The Guilty Are Afraid

Then something moved across my leg. My nerves leapt practically out of my body. My gun went off with a bang that rattled the doors and I sprang back, sweat starting out on my face.

I heard a low growling sound and a scuffle, and I knew the cat had come up in the dark and had rubbed itself against my leg.

I stood still, my back pressed against the banister rail, cold sweat oozing out of me, my heart hammering. I put my hand in my pocket, and took out my cigarette lighter.

“Stay where you are,” I said into the darkness. “One move and you’ll get it!”

Pushing the .38 forward, I lifted my left hand above my head and flicked the lighter alight. The tiny flame gave me enough light to see the man in the corner hadn’t moved. He still crouched there on his heels: a little, dark man with a brown wrinkled face, slit eyes and a big, grimacing mouth that showed some of his teeth.

There was a stillness about him that gave me the creeps.

No one could stay so completely still unless he were dead.

The lighter flame began to fade.

I moved to the head of the stairs, then went down them to where the flashlight lay, its beam pointing across the hall to the front door.

I picked up the flashlight, turned around and forced myself up the stairs again. When I reached the head of the stairs, I swung the beam of the flashlight on to the crouching man.

I guessed he was Thrisby’s servant. Someone had shot him through the chest and he had crawled into the corner to die.

There was a puddle of blood by his feet and a dark patch of blood on his black linen coat.

I walked slowly over to him, pushing the gun back into my holster. I touched the side of his face with my fingertips. The cold skin and the board-like muscles under the skin told me he had been dead for some hours.

I drew in a long slow breath and swung the beam of the flashlight away from the dead face. Two big sparks of living light lit up in the beam of the flashlight as the cat paused at the head of the stairs, crouching and growling the way Siamese cats do when they disapprove of anything. I watched the cat cross the landing, walking slowly, its head held low with the sinister wildcat movement, its tail trailing.

It passed the Filipino without even pausing and stopped outside a door, facing me. It reached up, standing on its hind paws and tapped the door handle with its front paw. It tapped three times, then let out its moaning growl and then tapped again.

I moved forward slowly, reached the door, turned the handle and gave the door a little push. It swung wide open.

Darkness and silence came out of the room. The cat stood on the threshold, its ears pricked, its head slightly on one side. Then it walked in. I stood where I was, my heart hammering, my mouth dry.

I turned the beam of the flashlight on the cat. The beam held it in its clear-cut circle of light across the room to the foot of the bed.

The cat jumped up on the bed.

I shifted the circle of light and my heart skipped a beat. Thrisby lay across the bed. He was still in his white singlet, his dark red shorts and his sandals.

The cat moved over to him and began to sniff inquiringly at his face.

In the beam of the flashlight I could see the terrified, fixed grimace on his face, the clenched hands and the blood on the bed sheet.

There was no sign of a wound or of blood on the white singlet, but I was sure if I turned him over I would find the wound.

Someone had shot him in the back as he had tried to get away. As he had died, he had fallen across the bed.

III

I swung the flashlight beam around until I found the light switch, then I turned on the lights.

I turned again to the bed.

Thrisby looked a lot more dead in the shaded lights than he had done in the beam of the flashlight. The cat moved slowly around his head, crouching, its tail outstretched, its ears flat. It stared angrily at me over the dead man’s face.

I looked around the room.

It was in disorder. The closet doors stood open. Clothes had been bundled on to the floor. The drawers of the chest hung open: shirts, socks, ties, collars and scarves spilled out of the drawers.

Stiff-legged, I walked over to the bed.

The cat spat at me as I came and crouched down; its eyes wide. I reached out and touched Thrisby’s hand. It was hard and cold: at a guess, he had been dead five to six hours.

As I stood over him, my foot kicked against something, lying just under the bed: something hard. I bent, pushed aside the sheet and lifted into sight a .38 automatic. It was the gun I had returned to Bridgette Creedy. I was sure of that, but to make absolutely certain, I carried it over to one of the lamps and looked for the serial number.

I found it under the barrel: 4557993.

I slid out the magazine. Four shots had been fired: at least two of them had been fatal.