The Falcon's Malteser Read Online Free

they’re encouraged! It makes me sick to think of them scuttling across the pavements, infesting the trees, carrying their germs and diseases—”
    “So why do you feed them?” I shouldn’t have asked, but I had to know.
    The Fat Man laughed briefly, mirthlessly. Then he spun the empty carton in my direction. “Poisoned corn,” he said.
    He walked back to the car and got in. A few feet away, a pigeon suddenly gurgled and keeled over on its side. A moment later, two more joined it, their feet sticking up in the air. By the time the Rolls-Royce had reached the corner of Trafalgar Square and turned off toward Hyde Park, we were surrounded by corpses.
    “Do you think he’s trying to tell us something?” I said.
    Herbert didn’t answer. He wasn’t looking much better than the pigeons.

OPENING TIME
    Before the bus had even arrived to take us back to Fulham, we both knew that we were going to have to open the dwarf’s package. We hadn’t had it twenty-four hours, but already our apartment had been ransacked and we’d attracted the poisonous attention of the biggest crook in the country. Okay—so Johnny Naples had paid us five hundred dollars. He made us promise not to open the envelope. But promises are easily broken. So are necks. I knew which I wanted to see get broken first.
    There was a woman waiting at the door when the bus dropped us off. What with the dwarf and the Fat Man, I figured I’d already seen enough weird people for one day, but it seemed that today, like buses and musketeers, they were coming in threes.
    She was an old woman with gray, curling hair that stuck out like someone had just electrocuted her. Her lipstick, a vivid shade of crimson, was pretty electrifying, too. Her skin was a mass of wrinkles, hanging on her like an old coat. An old coat hung on her, too, a sort of seaweed green color with artificial fur trimmings. She had a hat like a tea cozy on her head and a bulging carpetbag in her hand. Although this was a main street in the middle of Fulham, her feet were lost in blue fluffy slippers.
    We assumed that she had drifted out of the local lunatic asylum and let ourselves into the apartment, ignoring her. It was only when we got into the office and found her still behind us that we realized that she had been waiting to see us. Now she took one look at the wreckage and whistled, smacking her lips together afterward as if she’d just swallowed a gumball.
    “Cor blimey!” she exclaimed. “Luv-a-duck! What a blooming mess!”
    “Who are you?” Herbert demanded.
    “Charlady,” she replied. She gave us a big, crimson smile. “I saw your ad in the newspaper.”
    With everything that had happened, we’d quite forgotten about our advertisement for a cleaning lady. But here a cleaning lady was.
    “Oh yes,” Herbert muttered. “What’s your name?”
    “Charlady.”
    “Yes. I know.” He frowned. I shrugged. Maybe she didn’t understand English. Maybe somebody had dropped her when she was a baby. Herbert tried again, more slowly. “What—is—your—name?”
    “Charlady!” she said for a third time. “Betty Charlady. That’s my name. But you can call me Betty.”
    Without waiting for an invitation, she stepped farther into the room, waving a feather duster that she had produced out of nowhere, like a demented magician. Herbert and I looked at each other as she brushed it lightly across the remains of a shelf. The shelf fell off the wall. The cleaning lady scowled. “Crikey!” she said. “Wot a disaster. You don’t need a blooming cleaner ’ere, luv. You need a master carpenter!”
    “Wait a minute—” Herbert began.
    “Don’t you worry!” she interrupted. The duster had vanished and now she was holding a hammer. “It won’t take me a minute. I’ll soon ’ave this place looking like new.”
    I didn’t doubt her. The carpetbag was so bulky it could have had a box of nails, a screwdriver, and even a stepladder concealed in it, too. But Herbert had managed to hold