Murder Queen High Read Online Free PDF Page A

tie it up with red — ”
    “Why not?” she grinned back. “If you’re going to worry about it, I’d just as soon get it cleared up — then you’ll forget it and enjoy our vacation.”
    “Sin — I don’t think you have any lust for adventure. A mysterious stranger with a gun, a bloody handprint on our own front porch — ”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Just because I don’t think there’s a mad doctor hiding under our table or — or — ”
    John Henry looked sideways quickly and hunched closer to his wife. “That’s the strange thing, Sin,” he murmured. “I’ve had a kind of a feeling that we’re being watched.” Her green eyes didn’t change expression but he straightened and flushed, anyway. “All right, all right — I know it sounds funny.”
    The waiter, plump even in the loose burnoose, was at his elbow. Conover flinched and Sin asked sweetly, “You having dessert, dear?”
    “No, I guess not.” Dourly, John Henry ordered two coffees. “Black. And the check too, please.”
    After the waiter had hustled off, Sin regarded her husband with gentle amusement. “I suppose you think our Arab’s been spying on us, too.”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s been at my elbow all through the meal.”
    “You’re just not used to good service, honey. People who eat here expect attention.”
    “Well, I still think something’s going on behind our backs. Something big.” Sin hoped to herself that the portly lady at the table behind Johnny couldn’t hear him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow we haven’t accidentally upset some criminal conspiracy.” What exactly, John Henry wasn’t sure “… dope smuggling, illicit diamond buying …”
    “But doesn’t that only happen in South Africa? I mean, don’t you have to have diamonds first?”
    He waved the objection off as irrelevant. “Just an example, Sin.” He nodded and locked his fingers under his chin. “We do know this. It involves a transfer of something from someone to someone. Didn’t the man say he had ‘it’ for me? And he looked like he might be a miner.”
    “‘It’ could be anything.”
    “I’d like to meet that fellow again. Next time, you can bet your life I’ll find out just what’s going on.”
    Her elfin face reflected a hint of alarm. “Johnny, he has a gun.”
    John Henry shrugged casually, showing plainly that firearms held no terror for him. After all, he pointed out, he had seen plenty of guns during his three years in the army — though he neglected to add that as an air force personnel officer his knowledge of them was more academic than practical. Besides, there were always means of taking a gun away from an adversary. Or so the training films indicated.
    The rounded Arab-gowned waiter returned with coffee in the rough pottery jug that the Ship of the Desert affected. He poured quickly and skillfully, deposited a woven salver containing the bill on the table and journeyed back toward the mecca of the kitchen.
    “I won’t be surprised the next time.” John Henry stared balefully at his coffee. “Just let anybody make a suspicious move.”
    Sin sipped in some of the steaming black liquid. “Good coffee,” she murmured. “But I still think your imagination’s running away with you.” She jumped and screamed, “Johnny!”
    John Henry had knocked over his coffee cup. All around, chairs scraped and customers craned toward the commotion. Curious eyes saw a young man with a white face staring at the bill as it lay on the woven salver. The portly woman at the next table said half-audibly, “I felt the same way the first time I got the check here, too.”
    Sin reddened, semi-angry at being part of the floor show. She looked at the spreading brown stain. “Honey, you’ve certainly ruined their tablecloth — ”
    But her husband’s white face was curiously triumphant. “There!” he whispered.
    “What? I can’t hear you.”
    “There, Sin — that ought to prove what I said. Look at