The Mike Hammer Collection

“We’ll think of something. If you feel okay you’d better get dressed. York’s car is still downtown, and when the cops get done with it you’ll have to drive it back.”

I handed him the coffee and he drank it gratefully. When he finished I took it away and went into the kitchen. Harvey was there drying his eyes on a handkerchief. He saw me and sniffed, “It’s terrible, sir. Miss Malcom just told me. Who could have done such a thing?”

“I don’t know, Harvey. Whoever it was will pay for it. Look, I’m going to climb into bed. When the police come, get me up, will you?”

“Of course, sir. Will you eat first?”

“No thanks, later.”

I skirted the living room and pushed myself up the stairs. The old legs were tired out. The bedclothes were where I had thrown them, in a heap at the foot of the bed. I didn’t even bother to take off my shoes. When I put my head down I didn’t care if the house burned to the ground as long as nobody awakened me.

The police came and went. Their voices came to me through the veil of sleep, only partially coherent. Voices of insistence, voices of protest and indignation. A woman’s voice raised in anger and a meeker man’s voice supporting it. Nobody seemed to care whether I was there or not, so I let the veil swirl into a gray shroud that shut off all sounds and thoughts.

It was the music that woke me. A terrible storm of music that reverberated through the house like a hurricane, shrieking in a wonderful agony. There had never been music like that before. I listened to the composition, wondering. For a space of seconds it was a song of rage, then it dwindled to a dirge of sorrow. No bar or theme was repeated.

I slipped out of the bed and opened the door, letting the full force of it hit me. It was impossible to conceive that a piano could tell such a story as this one was telling.

He sat there at the keyboard, a pitiful little figure clad in a Prussian blue bathrobe. His head was thrown back, the eyes shut tightly as if in pain, his fingers beating notes of anguish from the keys.

He was torturing himself with it. I sat beside him. “Ruston, don’t.”

Abruptly, he ceased in the middle of the concert and let his head fall to his chest. The critics were right when they acclaimed him a genius. If only they could have heard his latest recital.

“You have to take it easy, kid. Remember what I told you.”

“I know, Mike, I’ll try to be better. I just keep thinking of Dad all the time.”

“He meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”

“Everything. He taught me so many things, music, art . . . things that it takes people so long to get to know. He was wonderful, the best dad ever.”

Without speaking I walked him over to the big chair beside the fireplace and sat down on the arm of the chair beside him. “Ruston,” I started, “your father isn’t here anymore, but he wouldn’t want you to grieve about it. I think he’d rather you went on with all those things he was teaching you, and be what he wanted you to be.”

“I will be, Mike,” he said. His voice lacked color, but it rang earnestly. “Dad wanted me to excel in everything. He often told me that a man never lived long enough to accomplish nearly anything he was capable of because it took too long to learn the fundamentals. That’s why he wanted me to know all these things while I was young. Then when I was a doctor or a scientist maybe I would be ahead of myself, sort of.”

He was better as long as he could talk. Let him get it out of his system, I thought. It’s the only way. “You’ve done fine, kid. I bet he was proud of you.”

“Oh, he was. I only wish he could have been able to make his report.”

“What report?”

“To the College of Scientists. They meet every five years to turn in reports, then one is selected as being the best one and the winner is elected President of the College for a term. He wanted that awfully badly. His report was going to be on me.”

“I see,” I said. “Maybe Miss Grange will do it for him.”

I shouldn’t have said that. He looked up at me woefully. “I don’t think she will, not after the police find her.”

It hit me right between the eyes. “Who’s been telling you things, kid?”

“The policemen were here this morning. The big one made us all tell where we were last night and everything. Then he told us about Miss Grange.”

“What about her?”

“They found her car down by the creek. They think she drowned herself.”

I could have tossed a brick through a window right then. “Harvey!” I yelled. “Hey, Harvey.”

The butler came in on the double. “I thought I asked you to wake me up when the police got here. What the hell happened?”

“Yes, sir. I meant to, but Officer Dilwick suggested that I let you sleep. I’m sorry, sir, it was more an order than a request.”

So that was how things stood. I’d get even with that fat slob. “Where is everybody?”