Undercurrent (The Nameless Detective) Read Online Free PDF

Against the wall next to the desk was a luggage rack with the overnight bag open on top. I stepped to the case and looked inside without touching anything. There was not much to see: a change of underwear and socks, a second and sealed pint of Daniel's, a clean shirt in a laundry wrapping, and a paperback mystery novel.
    The paperback held my attention momentarily. It was torn and dog-eared, with a gaudy cover depicting a half-nude redhead and a guy with a .45 automatic; the red-head's hair-do, and the guy's clothes, and the cover price of twenty-five cents made it obvious that the book was a product of the early fifties. The title was The Dead and the Dying , and the author was Russell Dancer. I had never heard of the novel, but the writer's name was familiar. Russell Dancer had been a prolific pulp creator of detective and adventure fiction through the forties and very early fifties, until the complete collapse of the pulp market, and his name was prominently featured on at least a hundred covers among the five thousand pulp magazines which comprised my own collection. But it seemed odd that Paige would have a book like that with the newsstands filled with more modern paperbacks— unless he had been an aficionado of Dancer's work or the field in general . . .
    I turned away from the bag. The odor of blood was thickly brackish in there, and my head ached malignantly. I went to the door and outside without looking at Paige again, and made certain the door was unlocked before I shut it. Then I crossed to the motel office.
    Orchard was sitting behind the counter, reading the Monterey newspaper. He looked up at me, started to smile, and changed it to a frown when he saw my face. He stood up. "Is something the matter, sir?"
    "Yeah," I said. "You'd better call the police, Mr. Orchard."
    His eyelids worked up and down like intricately veined fans. "The police?"
    "There's been a killing in one of your cottages."
    "Killing? Killing?"
    "In Number nine," I said. "Walter Paige."
    All the color drained out of Orchard's cheeks, and his parted, too-red lips were like an open wound against the sudden marmoreal cast of his face. "Are you sure? A killing— here ? My God!"
    "You can go out and have a look yourself, if you want."
    "Oh no, no, I . . . believe you. It's just that . . . Mr. Paige, you say?"
    "That's right."
    "What happened? How did—?"
    "Somebody stabbed him."
    "Stabbed . . . him . . ." His eyes widened, and he shrank away from me with his hands fluttering in front of him like restless white doves. "You . . . it     wasn't . . ."
    "No," I said, "it wasn't. Listen, will you call the police or do you want me to do it?"
    "No," Orchard said, "no, it's my responsibility, I’ll call them  . . ." The doves came together and mated fretfully, and he turned away and got himself through the doorway into his private office. "A killing . . . we've never had . . . the Beachwood is a respectable family motel . . . oh God, oh my God!"
    I went around the counter and watched him at a polished mahogany desk, fumbling with the telephone. It took him thirty seconds to dial seven digits, and a full minute to get two sentences' worth of facts reported thickly into the receiver; but he got the story straight enough, remembering my name and using it freely. When he had finished the call, he put the handset down and began mopping at his face with a yard of silk handkerchief.
    I said from the doorway, "How long will it take them to get here?"
    "Five minutes, or ten, I don't know."
    "We'd better go outside and wait for them."
    "Yes. Yes, all right."
    We went out, and it was almost dusk. Three-quarters of the sun had fallen beyond the gray rim of the sea; what little light remained had a blood-red tinge. Orchard looked up at the darkening sky and went back inside and turned on the night lighting for the motel grounds— carriage-style lamps on high ivy-covered poles. The white gravel on the drive seemed luminescent under their glare.
    When Orchard