The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder Read Online Free PDF

corridor in the last half-hour!” he snapped.
    Stanley Grace shook his head. Jenner said nothing.
    Wainwright looked curiously perturbed.
    “Nothing out of the way happened, about the time of the shots, that any of you three know about?” persisted the homicide man.
    Then Wainwright said, as if he didn’t know whether to bring it up or not: “There was one odd thing, officer.”
    “Well? Well, let’s have it.”
    “I wouldn’t mention it at all, save that I know the police want all details on such a case. It certainly seems impossible that it makes any significance. Yet—it was strange.”
    “What was strange?” snapped the detective, on the verge of forgetting the prestige of millionaire Wainwright.
    “Jenner’s dog, Prince.”
    All eyes went to the fox terrier on the divan, trained to lie still and silent there when his master was busy. Prince wagged his tail a little and watched them all with bright little eyes.
    “Prince howled just before the girl screamed. About five minutes before. It was the weirdest howl I ever heard. No, not quite. I heard much the same thing, once, on a hunting trip in Maine. A dog with one of the party began much the same howling. The guide got up and ran out—and found that man dead. The dog had sensed it in some way, and howled for his dead master.”
    The detective pursed his lips, plainly impressed.
    “Hey, now! There may be something here. So Prince howled about five minutes before the girl ran to the hall when she heard the shots. Maybe these guys died before any of us know. Anything else happen?”
    None of the three said anything.
    “Are you guessing at the five minutes?” said the detective to Wainwright.
    “No! I looked at the clock about then. I looked because I had an appointment in the center of town at eleven thirty and I wanted to be sure I didn’t rest too long—”
    He stopped suddenly.
    The homicide man was staring at him, and he went on, his florid face a bit pale.
    “I wasn’t feeling well. I proposed to go into the next room and lie down for a few minutes.”
    “You mean the little room off this office, that opens onto that corridor? The one where them two guys are lying now, right outside the door?”
    “That’s right,” said the financier.
    “Hey! If you were right in there, with only a thin door between you, when they were shot—”
    “I don’t know that I was,” said Wainwright.
    “Huh? What do you mean, you don’t know. You’d know where you went, wouldn’t you?”
    Wainwright moved his head as if his collar pinched his thick neck.
    “I don’t know,” he said, “because about that time—my mind went blank.”
    “Your mind—”
    “Went blank,” repeated Wainwright. “I guess I fainted, or something. I didn’t snap out of it till just before you came from headquarters. So I don’t know if I went in that room or not.”

    The detective stared at Jenner.
    “Were you here with him?”
    “Yes,” said Jenner reluctantly.
    “Well, then you know. Did he faint or what?”
    “He didn’t faint,” said Jenner, after a moment.
    The homicide man just stared at him, with red beginning to show in his jowls at the stalling around.
    “He went into the room and lay down,” Jenner went on.
    “I didn’t know till this minute that he’d felt faint at all, or that he had that—er—mental lapse he mentions now.”
    “He walked right in and lay down?”
    “Yes!” Jenner glanced apologetically at Wainwright. “I didn’t say anything about that before, because it is so fantastic that Mr. Wainwright could have anything to do with the murders—”
    “You heard the dog howl,” the homicide man cut in, speaking to Wainwright again. “You started to go into the next room. Then your mind went blank and that’s all you know.”
    “That’s right,” said the financier.
    “This mind-a-blank stuff,” said the detective. “Has that happened to you many times?”
    “This is the first time it ever happened,” said Wainwright