The Case of the Killer-Diller

Начало книги

In the streets outside it was broad daylight already, but down in the basement-room night shadows still lingered on. Through stratified layers of hours-old cigarette smoke, unable to find its way out of the poorly ventilated place, two motionless forms, both in grotesque postures, were indistinctly visible. One was a girl huddled asleep on a piano bench, her head and arms resting on the keyboard. The other was a man, toes pointed downward, head on chest, finger-tips touching his sides, as though he were staring entranced at something on the floor.

The basement itself was no different from any other sub-street-level space of its kind. Bare whitewashed walls, an oblong vent fitted with opaque wire-meshed glass high up on one side, that looked out at about the level of passersby’s insteps, an array of steam and water pipes of varying girths that ran out parallel to the ceiling for half its length, then disappeared through it by means of elbow-joints. It was what the cellar contained that set it apart.

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