The Cliff House Strangler Read Online Free PDF

Mrs. Ahern. “Your mother does not wish for you to be distressed, my dear. She is with your father, and wants you to know that they love you and will always be with you in spirit.”
    Darien Moss grunted loudly in bored disgust. “Oh, please, enough of this trite nonsense. A dead child and an old woman—how very creative. Even on a bad day, any two-bit circus charlatan could put on a better act than this. Is that the best your so-called Aztec priest can come up with, Madame Karpova? Let’s give old Tizoc a real challenge. Why doesn’t he tell us why LieutenantAhern here has been spending so much time with a lady—and I use that term loosely—who keeps a certain
business
on Sloan Street?”
    Once again, Ahern came out of his seat, his face an ugly mask of rage. “Why you bloody good-for-nothing bastard—”
    “Or can this so-called high priest of yours tell us why Senator Gaylord has consistently voted to levy taxes on small independent businesses in the city,” Moss went on, ignoring the policeman’s outburst, “while at the same time glad-handing those same businessmen and promising them low-interest loans? And can Tizoc tell us how,” he continued before Percival Gaylord could retort, “the good senator has suddenly found the funds to construct a multimillion-dollar country estate in the Palo Alto hills?”
    “How dare you, Moss!” the senator exclaimed, his right hand balled into a fist. “It’s just like you to crash in here and bandy about your lies and innuendos. Have you no shame, man? Has the newspaper world sunk so low that it must resort to fabrications and character assassination in order to sell copies?”
    Before Moss could come out with the explosive retort I saw forming on his lips, the Tizoc voice shouted, “Silence! Your childish bickering is driving away the spirits. They have—Ahhh—”
    There was a collective gasp as a trumpet suddenly appeared above the psychic’s turbaned head and began to float about the table. Although I had half-expected this rather mundane manifestation—after all, what psychic worthy of the name could not produce a trumpet or two some time during a trance?—I found it interesting to note that the instrument remained beyond anyone’s reach, unless someone were bold enough to stand on the table. My eyes strained through the dim light to locate a string or a rod attached to the horn, but I could find nothing. I was forced to admit that, whatever it was, the so-called manifestation had been cleverly camouflaged.
    As suddenly as it appeared, the trumpet vanished, and an unusual three-stringed instrument took its place, floating above our heads much as the trumpet had, well above everyone’s reach.
    I must concede that even I was momentarily startled when music suddenly began issuing from the interior of the instrument. As far as I could see—and believe me, I was doing my utmost to examine the apparatus through the flickering candlelight—there was no one remotely close to the stringed device as it drifted above the table. I did not recognize the tune it was playing, although I guessed it was a Russian folk song of some kind.
    “Now that’s a good trick.” Robert chuckled softly, eyeing the illusion with a dispassionate eye. “How do you suppose they manage it?”
    “I wonder if it plays ‘Home on the Range’?” Darien Moss asked mockingly, picking up on Robert’s comment. “Or perhaps ‘The Last Rose of Summer’? That would be appropriate, don’t you think, considering the sorry old bag of tricks this fraud is subjecting us to?”
    Nora Ahern gasped at this, causing her husband to glare at the reporter who was seated to his wife’s left, “That’s enough, Moss,” he hissed. “Either keep your damn comments to yourself or leave.”
    “It is a balalaika,” Theodora Reade said to no one in particular, her voice—as is common with the hard of hearing—loud enough to drown out even Lieutenant Ahern and Darien Moss. “It is from Russia.