days." "Have you told the police?"

  "I'm the only person who thinks he's missing," she said evenly. "They wouldn't listen to me."

  I lit a cigarette and wondered briefly if she was crazy But the diamond pin in the miniature straw boater on top of her immaculate hair-do looked real; the kidskin jacket and fine wool skirt were definitely Fifth Avenue and exclusive. If she was crazy, she was also crazy rich and that's my kind of client.

  "Who is the guy you figure has murdered your brother already, and is all set to knock off your sister?" I asked carefully.

  ^ "My father, of course." She sounded mildly surprised. I thought I'd told you that before."

  I finished my gin and tonic and crooked a finger at a slow-moving waiter.

  "No," I said. "You didn't tell me it was your father Does he have a motive-or maybe he's shopping around for a new kick?"

  Her rye on the rocks was untouched, so I told the waiter to bring me a new gin and tonic with a slice of lemon, not lime. Lime is strictly from the birds—check with any sea gull.

  Martha Hazelton leaned forward slightly in her chair. "I'm deadly serious about this, Mr. Boyd," she said. "He has an excellent motive—money!"

  "It's the nicest word in my vocabulary," I agreed. "Go on."

  "When my mother died, her estate was worth two million dollars after taxes," she said forcefully. "The money was put into a trust—to be administered by my father for ten years, then equally divided among her three children. The ten-year period is up in two months' time."

  "You figure your old man doesn't want any of you to coUect?"

  "I wonder just how much there is left to collect, Mr. Boyd," she said dryly.

  "So he's killing you off one at a time to stop you from ever finding out?" I asked in a wondering voice. "He'd be real crazy to figure he could get away with a deal like that."

  The new gm and tonic arrived and Boyd was safe from malaria for another ten minutes.

  "Crazy or not, that's what he's doing," she said in a decisive voice. "Are you still interested, Mr. Boyd?"

  "Why don't you call me Danny?" I suggested.

  "Because it's a name for a bellhop," she said coolly. "I have no wish to know you socially, Mr. Boyd, just professionally."

  "This private detective label is just a gag," I said. "My true profession is rapist, and I figure white underwear is real nervous."

  Her lips tightened again. "WUl you please stop fooling around? I don't have much time—we're probably being watched even now. Will you take the job?"

  "What is the job—exactly?"

  "I want you to rescue Clemmie—get my sister off my

  father's farm before she disappears, like Philip has. It's worth two thousand dollars, Mr. Boyd. Take her away from that farm and hide her where she'll be safe, until after the facts about Mother's estate have been revealed."

  "Where would I hide her?"

  "That's up to you," she said irritably. "Anywhere—so long as it's safe. I'll pay all expenses, naturally. I'm offering two thousand dollars simply to have Clenmiie rescued from that farm. It wouldn't take more than a few hours, Mr. Boyd. It's a generous remuneration, surely?"

  "I guess so," I said. "I'll take it."

  She sipped her rye on the rocks cautiously, with a faint expression of distaste on her face.

  "I'm glad that's finally settled," she said. "Is there anything more you need to know?"

  "The name of the farm, and where I contact you after I've snatched your sister?"

  "The farm's called 'High Tor' and it's twenty miles south of Providence. You'd better not try to contact me —I'll call your office."

  "O.K.," I shrugged. "I'll go to Rhode Island first thing in the morning."

  "Why not today—now?" she asked impatiently.

  "It's afternoon already," I said. "It's hot and the wrong kind of weather for the fall, tomorrow may be cooler."

  She looked at me for a long, brooding moment. "I wonder if I'm doing the right thing?" she said slowly.

  "If you don't know now," I said, "call Radclijffe and ask for your money back."

  I stayed in the bar for another half-hour after Martha Hazelton had left, wondering if she was a refugee from Nutsville, the way she sounded. But then all my clients are a little nuts—why else would they come to me in the first place?

  It was around five when I got back to my office. In the three months since I quit the Kruger Detective Agency and founded Boyd Enterprises, I've picked up a few

  8

  things along the way, like an office with blondwood furniture and white leather chairs, some clients and some money. The latest addition is a secretary who sits behind a desk in the closet I optimistically call the reception area.

  Her name is Fran Jordan, and she's a redhead with gray-green eyes that have a pensive look in them, mostly. She also has a will of her own and a figure which makes her fully entitied to it.

  "Hi, Fran," I said. "Any calls?"

  "No calls—one caller," she said dryly. "He's waiting inside your office."

  "What does he want?"

  "He didn't say. His name is Houston, he told me." She lifted her eyebrows fractionally. "But he's not my idea of Texas."

  "Maybe he's got a wildcat oil well he wants to sell cheap?" I said hopefully. "I'll go talk with him. You doing anything tonight, perchance, peradventure?"

&
nbsp; "Danny," she said gently. "We agreed when I took this job that you'd lead your life and I'd lead mine. Tonight I'm leading mine—I have a project."

  "Yeah?" I said sourly. "I bet it leads straight in through the front door of Cartier's."

  "He's from the Midwest, looking for an investment program," she said complacently. "I'm givng him points that haven't even shown up yet on a Wall Street index."

  "So I'll go talk to the wildcat oilman," I said gloomily, and walked through into my office.

  He sat in one of the white leather armchairs, waiting for me. The mid-century man of average height and weight, constructed from data supplied by an electronic computor; the expensive, dark suit carefully tailored so he would never, never stand out in a crowd.

  A guy maybe forty, maybe not, with a polite, intelligent face and a polite, intelligent smile on his lips. Behind the neat, half-framed glasses, were the eyes of a dead slug.

  "Mr. Boyd?" he said in a colorless voice. "You appear to be a success—or haven't you paid for the furnishings yet?"

  "Been waiting long?" I asked him.

  "Thirty-five minutes."

  "Maybe I should charge you rent?" I said thoughtfully.

  He crossed his legs carefully. "My name is Houston, I'm an attorney."

  "We all have to make a living," I sympathized. "I figured you for a process server."

  "I represent Galbraith Hazelton," he said calmly. "You've heard of him, naturally."

  "You don't mean the Galbraith Hazelton, the female impersonator?" I asked.

  "Why don't we cut the comedy and get right down to business, Boyd?" he asked briskly. "It would be best for both of us—you agree?"

  "If your business is my business."

  "You talked with Martha Hazelton earlier this afternoon in a bar on East 49th. You must have met her by appointment and you talked for some thirty minutes before she left. That's correct, isn't it?" His eyes looked smugly at me.

  "It's your story," I told him.

  Houston smiled vaguely. "You drank two gin and tonics while she was with you—I have all the details written down, but there's no point in quoting any more. I presume she hired you professionally to perform some service for her?"

  "You make it sound cute," I said, "like I was a caU-boy or something."

  "I have to warn you," he said, with a slight edge creeping into his voice, "that Martha Hazelton is not herself."

  "You mean it was old Galbraith the whole time?" I asked with reluctant admiration. "He sure fooled me— the way he filled that skirt—Man! Like it was for real."

  The skin around his mouth tightened, slowly turning a dirty gray color.

  "You have a poor sense of humor, Boyd," he said. "I mean—and you know it—that Miss Hazelton is sick. A sickness of the mind. She suffers from delusions, imagines things."

  "Like you, maybe?" I suggested. "You look a product of a warped imagination, Mr. Houston. Something out of a nightmare—but an organized nightmare, naturally."

  He took a deep breath. "All right!" he nearly snarled. **Why don't we stop insulting one another for a moment and get down to facts. Anything Martha said to you would be part of her own fantasies and you'd be well advised not to go any further with them!"

  "Her money's real," I said pointedly.

  "Ah, yes—her money!" He relaxed visibly, now I was talking the language he'd majored in.

  "Money," he repeated comfortably. "Mr. Hazelton feels it is only fair you should be compensated for the time you've wasted on his daughter. Will fifty dollars cover it?"

  "In a pig's hindquarters," I said politely.

  Houston looked at me stonily for five seconds, the little contacts inside his computor head clicking softly.

  "You put a high value on your time, Boyd," he said finally. "What do you consider a reasonable amount?"

  "Two thousand dollars," I told him.

  "Ridiculous!"

  "So I'm still working for Martha Hazelton."

  He stroked the tip of his nose gently with one finger, while he thought it over. Then he stood up, rubbing his hands together briskly; he'd come to a final decision.

  "I won't argue," he said. "A thousand dollars—take it or leave it."

  "I'M leave it."

  "You'll regret it," he snapped. "You're building yourself all kinds of trouble!"

  "Legal trouble?" "To say the least."

  "Maybe I should get me a good attorney?" T wondered out loud. "You know where 1 can find one?"

  wo

  MOST TIMES I FEEL LIKE A DAY IN THE COUNTRY, I TAKE

  a walk through Central Park. Now there's a piece of country that knows its place. If the going gets tough you can always stop ofif at the Tavern on the Green for a martini—or pick up a cab.

  The trouble with New England is it has so much country, it gets kind of overpowering. Not that it didn't look O.K. with another day of sunshine showing up the scarlet leaves of the red maples, and the golden color of the birch trees. There was just too much of it and all of it real primitive, like a coldwater flat or the female Tarzan in one of the Village floor shows who does that Seminole Indian love dance. They say the Seminoles are a vanishing race, and if that's the way they make love, it figures.

  It was just past noon when I found the Hazelton's farm—a large sign beside the gates read "High Tor," so there was no mistakmg it. The gates were open so I drove in along the tracks toward the farmhouse set a couple of hundred yards back from the road.

  By the time I stopped the car out front of the farmhouse, there was a guy waiting for me. A heavily built character, around medium height, with wide sloping shoulders and bare arms that just rippled with muscle. He wore a black shirt, open at the throat with the sleeves rolled high on his hairy arms. The tan polished cottons were belted tight around his small waist, the cuffs tucked into high polished boots.

  I lit a cigarette and waited while he walked leisurely over to the car. His thick black hair was combed care-

  fully straight back across his head, and there was around the same amount of expression on his face you'd see on a wooden Indian. Sometime, somebody had flattened his nose, and there were tiny white scars above his eyebrows.

  He leaned his elbows on the open window edge and looked down at me. Close-up there was no improvement —it was a face and that was all you could say for it.

  "You selling something?" he asked in a curiously high-pitched voice.

  "Just visiting," I told him.

  "You sure you got the right place, buddy?"

  "You make friends real quick," I said, like I was impressed. "I've got the right place."

  "Uh-uh!" He shook his head slowly. "You got the wrong place, buddy. Nobody visits here."

  "I'm the dawn of a new era," I said. "I'm visiting with Qeromie Hazelton."

  "She don't see any visitors, buddy," he said. "Too bad."

  "She'll see me," I told him. "Why don't you be a real buddy, buddy, and go find out?"

  He sighed noiselessly. "She don't see anybody—^that's orders—so be a good Joe and drive on out, huh? That way we keep it nice and friendly."

  "Maybe if she's not seeing anybody, she's still hearing them?" I suggested.

  I pushed down on the horn, and it made a raucous sound for a few seconds, until his fingers clamped around my wrist, pulling my hand away.

  "You shouldn't have done that, buddy," he said sorrowfully, "now I got to get tough."

  His fingers were still tight around my left wrist, and his head was just inside the windowframe of the car. I let him keep hold of the wrist, lunged at his face with my right hand and got a firm grip on his nose between my first and second fingers. I moved my arm up and down quickly, so the top of his head slammed against the top of the windowframe, and then his chin slapped against the bottom. It was strictly a boing-boing, comic-strip

  caper, but it didn't do him any good at all. After five or six times I let go of his nose and he faded out of sight.

  I got out of the car and there he was. Down on his hands and kn
ees, looking like the guy on the railroad track ten seconds after the Twentieth Century went through. He was dazed but recovering fast, so I lifted my foot and tapped him sharply with the toe of my shoe just above the right ear. I stepped over him carefully on my way toward the front porch because it's a hard world and who likes to step on a buddy.

  The front door opened while I was still a couple of yards away, and a girl came out on the porch. She was young, not yet twenty; dark, with a vibrant curiosity showing in her eyes. She didn't look the sister type and I was glad about that—I need a sister the way the guy out cold on the grass needed a buddy.

  "I heard the horn," she said breathlessly. "Is there anything wrong?"

  "Not a thing," I assured her. "You're Clemmie Hazel-ton?"

  "That's right," she nodded eagerly. "Were you looking forme?"

  "I'm Danny Boyd," I said. "A friend of Martha's. She said to look you up."

  "I'm glad you did," she smiled warmly. "Any male friend of my sister's is a friend of mine!"

  "My pleasure," I said politely.

  "Didn't Pete come out when you tooted?" she asked.

  "Pete?" I asked blandly.

  "He's most of the help around here," she said. "I guess he must have been busy some place else." Her smile deepened as she looked me over carefully. "Won't you come in?"

  "Thanks," I said. "Martha gave me a message for you."

  I followed her into the house, into the large, wide-beamed living room that was furnished a little too selfconsciously in Early Colonial.

  "Sit down, won't you?" she said. "Can I fix you a drink or something?"

  "Not right now," I told her.

  She didn't have her older sister's elegance—or arrogance. But she had the beauty all right, not matured yet but coming along fast as the full curves under the tight dress proved. It began to look like an interesting assignment.

  "Is there any more hired help on the farm beside Pete?" I asked.

  "There's only Sylvia, but she's out on the farm someplace—I haven't seen her the last couple of hours—I can't think what's happened to Pete."

  "O.K.," I said. "I'll give it to you straight, Qemmie. I'm a private detective."