Creeping Siamese and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

once. We questioned taxicab drivers, questioned the three Roundses listed in the telephone book, and our ignorance was as complete when we were through as when we started.
    The morning papers, on the streets at a little after eight o’clock that evening, had the story as we knew it.
    At eleven o’clock O’Gar and I called it a night, separating in the direction of our respective beds.
    We didn’t stay apart long.
    II
    I opened my eyes sitting on the side of my bed in the dim light of a moon that was just coming up, with the ringing telephone in my hand.
    O’Gar’s voice: “1856 Broadway! On the hump!”
    â€œ1856 Broadway,” I repeated, and he hung up.
    I finished waking up while I phoned for a taxicab, and then wrestled my clothes on. My watch told me it was 12:55 A.M. as I went downstairs. I hadn’t been fifteen minutes in bed.
    1856 Broadway was a three-story house set behind a pocket-size lawn in a row of like houses behind like lawns. The others were dark. 1856 shed light from every window, and from the open front door. A policeman stood in the vestibule.
    â€œHello, Mac! O’Gar here?”
    â€œJust went in.”
    I walked into a brown and buff reception hall, and saw the detective sergeant going up the wide stairs.
    â€œWhat’s up?” I asked as I joined him.
    â€œDon’t know.”
    On the second floor we turned to the left, going into a library or sitting room that stretched across the front of the house.
    A man in pajamas and bathrobe sat on a davenport there, with one bared leg stretched out on a chair in front of him. I recognized him when he nodded to me: Austin Richter, owner of a Market Street moving picture theater. He was a round-faced man of forty-five or so, partly bald, for whom the Agency had done some work a year or so before in connection with a ticket-seller who had departed without turning in the day’s receipts.
    In front of Richter a thin white-haired man with doctor written all over him stood looking at Richter’s leg, which was wrapped in a bandage just below the knee. Beside the doctor, a tall woman in a fur-trimmed dressing-gown stood, a roll of gauze and a pair of scissors in her hands. A husky police corporal was writing in a notebook at a long narrow table, a thick hickory walking stick laying on the bright blue table cover at his elbow.
    All of them looked around at us as we came into the room. The corporal got up and came over to us.
    â€œI knew you were handling the Rounds job, sergeant, so I thought I’d best get word to you as soon as I heard they was brown men mixed up in this.”
    â€œGood work, Flynn,” O’Gar said. “What happened here?”
    â€œBurglary, or maybe only attempted burglary. They was four of them—crashed the kitchen door.”
    Richter was sitting up very straight, and his blue eyes were suddenly excited, as were the brown eyes of the woman.
    â€œI beg your pardon,” he said, “but is there—you mentioned brown men in connection with another affair—is there another?”
    O’Gar looked at me.
    â€œYou haven’t seen the morning papers?” I asked the theatre owner.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, a man came into the Continental office late this afternoon, with a stab in his chest, and died there. Pressed against the wound, as if to stop the bleeding, was a sarong, which is where we got the brown men idea.”
    â€œHis name?”
    â€œRounds, H. R. Rounds.”
    The name brought no recognition into Richter’s eyes.
    â€œA tall man, thin, with dark skin?” he asked. “In a grey suit?”
    â€œAll of that.”
    Richter twisted around to look at the woman.
    â€œMolloy!” he exclaimed.
    â€œMolloy!” she exclaimed.
    â€œSo you know him?”
    Their faces came back toward me.
    â€œYes. He was here this afternoon. He left—”
    Richter stopped, to turn to the woman again,