Man on a Rope by George Harmon Coxe

heavily. The metal reflector swiveled to focus downward and now the rest of the room took on size and shape. Barry swallowed and began to breathe again, but as reaction struck at him he felt the surge of anger.
    â€œWhat the hell is the idea?” he shouted. “I saw light in your office. I come up here and knock at the door—”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Amanti said, his voice thin. “There was someone here before you. Someone waiting when I came. I thought he had come back.” He pushed back in his chair. He laid the gun on the desk—the typewriter desk that Lynn used. “Come in,” he said. “Close the door. There is a light switch beside it.”
    CHAPTER FIVE
    W HEN B ARRY D AWSON had obeyed his instruction and the dome light in the ceiling was on he saw that Amanti had a bruise on his forehead. He also noticed that the drawers of the four-decker filing cabinet stood part way open, the top one forcibly bent near the lock.
    â€œWhy did you come here?” Amanti asked.
    â€œI wanted to talk to you.”
    â€œYou expected to find me here at this hour?”
    â€œI didn’t expect anything. I didn’t feel like going to bed after what happened tonight, so I thought I’d take a ride. What happened to you?”
    Louis Amanti still wore his three-piece white drill suit, and now as he came round the desk and moved to the water-cooler, he removed a clean handkerchief, soaked it, and held it against his forehead. When water began to trickle down his round face he squeezed the handkerchief a bit and made a pad of it. He went back behind the desk and sat down heavily, his bespectacled dark eyes peering suspiciously through the lenses that distorted them, his free hand beginning to stroke the nape of his neck.
    â€œSomebody slugged you,” Barry said, “is that it?”
    â€œNot here.” Amanti touched the bruise. “This must have come when I fell. I was paralyzed. I could hear and I knew what was happening, but I could not move.
    â€œIt was here,” he said, indicating the back of his neck. “I had come in and was feeling for the switch when it happened. I heard him and tried to grapple with him, but he. spun me aside and then I was hit. By the stiff edge of his hand, I think. It was like my head was coming off.”
    â€œWhat do you think he wanted?”
    â€œWho knows?” Amanti waved a pudgy hand to indicate the rifled cabinets. “He broke into my files. It is likely that he searched them as he did my desk in the other room.”
    â€œWas there anything valuable in them?”
    â€œIf you mean intrinsic value, no.” He stood up and opened a wall cabinet, disclosing a small safe. “Such currency and things of value that I have are locked in here. It has not been touched.”
    â€œWhat about the will?” Barry said, following a hunch.
    â€œThe will?”
    â€œYou said you had drawn up a rough copy.”
    Amanti’s gaze moved to the filing cabinet and he put aside his makeshift compress. Without a word he rose and began to paw through the folders in the second cabinet. Apparently satisfied, he went into his private office and turned on the light. Barry stayed where he was, but he could hear drawers being opened and closed.
    â€œThe original of that draft is gone,” Amanti said when he came back, “as is the only carbon copy. What else is missing I will find out in the morning. Now perhaps you will tell me why you thought the will would be missing.”
    â€œI didn’t,” Barry said. “It was just a thought.”
    â€œAlso,” Amanti said, as though he had not heard, “I am still confused as to your reasons for coming here tonight at all.”
    Barry thought it over because it was not an easy question to answer. It wasn’t enough to repeat that he was restless and that he had come here on nothing more than a hunch. Put simply, he wanted all the information from