The Mystery of the Cranky Collector - Carey M. V. - Страница 2

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Jupe looked up. A cobweb hung in one corner of the room. Also someone had recently squashed a bug on the wall nearby. The woman in gray frowned with distaste, then looked quickly away. Jupiter tried not to smile. Being a waiter was in some ways harder work than being First Investigator of the detective team, but the job sure had its amusing moments.

Suddenly, just as the musicians finished a set, one of the young waitresses dropped a glass outside. It shattered on the flagstone path in the garden.

Immediately Jupe knew which of the men was Pilcher. He was the tall, very thin one with the shaggy gray hair and the black suit worn shiny with age. The man came charging out of a corner. With an angry cry he started toward the garden. For a second Jupe thought he was going to seize the waitress and shake her. At the last minute he caught himself. “Watch what you’re doing, you little —”

He stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished, and glowered at the girl outside. Then he wheeled about and marched past his guests, heading through the dining room toward the kitchen.

“Dad, take it easy, huh?” The blonde in the blue dress darted after Pilcher.

“Marilyn?” The gray-gowned lady put out a hand as if to restrain the girl. But then she stopped and let her hand drop. She looked at the smooth-faced youth next to her. “Jim, really! That man!” she said.

The young man trotted after the girl. “Marilyn, wait. Mr. Pilcher, the girl didn’t mean to drop it. Mr. Pilcher? If you’ll just —”

Pilcher paid him no attention whatever. He pushed the kitchen door open and stood framed in the doorway. Jupe had the impression the old man was drawing in his breath so that he could really deliver a blast about the clumsy waitress.

Jupe stood still and watched. He saw Harry Burnside flying back and forth from the stove to the table, furiously arranging food on platters. At the sink the dark-haired drifter was swirling dishes through the suds.

“Burnside, get that incompetent girl out of my house!” Pilcher shouted. He obviously did not care who heard him. “And if you think I’m paying for that glass she just broke, you’re wrong. I’m not!”

“Dad, will you cool it, huh?” pleaded Marilyn Pilcher. “You’ll get your angina all stirred up. And you’re going to ruin my party. Dad, come on! Please!”

Marilyn Pilcher put her hand on his arm and tried to coax him out of the kitchen doorway. Jeremy Pilcher had not finished shouting, however, and he wouldn’t be coaxed.

The dishwasher looked around at Pilcher. He scowled as if protesting the uproar. For an instant he and Pilcher stared at each other. Then the dish he was holding slipped from his hand and crashed to the floor.

The party guests had given up all attempts at conversation. They stood awkwardly, pretending not to notice Pilcher’s tantrum. In the silence the smashing plate sounded like an explosion or a car crash.

Pilcher gasped.

“Dad, if you just wouldn’t get so mad!” cried Marilyn Pilcher. “It can’t matter if… if…?”

Pilcher suddenly bent double and clutched at his chest.

“Oh, I told you so!” wailed his daughter. “I warned you! Ray! Ray, come quick! He’s going to faint!”

She grabbed the old man around the waist, but he was too heavy for her. His knees buckled and he sagged to the floor.

A dark-haired young man dashed in from the living room. He and Harry Burnside hoisted Jeremy Pilcher off the floor. Marilyn Pilcher got a chair from the dining room and put it under the old man.

“Oh, Dad, I told you this would happen!” The girl was almost crying with anger and anxiety.

“Who’s his doctor?” A stout woman who had a take-charge air swept into the group near Pilcher and put a finger on his wrist, feeling for a pulse. “Where’s the telephone?” she demanded. “I’ll call his doctor.”

“No!” gasped Jeremy Pilcher. “No doctor! Don’t need a doctor.”

The dark-haired young man bent toward Pilcher. “Mr. Pilcher, we’re just trying to —”

“I said I don’t need a doctor, you idiot wetback!” croaked Pilcher.

The younger man did not react to this abuse. He did not even seem to hear it. Watching, Jupiter wondered whether Pilcher was in the habit of insulting his friends this way.

But then Jupe heard one of the guests murmur an explanation to a companion. “The young guy is Ray Sanchez,” he said. “He’s Old Man Pilcher’s personal secretary.”

“Jobs must be scarce these days” was the second man’s dry comment.

“Upstairs!” Pilcher ordered now. “Want to go upstairs and rest. I’ll be okay in a few minutes.”

Ray Sanchez looked around at the guests. His eye fell on Pete, who stood near the buffet table in his too-small waiter’s outfit. “You,” said Sanchez. “Give us a hand, huh?”

Pete put down his tray and went to the old man’s side. He and Sanchez lifted Pilcher from his chair and began a slow, staggering progress toward the front hall where a staircase went up to the second floor. Marilyn Pilcher went ahead of them, and the guests stepped back to let them through.

Jeremy Pilcher felt like a dead weight as Sanchez and Pete lugged him up the stairs. They were both breathing hard by the time they reached Pilcher’s bedroom. It was at the front of the house where the windows looked out toward the mountains.

Sanchez and Pete eased Pilcher down onto the bed, and Marilyn bustled into the adjoining bathroom to get a glass of water for her father. When she offered the water, Pilcher just pushed the glass aside. Water splattered across the bedclothes. “Nitro!” cried Pilcher. “Where’s my nitro?”

“Right here.” Marilyn Pilcher yanked open a drawer in the bedside table and took out a prescription bottle.

“Well, open it, open it!” scolded the old man. “Don’t just stand there like a cow!”

“Dad, one of these days I’m going to get my hands on some strychnine — and then won’t you be in for a surprise!” She shook a pill into her father’s outstretched hand.

“I blocked you on that move,” said the old man. “You know good and well what’s in my will — if anything funny happens to me you’re out on your tail!”

He put the pill under his tongue and lay back.

Pete was embarrassed by this barbed exchange between father and daughter. He began to back out of the room, but Marilyn Pilcher saw and caught him by the sleeve. “You stay here with my father,” she ordered. “I have to go back to the guests. Come with me, Ray. I need you to help.”

Pete felt a prick of panic. He did not want to be left with this sick, nasty old man. “Miss Pilcher,” he protested. “I can’t. I’m supposed to be —”

“You’re supposed to be doing as you’re told.” At that moment Marilyn Pilcher sounded much like her father. “But what if he… if he stops breathing? If his heart —”

“He won’t stop breathing. It’s not a heart attack,” Marilyn said impatiently. “It’s only angina. His blood vessels have gone into spasm, that’s all. His heart isn’t getting quite enough oxygen, so he’s in pain right now, but the nitro will take care of that. It isn’t serious.”

“I wish it was you who had it!” snapped Pilcher. “You wouldn’t be so quick to say it isn’t serious.”

“Sure, Dad,” said the girl, and she turned and went out of the room.

Ray Sanchez smiled at Pete, shrugged, then went after Marilyn.

Jeremy Pilcher lay still. His eyes were closed. Pete sat down in an armchair near the bed and watched the old man. Pilcher’s face was gray except for the places where small veins made purple patterns on his skin. The nose was high and thin, the cheeks were sunken. Pete’s gaze shifted to the hands.

They were skeleton hands with the bones clearly visible through the flesh. They were crossed on Pilcher’s chest, almost as if the old man were laid out for burial.

The thought scared Pete. He looked away quickly and began to examine the room where he sat. He saw a fireplace that hadn’t been cleaned since winter; gray ash was heaped up behind the tarnished brass fender. A brass basket on the hearth held a few sticks of wood and a pile of yellowing newspapers that could serve as kindling. A model ship and a pair of dusty candles in china candlesticks decorated the mantel above the fireplace.

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