Which Way to Die? by Ellery Queen Page B

of the flower bed and looked up at the full moon. She was very pale. When Corrigan put his arm around her waist, she slipped away and glanced back at the house. Damn that Grant woman! he thought. That was thirty for tonight. He made no further attempt to recapture the mood.
    â€œOn our next date we’re going to my apartment,” he growled. “Nobody’ll be popping out of the woodwork there!”
    â€œI’m sorry, Tim. I guess she scared me.”
    â€œSure,” he said.
    She glanced over her shoulder. “Let’s go back to the table. I think Elizabeth is watching us through the drapes.”
    â€œFrank must get his nastiness from somewhere,” Corrigan said glumly. “Okay, Norm. Wait. As long as we’re on this side, I’d better make a check of that other roof.”
    He peered about in the moonlight and located the footprint he had left in the flower bed. He stepped into it, braced himself against the parapet, and peered across the street.
    The roof of the opposite building was bright as day under the moon. There was no one on it. Corrigan pushed himself back and stepped out of the flower bed.
    â€œNothing,” he said. “Now all I’ve got to do is wait for Chuck to get back.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Tim,” Norma murmured. Then she smiled and slipped her arm through his. “Next time your place. I promise.”
    They were sitting at the lawn table, feet on one of the benches, sharing a cigarette, when the house phone rang inside. It was one o’clock. Corrigan got to it before the third ring.
    â€œI’m back, lover boy,” Baer’s bass voice said in his ear. “How’d you make out?”
    â€œNone of your goddam business,” Corrigan growled. “Chuck,” he said to Norma, who had followed him; and he went into the foyer and closed the toggle switch beside the elevator. A moment later Baer stepped off the car. Corrigan opened the switch again.
    Baer grinned. “I take it that means you struck out.”
    Corrigan opened his mouth to make a profane suggestion.
    It was never made.
    Somebody screamed in one of the bedrooms. The scream was so full of terror that it disguised the sex of the screamer.
    Corrigan and Baer raced.

11.
    Norma, paralyzed, was left behind. As they dashed into the hallway leading to the bedrooms, there was another scream. This time its sex was determinable, and its origin. The yell came from Frank Grant’s throat, in the bedroom the two boys occupied.
    They heard the bathroom door in the boys’ room slam. Corrigan reached the bedroom door a step before Baer. He threw his shoulder against it and bounced off. It was locked.
    They heard someone crash into the bathroom door inside, then the clatter of some metal object falling to the floor. There was a muttered curse in a voice Corrigan failed to recognize, then heavy footsteps pounded across the room away from them, which meant toward the French doors.
    Corrigan and Baer worked together like parts of a machine. So when the MOS man spun past Baer and raced back up the hall, the private detective had no need to ask questions. He knew that, with his heavier build, he was delegated to break in the bedroom door while Corrigan circled around to cut off whoever had just fled from the bedroom.
    Halfway down the hall Corrigan almost collided with Norma. She skipped into the bathroom out of the hall to let him pass, and he tore on by. An instant later he was across the living room, had rolled open the sliding door, and was racing around the corner on the roof.
    Gun in hand, Corrigan skidded to a halt on the bedroom side of the house. One of the French doors to the boys’ room stood open; no light showed from inside. There was no one in sight. The only sound he heard was the thud of Chuck Baer’s beef hitting the door from the hall.
    Corrigan ran around the entire perimeter of the house.
    No one. Nothing. Whoever it was had got away. He