Murder Queen High Read Online Free PDF

that!”
    His forefinger stabbed toward the salver. Sin indulgently looked at it, at the bill lying across it. Then she stared, awe-struck.
    It wasn’t a bill, at all. It was just an ordinary playing card. The Queen of Diamonds. And across the queen’s face someone had written in a bold hand: “Your deal.”
    The headwaiter, colorful in his Foreign Legion uniform, paused at the top of the staircase and waited for the Conovers to reach the balcony. Sin held tight to John Henry’s arm. He could feel her trembling a little and when he looked at her, the greenish eyes were sober and slightly scared.
    Behind them, down the twisted staircase, there dinned the renewed clatter of dishes as the Ship of the Desert continued business as usual. All four pieces of the orchestra had returned to their stand and were mutedly tuning up.
    The headwaiter knocked on the oak-paneled door at the east end of the balcony. A man’s bass grated, “Come in,” and the Foreign Legionnaire opened the door to bow the Conovers into the office ahead of him.
    It was all leather except for the spacious plate-glass window at the other end. A burly man stood there contemplating the glowing pattern of Azure, his light-blue suit contrasting with the brown walls and the moon-touched velvet outside. He wheeled and took his hands from his pockets as the headwaiter closed the door to shut out the multi-noises of the restaurant.
    “This is the owner, Mr. Barselou,” he said. “Mr. and Mrs. — ah.”
    “Conover,” John Henry filled in. Barselou inclined his bold head. The Legionnaire started a sentence but his employer shifted colorless eyes his way and the headwaiter subsided, bowed again to the Conovers and left, closing the door softly.
    “Now, Mr. and Mrs. Conover,” Barselou rumbled in a slow-freight voice, “suppose you sit down and tell me what seems to be the trouble.”
    Overwhelming as both the man and his huge desk were, Barselou didn’t gain complete domination. Sin sank gratefully into the leathery embrace of a chair, but John Henry advanced belligerently to the older man. “This,” he said, and flipped the pasteboard queen face up on the desk’s surface.
    Barselou lowered his big frame into his swivel chair and picked up the card with the tips of his fingers. After a moment of study, he smiled amiably at John Henry. He murmured, “‘Insipid as the queen upon a card.’”
    Sin replied automatically, “Aylmer’s Field. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
    Barselou quirked an astonished eyebrow but John Henry didn’t intend to explain about his wife’s trick memory at this moment. He said, “That’s what goes on in your restaurant. That’s why I insisted on seeing you.”
    “What and why?” Barselou chuckled. “I’m further in the dark than you are, Mr. Jones.”
    “Conover,” Conover corrected.
    The man behind the desk snapped his fingers. “Sorry. I’ve been thinking all evening about somebody named Jones. Tell me about the Queen.”
    “Start at the beginning, Johnny,” Sin suggested immediately.
    “Yes, do.” Barselou’s face was fierce even in geniality. “Right in my own establishment — like a mystery story, isn’t it? I’m quite a mystery fan.”
    “Okay,” said John Henry. He felt uncomfortable standing now while the other two sat, so he dropped abruptly into the padded chair by the desk. “Okay,” he said again. “It was like this.” John Henry told what it was like.
    When he was done, Barselou rubbed a spadelike hand over his heavy jaw. He swung his flinty eyes from one to the other before he spoke. “Incredible.”
    “I suspected that waiter-from the beginning,” Conover said truculently.
    Sin was more tactful. “We’re getting tired of that sort of thing, Mr. Barselou.”
    Pale eyes sparked. “Why? Has something else like that happened?”
    “Not exactly,” said John Henry, silencing his wife with a husbandly glance. “My wife means we’re tired from our trip, that’s all.”
    “Yes, quite a