"killerinthehouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blackmon Robert C)

I hang up and started thinking, hard. The help couldn't know about murder in the house, of
course. They'd go wild and empty the place in an hour. I had to keep things under control.

The young couple was out, of course. David Hammond was the corpse, so that let him out
in more ways than one. That left Neal Carter, Alfred Marsh and James Ollis, the three drunks.
I remembered them vaguely, but I'd gone to my room on the third floor early in the evening
and had evidently missed the bellhops taking them to their rooms. No one had told me about
it.

I stood there, scowling, looking about Hammond's room.

I was on the right side of the bed. The room door was in front of me and slightly to the
left. The balcony windows were behind me. The doors to the small bathroom and the smaller
clothes closet were to my left, across the room. Both doors were closed.

Hammond's gray suit was on a chair not far from the bed, and I went to it with some idea
of finding out something about the dead man. Looking through the pockets, I found a cigarette
package, a Sea View Hotel matchbook, a couple of clean handkerchiefs and a black leather
wallet. There were no opened letters in his breast pocket.

I looked through the wallet and found about a hundred dollars in various bills and that
was all. There were no lodge or club cards, no business cards. The wallet was new and the
factory identification slip had not been filled in. So far as the stuff in his pockets was
concerned, the dead man was "Mr. Nobody, from Nowhere."

I thought about examining his luggage, but decided there'd be time to do that later.
Right now, a killer with a knife was roaming around the Sea View Hotel, unless he'd holed
up in his room somewhere. I had to find him, at least by the time the pavilion dance broke
up and the rest of the Sea View patrons started coming back to the hotel.

Moving fast, I checked the two windows opening out on the balcony, and found them locked.
I left them that way and went back to the main hallway. My nerves were tight enough to use
for harp strings. I went down the hall to Room 710 and tapped on the door.

"All right! All right !" a man inside yelled thickly. "Don't knock all night. Come in!"

I opened the door with my passkey and got a look at James Ollis, the first of the three
drunks.

He was short and much fatter than Dave Hammond. He had on a pair of red and yellow pajamas
that would make a blind man dizzy. He was sitting up in the middle of the bed, with the bed
light on, nursing a half-empty bottle of whiskey. His little blue eyes were bleary and the
fringe of curly, brownish hair around his bald spot gave him the appearance of a faded kewpie.
His lips sagged wetly, and he stared at me with his eyes out of focus.

"drunk'en all under the table, I did," he told me gravely. "Told'em I could do it. Have
a drink, my pal. Thanks. I don't mind if I do."

At any other time, 1 could have laughed at his drunken dignity as he lifted the bottle
and poured about a jigger of Scotch on himself and the bed. The room reeked of the stuff.