A Game for the Living Read Free Page A

of the apartments on Lelia’s floor and the floor above had bars. It was too late now to think of bars. A moment later his mind sank into a shocked despair. He sat down on a straight chair and put his hands over his face.
    It came to him suddenly: Ramón had done it. Obviously! Ramón had a violent temper. He had stepped between Ramón and Lelia several times when Ramón had been about to strike her in some burst of petulant anger. They had got into another of their Latin quarrels about nothing, he thought, or Lelia had not been appreciative enough of some present he had brought her—No, it would have to be something worse than that, something so bad he could not imagine it now, but he felt sure Ramón had done it. Ramón also had a key. He could simply have used the door.
    â€œ Ai-i-yai-i-i-i! ” cried a falsetto voice from the hall, and at the same time there was a pounding on the door.
    Theodore ran to the door and yanked it open. Footsteps were running down the stairs, and Theodore plunged after them, reaching the ground floor as he heard the wooden door of the courtyard grate on the cement walk. He ran out to the sidewalk and looked in both directions. He saw only two men walking slowly in conversation across the street. Theodore looked around the dark patio. But he had heard the wooden door move. With a sense of futility and a feeling that he might be doing the wrong thing, he went back into the building and climbed the stairs. If it had been the murderer, even if it had been, it would have been useless to go running down the street after him, not even knowing in fact in which direction to run. And maybe it hadn’t been the murderer, just a hoodlum from the street, or from the party that he now realized was going on in an apartment on the next floor up from Lelia’s. But if it had been the murderer, and he had let him get away—
    Just inside Lelia’s door, he paused. He had to behave logically. First, tell the police. Second, stand guard in the apartment so that no one could destroy any fingerprints. Third, find Ramón and see that he paid with his life for what he had done.
    Theodore went out and closed the door, intending to go to a cantina he knew of a block away where there was a telephone, but going down the second flight of stairs he ran into the woman who lived in the apartment next to Lelia’s.
    â€œWell, Don Teodoro! Good evening!” the woman said. “Happy Fifth of—”
    â€œDo you know that Lelia’s dead?” Theodore blurted. “She’s been murdered! In her apartment!”
    â€œ Aaaaaah ! ” the woman screamed, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
    Instantly two doors opened. Voices cried: “What is it?” “What happened?” “ Who was murdered?”
    And Theodore found himself simply struggling to get back up the stairs he had come down, back into Lelia’s apartment, because her door was unlocked, and even now two men were running in.
    â€œ Please! ” Theodore yelled. “You must get out! You must not touch anything! There may be fingerprints!” But nothing was of any use until twelve or fifteen of them had peeked into the bedroom and screamed and run out again, covering their eyes in horror.
    â€œYou’re like a bunch of children!” Theodore snorted in English.
    Sra. de Silva volunteered to telephone the police from her apartment, but before she went off she said to Theodore: “I heard something at about eleven o’clock, maybe a little earlier. This clatter on the roof. But I didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t hear any glass breaking.”
    â€œThere wasn’t any glass broken,” Theodore said quickly. “What else did you hear?”
    â€œNothing!” She stared at him with wide-open eyes. “I heard this clatter. Like somebody was trying to climb over the roof. Something on the roof, anyway. But I didn’t look out. I should have looked