He turned a white, wild-eyed face to her, then ducked his head and dashed on. His boot nails rang on the marble steps as he started down. Daisy ran after him.
“Hey, stop!” yelled someone behind her.
“Stop!” Mr. Thorwald squawked.
Hesitating, Daisy looked back. To her astonishment, she saw Lambert chasing her, brandishing a gun. She hadn’t time to be afraid before Mr. Thorwald launched himself at Lambert’s ankles in a very creditable Rugby tackle and brought the young man down. Lambert’s gun flew towards Daisy, while his horn-rims and Thorwald’s pince-nez slithered across the floor.
To Daisy’s even greater astonishment, she caught the gun. So the dreaded cricket practice at school hadn’t been wasted, after all!
But what on earth was going on? HadLambertshot Carmody? And if so, was he aiming atDaisy?
She had assumed the fugitive to be the villain. Was he a conspirator or, more likely, just a terrified witness? In any case, while she dithered he was making his escape, and even if he was only a witness, he ought to be stopped and made to return to give evidence.
Daisy sped on, holding Lambert’s revolver by the barrel so that she could not possibly fire it by accident. She hoped.
“Come back!” shouted Lambert.
“Ugh!” uttered Thorwald breathlessly.
From the head of the stairs, peering over the rail, Daisy saw the fugitive leaping downwards like a chamois, already two floors below.
“Come back!” she called, trotting down the first flight.
“Stop!” Lambert, dishevelled and looking younger than ever without his glasses, appeared at the top. “I’ll get him, Mrs. Fletcher. You stay out of this.Please!”
Daisy froze as he bounded down the stairs towards her. At the last moment she remembered the gun in her hand. She swung it behind her to prevent his grabbing it. It slipped from her fingers and between two of the barley-sugar-twist banisters. A moment later a distant clang arrived from the bottom of the stairwell.
By then Lambert had passed Daisy and she, deciding discretion was definitely the better part of valour, had scurried back to the top of the stairs.
Mr. Thorwald was tottering to his feet, bleating plaintively, “My pince-nez, my pince-nez! Would someone be so kind as to find my pince-nez?”
Two persons of clerkly appearance and a probable typist had emerged from surrounding offices to gather about him,clucking and tutting in no very helpful fashion. Daisy spotted the pince-nez and returned it to him. As he clipped it to his nose, the top of the lift cage reached their floor at last.
Sprawled across its flat roof lay Otis Carmody, his neck all too obviously broken.
At Daisy’s gasp, the others all swung round to gape. The typist shrieked and fell into the arms of one of the clerks. Meanwhile, Carmody continued to rise at a stately pace until he disappeared from sight. The elevator stopped.
“Hey, wha’z goin’ on here?” the aged lift man demanded querulously, peering with suspicion through the inner gate, making no move to open it. “See here, one of you lot throw something down the shaft? Against reggerlations, that is.”
Everyone, even Mr. Thorwald, turned to Daisy.
“A man fell down the shaft,” she said.
“Izzat so? Against reg … Huh? Wha’zat you said?”
“There is a dead body on the roof of your lift.”
“Lift? Wha’z … ?”
“Elevator. A man fell down the shaft and landed on your elevator.”
“Wuz a almighty whump,” the old man admitted, at last opening the gate. “Didn’t sound like no garbage hitting. Lessee.”
“You can’t see anything as long as the lift …” Daisy stopped as feet pounded towards them from the direction of the stairs.
“What’s going on?” panted Lambert. “I lost him. He just kept going down. I couldn’t keep up, let alone catch up.”
“You saw him running on down?” Daisy asked, surprised. She recalled clearly the time she had gone up the Monument in Fish Street Hill. Built to commemorate theGreat Fire of London, it had 311 steps. Going up was bad enough, but going down, her knees had been wobbling uncontrollably long before she reached the bottom. Only a mountain goat could have run down.
