The Shell Scott Sampler (2 page)

“Easy. Call me Shell, huh?”

“Shell. But how can you say such a thing? He's priceless. And he's horribly jealous, isn't that wonderful?”

“No, that's horrible. Either he trusts you or he doesn't. It's as simple as that.”

“Well…”

“You see? He's horribly jealous. That means he doesn't trust you. Besides, he has a little thin black moustache—you said so yourself.”

“But you don't even
know
him.”

“Lydia, give him up. We'll all be happier —”

“Why are you talking like this? What do you care —”

“Well, I'm jealous.”

“But you just said —”

“Never mind what I said. Tell me more about Rotty.”

There wasn't a great deal more. They had dined and danced and had wine and crepes suzette—he could even order in French.

“He sounds like a con-man to me,” I said.

“He's not, either. Oh, at first I thought maybe he was only after my money, but now I'm sure it isn't that.”

“That's clear thinking…. You've got money, too?”

“Yes, my father was the Brindley of Brindley Nuts—canned pecans, almonds, cashews and so on. He left me several million.”

“Nuts?”

“No, dollars, silly. I'm—well, I guess you'd say loaded.”

“That's what I'd say.” I paused, thinking, considering all angles. Then I stood up.

“Let's go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the Montclair.”

* * *

Lydia's suite was composed of living room, sitting room, kitchenette, bedroom and bath. I cautioned Lydia to be very quiet and we went in silently. I then spent half an hour going over the place, but all was in order except for the “thing” she'd mentioned finding under the bed. It was a compact portable transmitter, all right. I left it under the bed, undisturbed, then joined Lydia in the front room.

As far as I could figure it, there were only two probabilities, especially since there were no other transmitters to be found. First, the culprit was a hi-fi bug, one of those cats who sit around listening to trains hooting and crickets cricketing and wild birdcalls and such. Second … that was the one I liked.

But how to prove it? I could call all the people in town who sold electronic eavesdropping equipment, trace the men who'd recently bought such items. That could take days, though. Or, if the receiver were here in the Montclair I could start knocking on doors—a method that also failed to strike me as speedy or efficient. And nothing would really be proved even if I found a receiver. Besides, the little transmitter had power enough to broadcast on its special frequency for several blocks.

Or I could … I had it.

I whispered, “When did Rot—Rothwell leave on his trip?”

“Let's see. This is Friday, so it was Tuesday. Three days ago. He'll be back Monday.”

“He may be back today.”

I started to tell Lydia about it, but decided not to. It was eight to five she'd think I was nuts, and ten to one she wouldn't cooperate anyway. I would simply let it happen, and trust in my fairy godmother or whatever it is that watches over me. It might even work better this way. Moreover, the other way Lydia might get confused. There was a pretty good chance she'd get confused anyhow, but in this case to think was to act.

I jumped up, walked to the front door, opened it and slammed it shut again, careful that it didn't lock. Then I thumped over the living room carpet.

“Well, here we are!” I bellowed. And I thumped across the living room to the bedroom and whacked the door open.

Lydia, a puzzled expression on her face, walked up behind me.

“Here we are,” I said loudly, “alone at last.”

“Shell,” she said, “we have been alone for —”

I interrupted. “Let's have some more of those hot martinis!”

Lydia was starting to look a bit unnerved. “Hot martinis!” she said.

“That's the ticket,” I shouted.

“What's this?” she said, peering at me dubiously. “Why hot?”

“Yes, why not? Let's try something
new.
Let's not be hidebound by static old conventions. I'm tired of that static. Let's be different, let's be gay. Oh, Lydia, Lydia!”

“Huh?” she said.

I trotted back and forth over the bedroom carpet, stamping my feet. “No, you don't!” I roared. “You won't get away from me now. Ha! Got you!”

Lydia stood motionless in the bedroom doorway, staring at me. A slow paralysis seemed to be creeping over her. Except for her head, which was wagging back and forth.

“Here we go!” I yelled, and sprang through the air and landed with a thump in the middle of the bed. Then I got my feet under me and started springing about. I was beginning to have a few misgivings about this; if it didn't work, Lydia and I would be all washed up. But it was too late to stop now, I had burned my bridges, cast the die, flung the gauntlet. Too late. So I kept bouncing.

“Shell!” she cried.

“Lydia!” I cried.

“What are you doing?” she yelled frantically. “What are you
do
ing?”

Lydia was doing marvelously, I thought, even without coaching. I bounced up and down on the bed as if it were a thick trampoline, the springs wailing and shrieking, letting out noises actually un-bedlike. I was going higher and higher now, getting the hang of it.

“Shell!” Lydia wailed, “have you lost your mind, are you mad?”

“Yes! This is madness —”

“What happened? This is crazy.”

“— madness!”

I bounced almost to the ceiling, and when I came down, some springs let go with the twanging sound of coiled ricochets.

Lydia almost screamed. “Stop it, Shell,
stop it,
STOP IT!”

“DARLING!” I yelled.

“STOP!”

“DARLING!”

“Cops—murder—
help!
” she yelled, all unstrung.

I lit on the edge of the mattress and the bed broke, the frame splintering with a crashing sound that blended with the grating and twanging of springs giving up and letting go. I figured this had gone far enough, and stopped bouncing.

Lydia had just spun about as if preparing to sprint for miles. “Wait,” I called to her. “Don't leave. Listen.”

She stopped, looked back over her shoulder at me. “But —”

“Shh. Listen.”

There had been, I thought, the sound of a distant crash. Like a door slamming maybe.
Fifty feet or so away? Then came faint thumpings. Was it … ? Yes, more thumpings, feet
pounding, pounding nearer, getting louder. And a high, keening sound out there: “Lyyyydia!
Lyyyyydiaaaa!
”

I climbed down off the slanting bed.

“What's—what happened to you? What's going on?” Lydia asked me.

“We'll soon know. We stirred something up. I'll explain later —”

That was all there was time for.

The thumping and keening sounds were almost upon us now.

The front door crashed open.

Feet thumped across the living room, reached the bedroom.

He was tall, slim, dark, moustached, and very speedy. He took one step into the room, left his feet and flew four yards through the air straight toward the bed, without even looking. He landed atilt and bounced and wound up in a heap over at the intersection of the walls.

But he was up in an instant, head snapping about, teeth gnashing, eyes rolling.

“Hoo!” he snorted. “Hah!” He lamped Lydia, then focused on me and sprang again. At me this time. He came at me like a windmill, arms flailing.

I grabbed his arms, got my fingers around his biceps as Lydia yelled, “Rotty! Stop it!”

“Yeah, Rotty,” I said. “Stop it.”

But he was swinging and snorting, completely out of control. I'd managed to ward off all the blows so far, but there were so many it was quite an operation. I was sort of winded from all that bouncing anyway.

“Look,” I said. “It's all right, pal. Relax. Just a little trick.”

“A trick!”
he roared. “I'll trick you!”

“Dammit,” I said. “If you don't watch out, you're going to hit me, and then there'll be hell —”

I knew it. Right then he sneaked a hand loose and got me a good one on the eye.

There was no help for it then. I stopped trying to hold him, ducked a roundhouse right and tapped him one. It wasn't an especially hard blow, but it landed on his kisser, which for at least a week was going to be of no use to him for kissing.

He sailed back and landed on his rear pants pockets and sat there with a pained look on his face.

Lydia raced over to him, knelt by him and said, “Rotty, darling, are you all right? Where did you come from? Oh, I'm a nervous wreck!”

He blinked at her. “
You're
a nervous wreck!”

“What happened?” she said. “What happened?”

He said, “I'll ask the questions. What happened?”

Then, as he stared at her, his brows pulled down and down and down, until he appeared to have very hairy eyes, and he looked her over carefully, and he looked me over carefully. Then he said in a dull voice, “Something is cuckoo here.”

“Lydia.” I cleared my throat. It was time for the explanation, and I wasn't exactly sure how Lydia would take it. “This will require your undivided attention for half a minute,” I said. “A sort of generous, what-the-hell attitude would help, too.”

She straightened up and stood looking at me, a puzzled expression on her face. Not that her expression had changed much during these last few minutes.

“You see,” I went on, “the problem was to find out who planted that item under your bed, who was the guilty party. There were several long-drawn-out ways to check the thing, but I had a feeling the villain was Rotty dear, here. I had a hunch he didn't trust you to the ends of the earth, and his ‘business trip' might merely be an excuse to check into the Montclair where he could keep a beady eye—or ear, if you'll accept the phrase beady ear—on you. So I cooked up this little episode on the fifty-fifty chance it would pop him out of hiding.” I paused. “I had no idea it would shoot him out of a cannon.”

“I don't…” She frowned. “I don't quite understand.”

“You will. Just take your time. And remember I did only what you employed me to do. If I'd told you what I was up to, you wouldn't have believed me in the first place; and in the second place, you sure as fate wouldn't have cooperated with me in the gambit. So I just played it by—by ear. Incidentally, Lydia, you did splendidly. In fact, I hope he really has it recorded.”

“Recorded?” It sank in part of the way then. She glared at me. “Why, you beast. The very idea! You beast —”

But then it sank the rest of the way in. The first part had been merely my deviltry—or whatever Lydia might have preferred to call it. But the second part was the Rotty part.

Slowly she swung her gaze from me to him, then finished what she'd started to
say. Only this time she was speaking to Rothwell Hamilton Fish. “You
beast!
” she
cried.
“The very idea!”

Rotty was just struggling to his feet, poor chap, when she hauled off and socked him right in the chops. Not just once, but several times, moving with much agility.

Rotty went down again, clear onto his back this trip.

Slowly, very slowly, he clambered to his feet. He knew the jig was up, but at the last there he said something that almost got him onto my good side.

He glanced at Lydia and shrugged, then looked at me.

“Hell,” he said. “I can lick her. She just hit me with eight or ten lucky punches.”

Then, without another word, he turned and walked out of the bedroom and through the living room and out the front door, never, I felt sure, to be seen in these parts again.

For maybe a minute Lydia and I stood there in the bedroom, not saying a word. We gazed around the room, at chairs, the dresser, at the broken bed, at each other.

I waited.

But finally the suspense was too much. I was, after all, greatly interested in what her reaction would be. So at last I said, “Remember, I did only what you employed me to do. So, baby, you'd better not try socking me.”

And at last she smiled. Gently at first. But then a little more warmly. And with this tomato, a little more warmly was like the house burning down.

“Shell,” she said, “I'll bet you did kill those elephants with rocks.”

I sighed, and relaxed, and grinned. “Not really,” I said. “In fact, elephants scare the devil out of me.”

“They certainly didn't scare it
all
out.” She kept smiling.

“Well, they were small elephants. Hardly more than babies. The worst part was the burning swamps and creeping —”

“Shell,” she interrupted me, “I suppose you did me a favor.”

“Time will tell.” I grinned. Not for any special reason. I just felt like grinning.

“But what made you think it was Rotty?”

“Oh, a lot of things—mainly you.” I grinned some more. “But just his name alone should have warned you, Lydia. Imagine going through life with a name like Rotty Fish. Bound to mix a man up. He was irrevocably doomed on the day when he failed to insist that you call him Rothwell.”

Lydia walked over to the dresser and peered into the mirror, patted the tangled black hair, smoothed a hotly curving eyebrow. “This must seem like an odd case for you, Shell. Different, anyway. No murder, no kidnaping—nothing even criminal.”

“I wouldn't say that. Bugging bedrooms must be at least a misdemeanor. Besides, what I did to Rotty—
that
was criminal.”

She smoothed the other brow.

I said, “Well, I suppose I'd better get back to the office. I suppose. Feed the fish or something. I have guppies, you know. Uh…”

She turned, leaned back against the edge of the dresser, fixed the tawny brown eyes on me. “You've done enough work for today, haven't you?”