Frogmouth Read Online Free Page B

Frogmouth
Book: Frogmouth Read Online Free
Author: William Marshall
Pages:
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a black plywood arrow pointing left. The sign read in English and Chinese and one other language that looked like Urdu, NOAH'S ARK THIS WAY !
    It was Pets' Corner. It was where the goats and pigs and hares and squirrels and talking parrots and cats and dogs and peacocks were.
    It was where Yat waited.
    NOAH'S ARK THIS WAY !
    He saw Lee and Yan glance at each other and shake their heads. The silence of all the deaths was tangible. Feiffer, drawing a breath, began walking slowly toward the worst of it.
    In Borley Rectory, Lim looking hard at the wall of the Detectives' Room, said as an inspiration, "It isn't what's in the wall, it's what's behind it! The wall is acting as a sort of eardrum for it and it's—" He looked down at the Public Works Department's renovation blueprint of the place on O'Yee's desk. What was behind the wall was air. Lim said, "Maybe from the cellars!" He was thinking hard. Things like this shouldn't be allowed to beat you. Lim, tapping hard at his teeth with his thumbnail, said, "Maybe it's—" He had run out of maybes. His thumbnail stuck to his teeth, sweat starting on his brow, Lim, all his brass tarnishing as O'Yee watched, said in sudden panic, "Sir! Mr. O'Yee, what the hell do you think it is ?"
    "I've got it!" Lim, starting to jump up and down, said in triumph, "It's the ghost of someone you beat to death in one of the cells downstairs and he's come back to exact his revenge and the terrible howling sounds and the scrapings and the chain-rattling"—so far there hadn't been any chain-rattling, but if he was right that would come later—"and the shrieks and laments are the psychic sound of the boot being put in and the blood flowing on the tiled floors and the cries of—" He was getting carried away. Keep it professional. Lim asked, "How many people have been beaten to death in this station over the years, would you say, sir?"
    O'Yee said, "None."
    "Suicides!"
    O'Yee shook his head.
    Lim said, "Bad accidents! You know, people falling down and cracking their heads and their spirits coming back to—" Lim said in self-criticism, "Right. If they weren't dead, they wouldn't come back as spirits." It was how detectives worked things out: a step at a time. Lim, hitting it, said, "It's like The Exorcist —-it's the psychokinetic outpourings of a girl in that most spiritually traumatic of all times, puberty!" He looked happy. Lim said, "There aren't any girls in puberty around here, are there?" Lim said gently, "I don't suppose . . . I don't suppose we could both be imagining it, could we?"
    . . . Creak . . . herk . . . AAARRAGAH— Wah!
    RAAAHHGGG! . . . Whoomph!
    Lim said sadly, "No."
    8:31 A.M.
    In Old Himalaya Street, he was ready.
    Auden said softly, "I'm ready." He looked across from the lane to where Spencer was being inconspicuous looking into the window of an empty shop next to the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank and said softly to any part of his anatomy that might be listening, "I'm ready."
    He wondered what odds Spencer had gotten. They were probably . . . reasonable . . . Auden said softly, "Bring on the Tibetan Tornado."
    8:32 A.M. He looked at the clock on the wall of the bank. He wasn't going to have long to wait.
    He kept himself fit.
    He looked after himself.
    "A Wang! A Wang!" He peered out around the end of the lane and saw Sagarmatha Hill.
    Auden said to his body, " I can do this! I-can-do-this!"
    8:33 A.M.
    He sat down with his back against a wall and his head in his hands to have a little rest before he did it.
    In Pets' Corner, Yat looked at him. Yat was a short, bald Southern Chinese in his fifties who, like all Hong Kong businessmen, no doubt spoke perfect English. He blinked. All around him the police and his keepers were laying out dead animals in rows. Looking hard at Feiffer he shook his head.
    Feiffer said in Cantonese, "Do you employ a nightwatchman?"
    Nothing made sense, not the English, not the question, not anything. Yat said, "No." He tried hard to understand the
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