A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

I go around on the other side of it and I spot a saucer of milk standing there on the floor next to it. One of the slats on that side is hinged, so that it can be opened up just about six inches from the floor. I reach down and I put my hand on it and I’m just fixing to lift it, then I think: “The hell with her and her chickens, I’d better go down and find out what she’s up to instead of wasting my time up here.” So I ease out of the room and go downstairs.

She’s down there with the body. I stop and watch her for a minute from the stairs. She’s uncovered his face and she’s groveling upon him — sort of twined about him. Her face is hidden against him as if she was trying to burrow her way into his clothes and she couldn’t have got any closer if she tried. Maybe it’s just the Oriental mode of displaying grief, but I have my doubts. There’s something pathological in this, that creature is less than human — or thinks she is.

Something snaps in me. “Don’t coil up on him like that!” I bark at her. “You’re like a damn snake nesting on something it’s killed!” She untwines slowly and raises her head and turns it my way, and a ghoulish smile flickers on her face. Maybe I just imagine that, for it’s dark in the room.

There’s a pounding outside at the door and Vin has come back with the medical expert and a policeman. There’s a motorcycle throbbing against a tree out there, and it’s the friendliest sound I’ve heard in twenty-eight years. They’ve parked the ambulance as close to the house as they can get it, which is about half a mile down the dirt road which gives up at about that point.

“So what’s the riot?” says the medical guy. “This kid comes tearing in on a Ford without brakes, which he stole from a Jap farmer, and knocks over one of the lamp posts outside headquarters—”

“That was the only way I could stop it,” explains Vin.

“Stole ain’t the word,” I squelch the hick. “I’m Lawton of the L. A. homicide bureau, and since he was deputizing for me, you call that commandeering. I want an autopsy from you.”

“When’d it happen?”

“Five after eleven.”

He goes over and he fumbles around a little, then he straightens up and his mouth is an O. “P.M., huh?”

“Not last year and not last week, eleven tonight!” I snap.

“Never saw anything like it,” he mutters. “Stiff as a board and all black like that! You’re gonna get your autopsy, mister.”

“And make it gilt-edged, too.”

There’s a rustling on the stairs and we all look upward. Veda’s on her way back to her room, with that damn long dress of hers trailing after her up the steps like a wriggling tail.

“Who’s the spook?” asks the examiner.

“We’re coming to her. First, the autopsy,” I tell him. “Don’t put it off, I want it right away — as soon as you get back with him!”

The driver comes in with a rubber sheet and he and the cop carry the old man out between them.

“Turn these over for me too,” I say, “and get me a chemical analysis on them,” and I pass him the butts I swiped in her room and the one the old man was smoking on the stairs when he fell. “And make room for my wife on the front seat. I’m sending her in with you.”

He gives me a surprised look. “You sure you want her to ride with us on a death car like that?”

“One sure thing, she’s not staying another minute in this house, not while I know it. Wait, I’ll bring her right down!”

I go up to get her, and I find her in the hall shivering and pop-eyed. She’s standing outside Veda’s door bent over at the keyhole like she was rooted to the spot. But as soon as she sees me she comes running to me and goes into a clinch and hides her head on my shoulder and starts bawling and shaking all over. “Charlie, I’m afraid to stay here! That awful woman, that awful heathen woman in there, she’s possessed of the devil.”

I lead her downstairs and out, and walk her down the road to where the car is, and on the way she tells me about it. “It’s enough to make your hair stand on end,” she whispers. “Such awful goings-on in there.”

“All right,” I say soothingly, “tell Charlie about it, Charlie’ll know if it’s bad or not.”

“I heard the gentlemen come downstairs,” she says, “so I got up to come down and make them a cup of coffee. As I was going past her door, I heard funny sounds from there. I’m only a woman after all, so I stopped and took a look through the keyhole. And after that I couldn’t move from there. I was held there against my will, until you came along. Charlie, she was dancing — all by herself in such a weird way, and it kept getting worse all the time. She kept getting nearer and nearer the door, until I think she would have caught me there if you hadn’t come. She seemed to know someone was outside her door, and she kept her eyes on it. I couldn’t budge!”

I know she isn’t exaggerating, because I myself noticed a sort of magnetism or mild hypnotism about this Veda from the minute she came in the house. “What kind of a dance was she doing?” I ask her.