The Case of the Murdered Muckraker Read Online Free Page B

missed elevenses. Everyone else appeared to have preceded them. The publisher’s offices were all but deserted as they passed through.
    As they approached the elevators, Daisy immediately recognized the man waiting there, if waiting was the right word. She knew him as much by his actions as his looks—Otis Carmody had opened one of the gates and was peering impatiently down the elevator shaft.
    Presumably he had long since worked out how to tell by the esoteric movements of cables which elevator was on its way. Though the Flatiron’s lifts were twenty years younger than the Hotel Chelsea’s, the machinery proceeded with almost as much creaking, groaning, clanking, and rattling.

    Daisy assumed the loud report was just part of the general cacophony until it was followed by an unmistakably human sound, a yelp of pain. A firecracker? She had heard plenty last night. Perhaps an office boy had unwisely kept one in his pocket.
    But not ten paces ahead, Carmody teetered on the brink for a moment, then toppled over.

3
    â€œ J umping jiminy!” cried Mr. Thorwald.
    â€œHe didn’t jump,” Daisy said grimly. A pace ahead of the editor, she saw a man dart across the passage beyond the elevators, heading for the stairs. “Stop!” she shouted.
    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.
    â€œHey, stop!” yelled someone behind her.
    â€œStop!” 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? Had Lambert shot Carmody? And if so, was he aiming at Daisy?
    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.
    â€œCome back!” shouted Lambert.
    â€œUgh!” 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.
    â€œCome back!” she called, trotting down the first flight.
    â€œStop!” 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