Читать книгу Murder of a Startled Lady - Charles Fulton Oursler - Страница 10

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My telephone was ringing.

From somewhere in a bottomless pit of sleep I heard the scolding clamour of the bell. Its buzzing jingle called me, even as I wrestled with dark angels, tormented me, while I felt trailing garments of corpse-cloth slither across my cheeks and fought off horrible old women who skated on their heels——

Nightmare! I shivered with relief to awaken and find myself in the bedroom of the old Abbot homestead in Scarsdale. The shrilling of the bell was just beyond my left ear now. Still I did not stir from my catalepsy, too bewilderingly in my own entranced thoughts. I began to remember things clearly—the spirit séance in Colt's office; the medium fainting, Colt sending her and her husband away in the care of Professor Gilman—but that was all more than twenty-four hours ago. That was Thursday. I had gone home after that séance, gone to sleep, got up again the next morning, worked all day at the office; I had come home again—it must be Saturday!

I sat up and glared at the folding, leather-cased timepiece on the table between our beds. Ten minutes after two in the morning and dark as the inside of an executioner's belly. I had been asleep only a little over an hour——

"Hallo!"

"Sorry to wake you up, Tony!"

"Chief! Good-morning—what's up? Anything wrong?"

"I don't know, Tony—but maybe you would like to come down here and help me to find out."

"Sure I will. Where are you—Headquarters?"

"No—at my home."

"I'll be right along—but I wish you would give me some inkling of what it's about, Chief."

Thatcher Colt hesitated a moment and an almost embarrassed note crept into his voice when he answered:

"Well, Tony—ever since that spook show we had here the other night, I've been restless—and a little sleepless. I didn't believe in the séance, of course, and yet I wondered if I had any right to ignore such a message without investigation. You see?"

"Sure, I see," I whispered, not to arouse Betty. "I felt a little that way myself. What did you do?"

"Well, naturally, I inquired at the Bureau of Missing Persons first. No report of a girl named Madeline missing."

"Hmpf!"

"Exactly. Then I looked up the location at Fairland Beach—and I sent three men from the emergency service division down there after nightfall. That was just to be circumspect—I didn't want the papers full of this."

"No. Did the emergency men find anything?"

"They have just telephoned me from Bellevue dock. Yes, they did find something—a box—filled with human bones."

"Good God!"

"Something like that, I suppose. They are bringing the remains up to my library."

"I'll be there in forty-five minutes," I promised. As I sprang to the cold floor, a muffled voice came from the quilts and coverlets of my wife's bed. I promised not to drive more than sixty-five miles an hour and so I got dressed, kissed Betty, and started off on my lonely drive into town. It was the end of any personal life for Colt or myself until a vicious, hideous mystery in human behaviour was made known.