The Haunting Ballad Read Online Free

being drawn back into the orbit of the Café Mercutio, one of whose inhabitants might well be stealing my fiancée’s affections. What a world, what a world …
    I shook myself out of my little reverie and rang up Mr. O’Nelligan. Though he claimed to be glad to hear from me and asked about my sister’s recuperation, there was a definite tone of distraction in his voice.
    â€œAre you all right?” I asked.
    â€œOh, I’m splendid,” he answered in his rolling brogue, then added hazily, “It’s just that this giant marlin has been putting up quite a battle.”
    â€œMarlin?” I was struck by a preposterous image of Mr. O’Nelligan wrestling a massive fish across his sitting room. “What the heck are you talking about?”
    My friend sighed with gentle exasperation. “ The Old Man and the Sea, of course. By the estimable Mr. Hemingway. I’m in the final pages as we speak. Have you read it?”
    The reality was that since high school I hadn’t read much that didn’t come with a lurid cover and a title akin to Killer Cutthroats of Jupiter. By contrast, Mr. O’Nelligan consumed books the way a kid gobbles gumdrops, mostly the great classics and other such highfaluting fare.
    â€œNope, never read it,” I said, “but assuming you’ve landed your marlin by tomorrow, I’ve got a possible case that might pique your interest.”
    I repeated the conversation I’d had with Sally Joan Cobble. For an extended moment, there was no response on the other end of the line. I guessed that my friend was sneaking himself another paragraph of deep-sea drama.
    Finally he answered, “By all means, Lee Plunkett, I shall attend thee.”
    â€œThat means you’ll be coming along, right?”
    â€œDid I not just say so, boyo?”
    *   *   *
    HOW TO DESCRIBE Mr. O’Nelligan? There are the facts of his life, of course, which would trickle out of him at odd intervals. You just never knew what fragment of his varied history he’d next reveal. Once, for example, he and I happened to be crossing a cemetery when I paused to comment on the fanciness of a particular mausoleum.
    Mr. O’Nelligan nodded appreciatively. “Indeed, the ornamentation is striking. The structure itself appears quite sound as well. I myself built one once.”
    â€œYou built a mausoleum?”
    â€œI did. It was many years ago, to be sure. Mine was of red brick, being a bricklayer as I was.”
    â€œYou were a bricklayer back in Ireland? I thought you’d been a teacher?”
    â€œAlso a train conductor and a salesman and a stage actor. A man may pursue many callings in his time, may he not?”
    You’ve also been a warrior, I could have said but didn’t. Early on, I’d learned not to probe my friend too deeply on that subject. In his youth, back in the ’20s, he’d played perhaps his most contrary role: that of the covert rebel and soldier. I knew that he had both faced and dealt death during those days. I knew that he wore his trim gray beard as camouflage for an old knife scar. All this seemed to conflict with the genteel individual that I’d come to know and admire.
    There among the gravestones, Mr. O’Nelligan waxed poetic. “Laying bricks has much in common with your chosen art of deduction, Lee.”
    â€œYou don’t say.” I in no way viewed my job as an art—I was satisfied just to draw a paycheck on the rare occasion.
    â€œIt’s true. Just as a bricklayer must work brick by brick, row by row, to raise a solid structure, so must the detective build his case, stacking one observation upon the next until the proper outcome is achieved.”
    â€œNever thought of it that way.”
    â€œWell, now you shall, yes?”
    â€œOh, yes indeedy.”
    At the time of the Cobble case, I’d known Mr. O’Nelligan for about a year and a half. He’d