The Case of the Petrified Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

cut.”
    I said, “Strangulated? I heard she got her throat cut from ear to ear.”
    Martha gave a kind of shudder. “Oh no, sir. I was there. I heard him do it. Saw it, too. She was a-choking an’ a-gasping.” Martha hugged herself. “It was awful. And then he came for me.”
    “The man who strangled Miss Sally knows you saw him do it?” I said.
    She nodded. “He saw me and chased me. But I got away to a place he don’t know about. I been laying low for a long time. This morning, early, I hear some men talking about you. They say you’re a detective what finds people even though you’re just a kid. They say you are up on B Street and you have a Sign supposed to be an Eye. So I come uphill and find that Sign with an Eye but I think he is following so I sneak in and lay low. I can’t pay. But I got this.” She reached up and undid a clasp at the back of her neck & held out a little black & goldcross on a gold chain. Her hand was shaking. “You got to find him and tell people he done it.”
    “Don’t worry about paying me now,” I said. “Just tell me his name.”
    “I ain’t sure,” said Martha. “Miss Sal, she call him different things and I can’t recall right now.” Her lower lip trembled.
    Then she caught sight of the cigar box on my desk & her eyes went so wide you could see the white all around them. “What is
that
?” she said.
    “Don’t take any mind of that ghoulish stone baby,” I said, taking the box off my desk and putting it on the floor. “It was just a prank.”
    But she was not listening. She had seen something else. Something in my oyster-can waste bucket. She put the gold cross on my desk & bent down & pulled out an old brown apple core.
    “Ain’t you gonna eat this?” she said, holding it up.
    “No,” I said. “But it is dirty—” Before I could say another word she had devoured it.
    “Are you hungry?” I asked.
    She nodded. “Powerful hungry,” she said. “I ain’t had nothing but a little barley and raw oats for days and days.”
    I said, “Why don’t you come along with me to the Colombo Restaurant? I will buy you breakfast. Or lunch. Or both. You can tell me what you know about the killer.”
    “No,” she whispered. “He might see me. Every time I go out I think I see him following me.”
    “Who?” I said. “The killer?”
    She nodded. “When I was trying to find you just now I feel him after me. So I sneak in and I hid back there.”
    I said, “And you cannot remember his name?”
    Martha nodded & chewed her lower lip. “Miss Sal, she call him something. I remembered it yesterday…but now I disremember.”
    “Do not worry,” I said. “It will come to you. And you are sure it is the killer who is following you?”
    “I ain’t sure. I can’t see faraway things so good.” She shuddered. “But I
feel
it is him. I was laying low for so long I thought he’d of gone. But he hasn’t and he is after me, I am sure of it.”
    She began to cry.
    I gave her a handkerchief & said, “
Fortes fortuna iuvat.
That is Latin for ‘Fortune favors the brave.’”
    She said through her tears. “I’m an orphan and I got nobody now. How can I be brave?”
    I said, “I am a double orphan. And I don’t have anybody either. That is why we have to be brave.”
    She looked up at me with wide eyes. I could not read her expression.
    I said, “If you can’t remember his name, can you maybe tell me what he looks like?”
    She nodded. “He was tall and slim, with yellow hair and one of them li’l billy goat beards.”
    I took out my Detective Notebook and wrote down:
    Short Sally’s Killer: tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard.
    I was about to ask her what the killer had been wearing when from outside came a sudden volley of gunshots.
    Martha doubled forward with a gasp, clutching her stomach.
    The world seemed to stand still & I went cold all over.
    Short Sally’s Killer must have followed Martha here.
    And now he had shot her.

Ledger Sheet 9
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