title: The Locked Room Reader: Stories of Impossible Crimes and Escapes.
author: Hans Stefan Santesson
description: <br />The Locked Room, by John Dickson Carr<br />The Dauphin's Doll, by Ellery Queen<br />Nothing is Impossible, by Clayton Rawson<br />His Heart Could Break, by Craig Rice<br />The Oracle of the Dog, by G. K. Chesterton<br />When a Felon Needs a Friend, by Morris Hershman<br />The Doomdorf Mystery, by Melville Davisson Post<br />The Big Bow Mystery, by Israel Zangwill<br />The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr, by William Brittain<br />The Long Way Down, by Edward D. Hoch<br />Time Trammel, by Miriam Allen deFord<br />Reprieve, by Lawrence G. Blochman<br />The Smoke-Filled Locked Room, by Anthony Boucher<br />Bones for Davy Jones, by Joseph Cummings<br />The Fine Italian Hand, by Thomas Flanagan<br />The Narrowing Lust, by Henry Kane
zlib_text: # The Meddler
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone was in my room.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had to be one of Sinc’s boys. He’d been stupid. I’d left the lights off.
  The yellow light now seeping under the door was all the warning I needed.
  
  
  
  
  
  He hadn’t used the door: the threads were still there. That left the fire
  escape outside the bedroom window.
  
  
  
  
  
  I pulled my gun, moved back a little in the corridor to get elbow room. Then—
  I’d practiced it often enough to drive the management crazy— I kicked the door
  open and was into the room in one smooth motion.
  
  
  
  
  
  He should have been behind the door, or crouching behind a table, or hidden in
  the closet with his eye to the keyhole. Instead he was right out in the middle
  of the living room, facing the wrong way. He’d barely started to turn when I
  pumped four GyroJet slugs into him. I saw the impacts twitching his shirt. One
  over the heart.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was finished.
  
  
  
  
  
  So I didn’t slow down to watch him fall. I crossed the living-room rug in a
  diving run and landed behind the 