NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE

Also by Leigh Brackett

Stranger at Home (as by "George Sanders") (1946)

Shadow over Mars (1951)

The Starmen (1952)

The Sword of Rhiannon (1953)

The Bi gJump (1955)

The Long Tomorrow (1955)

An Eye for an Eye (1957)

The Tiger Among Us (1957)

Rio Bravo (1959)

Alpha Centauri—Or Die! (1963)

Follow the Free Wind (1963)

People of the Talisman; The Secret of Sinharat (1964)

The Coming of the Terrans (1967)

Silent Partner (1969)

The Halfling and Other Stories (1973)

The Ginger Star: Reintroducing Eric John Stark, 1 (1974)

The Hounds of Skaith: The Further Adventures ofEricJohn Stark, 2 (1974)

The Reivers of Skaith: The Further Adventures ofEricJohn Stark, 3 (1976)

The Book of Skaith (1976)

The Best of Leigh Brackett (1977)

No Good From A

Corpse

LEIGH BRACKETT

1999

No Good from a Corpse (collection)

Leigh Brackett; "Murder in the Family,"

1945 by Leigh Brackett; "Red-Headed Poison"

(orig. "The Case of the Wandering Redhead"),

Misfortune Teller" (orig. "The Death Dealer")

Brackett; "So Pale, So Cold, So Fair," copyright

Dustjacket and interior artwork by Joe Servello.

FIRST EDITION

Published January 1999

Dennis McMillan Publications

11431 East Gunsmith Drive, Tucson, AZ 85749

102102.124@compuserve.com

http://www.booksellers.com/dmp

CONTENTS

Introduction by Ray Bradbury

No Good from a Corpse (1944)

Murder Is Bigamy (1945)

Red-Headed Poison (1943)

Murder in the Family (1943)

Design for Dying (1944)

I Feel Bad Killing You (1944)

No Star Is Lost (1944)

So Pale, So Cold, So Fair (1957)

The Misfortune Teller (1943)

Afterword by Michael Connelly

Bibliography &

Screen Credits by Robin Smiley

This book is dedicated to (who else?)

Leigh Brackett

B&B

BRACKETT & BRADBURY

1944

Why do I pick 1944 to place under Brackett and Bradbury or Bradbury and Brackett? Because that was the year when we were beginning to blossom as writers. She was my best loving friend and teacher, and I was her best loving friend and student, and we had been meeting at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica every Sunday noon for three years where I would bring along a new short story (dreadful) and she would let me see one of her Planet novel chapters (beautiful) and I would praise hers and she would kick hell out of me, and I'd go home and re-write my imitation of Leigh Brackett.

But the summer of 1944 became somewhat different. Leigh published No Good from a Corpse, which changed her life and tossed her, a bit later, into the arms of Howard Hawks, the film director, and I broke free with a few good detective stories in Dime Detective and really excellent stories in Weird Tales which changed my life just as much in 1947 when I collected them in Dark Carnival.

Those were wonderful Sundays. I would watch Leigh play volleyball with the men and then we'd sit down with hotdogs and look at our latest stories. She was my good and constant critic and I was the sort of friend who could take over in an emergency. The emergency came when Howard Hawks offered her a chance to work on the screenplay of The Big Sleep with William Faulkner.

Leigh called and asked me to finish a novella which she had just begun for Planet, "Lorelei of the Red Mists." She had done about half of the tale and it needed another six or seven thousand words, as I recall. Would I do it? Easy as pie, I said. I'm Brackett's clone. Her style comes out the spigots on the ends of my fingers.

In ten days I wrote the last half of "Lorelei" and delivered it to Leigh.

"Damn you!" she cried. "It's terrific. I can't tell where I leave off and you begin." I think I burst into tears. It was a kind of graduation day from the Brackett Academy.

Years later, I hand a copy of "Lorelei of the Red Mists" to friends and dare them to find the paragraph in the middle of the story where Brackett stops being Brackett and becomes Bradbury. Can't be done. Even I have problems finding that exact place.

Those summers couldn't go on forever. Like all beautiful years they had to end, moving on to yet more beautiful years. In late 1945 I sold my first short story to Collier's. The first person I called was Leigh. I exploded with the glad news.

"You son of a bitch!" she cried. "I have nurtured a viper at my bosom!"

"Not a viper but a lover," I said, and not long after that I was best man at her wedding to Edmond Hamilton, who was friend and teacher to us both.

And not long after that I married Maggie McClure and we lived in Venice, California, in a small apartment only a few blocks from Leigh and Ed who had a beach house among the pumping oil wells on the dunes.

The rest is fairly well known. I moved on to write the screenplay of Moby Dick for John Huston, and Leigh did a series offilms for Hawks, while Ed became more and more notorious for his Captain Future novels.

Leigh's last screenplay was for The Empire Strikes Back, the best of the Star Wars film series. She spent New Year's Eve and morning with me and Maggie, a wonderful time, but I sensed she was in her final year. A few months later she called me from a hospital in the high desert in grand laughing humor. The doctor, bless him, had injected a huge overdose of painkilling drugs so that she would die joyfully. She did just that, the next day, before I could make it to the desert to give her a final embrace. Her laughter still sounds. My love remains.

At the finale of The Empire Strikes Back I saw the message: This film is dedicated to Leigh Brackett. My loving tears came back. God bless her dear soul.

Ray Bradbury

Los Angeles, October 16, 1998

No Good from a Corpse

(1944)

It is better to live,

Even to live miserably;

The halt can ride on horseback;

The one-handed, drive cattle;

The deaf, fight and be useful;

To be blind is better

Than to be burnt;

No one gets good from a corpse.

Havamal

Chapter 1

Edmond Clive saw her almost as soon as he came into the tunnel from the San Francisco train. She was standing beyond the gate, watching for him, and somehow in all that seething press of uniforms and eager women, she was quite alone.

Clive smiled and tried to shove a little faster through the mob. Then her gray eyes found him. Suddenly there was no mob, no station, no noise, nothing. Nothing but the two of them, alone in a silent place with the look in Laurel Dane's gray eyes.

Clive's step slowed. He saw her smile. He answered and went on, but the lift was gone out of him.

She was wearing a white raincoat with the hood thrown back. There were raindrops caught in her soft black hair, but the drops in her thick lashes never came out of a Los Angeles sky. Her arms went around him tight.

He kissed her.

“Hello, tramp.”

“Hello. Oh, Ed, I'm so glad to have you back!”

He looked down at her. Cream-white skin, her face that had no beauty of feature and yet was beautiful because it was so alive and glowing, her red mouth, full and curved and a little sullen. He found it, as always, hard to breathe. He bent his head again.

They stood for a long time, the noise and the crowd flowing around them and leaving them untouched. Her lips were faintly bitter under his, with the taste of tears that had run down and caught in the corners of them.

“The car's outside, Ed.”

They walked toward the door. She held his hand, like a child.

Clive said, “Johnny didn't come down?”

“No. And you're to go straight to the office. He's got a client waiting. A very expensive and very urgent client.”

Clive groaned.

Laurel said acidly, “Female.”

“Oh, well! That's different.”

His wide, mischievous grin did a lot for his face. It was a sinewy, angular face that had known its way around for a long time, and there were those who said that Ed Clive could look tougher than the people he sent up. But his dark eyes were alert and friendly, his smile was nice, and most women decided he had a certain sinister fascination. They caught themselves wishing secretly that their own men didn't look quite so good....

He made himself comfortable in the coupe.

“You drive, baby. I'm an old man, and I'm tired.”

“The age I'll grant, but the rest is just plain laziness.”

Clive shook his head. “Hookworm,” His eyes were closed. The rain on the metal top sounded like a regiment of small boys bouncing golf balls.

“Drive slowly, dear, and be careful of skidding.”

Laurel pulled his hat down over his face and drove off through swirling streets toward Hollywood.

After a while she said, “I've been reading all about the case. The Los Angeles papers played it up big. They just loved watching a native son make the Frisco cops look silly.”

“I hope they used a good picture of me.”

“With that mug, darling, there's no such tiling. You're not happy about it, are you?”

“The case or the face?”

“You know damn well what I mean.”

Clive's mouth was suddenly bitter. “I caught me a killer, all right. She's twenty-three; she had red hair and the bluest eyes I ever saw. Sure, I'm happy.”

“Twenty-three,” echoed Laurel. “And she killed him for love.”

The car quivered sharply. Clive looked up. Her hands were rigid on the wheel.

“Love can be a terrible thing, Ed...”

He waited. When she didn't go on with it, he said gently, “You want to tell me now, or later?”

She sighed. “I suppose you've known all along, haven't you? I mean, that I have one of those things they call a Past.”

“Uh-huh. And I also had an idea that you had an idea that the Past might suddenly sneak up and become the Present again.”

“I'm afraid it has... No, not now, Ed. I have a rehearsal I'm late for already; you're tired and you have business wait-big. Come down to the club tonight. Early.” Suddenly she laughed. “I've got a surprise for you, Ed.”

“Yeah? I'll bet I can guess.”

“Try.”

“I'll bet it's a man.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Clive relaxed, tilting his hat over his eyes again. “How do you make a noise like jealousy?”

“You'll make a noise like something when you meet him, Ed!”

“Not any more, baby. I've got calluses.”

“You wait!” Presently she burst out, “Oh damn it, Ed! Why do you stay around me if you don't love me? Why do you want to be so...”

Clive said quietly, “I thought we had that all settled.”

“No.” Her voice was throaty with tears. “No, it isn't settled. It's . .. Oh, Ed, I wish I were different. I wish you were different. I wish the whole thing...”

“Sure.” He patted her thigh. “Sure.” He let his hand stay there, feeling the lithe play of the muscles as she drove. His mouth twitched, once, as though something hurt him.

They didn't speak again until Laurel stopped the car and said tiredly, “Well, here I am. You can drive yourself back to your office.”

Clive sat up. They were on Ivar just below Hollywood Boulevard. Across the sidewalk were the pseudo-airliner doors of the Skyway Club. The rain had slacked off.

There was a chrome-and-gray custom job parked in front of them. Clive frowned at it, but he didn't say anything. He took Laurel inside.

The foyer was small but opulent, with the airliner motif carried throughout. Queenie, one of the bouncers, was standing in front of the closed inner doors, talking to a tall, well-built man in a trench coat and a snap-brim felt.

“Can't help it,” Queenie said. “Boss's orders. Not even the Resident could get in during rehearsal.”

The man in the trench coat said something under his breath and turned around. He had a blond mustache above a sensual mouth. His skin was tanned, like Clive's. His eyes were very blue, very bright, and very angry.

Clive said, “I thought that was your car outside. When did you start haunting the Skyway Club, Farrar?”

Farrar ignored him. He said to Laurel, “That's a fine way to treat people! Honey, tell this big ape who I am.”

Clive knew she already had. He got in when he wanted to.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Farrar. It's a house rule. We can't take anybody in to rehearsal.” Laurel smiled.

“Well, if you put it that way—” Farrar smiled back, making it personal—“I suppose I can't get sore.” He examined Clive. “I'm disappointed. I thought you'd be wearing your crown of laurels.”

“I was afraid it would sprout in the rain.”

“Just as cute as ever,” said Farrar. “All right, Laurel. I'll be around again.”

He went out. Queenie said, “The ork's waitin', Miss Dane.”

“Be right there.”

Queenie went inside, letting through the sound of a man's voice crooning “As Time Goes By.” Clive jerked his head at the way Farrar had gone.

“Is that your surprise man?”

“Farrar? Heavens, no!”

“What's he doing here?”

“Oh, he came in for dinner one night around three weeks

ago—just after you left for Frisco. He fell for me, I guess. He's been making a pest of himself ever since.” Clive said, “That guy is not used to being called a pest by the female sex.”

“So I gathered. Well, I just don't like his type.”

“You better keep on not liking it. Kenneth Farrar is supposed to be just another honest private dick, but between the two of us he's one of the smartest blackmailers on the Coast”

A brief look of fear crossed Laurel's face. Then she shrugged. “I can handle him all right.” She came close to him. “Promise me, Ed? You will come early tonight. There's so much I have to tell you, and not all of it about me.”

“What does that mean?”

“I'll explain tonight. Just promise me, darling. Please.”

“Sure.” He laughed and kissed her. She put her arms around him tightly, the way she had in the station. He felt her shiver.

“I'm scared, Ed,” she whispered, “I'm scared.”

“I can send someone over to keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, no. It isn't like that. Maybe it isn't anything at all, except that I've got a guilty conscience. Anyway, I'd be all right here.” She pushed away from him, smiling. “I've got to run, or Jimmy will scalp me. Try and get some sleep, Ed. You look worn out.”

“Getting old,” he said cheerfully. “So long, kid.” He started to go, and then suddenly Laurel said:

“Ed...”

“Yes?”

She was looking around at the place as though she had never seen it before, or as though she wanted to be able to remember it if she never saw it again.

“Ed, I've been awfully happy here, with you.”

She was gone before he could say anything. The swinging doors let through the sound of the man's voice and bit it off again.

Clive walked slowly out of the Skyway Club.

Chapter 2

There were five people in Edmond dive's office. Three men, one of whom, a big black-haired fellow, was slumped in a dark corner with his head in his hands; two women, and a silence that Clive's entrance did not break but only deepened.

The office was not too large. It was paneled in Philippine mahogany and contained an expensive leather couch, matching armchairs, filing cabinets, and a desk. Wide windows looked out on the intersection of Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard a block away.

Jonathan Ladd Jones got up from behind the desk. He was a little man with a large head and a face like a healthy, sunburned frog. His eyes might have belonged to a spaniel, only for a certain wicked brightness.

Clive said, “Hello, Johnny.” He included the whole room in his smile. He took off his hat and coat. Johnny said, “Hello, Ed.” Aside from that, no one spoke. Four pairs of eyes followed the course of Clive's five feet and eight niches of well-tailored symmetry across to the desk and into the chair that was still warm from Johnny Jones's small bottom.

“Now,” said Clive, “what can I do for you?”

The man in the corner took his head out of his hands and said uncertainly, “Eddie...”

Clive's face became perfectly blank. Cords tightened in his cheeks and around his mouth, standing out sharply. He started to get up.

One of the women rose. She said, “Mick didn't want to come. I made him. I'm Jane Hammond, Mr. Clive—Mick's wife. Everything I have, everything I might have, depends on your help.”

Clive sat down again. After that first glance he avoided seeing Mick Hammond.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I imagine you understand...”

“Listen to me, Mr. Clive!” Her gloved hands crushed the big suede bag she held. She wore blue, expensively plain, and she had perfect legs. Clive was beginning to notice that she was beautiful, in a clear, golden, highbred way. She was also tired, inexpressibly so, in a way that had nothing to do with her body.

“I've waited a very long time to see you,” she said. “I can't tell you how important it is.”

Clive lighted a cigarette. He was politely impersonal now, but his hands jerked. “I never handle divorce cases.”

The young man sitting nearest the desk laughed loudly. “Divorce! That's good, that is! Divorce!” He resembled Jane Hammond. He was probably younger, but he was already getting saggy and bleared, and there was no iron in his face. He began to grow red with the force of his amusement. The girl over on the couch said, “Richard. Shut up.” She said it with an old, accustomed venom. She was curled up like a child on the seat, so that nothing much of her showed except that she wore a crimson coat and had light brown hair. Her head hung forward so that her face was hidden.

She said, “We've argued about coming here until I'm sick of it. Now we are here, let's get it over with. For good.”

Jane Hammond said, “My sister, Vivien Alcott. And my brother, Richard.”

Richard Alcott stopped laughing, breathing as though he had been exerting himself. Clive nodded briefly at both of them. Alcott acknowledged it. Vivien ignored him.

Jane Hammond came to the desk. “You don't understand, Mr. Clive. I'm trying to prevent a divorce—or something... something more permanent. I know how things are between you and Mick. But all that was years ago. It's different now. And from what Mick has told me of you I believe you're a big enough person to realize...”

“Forgive and forget,” said Alcott. “Kiss the bastard and make up. Don't let her fool you, Clive. Jane's a persuasive talker. Any woman is, when she's in love.” The way he said “love” had a peculiarly nasty implication.

“I am in love with Mick,” Jane said quietly. “And he has changed.”

“Oh, yes,” said Alcott. “He's changed, all right. I can tell you how much he's changed. He's got himself a fancy bitch...”

“Richard!” Hammond rose abruptly. He steadied himself with a heavy blackthorn stick. Clive realized for the first time that he was lame. He had not until then remembered the year-old newspaper stories of an automobile accident in which Hammond had been badly injured.

Clive kept his attention centered carefully on his blotter.

“I don't like this, Eddie,” said Hammond. “I didn't want it this way. Eddie...” He stopped, and then went on hoarsely, “If you'd just let me talk to you... God, I don't blame you! But if you'd only give me a chance... It isn't me that's important now. It's Jane.”

“Jane, Jane, Jane.” Vivien Alcott drawled the name mockingly. “Be honest, Mick. You're scared. You're so scared you'd crawl to anybody for help.” She laughed. “Jane! Yes—you love Jane so much, and that's why you have to spend your nights...”

This time it was Jane who said, “Vivien, stop it.” She turned to Clive. She was pale but stonily composed. “I knew it would be like this. I didn't want them to come.”

“No,” said Alcott. “You didn't, did you? Clive, she thinks one of us is sending her those letters. That's how she treats her family, since she married that bastard. She wanted to come down here alone with him and talk us into trouble.”

“I would say,” Clive told him, “that you were doing a better job of that than anyone else could.” He reached for a card and began to write. “Does that mean you're going to take the case? You're going to help that dirty rat after all he's done?” Alcott got up. His face was suffused. Clive saw that he was slightly drunk. “All right,” said Alcott. “Go ahead. Pull him out of this mess. Mick gets away with everything. But someday it'll catch up with him. Someday they'll find that bastard stuffed down a drain, where he belongs. And I'll tell you this much, to make the job easier for you. Everybody Mick Hammond has ever known has a reason to hate his guts. Even you!”

He went out, slamming the door hard after him. Vivien laughed.

Clive stood up and held out the card to Jane Hammond. “This man is a good operative and completely reliable. I can recommend him for whatever you may have in mind.”

She made no move to take it. “You can't refuse even to listen.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I forced Mick to come here with me because I knew that if you could see and talk to him you'd understand.”

“This man will do as much for you as I could.”

“I don't believe that”

Clive said impatiently, “Mrs. Hammond! I'm not the only private investigator in the country.”

“You're the only one I know, and trust.”

Clive frowned. He studied her with sudden intentness, and then said again, sincerely, “I'm sorry.”

She sighed and bent her head. Clive put the card in her hand and turned away. He stood looking out at the rain, smoking nervously.

“Eddie,” said Mick Hammond, “there's something I ought to tell you.”

Clive said, “Johnny, will you show these people out, please.”

Jonathan Ladd Jones went to the door. He had been perched in a corner listening. His expression now was peculiar—partly malicious excitement, partly apprehension.

Hammond said again, “Eddie...”

“Yes, Mick,” said Vivien Alcott. “Go ahead. Tell him. He's in the mood for dirty stories. He'll enjoy it.”

Hammond made a sound in his throat. His wife caught his arm.

“Come on, Mick,” she said gently. “Mr. Clive seems to be quite sure he knows everything as it is.”

Johnny bowed them out. Clive thought they were gone, and then Vivien Alcott's voice said: “Mr. Clive.”

She was standing in the doorway. The dreary light touched her broad cheekbones and the sulky line of her lips. It caught in her eyes, so that Clive couldn't see what color they were, only that they were not large and had a fault tilt to them like the eyes of a cat. They were disconcertingly intent.

“I knew you'd turn them down,” she said. “The bitch. The sweet bitch! My brother was right. She tried to sneak away, because she's afraid one of us is sending the letters. I'm glad you turned her down!”

She studied him for a moment and then laughed. “You should have listened to what Mick had to say. I hope you kill him when you find out!”

She went away. Johnny shut the door.

“Oi!” he said. “Such a family! For Chrissake, Ed, what was all that, anyhow? I never knew you knew any Michael Hammond.”

Clive poured himself a stiff shot from the office bottle, rattling it against the glass.

“Long time ago, Johnny.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. Well—uh—going home now?”

“Yeah. I haven't slept in three weeks, and I'm beginning to get punchy.” He pulled his coat on.

“That was a swell job, Ed.”

“Thanks. Oh, Johnny, about Laurel. I know about Farrar, but is there anything else?”

Johnny looked uncomfortable but stimulated. “Well...”

“I know there's a man. Take it from there.”

“That was it, that just went out Mick Hammond, He's been home with her four times.”

Clive stared at him. A sullen flush crawled up over his cheekbones.

“I'm beginning to get it. Two strings to his bow, huh? If the wife doesn't work, he's still got Laurel. Well I'll be...”

He went on from there. Johnny sat down behind the desk. “Wow!” he said, when Clive had quieted again. “Don't ever turn that loose on me, Ed. Uh—look, pal. It's none of my business, but if you put that guy on ice I'll be out of a job...”

Clive laughed. “I'll cling to that thought when I need something to steady me. I started to ask you if there was anything Laurel ought to be scared about.”

“Not a thing, unless she's scared of Farrar.”

“Sure of that?”

“Sure I'm sure. Listen, I'm the second greatest private dick in the country —”

“So sorry.” He opened the door. “So long, genius!” The office was on the second floor. As Clive reached the lower hall, which was dark even in sunny weather and showed nothing but closed doors, somebody stepped out of the shadows.

“Wait!” It was Richard Alcott. He gripped Clive's sleeve, breathing whisky fumes in his face.

“Listen,” he said. “I'll pay you not to take that case.” Clive jerked his arm free. He started away, and Alcott grabbed him again.

“Listen, Clive, I'm talking to you. I'll pay you plenty. They've got it coming to them. You don't want to help that bastard after what he did to your Marian.”

Clive turned quickly and hit him in the stomach. Alcott doubled up on the tiles.

Clive said furiously, “Why couldn't that son of a bitch keep his mouth shut!”

He went on out of the building.

It had stopped raining when he reached his apartment hotel. A thin kid in a blue uniform came out for his bags.

“Gee, Mr. Clive,” he said, “you sure showed up those cops all right! I'll bet there isn't anybody in the country any smarter than you.”

Clive laughed. “Go easy, Chuck! You'll have me so I can't wear a hat any more.” He gave the car a slap. “You can put the baby to bed for me.”

Chuck was overjoyed. He loved cars, but drove so poorly that he seldom had the chance.

The clerk, the switchboard girl, and the elevator boy all had a greeting for Clive. He kidded them, secretly enjoying the fuss, and went on upstairs. Chuck put the bags in the bedroom. Clive flipped him a folded bill.

“Gee, thanks! Gee, you're a swell guy!” Chuck's eyes shone. Young eyes, clean like a new sheet. Clive laughed, without humor.

“Don't trust it, kid,” he said. “Don't trust anything, and you won't get hurt.” He wondered if his own eyes had ever looked like that.

It was pouring rain again and Clive was in the shower when the phone rang. He cursed and went dripping across the carpet, wiping his hands on a towel. His body was lean and tanned, put together with tough, wiry neatness. There was dark hair on his chest and forearms.

“Edmond Clive speaking.”

It took him a minute to realize what the person on the other end was doing. He, or she, was whispering. Slowly, distinctly, but without a trace of honest voice.

“You're over draft age, Clive, but you're still young. You wouldn't want to die so young.”

Clive's eyelids narrowed. “What is this?”

“Just a suggestion. Nosy guys get hurt, is all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” There was a terrible, callous indifference about the whispering. “I'm talking about Laurel Dane, She's on a spot, pal, and nobody can get her off it. I don't want to have to bother with you. That's why I'm telling you. But if you're stubborn... it's a free country, pal, and you can die any time you want.” The receiver clicked.

Clive put the phone down carefully, and then raised his hand and inspected it. It was shaking. In spite of the sizzling radiator, the room had grown very cold.

Chapter 3

Edmond Clive walked to the Skyway Club. The storm had cleared momentarily, and he wanted the exercise. The cold wind felt good.

Hollywood Boulevard looked like a strip of polished jet in the glow of dimmed-out store fronts and street lamps half covered with conical black caps. There was a surprising amount of traffic. Ivar, however, was deserted. Halfway along it the blacked-out neons of the Skyway Club gave an eerie feeling of desolation, as though Clive were the last man walking on a dead world.

The hat-check girl squealed at him as soon as he came in the door. “Well, Mr. Clive! When did you get back in town?”

She had a Pekingese face with too much make-up on it, bleached hair, and long blood-red nails.

“Hiya, Sugar.” Clive surrendered his hat and coat. “Been behaving?”

“You know how it is.”

“I can guess.”

He was wearing a dinner jacket, and the severe black and white did things to him. Sugar liked what it did. She handed him his check, leaning farther over the counter than there was any real need for.

“I read all about it in the papers,” she said. “My, you're wonderful. Just like a detective in the movies.”

“Oh, sure,” said Clive. “Only handsomer.” Sugar was breathing hard through her mouth. She wasn't thinking about the San Francisco case, much. Her satin uniform was tight all the way down.

He reached over quickly and slapped it where it was tightest. “Sorry, Sugar. Don't you ever get tired trying?”

She jerked away from him. “You son of a bitch!”

Clive grinned. “You should see my pedigree. Five champions.” He left her fuming and went into the main rooms.

There was a shallow chrome-railed balcony, and then the floor. Chandeliers in the shape of miniature planes shed an intimate glow. The orchestra was soft and good, and quite a few couples were dancing. Laurel Dane was not on yet.

Samuels, the maitre, had once run a speakeasy in Saint Paul. He still looked like a speakeasy owner in spite of his impeccable tailoring.

Clive said cheerfully, “Hi, Sammy.”

“Hi.” Sammy was not cheerful. “Now look, Mr. Clive. None of this is my business, except one thing. I don't want trouble in my place.”

“Why, Sammy. Have you ever known me to make trouble?”

“That I have, pal! And more than any four other guys I ever knew. You're a good customer, and I like you. But you get rough, I'll have to send the boys around.”

“You do that, Sammy, and no hard feelings.”

Samuels went away, rubbing his hard blue jowls. Clive got out a cigarette and stood smoking. He looked over the crowd but found nothing to interest him except one gorgeous redhead. Presently he started down the steps.

Off to the right on the balcony, the door marked Gentlemen opened and Kenneth Farrar came out. Clive went back up the steps.

Farrar was extremely blond, bronzed, and attractive in his dinner clothes. He nodded to Clive, smiling with his mouth only.

Clive moved slightly, so that the post of the chrome railing was out of his way. In the distance he saw Samuels passing the high-sign to the bouncer brigade.

“Farrar,” he said pleasantly, “stay away from Laurel.”

Farrar examined him without haste. “I've always wondered what God looked like.”

“Now you know. And by the way, chum, how's the blackmail business?”

Farrar's neck reddened above his white collar. “Are you looking for trouble, Clive?”

“Are you?”

“You've got nothing to back up that statement. Nobody has. Nobody ever will have. And your own record isn't so goddam pure.”

“No. So you ought to know I don't need anything on you. You get in my way, sonny, and I'll frame you right into San Quentin.”

Farrar smiled. He had magnificent teeth. “Your way, Clive—or your bed?”

Clive hit him.

The bouncers might have come up out of the carpet. There were four of them, and they were big tough boys who knew their business. Neither Clive nor Farrar struggled much.

“I'll remember that,” Farrar said.

Clive nodded. “Sure. We'll both remember it.”

Farrar shook himself free. He went down the steps and out between the tables, toward the swinging doors marked The Cockpit, where the bar was.

Samuels came up. He said, “If you're not gonna behave...”

Clive looked at the four big men. He laughed. “You keep those nursemaids around and baby won't even play with his rattle.”

“All right,” said Samuels. “But I'm watching you.”

The orchestra struck a chord. People left the dance floor, and the lights began to dun. Clive glanced across at his table, a small one by the performers' entrance, close to the stage. It was empty. There was a “reserved” sign on it.

“Be seeing you, Sammy,” he said.

As he went away one of the bouncers announced in a hoarse whisper, “He's clean, boss.”

Clive grinned.

He sat down at the table. The band leader, a personality boy with very curly hair and a white coat, was announcing Laurel. The lights deepened to indigo. A spot lanced downward, centering on the curtained doorway.

Laurel Dane came in. She wore soft gray that clung and floated, and was shot with folds of flame color. Her flesh looked silver, her lips a warm scarlet. She walked across toward the stage, gracefully acknowledging the applause.

She found Clive and smiled at him. He could see a shimmer of tears in her eyes. He raised his hand.

Laurel sang “Blues in the Night.” The throbbing wail suited her and her voice. People liked her. She came down off the stage flushed with pleasure and looking as though she didn't have a care in the world. Clive got up and took her hand.

“I think we'd better go back to your dressing room, Laurel.”

“You sound queer, Ed. What's wrong?”

“I'm going to have to spoil your surprise. Hammond was in my office today.”

“Oh. I didn't know he was going to see you. He said he was afraid because of the threats... Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Oh,” said Laurel softly. “You refused him. Oh, Ed, how could you look at him and be so mean?”

“He's got right around you, hasn't he? There's a lot you need to know about that guy.”

“But I know it all, Ed! He's told me everything. And he needs help so badly.”

“He's apt to get it some day, for good.” Clive beckoned to a waiter. “Tell the man who comes to this table—if he comes— that Miss Dane is waiting in her dressing room.”

“Ed,” said Laurel, “you're not going to start trouble, are you?”

“Should I?”

“I know you when your mouth gets like that. Ed, listen to me...”

She stopped. Clive was staring over her head, at a tall man coming toward them, leaning on a heavy, blackthorn stick.

Laurel took hold of Clive's wrists. “Let me talk to you before you say anything.” She shook him. “Ed, listen to me!”

Veins began to stand out on Clive's forehead. Hammond stopped some distance away.

Clive said mildly, “I'm not sore at you, Laurel. Let me go.”

“I can't until I've made you understand!”

“I'm not going to touch him. Let me go!”

She took her hands away and clasped them between her breasts. “Everybody's looking at us. Ed, won't you come back to my room and let me tell you...”

Clive drew a long breath. “Laurel,” he said, “I'm not blaming you. Mick is a genius at things like this. I don't know what he's told you...”

“He's in trouble. Terrible trouble.”

“So he wants my help and he's using you to get it.”

“That's not true. If you'd only listen...”

Clive wasn't paying any attention to her. Hammond let his head and shoulders crumple forward—a strangely old gesture for a man no older than Clive. He turned away.

Laurel said shrilly, “You wait, Mick.” She put her hands up on Clive's chest. “Listen to me, Ed. I know all about you and Mick. But all that's different now.”

“My God,” said Clive, “He teaches all his women the same song.”

Samuels and his four big men were drifting up between the tables. There were dancers on the floor, but they weren't dancing. The music sounded loud and empty.

Laurel said, “You watch what you're saying, Ed.”

Clive lost what was left of his temper. “Quit pawing me! Listen, you fool. I've known that bastard since we were in kindergarten. He'll lie to or with any woman in the state to get what he wants. And he can always get what he wants.”

Laurel's palm cracked like a shot against his cheek.

“You son of a bitch, you can't talk to me like that! You know so damned much! You know everything. You couldn't possibly be wrong...”

He backhanded her across the shoulder, hard enough to knock her against the table and out of his way. He walked onto the dance floor. Samuels and the bouncers closed in.

Samuels said, “Now, Laurel...”

“You shut up!” She was standing straight again, holding her hand over her shoulder. Hammond stayed where he was, looking dazed. Laurel yelled, “Ed! Ed Clive!”

Clive went on. Nobody tried to stop him.

Laurel scooped up the sugar bowl from the table and threw it.

It hit Clive between the shoulders and then bounced to the floor and split open. Sugar cubes rolled like dice. Clive turned around.

Two pairs of large hairy hands reached out for him. He swung at the nearest face and was stopped halfway. He was held expertly, so that he couldn't even kick. Laurel came up to him.

“God damn you,” she whispered. “I said you stay and listen!”

Clive stared at her. He was sweating, breathing harshly as though he had run a long way.

“You make me sick,” said Laurel. Her voice had no inflection, and no shrillness. “Who do you think you are—God? You can't accuse me of something and then not even listen. You can't walk out on people like a nasty-tempered brat.” She began to cry, without changing expression. “I've been waiting for three weeks. I've been praying for you to come home. People need you, Ed Clive. You can't walk out on people when they need you.”

Clive's face twitched. Suddenly he began to laugh. It was clear, healthy laughter. Samuels and the strong men looked stunned.

“Of course not, baby.” There was not even any bitterness in Clive's voice. “That's what I'm here for, just to be around when people need me.” He waited courteously for the men to free him.

He put his arm around Laurel and started toward the curtained doorway. Over his shoulder, as though nothing had happened, he said, “Come along, Mick. The lady's buying the drinks.”

Michael Hammond ran a hand across his eyes and followed. Clive noticed that for all his limp he managed to be damnably graceful.

No one spoke on the way to Laurel's dressing room. She lay heavily against Clive's shoulder, mastering her sobs. She looked up at him when he opened the door. His face was relaxed and pleasant.

“Sometimes I'm afraid of you,” she said.

He smiled. He motioned Hammond inside and closed the door. Laurel sat down by the dressing table.

Clive said, “May we have a drink, Laurel?”

She nodded. Clive crossed the room. It was small, with a worn carpet on the floor. There was a couch with a chintz cover, a slipper chair, and an open closet with a lot of Laurel's clothes in it. One window with a heavy wire screen gave onto the alley behind the Skyway Club. It was open, because the heat from the kitchen made the place stuffy.

There was a bottle of bourbon on the table. Clive got three glasses from the bathroom cupboard and filled them.

“I wish you'd get some Scotch, Laurel,” he said. “I don't like bourbon.”

Hammond had sunk down on the couch, holding his head in his hands. Clive saw that his thick black hair was beginning to streak at the temples. He passed the drinks and sat down in the slipper chair.

“And now,” he said, “let us talk.”

The whisky had brought some life back into Laurel. “Ed, I don't trust you when you're polite.”

He smiled faintly. “After all this row, isn't anybody going to say anything?”

Hammond straightened up. For the first time Clive looked him in the face. He had always been handsome. Now he was beautiful, with the fine-drawn, unearthly beauty that suffering brings to some people. His eyes were tired beyond anything Clive had ever seen, except the tiredness in the eyes of Hammond's wife.

“Don't be angry with Laurel about me, Eddie,” said Hammond. “There's nothing between us. She just kept me from going crazy, that's all.” He paused helplessly. “I don't know how to begin. I suppose I had no right to come to you, but a man in a bad enough spot will try anything. Like the helldiver we saved from drowning during that storm. Remember? It didn't even peck us.”

“I remember.”

Hammond looked down at the floor, at nothing. “I've been through hell, Eddie. Nothing's the same any more. Somehow I've got to make you believe that.”

“You always were a good talker, Mick.” Clive lighted a cigarette with quick, nervous hands. “Go on.”

Hammond said again, “I don't know how to begin.”

Laurel got up, smiling wickedly at Clive. “Suppose you start with us, Mick. That ought to put him in a good mood.” She went across into the bathroom, her silver slippers sparkling on the dingy rug. She turned on the cold water, bent over the washbowl, and began splashing her face.

Hammond took his blackthorn stick and held it across his knees, trying to hide the fact that his hands were shaking. There was a long ragged gash in the wood. It had been covered with stain and polish, but the light showed it up like a scar on a man's face. Very slowly, as though he were not thinking about it, Hammond turned the stick so that the gash was hidden.

“I was afraid to come to your office, Eddie,” he said. “I'm being watched. I've been warned not to try to get help.”

“Can't you be watched here as well as anywhere?”

“I have been. If you were to look out the front entrance now you'd probably see Richard sitting in his car, waiting for me to come out with Laurel. But that doesn't matter. It's expected of me. I've spent a long time building up a reputation.”

“Yeah. How did it happen you were in my office today, then?”

“Jane did that. You see we're about at the end of our rope... I guess we both decided that anything was better than just waiting. Jane tried to keep it from Richard and Vivien, but in our family you can't do that. We argued and fought until none of it mattered much anyway, and Jane convinced me we'd have a better chance if I were there so you could talk to me... I'm sorry about what happened.”

“In other words, you and your wife went about getting help separately, each of you trying to keep it dark.”

“Yes. Well, I called your apartment, Eddie. They told me you were out of town. They weren't going to tell me anything more except your office address, but...”

“But you convinced the switchboard girl it was a matter of life or death, and she told you where I hang out nights.” Clive often had calls relayed to the Skyway Club. “Isn't there anything you can't do with women?”

Hammond let that go. “I couldn't hang around your apartment any more than I could your office. So I came here. I was going to come every night until you got back. I hadn't had much sleep, and I got the shakes. I don't like doing it in public. I crawled out into the back hallway here and Laurel found me. She pulled me round and I went to sleep on her couch.”

Hammond's head dropped forward so that Clive could see only the top of it. He had forgotten that view of Mick. A kid with black hair, baiting fishhooks or bending over to watch a red crab scuttle around a wet rock.

Hammond said, “Perhaps you know how Laurel is. You tell her things you wouldn't tell anyone else. She let me come home with her because there's no rest where I live. She slept on the couch in the living room, with the bedroom door closed.” Something like anger hardened his face briefly. “She kept me from going crazy. She promised to help me, with you. And that's all there is to it.”

Laurel came out of the bathroom. She went down on her knees in front of Ed Clive, her head tilted back, smiling. Her lips were red even without rouge. He could see the tight pale skin between her breasts and the motion of her breathing.

She said, “Aren't you ashamed?”

“I know you too well, darling, to be ashamed.” He bent over and kissed her. Her flesh was cold from the water. He shivered suddenly, drawing back. “Better go put your face on, baby.”

She pouted at him and went and did things with lipstick and a comb. Somebody knocked on the door. She called, “I'm coming,” patted her dress down, and started out. Then she paused with her hand on the knob, looking at Clive.

He grinned. “Run along, hussy, and make with the music. What's Sammy paying you for?”

She shook back her cloudy black hair. “It's all right,” she said. “Everything's all right.” She went out.

Clive rose, pacing the room restlessly. “Go ahead, Mick. What's your jam?”

“Then you will...?”

“I haven't said that. Go ahead and talk.”

“All right... God knows I don't have to tell you what a heel I was. Growing up on those sand dunes, wearing ragged overalls, never having enough to eat... I wanted success, and women were the easiest way. I don't think I ever thought about the ethics of it. They wanted something, and I wanted something, and nobody got hurt.”

Clive said, with cold anger, “Except Marian.”

Hammond nodded slowly. “Except Marian. Anyway, I got where I wanted to go. I talked a rich widow into getting me a job in a department store she half owned. I did work there, Eddie. I had to, because I knew she wouldn't keep me after she got wise to me. I even got promoted. The other partner was satisfied, so I stayed. I was all set. All I needed was a rich wife, with a spot in the social register. I found her. Her name was Jane Alcott, she came from Boston, and she didn't know much about me. I married her a little less than three years ago.”

He got out a gold case, braced his wrists on his knees, and managed to get a cigarette between his lips. His hands were shaking badly. He dropped the case. Clive put it back in his pocket and held a lighter for him.

“Got it kind of bad, haven't you?”

“Kind of.” Hammond closed his eyes, dragging the smoke down. “I didn't change after I married Jane. I went on parties, and I gambled, and if there was a pretty girl around I knew it. I never gave her grounds for divorce, but a woman doesn't like that sort of thing! We quarreled incessantly, and yet she stuck with me, Eddie—even with her brother and sister nagging all the tune to get rid of me. You know why? Pride, of course, partly. But she really loved me. That's funny, isn't it?”

He clenched his hands together between his knees, trying to stop their trembling.

“Then about a year ago I fought with Jane at a party. Richard, my brother-in-law, was engaged to a girl named Anne Lofting, and they were there, too. Richard left Anne to talk business with some big money and she was sore about it. We were both a little tight, and—well, we went off in the car together.

“We consoled each other for a while, down on the Coast highway. Then she got mad at me and made me drive her to where she could get a cab. I started home. I picked a winding road to speed on, went off the shoulder and down a steep bank and wound up in a gully. Nobody saw it happen. I was pinned under the car. It was dark there in the canyon, and still. There was a thin fog and it was cold and the car weighed more than Mount Whitney. Pain, Eddie—I couldn't even faint. I just had to lie there, and think.”

There was a long silence. It was raining hard outside in the alley. Someone slammed the kitchen door. The sound of Laurel's voice came very faintly from the hall.

Hammond went on slowly. “I realized that I'd never thought before in my life. I did some more thinking in the hospital. I'd have died without Jane. She stood by me even when she knew I was crocked for good. What is it, Eddie, that makes a woman love a man like me?”

Clive didn't answer. He stood by the window, listening to the rush and slam of the rain. It was very dark beyond the screen.

“I know what the Bible says about leopards and Ethiopians, but it isn't always true. I started to try and make it up to Jane—only it was too late. Someone has checked up on my past, Eddie. Everything I ever did. About six months ago Jane began getting letters telling her about me. They come at irregular intervals, and of course they're not signed. But they're accurate.

“It isn't blackmail. Money is never mentioned. But the letters hold it over us that some day they'll be sent to other people. My boss, our friends, the newspapers. Jane knows I've changed, and she wants to help. But that constant threat...

“I can't stand losing her, Eddie. That's why I wanted your help. Whoever writes the letters warns us not to try and find out who it is. But you've got to find out, Eddie! Unless you think I haven't any right to Jane, and I ought to kill myself.”

Clive turned. Hammond was crying, not making any fuss about it, and shivering like a dog that's cold, or frightened.

Clive said quietly, “All right, Mick. I'll do what I can.”

He moved, one step. He didn't have any warning. The beat of the rain on the alley paving covered any footsteps. Even the gun was silenced. All he knew was that something came out of nowhere behind him and slammed him forward on his face.

He tasted dust on the carpet. He tried to get up and was a little surprised that he could. Mick Hammond was standing erect, like a marble image. The slug had ripped the couch beside him.

Clive snarled, “Get down!” and went for the light switch. There were no more shots. In the darkness he found the table and jerked the drawer open and got the little gun that Laurel kept there. There was blood pouring down his left side and arm. He cursed and went out into the hall.

There was nobody there. From the front of the club came a crescendo of music and a burst of applause. Things rattled comfortably in the kitchen. Someone was whistling “Blues in the Night” and missing the tune badly. The door to the alley was closed.

There was a light switch. Clive turned it and then opened the door, standing flat in the corner beside it. A snarling, fretful gust of wind blew rain against his face. There was a smell of wet bricks and the gurgle of water down a storm drain. The alley was deserted.

Clive shut the door and turned the light on again. He leaned his right elbow against the wall, letting the hand with the gun in it droop. He was white around the lips. There was a lot of blood running down his arm. He watched it drip off his fingers and thought Sammy would be sore as hell about the carpet. Someone screamed.

Laurel Dane had come down the hall. She looked at the gun and the blood and said, “Ed,” very quietly, and folded up like a marionette when the strings are dropped. Mick Hammond came out of the dressing room.

“How do you like that?” said Clive. His cheek muscles twitched. “I get shot, and she does the fainting!”

Chapter 4

Samuels came down the hall in Laurel's wake. He looked at her, and then at Hammond, and then at Clive.

“Will you get to hell off my rug,” he said.

He picked Laurel up, shoved past Hammond, and put her down on the couch. Clive went in after him. He was reasonably steady. Samuels closed the door and glared.

“Did you kill anybody?”

Clive grinned. “He didn't wait long enough.” He dropped the little gun back in the table drawer. “Some guy just took a shot at me through the window.”

Samuels closed it and pulled the shade. “Get in the bathroom, will you, and bleed in the washbowl.”

Clive went in. Hammond was there, wringing out a cold towel for Laurel.

“Worrying about his carpets, the son of a bitch,” Clive muttered. “What about my clothes?” He held his hand over the bowl. Hammond limped out with the towel. He still hadn't said anything. Samuels came in and pulled off Clive's coat and shirt. Clive cursed him.

Samuels' hard, practiced eye appraised the damage. “Slug went right through between your arm and your side. Forty-five, I'd say. Just a couple of grooves. Another two inches and you'd have slept in the morgue tonight.” He looked in the washbowl. “For a guy your build you got a lot of blood. Just stay put, buddy, till I get back.”

“You and your lousy carpets!”

Clive inspected the wounds. They were ragged, but not deep. The blood was already beginning to clot. He looked like something out of a slaughter house.

Laurel began to make noises as though she were coming round. Clive pulled the bathroom door to. He called out, “How you doing, baby?”

“Ed! Ed, darling, are you all right?”

“Just a scratch, hon. Stay in there till I get cleaned up, will you? You shouldn't see me with my shirtie off.”

She laughed. “Take him a drink, Mick, and then get me one.”

Presently Hammond held a glass in through the door. His face was bone-white and his eyes were like glass in the light. He was out on his feet from sheer exhaustion.

“I'm glad you're all right, Eddie. Did you mean...”

“Sure, Mick. We'll talk some more in the morning.”

Hammond smiled, the smile of a tired small boy whose father has just promised him that everything will be all right. He went away. Clive shook his head irritably and drank his bourbon.

Samuels came back and did things with towels and disinfectant and gauze.

Clive said admiringly, “You act like you've done this before.”

Samuels scowled at him. “I have. And I can throw lead as well as I can clean up after it. Christ, the way you guys use my premises!”

Clive laughed, getting gingerly into his ruined shirt. “Relax, chum. I have no intention of using your premises to get killed on.” He eased into his coat and began fooling halfheartedly with his tie. “By the way, was Farrar heeled tonight?”

“No. You guys want to play rough, you go somewhere else, see?” He started out. “Better go home and get some sleep,” he said to Laurel. “My God, the boy friends you pick! You oughta be singing in a shooting gallery.” He glared at the ripped couch. “Any more like this, and you will be!” He slammed the door behind him.

Laurel got up and pulled a fur-trimmed coat out of the closet. All the vitality was gone from her. Her lips were like a smear of blood on white porcelain.

She said, “Let's go home.”

Clive's face was expressionless. He watched Mick Hammond help her on with her coat.

“Want to play angel, Mick, and drive me home?”

Hammond said, “Of course.”

Clive turned the knob. Laurel said, “Wait, darling. Your tie.” She fixed it for him. “There. You look fine, Ed.”

She didn't look fine. The way she looked frightened him. Hammond lumped out, still graceful. Laurel turned off the light.

“Darn it,” she said suddenly. “Forgot my compact.” She went back inside, swinging the door to behind her. Clive heard the table drawer pulled out softly and pushed in again. She came out, smiled, and walked on down the hall. The weight in her coat pocket was not a compact.

On the way out Clive stopped to phone. Jonathan Ladd Jones was not at home, nor in any of the dens of iniquity he frequented. Clive cursed him fluently.

He and Hammond retrieved their coats from the checking booth. Sugar saw the blood on Clive's cuff, and her eyes got round and shiny. Clive grinned at her.

“She bit me,” he said. “You know how women are with me.” He put his arm around Laurel. Sugar hated him.

It was still pouring outside. Hammond said, “My car is right over there.”

“See your brother-in-law?”

“No.”

They made a dash for the car—a long, swanky black-and-chrome job. Hammond slid under the wheel. Clive got in the back seat with Laurel. She was silent and depressed, and everyone seemed to have caught her mood.

Laurel's apartment house was a block or two north of the Boulevard, not far from Clive's. There was no hotel service, so there was no one in the lobby to see them go in. The elevator was automatic. They rode up in it, without speaking, to the third floor. Laurel opened her door, turned around, and gave them a sunny smile.

“Well, good night, children.”

Clive said pleasantly, “Good night, Laurel.” He put his arms around her. She relaxed. Her eyes closed, and her lips were hungry. He lifted her off her feet and went with her through the door.

Laurel said, “Damn you!” and kicked him on the shins. He cursed and put her down and she went for the gun in her pocket. “I'll make you get out! I won't let you stay here!”

Clive's hand got there first. She whimpered and clamped down on his wrist. Her nails hurt. He put the heel of his right hand under her chin and shoved. Laurel fell backward onto an overstuffed couch. Clive winced and grabbed his shoulder.

“Don't play so rough,” he said. “You want me to start bleeding again?” He dropped the gun in his own pocket.

“I want you to get out of here, Ed. Will you go, for God's sake!”

“Shut up, darling.” Mick Hammond was still standing in the doorway. Clive pulled him in and shut the door and made sure the bolt was turned all the way.

He took off Hammond's hat and topcoat, his dinner jacket, and tie. He opened his shut and laid the blackthorn stick on a table. Then he pointed to the bedroom.

“Go on in there and get some sleep before you fall down.”

Hammond went straight across the room. Without the stick his limp was not graceful. Clive watched him. For a moment his expression was almost tender.

Hammond closed the door behind him.

Laurel had found a cigarette, and her gray eyes were steady again. Her hair was lovely even when it was tumbled.

She said quietly, “I suppose I can't make you go away.”

“That's a fine thing! After all this time I consent to spend the night with you, and you try to throw me out. Don't you love me any more?”

“Love you? You son of a bitch, I hate you!”

Clive nodded. “That's why,” he said mildly, “you're willing to face death alone rather than risk my life.”

She looked up at him, as though there were no place else in the universe to look. There was a light in her that blinded him.

He sat down and pulled her over into his arms and kissed her—the hollow between her breasts, the curve of her throat, and then her lips. Their arms around each other were tight and rough.

After a while Clive raised his head, and she caught a sobbing breath.

“Oh, Ed, why did it have to be like this?”

“Because you're you and I'm me. Because I should have stayed away from you, and didn't have guts enough to do it.”

He rose, moving away from her. “I've known you for two years. I lost my immortal soul to you, and I couldn't help that. But up to a point I could help what I did about it. How many men have you been in love with during those two years?”

“I know of at least one woman you...”

“Sure! I've been drunk a couple of times, too. The hell with it!”

There was silence.

Presently Laurel said dully, “I'm no good, Ed. I never have been.”

“That's not true.” He was startlingly quiet. “You can no more help falling in love than a pelican can help diving for fish. Every new man to you is like a new toy to a kid. I just couldn't play it that way.”

“I always came back to you.”

“Yeah. Sure. You came back because you couldn't get me. You had me hooked but you couldn't get me, and that was something you had to find out about. Don't you suppose I knew that was the only way to hold you?”

“You're being cruel, Ed.”

“My God, do you think I didn't want you, on any kind of terms? Do you think I didn't lie in bed nights...” He broke off, and then went on, “I've seen things happen to a lot of guys who were fool enough to try and own the wrong woman, Laurel. I'd have had to own you.” There was nothing now in his face but a somber weariness. “I haven't any right to talk. I guess I haven't done you any good, either.”

She whispered, “I wouldn't have wanted to live without knowing you.” She went to him. “I'm leaving town in the morning, Ed.”

“I was waiting for that.”

“You're happy about Mick, though. I'm glad I met Mick, because now I know a lot of things about you that I've always wanted to know—what kind of a little boy you were, and why you're so full of contradictions.”

He smiled. “I didn't know you were one of those curious women.”

“We're always curious about the people we love. Mick told me about Marian. Did you love her very much, Ed?”

“I was seventeen then.”

“And she and Mick were your whole world. You even thought it was right that they should love each other. And then Mick threw her over, the way he did...”

“My God, he must have talked!”

“He had to. To get it off his conscience.”

Clive turned away.

Laurel said softly, “But it wasn't all Mick, was it? Something else happened about Marian, something even Mick doesn't know about. Something that killed you inside.”

Clive laughed suddenly. “Hey, we're not doing this right! Wait till I send out for a couple of beers and a guy to play 'Hearts and Flowers.'“

She made a face at him. “All right, so I'm being sloppy! Well, I'm a woman and I've got a right to be when I feel like it.” She came to him, close but not touching him. “I wish I were the right woman, Ed. You don't give yourself to everybody, and when you do it's for keeps. I wish I were like that. But I'm not. I tried it once, and it—it didn't work.”

She sighed and leaned back against the table, studying the bright toes of her slippers.

“I'm kind of a fool, I guess. Life's so full, and tomorrow's a long way off, and things just take care of themselves. And then all of a sudden they don't, and I get scared, like a silly kid. You were right, Ed. I wanted to get you. You're the only' man I ever met that I couldn't have if I wanted him. And I loved you. You made me furious, you made me unhappy, but I couldn't get you out of my mind. I'd have married you if you'd asked me.

“And then tonight I saw you standing there... I hadn't thought about your getting hurt. I was scared, and I wanted your shoulder to lean on, but I hadn't realized that I was putting you in danger.”

She raised her head. “I don't want you any more, Ed. Not that way. I know why you wouldn't take me, and I'm glad you didn't. I'm glad I'm going away, so it'll be easier for us both to break off.” Her dark lashes dropped, and her lips were sullen with tears. “You're so damned stubborn and you play for keeps, but you're straight. You're the straightest man I ever knew. That's why I want you to go away and let me fight this alone. It's my fight. I did it. And I don't want you hurt again, Ed. Can you understand that, you stiff-necked stone image? I don't want you hurt on account of me!”

“I understand.” Clive put his hand under her chin and tilted her head back. He kissed her, a lingering, gentle caress. Then, suddenly, he laughed.

“Sorry, darling, but I've already made a blood offering on this altar. About two gallons of it, in fact.”

He found Highland Cream in a cellarette and poured two drinks. He gave one to Laurel and then sat down on the big couch, crossing his legs comfortably.

“Now, then. Tell papa all about it.”

Laurel shrugged. “There's really nothing to tell. Somebody searched my apartment a couple of days ago, that's all. They didn't take anything.”

“Okay,” Clive said. “We'll make a game out of it. Let's see... . Once upon a time you met a guy and married him. You were pretty young then, and didn't know much. You probably loved him like hell. And then, after a while, someone else came along. Or several someones. Maybe your husband was the kind who plays for keeps, too. Maybe he just didn't like being run out on. Anyway, he threatened to beat your brains out, and you thought he was tough enough to do it. So you bought a one-way ticket and used it, quick.”

Laurel stared at him. “My God. But I don't keep a diary...”

Clive laughed. “I'm a very smart detective, precious. You should read my publicity.” He finished his drink. “Look, honey. Girls without Pasts don't keep guns in their dressing rooms. They don't watch every man that goes by to see if maybe he's somebody they'd rather dodge. They don't get the flaming horrors in their eyes when they see a man that looks enough like somebody to be that somebody, almost.”

He leaned forward. “Laurel Dane isn't your real name. Ten to one your hair is red instead of black. You couldn't have married me if I had asked you because you are married, and you can't get a divorce because your husband would find you. Am I right?”

Laurel shivered. She rose and walked away from him, her hands at her temples. “Don't say any more, Ed. I don't like even to talk about it.” After a moment she said, “Yes, I was married. It was in New Orleans. His name was Dion Beauvais, he was a gambler, he was black and beautiful and wild, and I loved him—like hell. But he wanted to own me, too, Ed, and I... Ed, have you ever been afraid, really afraid—of dying?”

“Have you seen him? Has he threatened you?”

“No. I'm not even positive that he's here. Maybe it's just my guilty conscience.”

“Got a picture of him, Laurel? Or—what is your name?”

“Sue,” she said. “Sue Tanner.”

“Let's keep it Laurel. It was Laurel I fell in love with.”

“I wish I'd never known Sue Tanner...”

She unlocked a drawer in the desk and brought him a photograph, one of those things that people have taken at weddings. The man was just as she had said. Clive had never seen him before.

“What kind of a voice does he have, Laurel?”

“What a funny question!”

“I'm just curious.”

“A lovely voice. All music—and steel.”

Clive drew her closer to him. The girl in the picture was strange, stranger than if he had not known her at all.

“I did have red hair, Ed.”

He was suddenly overcome with dislike for the picture. He threw it down and put both hands in her hair, lifting her mouth to his. “Let's leave it black, Laurel. I like it that way... and this hasn't changed...”

Her lips moved under his. “I'm going away in the morning, Ed. Whether Di's here or not I'd have to go.”

“It's your own life, Laurel. I can't tell you how to live it. But I'll do anything I can to help you.”

“I'm going away. I've stayed too long in one place.” She gave him a quick, tight hug and stood up. “I've got to get some sleep now or I'll look worse than Mick.” She began kicking off her silver shoes.

Clive went into the bedroom to get a pillow and some blankets. He was careful about it, but he could have walked around shouting as far as Mick Hammond was concerned. Clive had never seen anything but a corpse as dead to the world as he was. He pulled the satin quilt up around Hammond's shoulders and anchored it with one of Hammond's hands. The rhythm of his breathing never changed. Clive went out with the blankets, trailing a faint scent of lavender behind him.

He helped Laurel fix the couch. She had her dress off, and the pale gray satin slip molded her like a glossy skin. She nestled down and closed her eyes.

“Ed, I'm not really such an awful tramp. Is it wrong to have fun and like to have people like me?”

“That depends, honey. Some guys take it seriously.”

“I wish you'd go home, Ed.”

“I wish you'd go to sleep.”

She put out her hand. “Kiss me good night.” He bent over. Her mouth was warm and sleepy. “I'm glad you're here,” she said. “I'm so glad you're here.”

Clive rumpled her hair. “Go to sleep, will you?”

She did, with the ease of a tired kitten. Clive stood for a while, looking down at her....

He turned away abruptly, taking the little gun out of his pocket, and went through the apartment. There was nothing and no one that didn't belong there. The wall outside the windows was without fire escapes, pipes, or foothold of any kind. He went out onto the concrete service porch.

Laurel shared it with another apartment, which was dark and apparently empty. From somewhere below in the lighted stair well came a whisper of music and the ghost of a woman's laughter. The back door had a glass panel in it. Clive scowled at that, made sure of the lock and the extra bolt, and returned to the living room, where he switched off the lights and raised the blinds.

It was still raining. A little weak glow filtered in from the street lamps. Clive went to the telephone, standing so that he could be in shadow and still watch the black opening of the kitchen door. The dial rattled like machine-gun fire but did not disturb Laurel.

Jonathan Ladd Jones had not come home.

Clive whispered, “God damn it!” He weighed the little gun in his hand and thought about the men he had seen shot with .25's who had not minded it enough to let it slow them down. He managed to see the dial on his wrist watch. It was only twelve-thirty-four. He didn't believe it, but his watch hadn't stopped.

He rubbed his face and tried not to yawn. He was beginning to feel the sleep he'd been missing for three weeks. He dialed another number.

“George? Clive speaking. Is Johnny there?” The wire brought him sounds of people being happy in a loudish way. A jukebox was screaming “Murder, He Says!” George came back presently and said, “He ain't here.”

“Phone around for him, will you? It's important. Have him call this number, or call me back yourself if you can't find him.”

George said, “Sure.” They hung up. Clive waited fifteen minutes and grabbed the phone on the first ring. Jonathan Ladd Jones was still missing.

Clive said, “Well, thanks anyway. 'Bye.” He yawned again and pressed his shoulder, which was hurting him. He had had nothing to eat since breakfast. He decided that there was nothing definite about anybody gunning for Laurel tonight, and if anyone was going to he could wait while Clive got food and some strong black coffee.

He picked up Mick's dinner jacket to hang over the uncurtained window and then paused in the kitchen doorway, listening. It was pitch dark, except for a dull glimmer from the stair well away at the back. There was no sound anywhere but Laurel's even breathing. He started forward.

Somebody put a key in the lock of the front door and turned it, and pushed it against the bolt. Clive swung around. The bolt rattled again. Clive smiled. He took one catlike step toward it.

Something came out of the shadows behind him and connected with his skull just back of the right ear. There was a tremendous explosion without any noise to it. He fell a long way, into a place that was black and cold and utterly quiet. He had a dream while he was down there. Someone was slapping his face, sharply but without passion. He tried to move away but he was held. He cursed thickly and opened his eyes, but the darkness was still there.

A voice spoke out of it. It was not really a voice, but a whisper. It said, “I just wanted you to know, pal. Laurel's off her spot, now—f or good.”

It laughed. A heavy object slammed against Clive's jaw. The silence closed in again, completely.

After a long, long time there was another sound. It was far off, but painfully insistent. Now, when Clive raised his eyelids he could see the pale square of the icebox looming above him, and the bigger, paler square of the open door.

It came to him what the sound was. The telephone. He ought to answer it. No particular reason. It was just a thing you did. He rolled over on his face and started to get up.

Somebody hit him in the head with a red-hot axe. They kept on hitting him. He couldn't see anything at all, then, but the swinging flash of the blade as it bit into his brain. He stayed on his knees, his lips drawn back from his teeth, his body covered with icy sweat.

Presently he crawled over and got his shoulder against the sleek enamel front of the refrigerator and pushed himself upward along it.

The telephone stopped ringing.

The sharp stillness shocked against him. Clive shivered. He moved forward, struck the corner of the breakfast table and knocked it over, and went on without noticing it. He caught the door jamb and clung to it, staring into the living room. It was full of shadows, heavy around the sick light from the windows.

He said, “Laurel.” There was no answer. He let go of the jamb and crossed the room. His step was steadier. He found the switch.

The hard yellow glare showed Laurel. She lay on the floor, her cheek cradled on her forearm, her chin tucked under the curve of her bare white shoulder. She seemed relaxed and very comfortable. Clive knelt beside her.

There was blood at her nostrils. There was blood, not much of it, clotted in her hair above the nape of her neck. There was blood, just a little, on the knotted grip of Mick Hammond's blackthorn stick, lying beyond her outflung hand.

He laid his fingers on her throat. The pulse was dead under them. The warmth was already going out of her flesh.

Laurel Dane was off her spot, for good.

Chapter 5

It was quiet in the apartment. The swarm of men with cameras and measuring tapes and sketching pads and powders and camel's-hair brushes had finished and gone away.

Laurel had gone away, too. There was only a chalked outline on the rug to remind anyone that she had ever been there. It was curiously impersonal. It was like the things children draw in the sand and mark “This is you.”

Edmond Clive paced up and down in front of the windows. Hot afternoon sun lay squared on the floor. He watched his black shoes move across it and thought, The ram's over.

Detective-Lieutenant Jordan Games of the Central Homicide Bureau stood by the door, talking in low tones to a grinning little man named Korsky. A uniformed cop sat in a corner, balancing a shorthand pad on his knee and studying the other occupants of the room with an amused and nasty speculation.

Jonathan Ladd Jones sat stiffly on a straight chair. He had not shaved and there was a dazed look about him. Mick Hammond was on the couch where Laurel had slept her last real sleep. His hands hung loose between his thighs. He stared ahead of him, at nothing.

No one spoke except Games and Korsky, and their mumbling was only a sort of detached underlining of the silence. No one seemed to want to meet anyone else's eye.

Gaines had tried hard to crack them. Hours, in an empty apartment across the hall, Clive in one room, Mick Hammond in another. Now he was trying something new. Clive lighted his last cigarette and threw the pack away. His stubbled face twitched spasmodically, like the face of a man addicted to narcotics. The cop in the corner began a monotonous kicking of his heel against the chair rung. Korsky laughed a hard little laugh and Gaines said, “Fine!” Korsky went on talking.

Suddenly Gaines said aloud, “Okay, Korsky. That's all I need right now. Go on down and take care of Mrs. Hammond.”

Hammond brought his attention slowly to Gaines. His eyes held a terrible hate. Korsky went out. A uniformed man closed the door again from outside. The one with the shorthand pad straightened up in pleased anticipation. Johnny glanced quickly at Clive, and away.

Gaines came toward them. He was a big man, fleshy but not soft. He wore a well-cut blue suit, the set of which was spoiled by the thick pad of muscle across his back, relic of pick-and-shovel days before he started pounding a beat. His face was sun-reddened, healthy, appearing rather stupid until one noticed his pale, shrewd eyes.

He said, “Well, boys?”

Clive stopped pacing. “Look, Games. Either book us or let us go. I'm getting goddam sick of this stalling.”

“We've told you,” said Hammond. “Over and over we've told you. What more do you want?”

Gaines settled down in an armchair. His toes almost touched the chalked outline. He studied it.

“There are four possible answers,” he said. “One, you may be telling the truth. Two, you may have framed it between you. Three, Hammond may have slugged Clive and gone on from there. Four, Clive may have doped Hammond and ditto.” He looked up. “You're a smart guy, Ed. How do you figure it?”

Jonathan Ladd Jones stood up. “You goddam thickheaded son of a bitch! Ed's telling the truth, and if he says the other guy is, he is. What about the window in the back door? What about the phone call Ed got? What about the slug in the back?”

Gaines nodded. He was not angry. He seemed to have a great deal of time and not to care particularly what he did with it.

“The window in the back door. Uh-huh. A neat piece of work. The wooden frame removed carefully, without scarring. The glass held securely with masking tape. The nails in the frame clipped short from the underside, except four which were oiled to slide easily. The frame replaced. And we have a quick, noiseless way to reach in any tune we want to and unlock the door.”

He pulled out a sack of tobacco and began making a cigarette. His thick scarred fingers made his neat clothing look incongruous.

“Of course,” he said, “you all had fairly free entry into this apartment. You'd have had as much opportunity as anyone else.”

Clive started pacing again.

Hammond said, “You found the marriage license and the picture. You know Laurel was afraid of her husband.” He hesitated over “Laurel” as though the word had edges on it.

“I know you say she said she was.” Gaines struck a match with his thumbnail. “Korsky checked with the switchboard girl at your place, Clive. The guy who phoned you was whispering. Anybody can whisper. Even Johnny Jones, maybe.”

Johnny swore.

“Listen, Gaines,” said Clive, with ugly patience. “Laurel was killed sometime after one o'clock. I hung up on George about twelve-fifty-four. I suppose Korsky checked that, too. I walked across into the kitchen and somebody slugged me. Even your sawbones admits that this bump on my head must have put me to sleep for at least an hour. I didn't wake up until Johnny phoned around two, and I was too groggy to get there. Then I called you.”

“You're making it tough for me, Clive. I could take you down and let the boys sweat you.”

“You do, and I'll burn the breeches off you in court.”

Gaines sighed. “That shyster lawyer of yours is another one I'm gonna get some day.” He leaned back, looking bored and plaintive. “This is the god-damnedest case I been handed yet. People get slugged, and murdered, and other people walk in and out like a regular parade—at least the bolt's off the front door—nobody sees or hears anything and Hammond here sleeps through the whole thing like a baby. A hell of a case. You know what I think? I think somebody's lying to me.”

Clive said, “That's tough.”

“You're right, it's tough. But I'm tough, too. I'm a regular rump steak, I am.” He heaved onto his feet and began to walk around aimlessly. “Korsky's been doing the preliminary check. Clive, you and Hammond and the girl put on a swell floor show at the Skyway Club last night.”

Clive was standing by the open bedroom door. The smell of lavender came through it faintly. He closed his eyes and then moved away, like a man who doesn't see very well.

“Then you all went to the dressing room,” Gaines continued, “and only you two know what happened there, except that somehow Clive got shot, but when you all came out again you seemed to have brotherly love just squirting out of your ears. Now I ask you, fellas! I've heard all about what happened earlier in Clive's office. I know all about your hating each other's guts for twenty years or more. And then all of a sudden you're practically in bed together, and with the same dame. Does that make sense?”

Clive's lean face was expressionless, except for the nervous tic. “Sure it does. I kicked Mick out of my office, yes. Then he turned up at the Skyway Club because Laurel had promised to help him. She had a soft spot for sick cats. I didn't have anything to get sore at her about. If she'd been in love with him, what the hell? She didn't owe me anything. It just made me sick to look at him, so I tried to walk out and Laurel blew her top. So I figured it was better for her if I stayed. I was afraid she might crack up, she was so jittery. Nothing happened in the dressing room, except Hammond moaned about how everybody hated him, and some guy in the alley nearly finished me.”

Gaines said sleepily, “You wouldn't be working for Hammond, would you? Covering a client, like?”

“I kidded the bastard along because I didn't want Laurel howling at me. Whatever else he told you, forget it.”

“Okay, okay. It's just funny you back up his sleeping beauty yarn.”

Mick Hammond was staring at Clive. His expression was that of a sick man who realizes suddenly that the doctors have been lying to him and he isn't going to get well. Clive seemed to have forgotten that he was in the room.

Gaines yawned. “The hell with these midnight murders.... You wanted Johnny Jones awful bad last night, Clive. Why?”

“He's the only one can tuck me in bed the way Mama used to.”

“Do any drinking at the Skyway Club?”

“Some.”

“More when you got here, maybe?”

“Maybe.” The bottle and glasses were plain evidence.

“Hammond went right into the bedroom, didn't he? Then Laurel told you all about her life history and went to sleep on the couch. And you wanted Johnny Jones something awful.” Clive turned away irritably. “You wanted Johnny Jones,” said Gaines, “because you were so tight you couldn't be sure you'd see Laurel's husband if he did come.”

“All right,” Clive snarled. “So I was drunk.”

“The bedroom door was closed, was it?”

“Christ, yes! How many more times do you want it?”

“How did you know Hammond was asleep?”

“I saw him when I went in for the blankets.”

“But you were tight.”

“All right!”

“H'm,” said Gaines softly. “Hammond, your wife has a lot of money, hasn't she?” Hammond didn't seem to hear him. “Your brother- and sister-in-law came along with her. They make swell witnesses. Seems everybody knew about Laurel Dane. A scandal wouldn't exactly set you in solid with your boss, would it?”

Hammond shivered slightly. He paid no attention to Gaines.

“We haven't talked much about the murder weapon being your stick, Hammond.”

Clive said impatiently, “Anybody could have used it. You'll find my prints on it, from when I put it on the table. Or was it wiped clean?”

“It was wiped clean. So was the front doorknob, both sides. Not the back though, even though both doors were unlocked. Funny, huh?” Gaines chuckled suddenly. “So you were lushed last night. Shouldn't withhold information, you know. Well, that's all. You can go now.”

“What's the joke?”

Gaines said sullenly, “I may be a chump, but not that big a one. The way things stand that shyster of yours would have you out so fast it isn't worth wasting the ink to book you with. All I'm saying is, just be around when I want you again.”

“You know my address,” Clive said. “I've got a lease.”

Jonathan Ladd Jones licked his lips, which were dry and pale. “You're holding Hammond for the kill?”

“Suspicion. Too many loose ends to tie up in one morning, but—“ Gaines shrugged—“guys with lousy reputations and rich wives have beaten little girls' brains out before this.”

He opened the door and spoke to the man outside. Mick Hammond moved on the couch.

“Eddie...”

Clive went out.

There were a lot of reporters in the hall. Usually Clive was friendly with the press; it paid. Now he was aware of them only as something blocking his way. He pushed one man in the face with impersonal viciousness. The others got out of reach. Clive heard Johnny's voice behind him but not the words he said.

There was a cop in the alley behind the building. He let them by. A crowd stood around the front entrance, gawking hungrily. Somewhere a kid was yelling headlines.

Clive hailed a cab and got in, with Johnny at his heels. He put his face in his hands and sat without speaking. The sun burned hot through the window. The cords in Clive's neck stood out like ropes.

He said suddenly, “I did everything there was to do. Nobody could have known about that goddam door.”

Johnny looked out at the hills pressing rough and close against the rain-washed town. “It was just one of those things,” he said. “Nobody could have helped it.”

“She was glad I was there. She was scared, and she was glad I was there.”

“Nobody could have done any more, Ed.”

A little later Clive found himself in his apartment without remembering how he got there. Johnny was shutting the door.

Clive said, “Get out.”

“Like hell I will.”

Clive showed his teeth. He drew his hand back, but he didn't do anything with it. He seemed to have forgotten Johnny before the blow was even started. He went over to the liquor cabinet and got a bottle of Scotch and a glass, and then sat down in the big armchair by the table.

He spilled quite a lot of the whisky but managed to get some into him. He got up again and started to pull his coat off. Abruptly, with his arms still in the sleeves, he pitched over and hit his face on the floor, and lay still.

Jonathan Ladd Jones dragged him into the bedroom, covered him carefully with a blanket, and went out again. There was plenty of Scotch left in the bottle.

Chapter 6

It was nearly two the next afternoon when Ed Clive settled back from the table with a cigarette and his third cup of black coffee. He looked pale, gaunt, and about ten years older, but otherwise he was himself. Jonathan Ladd Jones was stretched out on the couch with a full belly and his eyes closed, enjoying it.

Clive said, “Johnny, I am on a spot.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you think about Mick Hammond?”

“If I didn't know you, Ed, I'd say you were the most low-down dirty son of a bitch in southern California.”

“I had to sell him out! Gaines had the two of us figured for the job. I could see that idea sneaking around in back of every question he put to us. He figured we found out Laurel was two-timing both of us and decided, because we were kids together, to bury our hatchets in her.”

“He didn't say so.”

“Why would he tip his hand? But it's what he meant. Why did Mick and I suddenly get so friendly? Why did I back up his sleeping beauty yarn if I hated him as much as I said I did? Yeah. And there was just sense enough to it to make it dangerous. I couldn't do either of us any good sitting in the can with Gaines's boys pushing my teeth in. Christ, I'm just three jumps away from the gas chamber right now, and I don't like it!”

“What about Hammond?”

“I'll get him out of it.”

“If somebody doesn't get you first. You know Gaines is playing smart with you.”

“He's got to. He can't find the way out of the tangle by himself, so he's using me—Edmond Clive, the Seeing-Eye dog, tame and guaranteed housebroken. He's got Mick to keep the papers happy, and Korsky digging for clues, and all he has to do is park his backside on a cushion and wait till I'm dumb enough to lead him somewhere.” He ground out his cigarette angrily.

Johnny said, “You weren't lushed, of course.”

Clive grinned. “I hope Gaines hasn't a sharp ear. Anyway, I gave him an out and he took it.”

“Yeah. He took it so quick it scares me. You know, Ed, you don't look so much like a Seeing-Eye dog to me. You look more like the goat they stake out to make the tiger hungry.”

“You're a hell of a big comfort to me!” Clive swore. “It ought to be such a simple case! It adds up beautifully most of the way, and then—blooey. The only reason Gaines let me go at all was because he couldn't decide how much I was lying.”

“You can't blame him.”

“No. He knew damn well if I was going to sell him a bill of goods I'd make it a better one than that.”

Johnny rolled over and looked at him. “Ed—you're sure Hammond didn't do it.”

“I tucked him in myself. When I went back to wake him up after Laurel was killed he hadn't even moved his hand from where I put it.”

“He could have been smart enough... All right, all right! We'll drop it right there!”

Clive sprawled out in the armchair and started another cigarette. “About the only other thing I'd bet on is that the guy who slugged me is the same guy that woke me up to tell me Laurel was dead. If so, he's the one who phoned me, and I'll lay odds he did the shooting, too.”

“Uh-huh. Laurel's husband?”

“Or a hired hand. We'll know better when Gaines gets the dope from New Orleans.”

Johnny yawned. “Well, everything looks straight enough to me. Eliminate Hammond, and that just leaves Beauvais.”

“Sure. But somebody had a key to Laurel's door. He was using it, just before I passed out. I shot the bolt on that front door myself, and checked it later. But when I came back after the murder it was off. Did the guy with the key get in— which means did Laurel let him hi—or did the man in the kitchen open the door himself?”

“You're asking. Sure Farrar wasn't in on this somewhere?”

“I don't see where... and Laurel would never have given him a key.”

“He could have stolen it out of her dressing room. Or made an impression in soap, or something.”

“Sure. So could anybody else in the city of Los Angeles. Then there's the question of the front doorknob being wiped for prints, and the back one not. Also, the question of Mick's cane.”

“That looks clear enough to me,” Johnny said. “The killer simply picked up the handiest thing and hit her with it.”

Clive gave him a cold stare. “Somebody was interested enough in Laurel to search her room, probably to make sure she was the right girl—she'd dyed her hair, remember. Incidentally, I'd say that would indicate Laurel's husband hired the job done—he'd have known her, black hair or not. This same guy took a lot of tune and effort to fix up that back door. He checked up on me to see if I was going to be a nuisance. And then he walks in depending on finding the 'handiest thing' to hit her with?”

“Well, hell, maybe he had a better idea. Maybe he wanted to hang the kill on somebody else.”

“That,” said Clive softly, “is a thought.”

“Hey, that reminds me.” Johnny got up on his elbow. “I finagled an interview with the apartment manager. He said Laurel's place was burgled a little over two weeks ago, along with five or six others. The management paid off and hushed it up, so as not to scare away the customers.”

“You see what I mean,” Clive said sourly. “Monkey wrenches.”

He rose and dialed the number of Central Homicide. In a minute he had Gaines's sleepy voice on the other end. Clive greeted him genially.

“Hello, you sweet bastard. How are your trained seals?”

“They get around. Want anything special, Clive? I'm busy.”

“Tough life for an honest cop. What did you get on Beauvais?”

“Just a minute.” Clive heard papers shuffling. There was a typewriter going somewhere in the background. Gaines breathed heavily into the mouthpiece.

“Just came through a half-hour ago. Dion Beauvais is his right name. Born in New Orleans. Thirty-nine, height five feet ten inches, weight one-seventy-six, build medium, hair black, eyes brown, complexion swarthy. Marks, knife scar left breast, two-inch ditto under jaw. Several arrests. Only one conviction. Manslaughter, and it was a setup. Should have been anyway second-degree.”

“That all?”

“No. Seems Beauvais is quite a guy around the French Quarter. Has trouble fighting off the dames. It was one of his lady friends shived him. Seems she didn't like his getting married.”

“To Laurel?”

“Yeah. Only, like she said, her name was Sue Tanner then. Beauvais was pretty stuck on her. Cut up rough when she ran away.”

“Yeah,” said Clive. “Know where he is now?”

“I-know where he was on the morning of the day after the girl was killed.”

“Go on.”

“He was walking out the front gate of the Louisiana State Pen.” Gaines's voice had a laugh under it.

Clive smiled without humor. “Nothing like prison for a good, clean, airtight alibi. But even convicts have friends, you know.”

“Don't fret, pal. We got an order out to pick him up for questioning, if we can find him.”

“Did he have any special gang, or a steady side-kick?”

“No, he seems to travel mostly alone. But we're checking it”

“What kind of a jolt did he get?”

“One to ten, and served three. He was paroled.”

“And that's all the news?”

“That's all,” said Gaines pointedly, “that I'm telling.”

“You scare me,” said Clive, and hung up. The hell of it is, he thought, you do. He looked down at the newspapers strewn on the floor. Murder of Night Club Singer. Prominent Detective Involved. His lips drew back from his teeth. He kicked the newspapers.

Johnny jumped up and said, “Huh?”

“My picture,” said Clive. “It stinks.”

He picked up his hat. Johnny yawned, stretched, and came after him.

“There's a stake-out on you, Ed.”

“Fine,” said Clive. “We'll get 'em out in the fresh air and sunshine.”

“Ed...”

“Yeah?”

“If I hadn't been out jazzing that blonde when you wanted me...”

“You,” said Clive quietly, “are a hell of a one to talk.” He gave Johnny's small hard shoulder a shake and a push. “Move, will you? We got work to do.”

They plowed through reporters in the hall. Clive picked out the undistinguished little guy in the background who was not a reporter and waved to him. He discovered that movement made the wounded surfaces under his arm rub together unpleasantly. He put his hand in his pocket and went downstairs.

The switchboard girl had half a dozen calls for him. Johnny had seen to it that none came through. Two were from Thomas Benson, attorney at law. Four were from Jane Hammond.

Someone said, “Hello.”

Clive turned. “Well, I'll be damned! Hello, Sugar.”

The girl at the switchboard was a nice girl. She didn't like the way Sugar March was dressed, but she couldn't help looking at it. Clive had to admit it was something even Methuselah would have noticed on his nine hundredth birthday. She wore her usual platinum hair and blood-red war paint. Her sweater was red, too, about four inches long, and not very concealing. There was quite a stretch of softly firm belly between it and her slacks, which were white, shiny, and snug. Her sandals had five-inch heels.

Clive shook his head admiringly. “This California climate! Only two days ago it was cold and rainy, and now look. You sure you won't overheat, Sugar?”

She smiled. “I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I'm pretty busy...”

“About Laurel.”

Clive studied her a moment. Then he steered her into a small anteroom and closed the heavy portieres.

“Okay,” he said. “Talk.”

Sugar walked leisurely over to the window. She put her huge cloth bag down on a side table and fished a cigarette out of it.

“I've got plenty of time.”

Clive jerked her around roughly. “Did you have something to say, Sugar?”

Her eyes were furious. “You lost her, didn't you? You weren't really so damned smart. And now the little bi—”

Clive slapped her across the mouth. She drew a deep harsh breath. Her eyelids closed. She swayed into him.

“But she is dead,” said Sugar thickly. “And now...”

He pushed her away. “Talk, or get out!”

“All right, God damn you! Someone came to the Skyway Club the evening before she was killed. Someone that hated Laurel. It was early, and Laurel wasn't there yet, and I'm the only one that saw them.”

“Who was it?”

Sugar smiled. “This is my night off, Ed. You know where I live.”

“Christ, you've told me times enough!”

“Someone that hated Laurel, Ed. Enough to want to kill her, and say so right out in public.” She licked her smeared lips. “Maybe, if you're nice to me...”

“You haven't told the police?”

“No.”

Clive said speculatively, “I don't think I want to wait till tonight.” He raised his hand.

She laughed, but her eyes followed it. “With all those reporters out there? And the hotel staff? I'll scream my head off.” She picked up her bag. “I'll be looking for you around eight.”

Clive shrugged. “Okay, Sugar. There's just one thing you haven't thought of.”

“What's that?”

“Maybe I killed Laurel myself.”

She stared at him, at his hard, sensuous face. Then she said again, “Eight o'clock, Ed,” and left.

Jonathan Ladd Jones was waiting at the curb with Clive's car. There was a black sedan across the street. The little man from the hallway was just getting into it. There was a second man at the wheel.

Clive whistled through his teeth, and waved. The men looked pained. He called amiably, “We'll take it slow,” and added an address. Then he climbed into his own car.

“For Chrissake,” said Johnny, “was that Sugar March?”

“It was.” Clive slid down in the seat and tilted his hat over his eyes. “Gah! The things a decent dick has to do. Remind me to write a book advising youths to avoid the profession. Take up something respectable, like crimping. I want to see Sammy.”

The black sedan made an illegal U-turn to follow them. They passed Sugar walking down toward the Boulevard. Johnny glanced at Clive and grinned.

“You look,” he said, “like you'd bit on a bad oyster.”

“Bitten,” said Clive smugly. “Got your gun?”

“No.”

Clive reached under the dash and pulled the flat Smith & Wesson .38 from its clip. He dropped it in Johnny's side pocket and then looked out the back window. They were close above Hollywood Boulevard now, hitting the press of afternoon traffic. A woman driver pulled out from the curb behind them, temporarily blocking the street, and the red light came on at the corner ahead.

“Pull over for a right turn,” said Clive. “Okay. They can't see you for a minute. Pick up Sugar and stay with her till I come back. That'll be about eight at her place.”

Johnny opened the door. He leered. “Think I'll be safe with her?”

Clive slid over under the wheel. “It's Sugar I'm worried about. If she does know something I'd like to be sure she lives long enough to spill it. Just take it easy, son. If she attacks you, lay that rod alongside her head.”

“I can think,” said Johnny, “of better lays than that.” He vanished.

Samuels lived in modest opulence in the north-of-Wilshire section of Beverly Hills. Clive parked in front of the bastard-Spanish house, got out, and stood waiting. The black sedan hesitated and then swerved in behind him. Clive leaned on the door and smiled.

“I'll try not to keep you boys too long. There's a service station just down there, and a drugstore that probably sells cokes, so if you should want anything don't hesitate to run along. I'll wait for you. And, oh, yes—I'm sorry my pal had to leave so suddenly. Urgent business. You know how it is.”

They knew. They told him about it. He listened, failed to learn any new words, and went on up to the house.

Samuels was not happy to see him.

“Every goddam cop in southern California riding the pants off me, and now you gotta turn up.” There were shadows under his eyes as blue as his jowls. He wore a yellow silk shirt and wrinkled green slacks and woven sandals that creaked. “Well, come on in.”

He led the way into a long whitewashed room with heavy beams and a gaudy tile fireplace. He shooed three fat swarthy kids out of a litter of comic books and motioned Clive to a chair. The kids stared and rushed away, yelling. Somewhere out in back a woman's voice chimed in. It was all rather unsettling to Clive. He had never pictured Samuels away from his tuxedo and his Skyway Club.

He was suddenly tired, and he hated Sammy's face.

“I suppose you've told all this to the police...”

“Damn right I have!”

“Well, once more won't kill you. I want to know anything you can remember that might have any bearing on what happened. Anyone asking for Laurel, anyone hanging around the club at odd hours, anything Laurel may have said or done that was out of the ordinary.”

Samuels said angrily, “I've told the whole goddam bunch of you I don't know anything about it, except what went on the night she was killed. And that still makes you and the Hammond guy the best bets!”

“You're stringing along with the majority. Did Hammond's brother-in-law ever come into the club?”

“Jesus, how should I know!”

“I'm asking you, Sammy.”

Samuels glared at him. Finally he said, “Well, a couple or three weeks ago some guy and a dame came in while Hammond was at your table with Laurel. The dame was plenty classy, a looker. The guy might have been her brother. Anyway, she was all right. Pretty friendly with Laurel, no trouble. Course, you can't always tell with dames. But this guy, he's had a couple and he's feeling feisty. I called the boys, just in case, and then Laurel got up to sing, and pretty soon the gimp started acting like his pants were on fire, he was so anxious to get out of there. So they left. And that's all. I don't know who they were.”

“They ever come back?”

“Only the gimp.”

“Did Farrar come back from the bar in time to see the row we had?”

“I didn't see him again that night.”

“Who was tending bar?”

Samuels thought a minute. “Vince. Vince Klingman.”

Clive wrote Klingman's address on an envelope and stood up. “One more thing. Farrar was making a play for Laurel while I was out of town. Ever see him hanging around her dressing room? When she wasn't there, I mean.”

“I saw him in the back hall a couple times, but I don't know whether she was there or not.” He got up with heavy ill-nature. “My God, I got a business to run! And the best singer I ever had goes and gets her brains knocked out.” He creaked down the hall and flung the door open. “Listen, the next dame I get, you stay away from her, see? You and that gimpy pal of yours, if they don't choke you both in the gas chamber. I got enough grief all by myself!”

Clive looked up at the palm trees rattling in the afternoon breeze. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we all have, Sammy.”

He went to his car and drove off, taking the black sedan with him like a toy on a string.

Vince Klingman lived in a neat, old-fashioned cottage near Western Avenue. The lawn was green and the white fence had all the pickets in it. Klingman himself was down on his knees, setting out little square chunks of earth like chocolate cake with green sprouts on top. He was thick and middle-aged, with a contented face.

Clive leaned on the gate. “Hi, Vince. You look busy.”

Klingman looked up. “Mr. Clive.” He rose to his feet, smiling. “Well. Won't you come in?”

“Thanks.” Clive pushed the gate open. Klingman wiped his hands on his earth-stained pants. “Stock,” he said. “It's a little late for it, but I love the smell. Wish I had more tune for the garden.”

“It looks swell. Vince—I just want to ask a couple of questions.”

“Sure. Uh—about Laurel...” Klingman went on awkwardly. “We all liked her around the club. And—well, I know how you... Well, you get me.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Vince.” Clive sat down on the porch steps. He was abruptly envious of Klingman and his garden and his serene face.

“You know Kenneth Farrar, don't you?” He described him. Klingman nodded.

“He was in the bar the night Laurel was killed. I built him a pousse-cafe.” Klingman's expression showed what he thought of men Farrar's size who went in for things like that.

Clive said, “Laurel and I had a little trouble. Maybe you knew about it.”

“Well, those things get around.”

“Did people go out of the bar to watch us? Farrar, for instance?”

“You know how folks are. Somebody says, There's a fight!” and right away everybody's got to go watch it. Farrar went, too. I didn't see him come back.”

“You ever see him hanging around Laurel's room when she wasn't there?”

Klingman frowned. “I don't think... wait a minute. Sure. She was singing, then, out front. I went back to the toilet in the back hall, and I ran into Farrar just outside her door. He was a little tight, and I knew he was trying to make Laurel— those things sort of circulate, you know—so I didn't think anything of it.”

Clive nodded. “Uh-huh. One more thing, Vince. Ever know of anyone asking for Laurel? Anyone, maybe, with blood in his eye?”

“So many people drift in and out, Mr. Clive. It's only the regulars you get to know. Guys were always asking about Laurel. You know how it was.” Klingman scowled uncomfortably at his boots. “Sometimes people got pretty sore about it. Sometimes the fellas, sometimes their dames. I don't know of anything lately, though. But, hell, Laurel was a good kid. She had her faults, like any of us, but she was a good kid.”

A yellow cab came down the street, fast. Jonathan Ladd Jones jumped out before the tires had stopped screaming and ran up the path.

Clive stayed where he was, on the steps. He said flatly, “Sugar.”

Johnny stopped. He had the dazed, incredulous look of a man who has just been kicked fairly hard in the stomach.

“Yeah,” he said. “She's dead.”

“Murdered?”

“No. No, she wasn't murdered. She's just—dead.”

Chapter 7

Clive stood up. Klingman stared from him to Johnny.

“You mean Sugar March?”

“Yeah,” Clive said. “The Skyway Club seems to be losing personnel fast. Poor Sammy. Thanks, Vince. Take care of yourself.”

He went out to the car. Johnny paid off the cab and climbed in beside him. He looked sick.

“For Chrissake, Ed, don't give me that dead-pan stuff. There wasn't anything I could do. I waited in a doorway to let her get ahead of me, and she got into this crowd waiting on the corner for the light to change. Maybe twenty people, mostly dames and service men. Just an ordinary bunch. You know those crazy shoes Sugar had on. Well, I guess she just got too near the edge and lost her balance. There was a guy turning the corner, trying to beat the yellow...”

Clive got a flask out of the glove compartment and gave it to Johnny. “Killed instantly?”

Johnny gulped from the flask and shivered. “Right under his wheels. It sure made a mess of her.”

“And you were watching her all the time? Nobody could have pushed her?”

“Like I said, there was a crowd and you know how those dames mill around. But it looked like a clean accident to me, and that's what everybody else thought. They were all screaming, 'She fell off! She fell off!' “

“Nobody you knew in the crowd.”

“Nobody I saw, anyway. Hell, a Boulevard corner right in the shopping hours! And after it happened you couldn't see anything. God, what a madhouse! I hung around just long enough to be sure she was dead. Then I got a drink in the nearest bar and came after you. Sammy told me you were here.”

Clive shoved his hat back and sighed. “Well, that's one possible lead shot to hell. Nice, pat accident. You're sure nobody was following her?”

“Nobody was near her until she got into that bunch. Nobody was paying any attention to her, and there wasn't anybody but just women with packages and baby carriages and stuff, and four or five soldiers. Cripes, just the way they move around could have pushed her off, with those silly shoes. I've seen it happen lots of times. Been pushed off myself.”

“I wonder if she kept a diary.”

“We could go see.”

Clive scratched his lip reflectively. “I hope the cops will accept the accident theory. Because it's going to smell awfully fishy—Sugar just having seen me, and then you ducking out and being on the corner when she was killed.” He kicked the starter, looking as though he tasted something sour. “This slays me,” he said, “but I'll have to do it.”

He stopped at the first drugstore and called Gaines, telling him the whole story of Sugar's visit.

“I'm going to her place now. Maybe she left a lead of some kind. I'll wait for you. Bring her key and come unofficially, and you won't have to worry about a search warrant.”

Gaines said he'd be there. Clive went back to Johnny.

“Got another job for you, kid. Sugar wasn't exactly thick with any of the other employees, but there's a chance she may have talked to somebody before she realized what a trump card she held. Question them all. Find out if anything else happened that might mean something now, and check up all you can on Farrar. Hop to it, and I don't care if Gaines's little stooge goes in the same cab with you.”

“Okay.” Johnny handed him the gun. “I guess I won't be needing this. Where'll I get in touch with you?”

“Go on to my place when you're through. I probably won't get back to the office for a year, the way things are breaking.”

Johnny left for a cab rank across the street. One of the men got out of the tail car and followed him. Clive drove away.

Sugar's address proved to be south of Sunset, an apartment over four garages at the back of some dingy flats. Gaines came almost as soon as he got there. They walked down the driveway. A hard-faced woman in blue pajamas put her head out the window and watched them.

Clive grunted. “You're scaring the lady with those big flat feet.”

They climbed rickety wooden steps. Gaines used the key he had taken from Sugar's bag at the morgue. The woman decided they were all right and took her head back inside.

The apartment was about what Clive expected. There were a lot of things in it, but not one of them was a hint about who had come into the Skyway Club to threaten Laurel's life.

Out on the street again, Gaines said, “The driver backs up Jones's story. Says the dame suddenly tipped over in front of him.”

“Oh, well. Maybe she was just having fun with me.”

“We'll check on it, anyway.” He studied Clive shrewdly. “You played this one smart. Keep on doing it.”

Clive smiled innocently. “Why, sure. Anything at all to keep you happy.”

He returned to Beverly Hills, stopping at a small, swanky office building on Brighton Way. The door marked Kenneth Farrar— Private Investigator was closed and locked. Knocking brought no response.

Clive had Mick Hammond's address from the newspapers. It turned out to be a big Georgian place set well back from Sunset Boulevard, on the winding, wooded stretch west of Beverly Hills. The grounds were beautifully landscaped. Beyond a high evergreen hedge Clive caught the glint of water in a turquoise swimming pool.

A tall, correct, cold-faced butler took Clive's card. “Come in, please. I'll speak to Mrs. Hammond.”

Clive thanked him and went hi. The hallway was a decorator's masterpiece, but it didn't feel like home. The butler indicated a chair and vanished. The chair looked uncomfortable, and Clive was too edgy to feel like sitting down anyway. He wandered past the curving white staircase toward French doors that opened on a wide bricked terrace. It faced west, holding a golden heat from the late sun. Scarlet ramblers burned on the walls and there were beds of spicy stock. It was an expensive garden, but Clive wouldn't have traded it for Vince Klingman's. It was only a stage set, like the hall. He leaned on the edge of a tile-topped table, to wait.

Richard Alcott came around a wing of the tall hedge, climbing the steps to the terrace. He stopped when he saw Clive. The color drained out of his face and then surged back again, so strongly that his skin was almost black.

“You bastard,” he whispered. “You duty rotten bastard.”

“I didn't poke you so hard, Alcott. You caught me at a bad moment, or I wouldn't have poked you at all.”

“Just how do you mean that?”

“I mean you were drunk—like you are now. It isn't considered sporting to wallop a man when he's drunk.”

“I'm not so drunk I don't know what's going on. I know why you're here. You're trying to save that bastard's neck. The two of you did it together, didn't you, and you're trying to get your hooks into Jane and the lawyer. Well, it won't do you any good! You understand that?”

It came to Clive that there was more in Richard Alcott than whisky and rage. There was fear.

“Dick!” It was Jane Hammond, looking lovely in dark blue slacks and a flowered silk shirt. Her face was startling. It was like Mick's, tempered and fined and a little unearthly, only there was steel in it that would never be in Mick's.

She said, “Dick, please go and lie down for a while.”

His lips made an ugly pretense of smiling. “Of course, Jane. I realize I'm unsuitable to the present company.”

Jane stiffened. Somewhere off behind them a car drove in and stopped.

“Yes, most unsuitable,” Alcott said. “I've had a drink or two. That's shocking, isn't it? Shocking, to a man who makes his living from murderers and thieves, and a woman who doesn't care if her husband kills the slut he bedded with.”

Jane turned absolutely white. Clive said quietly, “Get out.”

Alcott swung toward him. He was on his home ground, but more than that his fear was driving him to boldness. He saw Clive's expression and hesitated. Something moving out on the lawn caught his eye. He grabbed at the excuse.

“Well,” he said viciously. “So little Vivien finally remembered she had a home. It's a pity there isn't a good expressive word like 'bitch' for a she-cat.”

He swung on his heel and went into the house. Clive watched him.

Jane said abruptly, “I wish you'd hit him,”

Clive's mouth twitched. “There's plenty of time.” He went to the low wall. He was shaking slightly.

Vivien Alcott was walking across the green hollow toward the swimming pool. She wore her crimson coat and she moved with a vague slowness as though she might be asleep and dreaming something nice. She disappeared into a small white Georgian bathhouse.

“They let me see Mick this morning, Mr. Clive. He hardly speaks of the murder. All he talks about is you.”

Jane Hammond stood beside him, her brown strong hands touching the roses. “He's told me about you, over and over, in this last year. He's made me feel something of what he feels. That's why I'm trying so hard to think that there must have been a good reason for what you did to Mick.”

“And if there wasn't?”

“I think I'd want to kill you.”

“You believe in Mick, don't you?”

“In this last year, with all my heart. Before that, too, only I was afraid sometimes he'd never find himself.” She faced Clive. “You haven't told me why you turned on him like that.”

Clive's dark eyes were unpenetrable. Down by the pool, Vivien Alcott came out in a bright red bathing suit and cap. Her legs and arms were very brown. She was short and rather thick, without softness. She slid into the water, slowly, arching her head with a queer sensual pleasure, like a cat being stroked. She began to swim, easily and without splashing, making clean, purling turns at the end of each lap.

Clive turned away with nervous ill-temper. He lighted a cigarette, snapped the match into a bed of stock, and came back.

“It doesn't matter why I did what I did. All that matters is saving Mick from the gas chamber—and incidentally, saving myself, too. The least they can get me for is aiding and abetting, and Gaines will do his best to hand me the big rap. He doesn't like private dicks who get in his hair, and he's only letting me run until he can make up his mind who's lying. Unless I get a break, and damned quick, I wouldn't give a nickel for either one of us.”

“I think,” said Jane, “that you must have changed a lot, Mr. Clive, since Mick knew you.”

“That doesn't matter, either. Will you help me, or not?”

The day was almost gone. The thin, foggy chill of evening crawled up from the beaches to the west, bringing a taint of distance and the sea.

Vivien Alcott climbed dripping out of the pool. She pulled off her cap and shook her hair back and stretched, lifting her brown arms high toward the rusty sun.

Jane Hammond said, “What do you want me to do?”

“I have no authority. You could call a cop now and have me thrown out for bothering you. So I want you to give me a free hand here—with you, your family, the house.”

She was surprised. “But why?”

“Somebody hung this frame on Mick. Maybe by accident, maybe not. But Mick told me about the letters. There may be a connection.”

“I don't see...”

“Oh, for Christ's sake! Somebody's been trying for six months to persecute you and Mick into splitting up. Your brother has been trailing Mick for weeks, peddling nasty stories about him and Laurel and even taking you to the Skyway Club to prove them. God knows what little sister has been doing, but I'll bet it's plenty. And both of them knocked themselves out talking, to make sure Games would arrest Mick.”

He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, watching her stonily.

“You came to me, and I turned you down. Maybe it was just an act and you're writing the letters yourself, to get rid of Mick. Or maybe you got fed up suddenly. Maybe you followed us to Laurel's apartment and hit her with Mick's cane and went away happy.”

Anger burned up in her, giving her a sort of frosty glow. When she spoke it was with great care.

“I had no motive to kill Laurel Dane. I suppose I can't expect you to believe this, but I understood what was between her and Mick. I even understood his going home with her, and I was glad if he could find a few hours of peace.”

“Yeah,” Clive said. “But you haven't answered me yet.”

She stared at him without speaking. The sun dropped out of sight. Shadows crept into the hollows and along the hedges, reaching up for the darkness that was coming out of the sky.

“I suppose,” Jane said, “I shall have to let you do as you please.”

Vivien Alcott came out of the bathhouse. She had her scarlet coat on again.

“I suppose you read the afternoon papers, Mrs. Hammond,” Clive said. “The District Attorney's office has received 'secret information' in this case. I'm willing to bet that the writer of those letters has passed them on where they'll do the most good.”

“That'll make it worse for Mick.” Her face was hidden now in the dusk, but her voice held enough. “What Richard told you... well, either he or Vivien could be the one. But that wouldn't necessarily mean...”

“That the sender of the letters killed Laurel or had anything to do with it? No. That's the beauty of this case. Nothing necessarily means anything. It would only be a possible motive to land Mick in the death house. Where do you keep the letters? I want to see them.”

“In my safe deposit box. But there are people besides Richard and Vivien...”

“Sure, sure. There are one hundred and thirty million people in the United States. All we have to do is pick the right one.”

She said sharply, “I should think the first thing to do would be to find the man who was in the kitchen. He's certainly the most logical suspect.”

“You're forgetting there was also someone at the door. Someone with a key.”

“But the phone call! And this Dion Beauvais...”

“Has a copper-bottomed alibi. And there isn't one shred of evidence to connect him with the case anywhere. Hell, it could have been anybody! Anybody can whisper over a phone. Anybody that's been to the movies can fake a tough accent. Anybody can clip me from behind with a blackjack when I'm not looking.”

“Why, hello, Mr. Clive!” Vivien Alcott's high heels clicked over the terrace floor. She seemed wide awake now, and vivacious. She gave him her hand. It was square and strong, and still cold from the water. Clive shuddered and let go of it. “My goodness!” she said. “Am I that bad?”

“Your hand. It startled me a little, being so cold.” Vivien sucked her breath in. Her face was only a sort of coppery blur in the afterglow, but he could see the line of her little teeth and the brightness of her eyes.

“That's right,” she said huskily. “She was cold, wasn't she—when you found her?”

Chapter 8

No one spoke for a minute. Tree frogs chirped. Dim lights began to show from houses on the neighboring slopes, given halos by the mist, and there was a burst of illumination from the hall.

Jane Hammond was the first to move. Her voice was flat. “Let's go hi.”

Vivien Alcott walked beside Clive, so near that his hand brushed her coat.

She said, “You were really as close to it as that, and you didn't see anything?”

“No.”

“Did it hurt much, getting hit like that?”

Clive laughed. “I hardly notice those things any more. You get hardened to it.”

She studied his face intently. “I guess a detective has to be tough. Are you tough, Mr. Clive?”

“How do I look?”

“Tough. Awfully tough.”

Jane said, “Vivien, for heaven's sake!”

Vivien went in through the door and turned around, her hands deep in her coat pockets. She smiled at Clive, corner-wise.

“If he doesn't like it, he can say so. He would, too. I think he'd hit a woman if she spoke out of turn.”

She put her hands on his arm with sudden childlike seriousness. “Mr. Clive, you said Mick is innocent. Did you mean that? I mean really, because you know it, and not just because you used to be his friend?”

Everybody stopped dead.

“Well I'll be damned,” said Clive. “The last I heard you were talking sixteen to the dozen to make sure Mick got it.”

“And if he killed her, I hope he does! But—” she hitched away from him—“but hell! You don't like seeing even Mick executed for something he didn't do.”

Jane Hammond opened her mouth, and closed it again. Vivien spun slowly on her high heels and came back to Clive.

“After I read what you said in the paper, I thought maybe Mick was telling the truth, because I didn't think he'd have the guts to kill even a girl, let alone knock out a man like you, unless you let him.”

“Maybe I did. Maybe I was lying. The police think I was.”

Vivien's lips made a moist red O. “You are tough. Really tough!” She came in against nun, not too close. “I don't think you were lying, Mr. Clive. I think you'd lie better than that. I think you'd be an awfully good liar if you wanted to.”

“Of course he was lying!” Richard Alcott stumbled part way down the stairs and leaned against the white virginal curve of the banister, staring over. He was very drunk. “He knows he was lying. He and that bastard did it between them and they're both guilty as hell. Why are they letting you run around, Clive? And what are you doing in this house?”

Vivien laughed at him. “He's making an investigation. Maybe he'll give us all the third degree.” She turned shining pale eyes on Clive. “I'll bet you'd know how, too. I'll bet you've even had it done to you. You have, haven't you?”

“Once or twice.” He had an idea she'd like it if he took off his clothes and showed her.

Alcott was dangerously flushed. His veins protruded. “You won't investigate me. You have no authority.”

Jane said quietly, “I've given him the authority.”

Alcott looked at her, a long time. “You would, wouldn't you?” he whispered. “Anything to save him. Anything at all to keep that bastard from getting what he deserves. Do you know what you are, Jane? You're a cheap, common...”

“Shut up.” It might as well have been the flat of Clive's hand across Alcott's mouth.

Alcott took hold of the banister and yelled, “You haven't any right here! She can't give you the right. You can't question me. You can't lay a hand on me. I can have you arrested if you try.”

“That scares me.” Clive laughed. “With a murder rap hanging over me, that scares me a lot.” He stepped forward, holding his body erect and easy. “You're scared, sonny,” he said genially. “Only a guy with something to hide starts squawking before he's hurt. What have you got that you're afraid to tell?”

“Nothing. Nothing! God damn you, you can't bully me in my own house...”

“Here, or somewhere else. It doesn't matter.”

Alcott's color began to be frightening. “Jane. Jane, you can't let him. This is your house. You own it. I'm your brother, Jane. You can't...”

Jane let her cold blue eyes travel slowly from his blond head to his shoes. “But I can,” she said. “Once, a long time ago, I might have cared. But not any more. Mr. Clive has a free hand in my house as far as I can give it. What he does and what penalty he may have to pay are at his own discretion.”

She turned away as though the sight of them all made her want to be ill. Alcott went gray under the purple.

Vivien giggled. “Blood pressure. We're always hoping he'll have a stroke, but he never does.”

The doorbell chimed.

The butler came from somewhere beyond the staircase. He came so quickly that he had obviously been listening, but his face showed nothing. His heels made a loud noise on the polished floor. Clive realized how quiet it was in the hall. Alcott seemed to have stopped breathing.

“Good evening, Mr. Benson,” said the butler.

A small neat man came in, carrying a large brief case. He nodded to the butler, swept his small sharp eyes around the tableau at the foot of the stairs, sniffed, and pinched his small bloodless mouth even tighter.

“Well,” he said. “Well?”

Richard Alcott doubled up suddenly. “I'm sick,” he said. “Oh, Christ, I'm sick.”

The butler paused. His correct front dissolved enough to show a resigned and patient loathing. Clive thought probably that Richard Alcott's being sick almost anywhere in the house was nothing new around here.

“I'll help you,” he said, and went up the steps. “Where's the bathroom?”

“Get away from me, you bastard.”

“I wish you'd learn a new word. That bastard routine gets tiresome.” He got a hand under Alcott's arm. “Come on.”

Alcott pulled away. He gagged, let down at the knees, and changed his mind.

“Top of the stairs,” he whispered.

They started up. Alcott was taller than Clive, and heavier. He clung to him, his legs dangling.

“You,” said Benson. “You're Edmond Clive.”

“Oh, God, yes.” Clive was beginning to sweat. The top of the stairs was a long way off. Alcott retched loudly.

“I want to see you, Mr. Clive.”

“The bathroom will probably hold three. Come right along, but make it fast, brother. Fast” Vivien giggled.

Alcott made a convulsive surge up the last four steps and pawed at a door. “Open it. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

Clive doubted whether God was worried much. He got the door open. It was an opulent bathroom, done in apricot and chocolate brown. Alcott made it, but just. Clive leaned his back against the door. He lit a cigarette, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and waited. After a while Alcott sat back on his heels. Clive examined him with open contempt.

“You're a hell of a fine specimen,” he said.

Some of the nastiness came back into Alcott's face and, with it, the fear. He had less strength to hide it now. It looked out starkly from his eyes.

“You leave me alone. If you touch me—”

“I know. You'll call a policeman.” dive's lip curled. He bent over. “Go ahead, sonny. Scream your lousy head off, and see if it makes the bruises stop hurting.”

“You wouldn't dare! I'm a sick man. You wouldn't dare...”

“You're drunk, Alcott. Drunk and scared. Talk up.”

“I don't know anything. I tell you I don't know anything! What makes you think I do?”

“I'm an old dog,” Clive said. “I've been in the game a long time. I can read signs that aren't half as big and bright as the one you're wearing.” He sat down on the edge of the glistening tub. His manner, all at once, was quite companionable. “You began to show it out there on the terrace. Then you poured more in on top of the load you were already carrying, hoping I'd dissolve in the alcohol. But I didn't, so you started yelling about your rights. That was a dead giveaway, son. Remember that. If you're guilty, never object to questioning.”

“I'm not guilty! I haven't done...”

“Smoke?”

Alcott swallowed and said, “No!”

“Where were you,” asked Clive, “when Laurel Dane was killed?”

Alcott's body grew rigid. He watched Clive from under lowered lids, oddly as though his physical self were a stronghold and he a creature at bay inside it.

“I was at home,” he said. “In bed.”

“Can you prove that?”

“No. Nobody in this house ever knows where anybody else is, except perhaps at mealtimes. We all have our own cars. There are three ways you can go out without anyone seeing you. We don't keep a chauffeur and all the servants are inside the house.”

Clive nodded. “That seems an excellent arrangement. You could commit every crime in the calendar and never get caught. You follow Mick to the Skyway Club that night?”

“I—I started to. But I knew it wasn't any use. Jane had told me to mind my own business. She didn't care about Laurel, the bitch. So I just drove around to a few bars and came home. It was raining, and I—I didn't feel so good.”

“You certainly hate Mick's guts.”

“Don't you?”

Clive shrugged. “What do you think?”

“I don't know,” Alcott said slowly. “I don't know.” His mouth twisted with venom. “The bastard! I hope they convict him. I hope they...”

“You're sure he's guilty.”

“I don't care. He deserves it anyway. He's a dirty rotten—”

“I know. Bastard.”

“Do you know what he did?” Alcott's voice was shrill now, like a woman's. “He took my girl away from me. He had Jane and he had her money, but he couldn't keep his hands oft Anne. He took her down to the beach and made love to her and she broke off our engagement the next day. She said she wouldn't live in the same family with a man like Mick, and besides...” He shut up suddenly, withdrawing again into himself.

Clive laughed. “And besides,” he finished, “after Mick had worked out on her you looked like a pretty cold potato. Not a bad motive, at that.”

Alcott glanced up. There was only fear in him now—cold and naked and ugly. He said, with no voice at all, “Motive?”

“Sure.” Clive smiled at him. “For sending those letters.”

Alcott's colorless lips made three distinct tries before they could get any words out.

“Letters? Those letters Jane got about Mick?”

“Yeah. Those letters.”

Alcott's head fell back. His eyes closed. He drew a shaky breath, and then he laughed. He laughed a long time. It got fairly close to hysteria, but it didn't slip over.

“I didn't send the letters,” Alcott said.

Clive's voice didn't give away any more than his face did. “Mind if I search your room?”

“Hell, no. Move in and live there if you want to. Only for Christ's sake let me alone. I want to sleep.”

He crawled on his hands and knees to the door and pulled himself erect and turned the knob. Clive watched him wobble across the hall and disappear into a bedroom. After a minute he went slowly down the stairs again.

The butler was waiting in the hall. He stared fixedly at a point above and beyond the top of Clive's head, which annoyed Clive. He didn't like to be reminded that he was no skyscraper.

The butler inquired whether Mr. Alcott would be needing anything.

“A lot of things,” Clive told him, “including a swift kick in the teeth. But right now I think he wants to be alone. Got a telephone?”

“In there, sir. When you're through, Mrs. Hammond asks if you will join them in the library.”

“Thanks.” Clive started as though to move past him, and then stopped, close. “Just between us boys,” he said, “what do you think of all this?”

For a moment there was no response. Then the mask cracked open. “I think,” said the butler in a low, clear voice, “it stinks. It would please me to learn that the entire family was headed for prison, for life. Excepting Mrs. Hammond, who is a white woman.”

“How about Mr. Hammond?”

“I don't know. He's changed since his accident, but before that...” He shrugged. “Swine,” he said bitterly. “Pigs, sows, and swine!”

“Uh-huh. Know anything about the letters Mrs. Hammond has been getting?”

“Only that whoever sent them deserves a stretch in hell.” There was actually an angry flush in his flat cheeks. “I wouldn't have put up with them if it hadn't been for Miss Jane. Not after old Mr. Alcott died. This house! This rotten, filthy madhouse! And Miss Jane, to have married a man like Hammond!”

Clive looked at the floor. “Yeah,” he said. “Know where any of the family were between one and two a.m. yesterday?”

Yesterday. Yesterday, hell. It was a hundred years ago. He could feel the marks of all of them on his face.

“No, sir.” The butler went on to explain what Richard Alcott had already told Clive. Clive thanked him and, went into the small paneled alcove that housed the telephone. He called his apartment. Johnny Jones wasn't back yet. Clive left the number for him and hung up. He sat scowling, worrying his lower lip with his thumbnail. Then he called Gaines.

The big man growled surlily in his ear. “For Chrissake, I was just going to dinner. What do you want?”

“If I gave you a detailed answer to that one, you'd have a beard too thick to strain your soup through. Listen, sweetheart. You might take Laurel's key and check around to see if anybody can remember making a duplicate lately.”

Gaines sighed. “We're only a bunch of dumb flatfeet, but we try. I've had the boys working on that one since yesterday afternoon.”

“Any results?”

“Do you know how many guys make keys in Los Angeles and vicinity? Vicinity! That's about all this lousy town is— vicinity!”

“Yeah. I'll cry about that when I have time. In other words, you haven't anything new.”

“Not yet. Unless...”

“Unless what, dammit?”

“Oh, probably nothing. Only they brought a guy into the morgue this morning, early. Accident case. He tried to go downstairs on his neck. I wouldn't have heard about it, only somebody remembered that we were checking on key-smiths...”

“I get it,” Clive said sourly. “Another fluke like Sugar March. It had to be an accident, did it? Nobody could have tripped him? Nobody could have broken his neck and then shoved him downstairs?”

“Medical report says accidental death. I wouldn't know. He lived alone in one of those dumps east of Skid Row, and there were no witnesses. He was pretty old and shaky on his pins and people do break their necks legitimately.”

“It had to be a keysmith, though, and not a street cleaner or a barkeep or even a hustler.” Clive swore. “A couple more coincidences and you can lock me up in a paddy with the paper dolls. How about the March girl?”

“Accidental death. My belly's biting holes in me. Will you sign off and let me eat?”

“Sure, sure,” said Clive pleasantly. “Go ahead and eat, and I hope you strangle.”

He slammed the receiver down and went out. He was sweating. He walked across to the library door and stopped. He closed his eyes and shivered. For a moment he looked physically ill.

Chapter 9

The library was like the rest of the house. It was big and comfortable, done in dark blue and a soft dull rose. A woman's room, but not the kind that would stifle a man. The woodwork was white, the wall masses broken up with bookshelves and a few excellent pictures, the lamplight shaded and restful. And yet somehow it had an empty feel, as though it were not really lived in.

Jane Hammond looked up from the depths of an armchair as Clive came in. “How is Richard?”

“Sleeping it off.” He gave her a reassuring smile.

Vivien Alcott bounced up off a couch, all flushed and excited. She had shed the red coat, and the brown dress she wore was pretty tight.

“You've been missing all the fun. I thought Jane was going to murder Benson before you got back. Did Richard tell you what you wanted to know? Did you hit him?”

He grinned. “Where did you get so bloodthirsty?”

“Runs in the family. We all like our beef rare. Come over and sit down.”

She caught his left arm, hard enough to make him wince and bite his breath off short. She let go quickly and stood away.

“Gee, I'm sorry! I forgot. You got shot, didn't you?”

“A little. It's all right.”

“Mr. Clive.” Jane Hammond rose abruptly. “Mr. Benson isn't going to defend Mick.”

The lawyer said testily, “I didn't say that at all. I simply pointed out...” He glanced at Clive and pressed his lips together.

Clive said, “Just what did you point out?”

“I simply said that a straight plea of innocence was a ridiculous waste of time.”

Vivien giggled. “Not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“Insanity,” whispered Jane Hammond. “Insanity! And the stain of murder on Mick for the rest of his life.” Her eyes blazed. “I won't have it! It's cruel and unfair. Mick is innocent, and it's got to be proved!”

The lawyer reached a thin, angry hand into his brief case and threw a newspaper open on the table.

“Look at it! Love Nest Killing. Remember what I have to work with and stop asking for miracles!” Benson fixed Jane Hammond with a hard, uncompromising stare. “This is a shocking thing. There's public feeling about it. I've spoken to the District Attorney, and I assure you that there'll be no mercy from him. I'll do my best, Jane. But please remember that I wouldn't have touched this case if it hadn't been that you're Tom Alcott's daughter.”

“I know that. I also know that you believe all these things of Mick. You think I was a fool to marry him, and we both deserve what we're getting.”

Vivien broke in sharply, “Well, you do! Mick married you for your money, he's kicked you around like a cur pup, and you don't care about any of it as long as you can have him to sleep with.” She stepped forward, trembling, her fists clenched. “Richard was right. Any woman that will take what you've taken from Mick is no better than a—”

“Vivien!” The lawyer was using his courtroom voice, “Stop that at once! You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Why? It's the truth!” Her words began to stumble. “She doesn't care about anybody but him. She doesn't care about her own family. She doesn't care if he killed that woman, if she can have him back!”

Clive put his hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy, kid.”

She shivered violently. Her head went back. She struggled for a moment to breathe. Then she turned out from under his hand and walked to the couch and buried her face in a corner of it.

Jane said, to no one in particular, “I'm sorry.”

The lawyer shrugged. He picked up his brief case.

Clive said, “You're a hell of a fine lawyer.” He pointed to the newspaper. “That's no courtroom. You haven't any right to try Mick Hammond in that.”

“I must do as I think best, Mr. Clive.”

“Mick's told you he's innocent.”

“Yes.”

“And you don't believe him.”

“No.”

“And you don't believe me, either.”

“Did you expect me to?”

“Hell, why should you be unique?” He was suddenly furious. “God damn it! Doesn't anybody think I have a brain? Would I try to get away with a corny yarn like that if it wasn't true?”

“I'm sure I couldn't answer that,” said Benson.

“No. No, I don't suppose you could. All right. So you're convinced that either Mick or I did the job, and that one of us is stooging for the other?”

Benson nodded. “Either that, or you were simply too drunk to know what was going on, and tried to cover it on the spur of the moment with that fantastic tale.”

Clive took a quick, nervous walk to the window and back again. He stopped in front of Jane Hammond.

“My lawyer said practically the same thing when I talked to him on the phone this morning, only he wasn't as polite about it. A plea of temporary insanity is the safest thing for Mick.”

He might as well have struck her.

“I'm telling you the truth,” he went on angrily. “No one believes my story, and, unless I can turn up something to prove it, no one ever will believe it. Gaines and the D.A. are going to be satisfied with what they have. In view of his accident and his nervous condition, Mick might have a chance— and maybe you'd better grab at the best straw there is.”

She said, “You know Mick didn't kill her.”

Clive looked away from her. “When I went to wake him, he hadn't even moved his hand, with the quilt folded under it. I had a fight to stir him, even then.”

“He's like that, when he hasn't slept for a long time.” She closed her eyes. “Mr. Benson—if you won't change your mind, we'll get another lawyer.”

Benson stabbed his cold, small gaze from one to the other. Then he raised his shoulders. “Very well,” he said. “I'll do what I can.”

He went out, without saying good night. Vivien was gone, too. It was suddenly very quiet.

Clive said awkwardly, “Well...”

Jane Hammond came to stand in front of him, searching his eyes.

“You're a strange man,” she said. “I think a person could hate you bitterly or love you very deeply, but nothing in between. I think I hate you for the way you treated Mick. And yet I believe you'll do your best to save him.”

He said brutally, “It's my neck, too.”

“But you could have saved it by not telling the story you did. By saying that Mick struck you down from behind.”

“I can still do that.”

“Are you going to?”

Clive said, “No.”

She let her head drop forward. “I trust you. I don't know why. Perhaps it's that I have to, or... I've been thinking. If turning on Mick the way you did was a trick to throw the police off, to give you a chance to find out what really happened, then of course you couldn't tell me. You'd be afraid I'd tell Mick, or give it away somehow, and then the police would be sure that you were guilty, too.” Something was tightening inside her throat, blocking her voice. “I hope that's the way it was. I hope you aren't lying to me now. Because if you are...”

“You're forgetting something,” he said. “I have another reason.”

“Yes—I was forgetting. You loved her, didn't you?”

Muscles tightened sharply in Clive's face. “Yeah.”

She moved away from him, pushing the hair back from her forehead. “Why do things have to be this way? Why can't there ever be any happiness or peace, no matter what we do or how hard we try? What does God think we are? How long does He think we can stand it?” She began to cry, in hard, racking sobs.

Clive put his arms around her. He brought her head onto his shoulder and held her there, gently.

“I don't know,” he said. “Only they shove the cards in your hands on the day you're born, and you can play 'em any way you want to.”

After a while she whispered, “Thanks,” and straightened up, fishing for a handkerchief. Clive grunted and gave her his.

“Dames who give out like that should carry sponges,” he said. He smiled. “Better get some sleep now. It won't help anybody if you slip your cable.”

“I know. I'm sorry. It's just that...”

“Go on to bed. I'll tell Jeeves to take you up a tray.”

“His name is Mulligan.” She caught her breath between a laugh and a sob. “I never believed it either.”

At the door she took his hand and pressed it, and went away up the curving stairs.

Mulligan glided up to Clive's elbow.

“She'll want a tray,” Clive said. “Something that'll help her to sleep.”

“Yes. Right away.” Mulligan added, “I hope, for her sake, things aren't as bad as they look.”

“Yeah,” said Clive. “But I wouldn't take any bets on it.”

He was halfway out the door when he heard the phone ring. Mulligan went back and answered it.

“For you, Mr. Clive.”

It was Jonathan Ladd Jones, and he was feeling sorry for himself.

“Gawdamighty, my tongue's hanging clear to my knees! I never knew so many people worked for Sammy. And Sugar never dropped a hint to any of them. Nobody else heard anybody threaten Laurel. Farrar's been hanging around her dressing room, but I knew that myself. Nobody noticed anyone else doing it, but that doesn't mean anything. There was hardly ever anyone in the hall, and you can get into it from both the club and the alley.”

“I knew that,” said Clive.

“Okay! So you know everything I know. Any luck with you?”

Clive said slowly, “I don't know yet.”

“Coming home now?”

“That depends.”

“Had any dinner?”

“No, mama.”

“Well, you ought to get some dinner.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Look, Ed, it's not good to...”

“For Chrissake, can't I even feed myself? Get down to headquarters and get all the dope you can on the stiff with the broken neck they brought in this morning. Go on over to the guy's flophouse and see can you earn what I pay you. I'll catch up with you as soon as I can.”

Johnny cursed him, bitterly and at some length. Clive grinned and hung up. He said good night to Mulligan and went out, pausing on the dark driveway to locate Richard Alcott's windows. A light came on while he was watching, and the blinds were pulled down. Clive went on to his car.

He opened the door. Something rustled inside, and Clive dropped sideways like a cat.

“It's only me,” a small voice said.

Clive straightened up, sweating. “What,” he said, “the merry aitch are you doing here?”

The answer was slow in coming, and it wasn't really an answer.

“I blew off in there, didn't I?”

“I never saw it done better.”

“You think I'm pretty much of a heel, don't you?”

“Well, a thing like that doesn't exactly advertise a girl's charm.”

“No.” This time there was a very long gap. Clive shot an impatient glance at the house. Alcott's light was still on.

Vivien said, “I'm sorry.” She sounded about five years old.

Clive laughed. “You don't owe me an apology. I'm sort of a heel myself. Besides, I'm Mick's friend, and that makes me one of the family.”

“You don't think much of us, do you?”

He said quietly, “I think a lot of Jane.”

“Yes.” Vivien sighed, a peculiar sigh that might have meant anything. “I thought you would. Please get in. I want to talk a minute.”

Clive slid under the wheel. He could feel her round, strong thigh against his.

She said, “This probably won't make any difference to you, but I'm going to tell you anyhow. I used to be in love with Mick.”

“The woman scorned, huh?”

“You could call it that, I guess. But there's more to it. You see—I'm not pretty. Jane is. Jane is everything I'm not. Jane always got everything when Father was alive, and he left her all his money. All Richard and I got were trust funds. You can see what he thought of us.”

The bitterness of her laugh startled him. “Maybe he was right. Richard's a nasty drunken little swine, and I—” She broke off short, and then went on again half jokingly. “Richard and I got our unstable nerves from our mother. Richard and Jane both look like Father, but Mother was tall and fair too. Nobody knows whom I look like. Everybody always said maybe I was a changeling.”

She gave him a tip-tilted smile. “Personally,” she said, “I've always thought I was a bastard.”

“Well,” said Clive. “Well!”

“And if you think that helps any, you're crazy!”

“No. No, I don't imagine it would.” He shifted, but the wheel pinned him. He couldn't get away from that warm, vibrant thigh.

“So now you know,” said Vivien wearily. “I hate Mick, and I hate Jane, and I hate Richard, and I hate myself.”

“Doesn't that get a little tiresome?”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, “you don't know.”

After a pause Clive said easily, “That explains the letters, then.”

“Letters? You mean the ones about Mick?”

“Yeah. Richard told me all about your sending them.”

“He would.” Her voice didn't show anything but her peculiar brand of family affection. “He would try to blame them on me! Well, I didn't send them. I'm sorry I didn't, but I didn't. If I'd thought of it and had known how to find out all those things about Mick, I probably would have done it. But I didn't.”

“Well,” Clive said, “that's that, then.”

“I never met a detective before.” She sounded eager as a child. “What will you do now?”

“Detectives never tell.”

“I'm sorry I pulled your arm. Does it still hurt?”

“No.” He laughed. “I'm tough. Remember?”

“Yes. I remember.” She hesitated. “The man that hit you— you know, in the kitchen. I should think, being so close to him and everything... haven't you any idea who it was?”

“Guys who make a business of things like that are pretty careful, and a blackjack doesn't have much personality. It could have been anybody.”

“But you're going to find him, aren't you?”

“I'm going to try.”

“You scare me when you sound like that.” Her hand came up to his where May on the wheel. “The papers said that you and Laurel—”

“The papers said! All right, God damn it, yes! I loved her.”

She let her fingers slide away across the taut cords of his wrist. “I'm sorry.”

He shook his head irritably. “Skip it. I just haven't slept much lately.”

She pushed herself away, out of the car. “I never met anyone like you before,” she said. “Perhaps if I had...”

She was gone, leaving a queer little whimper on the foggy air. Clive didn't look after her. He got out the flask and took a stiff one, and one more to wash it down. Then he started the car, tramping on the throttle to make it backfire, and drove onto Sunset Boulevard. He didn't go far. There was a tree some hundred feet west of the Hammond gate. Clive parked in its shadow. His chaperon was still waiting patiently.

Because the house was set higher than the surrounding ground, Clive could see the light in Alcott's room. Almost immediately it went out.

Clive waited.

About five minutes later a long dark convertible rushed out of the Hammond driveway and headed east.

Chapter 10

Edmond Clive was good at following cars. The three of them—the convertible, Clive's coupe, and the police tail car— went down Sunset to Beverly Hills, slackening pace when they hit the more traveled streets. At Camden the convertible crossed over to Wilshire and headed toward Los Angeles.

They went as fast as the law allowed, and no faster, stopping carefully for red lights. They passed the dimmed-out Miracle Mile, Western Avenue, and then the copper-sheathed tower of Bullock's store. Presently they were on the wide causeway splitting Westlake Park. The still water of the lake was like a shield of polished iron under the sky. The convertible turned right on Alvarado, and then onto Seventh Street. Theater parking had jammed the curbs. It turned again, onto the dark side of the park, and slid in beside a fire plug.

Clive hung back. The tail car was on his rear bumper now. The street was deserted.

Richard Alcott got out of the convertible and walked quickly into the dense shadows of the trees. Clive left his car in the street and followed. Alcott was moving fast toward the lake, and not making much noise about it. There was a wide graveled path beside the water. Alcott avoided this, keeping on the grass where he was covered by the shrubbery. He seemed to be aiming for a spot where the shore line made a jog inward and the trees came close to it, overhanging a stand of pampas grass.

Clive bent over and ran without sound, making a circle. He came down to the lake ahead of Alcott and crouched beside a clump of the saw-edged grass.

Alcott's feet crunched softly on the gravel walk. He had his hand in his pocket. He paused in the shelter of the pampas, listening, standing black against the paler darkness of the water. Then he took his hand out of his pocket and raised it, high, like a woman starting to throw a ball.

Clive stood up, fast. He caught Alcott's upraised wrist just as it began its forward sweep. Alcott let go a strangled yell. Clive kicked him back of the knee and pulled his arm over his shoulder. Something dropped heavily. Alcott twisted around. Clive's shoulder hunched slightly. His fist traveled about six inches and hit square. Alcott fell on his back, jerked briefly, and lay still.

Clive got out a small flashlight. Almost at once he found what had fallen. It was a Colt .45, with a silencer. Clive stared at it. “Well,” he said aloud. “Well I'll be damned!”

Somebody was tramping around in the bushes behind him. A man said gruffly, “Hey, what goes on?”

Clive turned. The beam of his flashlight speared Alcott's face. There was a sudden sharp feminine scream.

“Migawd, he's killed him! Joey . ..”

“Relax, sister,” said Clive. He was holding his left shoulder now, his face twitching with pain. “I only hit him a little.”

Somewhere a man was making angry noises among the trees, coming closer. The flashlight beam showed a little red worm crawling out of Alcott's wide-open mouth.

The woman said hoarsely, “You brute!”

Clive didn't answer that.

The woman said, “You get a cop, Joey. You go right away and get a cop.”

Clive laughed. “Never mind, Joey.” He raised his voice. “Hey, Junior! Over this way!”

The plain-clothes man panted up. He had his gun out, and he looked hungry and resentful.

The woman shrieked again.

“Bandits! Joey, you get me out of here! Don't you dare touch us, you two. Joey, you take me right away...”

“Yeah,” said the plain-clothes man. “You do that, Joey. Quick, before I forget I'm a gentleman. Go on! Scram!”

They went. Her voice carried clearly. In the future Joey would probably pick a less private spot in which to do his necking.

“Dames,” said the plain-clothes man. “Yah!” He frowned at the revolver lying beside Clive's foot. “Okay, Clive. What gives?”

“Plenty.” Clive handed him the flashlight and stepped carefully around the gun. “Don't touch that.” He kneeled and sopped his handkerchief in the cold lake water and slapped Alcott in the face with it. Alcott pushed himself up on his elbow, retched, and fell back again, but he was conscious.

Clive said pleasantly, “In a few minutes you are going down to headquarters and be booked for attempted murder. Down there you will sing your head off. But I'm in a hurry and I'd like to hear about it now.”

Alcott shut his teeth together. “I won't talk without my lawyer.”

“The cops can hold you a long time before you can have a lawyer, son. How are your kidneys?”

“My kidneys?”

“Not too hot, are they, with all that stuff you swill down? They can keep you from going to the John for a long, long time. It doesn't leave any marks on you, but it isn't funny.”

Alcott's gaze was fixed on Clive. He said nothing.

“They can keep you awake, too. Fifty, sixty, seventy hours. No water. No cigarettes. No fresh ah-. Lights burning your eyes blind. Sometimes they do tricks with a telephone book. That's fun, Alcott. You'd be surprised how much beating a guy's head can take from a telephone book and not show anything.”

He paused. He was smiling, rather kindly.

“Vivien said something about high blood pressure. Be too bad if you were to have a stroke because you wouldn't talk. But you couldn't blame the cops if a guy had a stroke, now could you?”

Hoarsely, between his clenched teeth, Alcott began to curse.

Clive's hand shot out and took him hard across the mouth. Moving very quickly, he caught Alcott's shirt and dragged the dead weight of him to the edge of the lake, so that his head hung over into the water.

Clive said very softly, “You shot me in the back from a dark alley. You hit Laurel from behind. Did you knock that old man downstairs the same way, or was he feeble enough so you dared to face him?”

Alcott writhed under Clive's grip. His hair moved sluggishly in the cold water.

“I didn't. I didn't kill anybody.” His eyes rolled toward the plain-clothes man. They showed white around the irises. “You! You're a policeman. Make him stop!”

The plain-clothes man shrugged. “I just came along for the ride.”

Clive said, “You plugged me, Alcott. Were you that sore about that whack in the belly?”

Fingers tore at his coat sleeve. “You can't prove...”

“You were trying to get rid of the gun. Your fingerprints are on it. There's a bullet in the wall of Laurel's dressing room that'll match the barrel. Did you pay somebody to make that phone call or did you do it yourself?”

“Phone... phone call?”

Clive shoved his face under and dragged him up again instantly, coughing and blowing.

“The phone call, Alcott. The one you made threatening Laurel's life.”

“Oh, Christ, I didn't! I didn't even know...”

“Did you go through the alley or the club when you stole the key from Laurel's dressing room?”

“I didn't! Why would I want to? She wasn't anything to me.” Alcott strained his head up, away from the water. “How did you follow me here? How did you know?”

Clive said, “What do you think I am—a baby? You were scared stiff. Not about the letters, but about something. Why do you think I let you go? I knew you'd make a break for it.”

“Oh, God,” moaned Alcott. “Let me up.”

“As soon as you talk.”

“I didn't have anything to do with it, I swear I didn't—”

“I wonder,” said Clive conversationally, “how long you could hold your breath under water?”

Nobody said anything for a minute. The dark water rose and fell, and somewhere a duck quacked sleepily.

Alcott whispered, “All right.”

Clive pulled him back from the edge. Alcott was completely relaxed now, his eyes closed.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

Clive lit one for him. Alcott began to talk in a toneless voice.

“I didn't mean to shoot you. I meant to shoot Mick, and you stepped in front of me. I bought the gun and the silencer after Anne left me. I couldn't make up my mind to use them. I was afraid of murder. And then, when I knew Mick wasn't ever going to get what was coming to him from Jane, I...”

He rolled his head, coughing over the smoke. Clive said, 'Take your time.”

“I sat in my car that night, alone, outside the Skyway Club. I was thinking about Anne, and about Mick there, playing with another woman. I was thinking about the money, too. He married Jane for her money—money that should have been mine. I'm the son! What right did Jane have to my money, the bitch? My money, going to a bastard like Mick, who was cheating on her in public with a night-club slut and she wouldn't believe it!

“I got my gun and went around into the alley. It was raining and there was nobody around. I knew Mick went back to her dressing room a lot. I looked through the window and I saw him sitting on the couch, right in front of me. I wanted to blow his head off, so he couldn't take the money that belonged to me, or the woman that belonged to me, any more.”

He stopped. He was beginning to shudder in regular spasms.

Clive said, “So you fired at Mick, and I stepped in front of you.”

“Yes. And then I was scared. I could have killed Mick then, but I was scared. I thought you were dead, and I never knew before what it would feel like to kill a man. I'd been drinking in the car and I got sick. I knew somebody would be coming out. I ran down the alley and got in my car and drove away. I stopped once on the way home. I was sick. I was home all the rest of the night, in bed.”

Clive studied him for a long time without speaking.

“Alcott,” he said at last, “I think perhaps you've forgotten something. I think you haven't told me what you did between the time you drove away from the Skyway Club and the time you went to bed.”

Alcott's body grew slowly rigid. “I told you...”

“I think after you ran away you took a few more drinks to settle your nerves, and you got to thinking. Maybe the second time wouldn't be so bad. And you began to see how you could take care of Mick so that you yourself wouldn't be suspected. You decided you were really a pretty big guy. I'd socked you one, and you'd paid me out, and as far as you could see you were safe. Be nice to do the same thing for Mick...

“I'm not sure about the key. Maybe you'd had the idea in the back of your head for a long time. Maybe you got it from Laurel's dressing room, or maybe you stole it from Mick. Anyway, you had a key to her apartment. You went up there...”

“No. Clive, I swear to God—no!”

“Did you hire it done, then? Was that your strong-arm boy that clipped me?”

Alcott drew a long breath. “Clive,” he said very slowly, “I didn't kill her. I didn't kill anyone, then or later.” His eyes met Clive's, held them fairly. He whispered, “I wish I had, though. I wish to Christ I had!”

Clive stood up. The plain-clothes man said, “He's passed out.” Clive seemed not to hear him. He looked down at Alcott, somberly abstracted. The plain-clothes man lighted a cigarette, watching him curiously.

Presently Clive gave his shoulders a hitch and turned around, bending over the gun. He found a pencil, and hooked it carefully through the trigger guard.

The plain-clothes man nodded at Alcott. “Funny thing. Guys like that, you don't really have to do anything. Just talking scares the bejesus out of 'em.”

Clive grunted. “You should see him tackle a woman. Hell on wheels. Throw some water on him.”

The plain-clothes man picked up Clive's wet handkerchief and went to work. Alcott came to, and Clive spoke to him.

“Listen, and get this through your head. I have this gun. I will get the bullet. Junior here is a witness to your confession, so don't think you're getting away with anything.”

The plain-clothes man had a funny look on his face. Alcott began to struggle onto his knees.

“You're no good to this case,” Clive said, “and you'll be a lot of harm to Jane if the papers get hold of you. I'm the only one that got hurt and I'm willing to forget it—on condition.”

“Condition?”

“Yeah. Try and behave like a human being around Jane, and as soon as you can after this is over take yourself and your dirty tongue away somewhere and stay a while. A long while. Get it?”

“Yes,” Alcott whispered. “Yes. I got it.” His face was only a pale gleam in the darkness, unreadable. He balanced on his knees and then tried standing. Clive watched impassively.

“Don't talk to Jane. Don't talk to anybody. And remember the jail is yawning for you if your foot slips.”

Alcott didn't say anything. He lurched away across the gravel path.

The plain-clothes man said, “Well...”

Clive's brows went up. “What's the matter, Junior? Conscience got an ache?”

“Well, he's gotta connection with this case...”

“Sure. He can make it a little tougher on Mick's wife, but that's all. I'm the injured party, and I'm not doing anything about it. So where does your conscience get off?”

“Well...”

Clive pulled out his wallet. He handed the man a couple of bills. “That's no bribe, Junior. That's a poultice for the ache.”

Junior whistled. “I could poultice a lot of aches with that. But if Gaines starts asking questions . ..”

“Why should he? As far as he knows Alcott never left the house. Why confuse the poor lug by telling him?”

The plain-clothes man shrugged. “Okay. I'm just a hired hand, anyhow. Let's go.”

They went. When Clive drove onto Wilshire, Alcott's car had already started creeping back toward home.

Clive went up to Homicide to see Gaines. Korsky was with him in his dingy cubicle, sitting back-to-front on a scarred chair and smoking a cheap cigar.

Gaines glanced up from behind a littered desk. “Decided to give yourself up?”

“My God,” said Clive. “What a comedian.” He sat down uninvited and began to add more smoke to what was already rolling under the ceiling. Gaines went on making a cigarette. It was hot. Korsky examined Clive with bright, hard eyes.

Clive told about the letters. There was not much point in keeping them quiet any more, and the police laboratory had a better chance of finding out things about them than he did.

When he was finished Gaines said, “We been checking on Kenneth Farrar. Want to hear about it?”

“Yeah.”

“Shoot, Korsky.” Gaines became absorbed in the actions of a fly walking across the ceiling.

Korsky talked without taking the cigar out of his mouth. “He tells a straight story. He was crazy about the girl, but she couldn't see him. After the fight you picked with him he had a drink and moved on. I checked him through four or five places. He got home about a quarter to one, according to the night clerk, and he didn't go out again. The back door is locked after ten o'clock and only the clerk and the manager have keys. Besides, the clerk can see down the hall to the back stairs and the door itself makes a noise. Nobody went near it.”

“Fire escape?”

“That comes down right over the back door. He'd have heard it.”

Clive nodded. He showed neither surprise nor disappointment. The silence lay heavy in the airless room.

After a while Gaines said, “There were no prints but yours and Hammond's and the girl's. That doesn't help you any.”

“No.”

“Farrar doesn't, either.”

“No.”

“There isn't a lot of hope on the Beauvais angle—even if you weren't lying.” Clive shrugged. “Probably those letters won't help any more than the rest.”

“It's possible.”

Gaines tilted forward in his chair and crushed out his butt. “Why,” he asked softly, “should I bother with any silly damn letters? Why shouldn't I book you right now and throw the whole thing to the D.A.?”

Clive's face twitched slightly. “Because Mick didn't do it. Because I didn't do it. Because we didn't do it.”

“Think of a better reason.”

Korsky let his breath go with a harsh little rasp. “I can think of a better one. Eddie didn't realize how silly he was going to look, saying he was dumped on his pratt in the kitchen. So now he's got to find a fall guy to save that ugly mug of his.”

Clive said, with no particular emphasis, “I can top that.”

A curious tautness came over Gaines. “Yeah?”

Clive nodded.

“Well, go ahead.”

“With that in the room?” Clive indicated Korsky with his thumb.

“Why not?”

“I'm sentimental, that's all. I don't want to blast the boy's bright faith in the sanctity of the Police Department.” He sighed. “But we all have to grow up, don't we?” He leaned his elbows on his knees, nipping his cigarette in the general direction of the cuspidor. “You remember Joe Rappatoni?”

Slow crimson flowed up to the roots of Gaines's hair, leaving a white line around his lips. He sat perfectly still, staring into Clive's eyes. Korsky straightened up on his chair.

Gaines said, “Get out, Korsky.”

Korsky started to say something, changed his mind, and went out. Gaines got to his feet, leaning over the desk. Clive stopped the words in his mouth with a quick gesture. He went noiselessly to the door and pulled it open.

Korsky caught himself on the door jamb.

Clive smiled. He kicked Korsky accurately and with force in the upper belly, pushing out straight with his heel. Korsky ran backward across the hall, fetched up hard against the opposite side, and slid down to a sitting position on the floor. He looked as though he would be there for some time.

Clive said, “I've been wanting to do that, pal.” He closed the door and leaned his shoulders against it.

Gaines said harshly, “What are you trying to pull?”

“Blackmail.”

“What do you think you know about Rappatoni?”

“He was a louse. If I'd been your sister I'd have shot him, too.”

Gaines waited a long while. Then he said carefully, “You can't prove my sister had anything to do with that mess.”

“I can make a damn good try.”

The fly buzzed industriously on the ceiling.

Gaines came around the desk. “I knew you were a bastard, Clive, but I never thought you'd pull a thing like this.” He cursed him obscenely. “You haven't got a thing that will stand up in court. They hanged a man for that killing.”

“Sure. And Little Cuppy killed a lot of guys in his time, too. But Joe Rappatoni wasn't one of them.”

Clive took his shoulders away from the door. He kept his voice low, but it was guttural with anger.

“You'd be surprised what I've got that will stand up in court—against you and half the big shots in this state. I make a collection of things like that, so when some influential son of a bitch backs me into a corner I'll have a chance of getting out again. You asked for it, Gaines. Now I'm telling you. Lay off me! You think I'm bluffing, go ahead and call me. Maybe it's worth it to you to pin a bum rap on a private dick you don't like. I don't think it'll be worth it to your sister.”

After a long interval Gaines turned away. He walked over to his desk and put his palms on it, flat, and said over his shoulder, “Get out.”

Clive grinned, without humor. He opened the door and went out. Behind him, Gaines began to curse in a choked whisper.

Korsky still sat on the floor. His mouth was wide open. Whistling, wheezing noises came out of it.

“Try a cubeb,” said Clive kindly. “Good for asthma.”

The outside air felt ice cold when it hit him. His cheek muscles were twitching, and he broke four matches before he could get his cigarette going.

He laughed and started walking, toward the nearest bar.

Chapter 11

Jonathan Ladd Jones had left a note stuck in the door of the keysmith's room, “Waiting in #4B.” Clive scowled and went down the stairs again. He prowled in the dirty yellow smear of light that came from two feeble bulbs set back and front. The frayed carpeting tried to trip him, and when he touched woodwork it was greasy with the memories of ancient cooking. The place smelled of many people, many things, none of them clean.

He found the number finally and knocked. The voice of Jonathan Ladd Jones came from beyond.

“C'min, c'min, whoever you are.”

He sounded very happy. Clive opened the door. The stench of the hallway was beaten back immediately by a more powerful one that had been cooped up inside. The inside odor was mostly gin. There were other things—perfume, stale smoke, musty fabric, sweat. But predominantly it was gin. Clive staggered slightly. He shut the door and propped himself against it. He shoved his hat back and stared.

“Well,” he said. “Well, blow me down.”

A small room with blotched plaster and stained paper on the walls. The usual articles of furniture, very old, very tired, very sad. Unshaded bulbs glared overhead. There was a lopsided armchair opposite the door, and there seemed to be several people sitting in it.

On closer inspection it turned out to be only Jonathan Ladd Jones and a blonde. She was a big, healthy blonde. She was sitting on Johnny's lap, and she covered everything but the top of his head and his shoes. Johnny wormed his face through a froth of pink chiffon ruffles and said, “Hiya, Ed.” His spaniel eyes were bright and unfocused. He waved, causing liquid to slosh in the glass he held.

Clive said, “Hi,” and waved back.

The blonde gave him a huge damp grin. “C'mon in. Y'pal's been keepin' ya seat warm.”

“Nuh-uh,” said Johnny. “Your seat, baby.” He giggled. “God, my knees! You sure don't starve yourself.”

The blonde smiled. “I like to give 'em their money's worth.” She jerked her head up suddenly and let out a screech that made Clive jump. “Kethrin! Kethrin, here's ya boy!”

Kethrin came from an adjoining room. She wore something loose, Nile green, and pretty slinky, only she didn't have much to sunk with. Her hair was a deep maroon and her face slid away from under popped brown eyes as though it were too tired to stay put.

She held up a fresh bottle of cheap gin and said heavily, “Oh boy, now we can have a party.”

Clive took a deep breath. “Now wait a minute, sister. I've got work to do.” He smiled patiently. “Johnny. Johnny, dear. I sent you down here to investigate something. Remember?”

“S'what'm doin'. 'Vestigatin'.” He nudged his face forward, causing interesting reactions under the pink ruffles. “Big case,” he said. “Very big case.”

“Yeah. I can see that. But there was a corpse, remember? A male corpse, with a broken neck.”

The blonde shuddered. Johnny groaned. “F'Chrissake sit still. 'M bein' ground to a powder.” He looked at Clive reproachfully. “I got what you wanted, Ed. Just ask the girls.”

The blonde said, “You tell'm, Kethrin. I can't bear it.” She hid her head on Johnny's shoulder.

Kethrin said, “Well...” She was standing close to Clive now. She was runty enough to make him look like a good-sized man. She held out the gin bottle.

Clive said, “No, thanks. What was it you had to tell me?”

“We could be more comfortable over there.”

“I don't think so.”

“I talk better when I'm comfortable.”

Clive got out a five-dollar bill. “That help any?”

“Well...”

He held the bill out of reach and waited. He was wondering what the oxygen content of the air was and how long he could continue breathing. He felt green.

“I saw a man,” said Kethrin.

The blonde whinnied as though Kethrin had said something very funny indeed. Johnny's feet kicked. “Stop it,” he said. “You tickle.”

Clive looked innocent. “A man. Any special kind?”

“Just a man.”

“How, when, and what was he doing?”

“Coming upstairs. I didn't hear him until he stumbled in the hall outside. When I got the door open he was halfway to the next floor.”

“Slowpoke,” said the blonde viciously. “Gettin' old.”

“I could be your daughter.” Kethrin shrugged and added, “Hell, I could be, at that.”

“About the man,” said Clive.

“Oh, him. Well, he was sorta tall and he had on a black coat and a black hat jammed over his eyes. I couldn't see his face.”

“Old or young?”

“He was taking the steps like he had plenty of pep, all right.”

“Then what?”

“Then I went back to bed. Pretty soon I hear a hell of a racket. I look out the door and there's this old guy that makes keys lying on his belly at the foot of the stairs, with his head folded under. Other people start coming out, too, but I'm nearest so I get there first. I see he's dead, all right.”

She shivered, and for a moment her face was pitiful.

“I guess maybe I scream or something. Then I look up the stair well. I don't know why. Maybe I just want to look away from—him. Anyway, it's dark up there but I think I see something, a black coat maybe, moving up. Then people start coming out into the halls above, and I ain't sure I hear what I think I hear—the sound of the door onto the roof, opening and shutting.”

She drank from the bottle. “Okay,” she said, when she had her breath again. “How's about that dough?”

Clive gave it to her. “Did the keysmith usually go out as early as that?”

“Nuh-uh. But he wasn't going out. He didn't have nothing on but a shirt and underpants. Way I figure he must of headed for the can and tripped just at the head of the stairs. He was an old guy, and the carpet's full of holes.”

Clive nodded. “Thanks. Okay, Johnny. We go home now.”

The blonde raised her head and blinked at him. “Home?” she repeated. “Go home?”

“Uh-huh. You know—home. Everybody has one. Sort of a place to go to, all your own.”

The blonde looked down at Johnny. “You gotta home?”

Johnny buried his face in pink ruffles and let his head ride up and down on the heaving of them. “Home,” he said, “but no mother.” He wept.

“You wanna go to it?”

“Why would I wanna go home all by myself? 'M lousy company.”

She crushed him tenderly to her bosom and glared at Clive, “You heard him. He dowanna go home.”

Kethrin giggled. “Plenty of gin, big boy. Stick around and have some fun.”

Clive smiled. “I'd love to, baby. But I'm working a case. It's tough, but we have to be brave about those things.”

The blonde took a deep breath. Johnny's head rose and fell. His eyes were closed. The blonde said distinctly, “He is staying.”

Clive went a little closer. “Johnny!”

Johnny smiled drowsily. “Can't come, Ed. Somep'n holdin' me down. Awful sorry.”

The blonde said, “If you wanna scram, go ahead. We c'n get along without you. Can't we get along, Kethrin?”

Kethrin said they could. She said, “One from four makes more gin.”

The blonde said, “See?” very hard, through her teeth. Clive got out his wallet again.

“Will this get you up, babe, or do I use my boot?”

The blonde measured Clive carefully and then laughed. “Get him!”

Kethrin sucked noisily on the bottle, considering. “He ain't so awful big,” she decided, “but he's tough. Maybe you better take the dough.”

The blonde picked up Johnny's head by the hair and laid it against the chair back. She rose, fishing around by her feet for an empty bottle.

She said, “I'm sorta tough myself,” and raised the weapon, shaking her arm loose from the pink ruffles. It was about the size of Clive's thigh. She moved forward.

Kethrin giggled and took herself and her gin out of the way, “Oh boy,” she said. “Oh boy.”

The blonde let fly. Clive ducked. The bottle hit the door behind him. Johnny started and sat up.

Clive said evenly, “You come one step closer, honey, and I'll land you one square in the wind.”

“You,” said the blonde, “are no gentleman.”

She started one from below the knee. Clive had plenty of tune to get out of the way. The only thing he hadn't figured on was the bottle he stepped on. There were a lot of bottles. The girls seemed to keep them around as mementos of happy times. There was one under his heel when he stepped back, and it nearly sat him down flat. The blonde's fist caught him on the side of the head. Clive turned over three times and hit a table, causing a crash and an explosion of splinters.

Kethrin set her bottle on the floor, clapped her hands together, and said solemnly, “Whee.” Clive rolled over, shaking his head and kicking pieces of table out of his way. The blonde advanced, breathing heavily.

“Now,” she roared, “he busts my furnicha!”

He waited until Clive had started repeating himself and then smiled cherubically.

Clive lay on his back and stared, fascinated. A foot in a large pink mule rose into the air and rushed down at him with the aim and authority of a pile driver.

He caught it close to his stomach and threw it away, hard The blonde sat down. Plaster ripped and fell somewhere below.

Johnny said suddenly, “He's my pal, y'unnerstan'? You can't do that to him.”

Clive didn't see much sense in that remark. He succeeded in untying himself from the wreckage of the table and retrieved his hat. The blonde remained seated, blowing like a winded horse.

Johnny said, “Y'unnerstan'? You can't do that to my pal.”

“Oh,” said the blonde. “Oh, can't I!” She got up. Clive wouldn't have believed that she could do it that fast. She was squarely between him and the door.

He jammed his hat on and made sure his feet were free of bottles.

The blonde looked at him. She took a good long look. Then she turned suddenly on Jonathan Ladd Jones.

“All right,” she said. “If that's the way you feel about it.”

She picked him up by the collar and the seat of the pants and yelled, “Open that door, you horse-faced little bastard!”

Clive decided she must mean him. He opened it. Johnny shot out into the hallway, lit on all fours, rolled over, and fetched up on his back with his feet propped against the wall.

Kethrin waved.

Clive raised his hat politely and went out, fast. Behind him the door began to give out sounds like a drum being beaten rapidly and with force.

Clive whistled. “If she does that well with gin bottles, what couldn't she do pitching for the Yankees!”

Quite a few people were hanging over the banisters and out of doors, grinning. He nodded at them.

“Nice kids,” he said. “Trouble is, they're a little too refined.”

He got hold of Johnny's collar and dragged him bodily down the stairs. The cold air outside revived him somewhat.

“That clue was worth the five bucks, huh?”

“Oh sure! That heavy-duty tank damn near breaks my neck, but it's worth it!” Clive wrenched the car door open. “Go on. Get in.”

Johnny was unabashed. When Clive had the car going, headed west again, he said, “At least you know somebody was around that didn't belong there when the old guy was killed.”

“Yeah. Somebody. A man with no face. Just a black coat and hat going upstairs. Maybe. And maybe that lass with the maroon hair was so lushed that she might have seen Winston Churchill riding by on a pink barrage balloon.” He grated the gears savagely. “That's the hell of this case. Nobody has a face. Nobody even has a voice. Just shadows and whispers and keys turning, and death in somebody's heart, and no way to get any of it out into the daylight.”

Johnny shot a glance at him. “You had any dinner, Ed?”

Clive laughed. “Okay, mama! Just don't try and hold the spoon for me, will you?”

He had his dinner, trying not td think that he should be having it at the Skyway Club, trying not to think that he wouldn't ever be having it there again. He listened while Johnny told him what he knew about the keysmith. The man's stand had been near Fifth and Broadway, and there was no more chance of identifying one of his customers than of picking out a particular sea gull in a flock of thousands.

He brought Johnny up to date on the Hammond family and the situation with regard to Gaines. Johnny was immensely pleased with the latter. He called Gaines a number of things, none of them complimentary, and then sighed.

“Anyway, that lets both Farrar and the guy with the whisper out as shooting suspects.”

Clive laid his fork down. “Farrar. I think, Johnny, we will go and have a talk with Mr. Farrar.”

But they didn't. Clive took the precaution of calling, first. It was a long way to Beverly Hills, and he had to think of gas and tires. Farrar was not at his office, nor his apartment. He had come in shortly after six, changed his clothes, and gone out again. No, he hadn't said where.

Clive introduced himself and asked some questions about Farrar's alibi. The clerk was anxious to talk. He hoped to get his name in the papers. Clive didn't learn anything Korsky hadn't told him.

Going back to Hollywood, Clive said, “I'd give a lot to know what Farrar does with his spare time.”

“I could tell you.”

“Don't. I've heard enough smut for one day.”

“Anyway, what difference does it make? He's got an alibi.”

“Sure, sure. Everybody's got an alibi, except the two people that didn't do it. Farrar's clean, Beauvais is clean... Was it you that sneaked into the kitchen and slugged me, Jonathan Ladd Jones?”

“Yeah. With my Aunt Fanny's antimacassar. What do we do now?”

“Get some sleep. After that...” Clive scowled. “Farrar may not be deliberately keeping out of my way, but he isn't making it easy for me to see him.”

“Would he?”

“Perhaps not. But he's no pattycake, and if he's got an alibi, why is he worried?”

“Maybe it's just coincidence.”

Clive said evenly, “If one more person says 'maybe' or. 'coincidence' in my hearing once more I will boot his teeth out through the back of his neck. Anyway, I'm going to do a little research on Kenneth Farrar, unless something hotter turns up. I'll stake out on his apartment early in the morning. You take his office. We can keep in touch through the switchboard girl.”

Johnny yawned. “Waste of time, Ed. I don't like Farrar any better than you do, but there's no reason to think he had anything to do with Laur—with what happened.”

“Up to now there's been no reason to think anybody had anything to do with it. Only Laurel's dead. Besides, what do you care if I waste your time? I pay for it.”

“Sure, sure.” The car stopped in front of Johnny's bungalow court. He climbed out and then stuck his head back through the window. “For cripe's sake get some rest, will you? You've got a disposition like forty yards of barbed wire.”

Clive grinned and went home. He let Chuck put the car to bed. Gaines had either not supplied him with another tail or he simply had not paid enough attention to notice. The hall was empty. He unlocked his door and stepped inside, thinking lovingly of sleep.

Somebody jammed a gun in the pit of his stomach and kicked the door shut all in one movement.

“Hold still,” said a voice out of the darkness. A soft, slow voice with a lilt under it that comes only from having Irish blood. “Just hold right still. This rod's got a hair trigger.”

Clive did as he was told. A hand ran over him with expert speed, found nothing, and went away. The gun muzzle took itself out of his stomach. There was a feeling of someone moving back.

“Turn the lights on, Mr. Clive. Then just stand still.”

“I'm a high school pony,” said Clive. “I stand the first time you tell me.” He reached unhurriedly for the switch. “Anyway, I've been wanting to see you, Mr. Beauvais.”

The lights went on.

Chapter 12

They stood easily, looking at each other. Beauvais held his Police Special .38 as though he had forgotten he had it.

He was not the man in Laurel Dane's picture, except that he still had his big pantherish body and his swarthy good looks. But he had aged and hardened, and there was no laughter in him. His skin was pale with the bleaching of three years in the cell blocks, but it only made the brown of his eyes browner and the black of his brows and hair blacker. The lines around his mouth were like scars, cut deep.

Laurel's husband. The first man she loved, the only man she married, the man who had taken steel because of her. It didn't register. Clive thought, That wasn't Laurel. That was a redheaded kid named Sue Tanner, a girl I never met. And he never met Laurel. But they were both dead, lying in a dark drawer, not feeling the darkness or the cold. Red hair, black hair, it didn't matter. There was only silence now, and the long, long night.

Clive said, “I didn't kill her.”

Beauvais moved his chin. “Sit down. I want to listen... and I don't want to hear anything but truth.”

Clive walked over and sat down, not hurrying. He leaned forward with his hands lax between his knees and started to talk.

“I knew her for two years. There was nothing between us but feeling. Monday evening she told me she was afraid. Somebody had searched her apartment. She thought it was you, or someone sent by you. She asked me to help her and then—withdrew the request. I stayed with her anyway. Mick Hammond, who was her friend and nothing more, went to sleep in the bedroom. She went to sleep on the couch. Somebody tried to get in the front door with a key and when I started for it somebody slugged me from behind. When I came to she was dead. Hammond was asleep. He didn't kill her. He had no reason to kill her. I've talked to Mrs. Hammond, and I know.”

“Go on.”

“All the rest of it's in the papers.”

“Go on.”

“Someone had taken the glass panel out of the back door. It had been fixed for a long time. There were no fingerprints that didn't belong there. The front doorknob and the stick were wiped clean. The front door was open, but nobody knows whether the person with the key got in or not. The man in the kitchen could have done that to divert suspicion from himself. Or he could have torn his gloves, or even taken them off while he was talking to her.”

“Go on.”

Clive looked up. Beauvais leaned forward, tense, his lips drawn back showing his teeth. His eyes were not quite sane.

Clive said, “What more do you want?”

“What you've been saving for the last.”

“Who was he, Beauvais?”

The gun made a small, blind movement. “Tell me how he sounded, what he said, what he did. Go on.”

“He called me on the phone. He didn't have a voice. He whispered. He told me to stay out of his way, that Laurel's number was up. Later, when I was lying in the kitchen, he slapped my face to bring me to. He said, 'I just wanted you to know, pal. Laurel's off her spot—for good.' He was still whispering. Then he laughed and hit me on the jaw and went away.”

“He whispered,” said Beauvais softly, and smiled. His teeth were very white, very strong, very beautiful. “He slugged you?”

“I think so.”

“He killed her?”

“Don't you know?”

Beauvais ran the red tip of his tongue across his pale, tight lips He didn't seem to be in the room any more. He was looking somewhere far beyond it, and his words were no louder than his breathing.

“Yeah. Yeah—I know.”

He turned abruptly, going noiselessly to the door.

Clive said, “Beauvais!”

The dark man whipped around. His gun came up. Clive rose.

“Wait,” he said. “This isn't just your fight.”

The muzzle twitched and steadied. Clive looked past it into Beauvais's eyes. “It's my debt, too,” he said. “You can't pay it alone.”

Silence answered him. Beauvais's right forefinger ridged, drawing in. There was sweat around his hairline.

Clive didn't move. The gun held steady. Beauvais shivered suddenly. His head went back a little, and then sideways. He let his breath out, hard. The gun hit the floor. Beauvais turned and walked toward the nearest chair, not seeing it clearly, and went heavily to his knees in front of it. He let his head and shoulders fall forward into the seat and stay there.

Clive poured a stiff jolt of whisky. He set the glass on the floor and took Beauvais by the shoulders and rolled him around. He growled at Clive and tried to push him off, but he was like a man fighting in a dream. Clive held the glass to his lips.

“It's okay,” he said. “I know. Prison does things to you.”

Beauvais drank, rattling his teeth against the rim. He coughed and shuddered violently, letting his head drop into his hands. He had lost his hat. His hair was like thick curled silk.

“Three years,” he said hoarsely. “Three years looking at dim walls and dim faces, lying on a hard cot and listening to the silence. No sun. No talk, no music, no wine. No sky, except a little piece way at the top that got caught in the bars. Caged up, me, like a roach in a matchbox, with nothing to think about but—her.”

The cords stood out on his black-haired wrists. His face was twisted like that of a child crying.

“I'd think about her—about the first year when she was mine and I didn't mind a knifing because of her. About the body and the white skin and the red hair of her, and the way her eyes could laugh. I'd think of feeding her pralines and walking with her down the Rue Royale, smelling the smell of the fever bottoms and the chicory, and then lighting candles to the Blessed Virgin in St. Louis, praying for a child. And then... I hunted her for two years, and then I went to prison. I'd look up at the little piece of sky and wonder who she was sleeping with and beat the walls because I couldn't kill them both. And the screws would come and throw me in the hole.

“It was worse down there. No light, no sound. She used to come to me. She'd stand there shining in the darkness and sing, and I could hear her but never touch her. And I'd beat the walls some more.”

He held his hands out and stared at them. Clive saw the scars and two knuckles that had been broken. He poured himself a drink, got cigarettes, and came back. On the way he picked up Beauvais's gun and dropped it in his pocket.

He gave Beauvais a smoke and then said quietly, “Who was he?”

“My cell mate for eighteen months. I suppose he had a name. I never heard it. Everybody just called him the Big Fella.” He got up suddenly and stood with his back to Clive. “I had to talk.”

“Sure.”

“I been holding that a long time. I'm French-Irish. I haven't got frozen guts like some people. I had to talk.”

Clive nodded. “Forget it.”

“Night sweats,” Beauvais muttered, “and the jerks. I'm no easy-doer. Seven months after Big Fella got out I walked up and down that lousy cell, knowing he was looking for Sue, wondering if he'd find her, wondering if my parole would come through... When I walked out the gates the first thing I saw was Sue's picture in the Times-Picayune. It was a picture of her dead.”

Nobody spoke for a minute. Then Clive said, “Tell me about this cell mate.”

“Can I have another drink?”

“Help yourself.”

Beauvais went over and got it. He was looking human again. “He's a big guy,” he said. “Shrinks me to a flyweight when I stand beside him. He was in the rackets, strong-arm stuff, and the cops worked him over a few times. You could tell he'd been beaten around the head, and he couldn't talk above a whisper because some bull used a night stick on his Adam's apple and didn't know when to quit. He hated people, any people, but especially cops. He used to watch the screw like he wanted to take him apart barehanded. He scared hell out of three other guys they tried him out on. They were too crowded to give him a cage to himself, so they dumped him on me.”

Beauvais started pacing restively. “Funny thing. Big Fella kind of took to me. Maybe he figured I had troubles, too. He never talked much, but he'd sit there mooning at me like a dog and listen when I'd start screaming about Sue. At night when I'd have the sweats and the bad dreams he'd gentle me down, so as to keep the guards off my back. He . ..” Beauvais broke off, cursing, and ground out his cigarette.

“Did you send him to kill her?”

“No,” said Beauvais shortly. “He wanted to find her for me. I was happy about that. I'd been paying guys to look for her, until they sent me up. After that it took all my dough to get me out again.”

“What were you going to do when you found her, Beauvais?”

Beauvais sucked his breath in harshly between his teeth. “I don't know. I don't know. Something. Beat her, make her suffer, make her know I'm the man she married. Take her back to the Vieux Carre to stop the mouths that were laughing at me, and then fix her so there won't be any more men. I don't know. Something, maybe. Maybe nothing. I don't know.”

He raised his head. “But she was mine! Nobody else had a right to touch her! Jesus Christ—to wait and wait and then find she's dead...!”

“This Big Fella—he was pretty fond of you?”

“I told you. He used to mop the sweat off me when I had a bad night, like I was his kid or something. He got the hole for three weeks once because a guy picked a fight with me in the yard and Big Fella took him on. He liked me. Yeah.” He looked as though the words tasted bitter in his mouth.

Clive said, “Maybe he thought he'd be doing you a favor to put Laurel—her—where you wouldn't have to worry about her.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You know where to find him?”

“He told me he had a cousin in Santa Monica, a dame. It was the only place he had to go for money to get started again.”

“You know her address?”

“Yeah.”

Clive picked up his hat. “Wait till I see if the hall's clear.”

Beauvais said, “Wait a minute.” He came up to Clive and took him by the shoulder and turned him around.

Clive said, “Take your goddam paws off.”

Beauvais relaxed his grip, slowly. “You were in love with each other.”

Clive said nothing.

Beauvais sounded almost lazy. “Did you sleep with her, little man?”

Clive hit him.

Beauvais went over onto his shoulder blades. He got halfway up, fumbling at the cuff of his left sleeve, and Clive hit him again. He moved fast, and he hit with his whole body. Beauvais fell down again. Clive stood over nun, but it was a long time before Beauvais stirred.

“God,” he said. He put his hand up to his mouth and stared at the blood on his fingers. “God, what a wallop!” He threw his head back suddenly and roared, deep, healthy Irish laughter. “And me thinking all the time I could break you in my two hands!”

Clive turned away.

Beauvais got up, mopping his face carefully with a thin linen handkerchief. “I shouldn't have asked that.”

Clive's mouth twitched. “The answer's no. I knew us both too well. I didn't want to make the mistake you did.”

There was silence. Beauvais put his stained handkerchief in his pocket and got his hat.

“Okay, Tarzan,” he said. “Let's go.”

Clive switched off the lights. He didn't offer to give Beauvais back his gun.

There was no one in the hall, or on the back stairs. Clive got the car out and backed it down the drive, with Beauvais slumped low in the front seat. Nobody saw them. Three or four cars followed them down to the Boulevard. Clive went along Highland to Santa Monica Boulevard, and turned west.

After a while he said, “I think we have a chaperon.”

Beauvais chuckled. “You're kinda hot, too, huh?”

“No,” said Clive acidly. “Gaines just loves me too much. He worries about the people I play with.”

“Shake him.”

Clive did some fancy maneuvering. Either he lost the trailing car or the driver was a very smart man. Clive couldn't be sure, because shortly afterward they hit the military dimout zone and a pea-soup fog on the edge of Santa Monica, and it was impossible to tell whether any of the half-dozen cars crawling after them under parking lights were following them.

“You did a neat job of cop-dodging, Beauvais. They've had an order out for you since Tuesday. How'd you get here, and so quick?”

Beauvais shrugged. “I already had a ticket on the plane to L.A., under another name. I knew Big Fella was out here. I had a hunch he might have picked up her trail some way, and I wanted to see him. I got through the airport just before the flatties were set to catch me. Then I had to hang around out of sight until I could get you alone. I had to be sure . ..”

The way he said that made Clive's stomach quiver slightly. “How'd you get into my apartment?”

“The bunkie I had before Big Fella was an expert on locks. He taught me to open anything with hinges on it.”

“Education,” said Clive, “is a wonderful thing.”

They found the house finally, with no help from the fog or the dimout. They walked up a streak of broken cement between spreads of lawn that were about half wire grass and half native hardpan. Overgrown poinsettias rattled stiffly against the front wall, which was frame painted some indeterminate color, and not recently. The cold salt sweat lay on everything, eating, rotting, corroding.

Beauvais knocked.

Clive looked back down the street. He could see nothing that looked like a tail, but, considering visibility, that didn't mean a thing. He settled his shoulders uneasily.

A peephole in the door opened, shooting a little spear of light across Beauvais's jaw. A man's heavy voice said, “Yeah?”

“You John Kelleher?”

“Who's askin'?”

“I am. I want to talk to your wife.”

“Oh, you do?” It was a voice that belonged with a thick neck and big red fists with scars on the knuckles. “I'm particular who talks to my wife.”

Clive said quietly, “Just a moment, Mr. Kelleher.” He dug something out of his pocket and pushed past Beauvais, holding his hand close to the light.

Kelleher grunted. “I shoulda known.”

“Police business,” said Clive, putting the badge away. It was a perfectly good, perfectly legal police badge. The plain-clothes man who lost it never could understand how it happened. “We just want to ask a few questions. Open up.”

The peephole closed. Clive muttered to Beauvais, “For Chrissake, take it easy!”

Kelleher matched his voice. He wore khaki pants and an undershirt that smelled of hard work. There were freckles and a fuzz of red hair across his beefy shoulders.

“Come in,” he said.

The living room was small, furnished out of a time-payment store and the five-and-ten. But it was swept and polished and dusted, and the only untidiness was Kelleher's dirty shirt hanging over a chair arm and a drift of papers on the floor beside it.

Clive removed his hat. “Mrs. Kelleher?”

She was over by the phony fireplace, standing very straight with her bony hands locked at her waist. Her faded house-dress still had cheerful flowers in it, and it was fresh. Her graying hair was cut short and the wave was homemade, but it glistened with brushing. Her eyes were blue, very wide, very frightened.

Beauvais said roughly, “Where is he? Where's your cousin?”

Kelleher shoved by the two men. He put his arm around his wife and said, “My wife ain't done nothin'. She ain't responsible for nothin'. And if you start bullyin' her, cop or no cop, I'll fix your wagon, so help me God.”

Clive smiled, a pleasant and friendly smile. “There'll be no bullying.” He said that as much to Beauvais as to Kelleher. “There are some questions we'd like to ask your cousin, Mrs. Kelleher, and we hoped you could tell us where to find him.”

Her eyelids flickered down. “John,” she whispered, “please put your shut on.” Kelleher went slowly to get it, not taking his eyes off the two men. The woman said, “I don't know where he is. Has he done something?”

“That's what we want to find out. He doesn't live here?”

“No. I don't know where he lives. He wouldn't tell me.”

Beauvais said, “But he comes here. You give him money.”

She parted her fingers and knotted them again in a different sequence. Kelleher came back to her, buttoning his shut. He left the tails outside.

“I'm frightened of him,” she said. “I haven't the money to give him, but he...” She made a vague gesture and went on rapidly, “He wasn't always like that, you see. I knew him when he was a little boy. He's been hurt. He doesn't look at things like he used to. I...”

“I understand.” dive's voice was gentle. “Can't you give us any clue to where we might find him?”

She shook her head. “He was here this afternoon. He wanted fifty dollars. I told him I couldn't give it to him. He said he had to have it, that he was going away and wouldn't bother me any more. When I said there wasn't any way I could get fifty dollars he was angry. I thought he was going to make trouble, but he went away.”

Kelleher snarled, “I've wanted to make trouble for that son of a bitch myself, but the old woman wouldn't let me.”

“I was afraid, John. He—isn't right.” She moved toward Clive. “Please, don't let him know I've told you anything. Don't let him hurt us.”

“He isn't going to hurt anybody, Mrs. Kelleher. Not any more. But we've got to find him. Surely he must have dropped some hint. Please try to think!”

Mrs. Kelleher walked jerkily, halfway across the room and back.

“He coughed a lot. His throat was hurt, you know. He said once that this beach air was killing him.”

“There's a lot of beach, Mrs. Kelleher.”

“But he didn't tell me anything more!”

Clive grabbed Beauvais's arm and stopped him from doing whatever he'd been going to do. “Please, think hard.”

“I am... . Once when he came in I was writing down the grocery list. I asked him for some paper, and he gave me an old garage bill. I thought that was funny because he doesn't have a car. When I mentioned it he said it was just something he picked up, and then he snatched it away from me and stuffed it back in his pocket. But I'd already seen the name and address on it.” She paused, frowning. “That's what I couldn't understand. Why he should mind, I mean. The bill was months old, and it wasn't his name.”

Clive said carefully, “Do you remember the address?”

“I didn't pay much attention. It was a Jewish name, I know.”

“Take your time, Mrs. Kelleher. It probably doesn't matter, but I'd like to check on it.”

She paced up and down, her face screwed up in an agony of concentration. No one else moved or spoke.

“Venice,” she said suddenly. “That was it. Venice. Avenue...” She stopped. Clive held his breath. She shut her eyes and made writing motions on the air. “Thirty-seven. Avenue Thirty-seven. I don't know the house.”

Clive relaxed. “Thank you, Mrs. Kelleher—Mr. Kelleher. Sorry to have had to bother you. And don't worry about trouble. We'll take care of that. Come on, Beauvais.”

Beauvais said, “It wasn't his bill. What difference...”

“Come on!”

Beauvais hesitated, and then went. Kelleher closed the door behind them with unnecessary emphasis. The street was just as it had been, dark and cold and full of fog. Clive coaxed the motor back to life.

“You damn fool!” he said. “Why do you suppose he'd care if she saw somebody else's garage bill unless it meant something to him? He said he picked it up. Okay. He found it in a closet or somewhere in the house where he's living. The tenant may be different, but the address is the same.”

Beauvais gave a surly grunt. “Know where the street is?”

Clive laughed. “I think so. I lived most of my childhood one block over, on Thirty-eight.”

“He may have left town already.”

“Maybe. But he's broke. I think he'll wait a while before he tries rolling anybody. If he caught a rumble on it he'd be in hot water. That trick voice of his has its drawbacks.”

“Okay. Get going.”

They didn't talk, driving south along the coast. They left Windward and the Venice Pier behind them, taking the new asphalt road where the car tracks used to be. Clive remembered the little red trolley bucketing back and forth down the long line of telephone poles to Del Rey, making a noise like the New York El. He'd always ridden up front where you got the full effect of the bouncing, and could watch the dogs scatter off the tracks ahead.

Past the hill on Thirty-five where he'd chipped the cartilage in his knee skating, and then the place where he had seen his first corpse—a drowned woman brought out of the sea. He slowed down, risking his spotlight in brief flashes. The curb was solid along the beach side to the right. At the left narrow asphalt roads dropped down the hill to the flats. Thirty-six, Thirty-seven. One more block and you're home. Hot gingerbread and milk after school. Only home isn't there any more. They pulled it down to make way for a derrick, and there hasn't been anyone to bake gingerbread for a long time now.

Clive turned left off the highway, let the car drift its own length down the hill, and then set the hand brake, leaving the gear in reverse. He chuckled suddenly.

“I used to coast my bike down this hill. There's a right-angle turn at the bottom. I used to be able to take it with my hands in my pockets.”

“No kidding!” said Beauvais. “That's swell.”

“Yeah. It was.”

They got out. The sea was very close, lashing the beach with big thundering waves and then backing off with a slow hiss. It didn't sound any different. It smelled the same, too, except that now there was a heavy pungence of oil and sump-water under the clean salt. Once there hadn't been anything but sand and the sunburned houses and the wind off the water. Now there were derricks, thick as flies on a dead dog. The vacant spaces that used to be covered with tough little wild flowers in the spring had scars like malignant ringworms where the sumps had stained them, littered with bones from old rigs and chunks of broken concrete.

Clive rubbed his hand over his face. It felt slippery with the fog-damp on it. Somewhere to his right a well rig choked and sighed like an old man going upstairs.

“All the houses are across the highway, toward the beach,” he said. “You stay out of sight. There might be another big guy living here, and I wouldn't want you blowing the wrong head off.”

Beauvais said, “I'll take my gun back.”

Clive reached in and got his own .38 from under the dash, and then handed Beauvais his gun. Beauvais was standing very close to him, a paler shadow against the night.

“I'm cutting you in on this because I guess you got a right.”

“I bought it, pal. With a crack on the head.”

“Yeah. Only don't get in front of my gun.”

Clive's mouth was ugly. “Don't take on too much to worry about.” He went away, scrunching sand under his feet.

They crossed the highway, stumbling over the curb, and split up. A dog began to bark furiously. Clive climbed ghostly steps and knocked on the first door. A thin young man in dirty denim pants and a faded T-shirt stuck his head out. There was a radio playing loudly.

Clive said, “I'm looking for a man who lives on this street. A very big man who talks in a whisper. Know him?”

“Sure. He lives down by the canal. Tried to get my kids to come inside his shack the other day. I ain't lettin' 'em play down there no more.” He studied Clive. “Law?”

Clive moved his head closer. The blaring radio covered his voice. “Got a phone?”

“Nuh-uh. But there's one across the street.”

“Okay. Give me a couple of minutes and then go over and call the cops. Tell 'em where to go, and tell 'em to make it fast. Got it?”

The young man nearly lost his grip on the cigarette in his mouth. “Jeez! Sure. Yeah, I got it.”

Clive started away.

“Hey. The house—”

“I know the house. Thanks.” Clive vanished into the fog. Beauvais drifted up, guided by the grating footsteps.

“Well?”

“He's down by the canal. There's one shack all alone in a flock of oil wells, nice and private. I'd almost forgotten it was there.”

“Canal?”

Clive felt for the curb with his foot. A car crept by, pushing a dim globe of light ahead of it.

“Yes,” he said. “Part of the old 'Venice of the Pacific' build-up, when the development was going to be something special. There's a whole system of them. They get water from an ocean inlet down at Del Rey. We kids used to spend most of our time down there, fishing and swimming.”

You wouldn't want to swim there now. The banks are black with seeping oil, and the water's black, too, and it stinks. There aren't any fish in it now.

They went back down the hill, past the heave and groan of the well, groping their way in the blind dark. A zone of silence and a feeling of space, and then Clive heard the rhythmic creak of a walking beam and a motor that sounded different from the first. He found Beauvais's arm and pressed it. There was light seeping through the fog, a dirty yellow stain on gray-black wool.

Beauvais laughed without mirth and started forward. Clive held him. He was standing with his head raised, listening. Beauvais jerked away.

“Getting chicken?”

Clive didn't answer that. He stood a moment longer, but all he could hear was the rig and the sound of water slipping in from the sea, going with a furtive rush under the lock a hundred feet away. He shrugged irritably.

“I've got an itch between my shoulders that says we didn't shake our tail. Don't ask me why. It's just a feeling I get.”

He followed Beauvais, taking the gun out of his pocket, and walked beside him up three rotting wooden steps. Beauvais hit the door with his doubled fist.

Clive waited, not conscious of any excitement, not conscious of anything but the slow footsteps moving toward them over a warped and sagging floor. The old woman with the cats used to live here, he thought. Seventeen cats, and she nailed herself in at night. Mick and I used to play with the kittens.

Beauvais stood close to the door. The gun in his hand caught a dull glint from the light. His voice was tender, the kind of an Irish voice that sings about Molly and the Rose of Tralee.

“Big Fella. It's me, Di. Dion Beauvais.”

Silence. Long and heavy, choked with fog and the smell of the black sea water. Clive shifted his weight forward.

Beauvais said, “It's okay, Big Fella. You did me a favor. I just want to say Thanks.' “

A rusty bolt pulled through its ring. A yellow glow fanned out, pushing past the man that filled nearly all the space in the door frame. Beauvais was smiling. He might have been greeting his bride.

Moving very fast, Clive brought his gun barrel down across Beauvais's wrist.

Chapter 13

The bullet hit the rotten step and kept going. The gun fell out of Beauvais's hand almost onto the hole. The mist snared the noise of the shot, wrapped it up, and threw it away far out in the empty night. Clive kicked the gun off toward the canal and dropped back down the stairs.

“Hold it,” he said. “Just take it easy.”

Beauvais held his wrist in his left hand and cursed in a flat, venomous whisper. His fingers were out of sight under his cuff. The man in the doorway had not moved or spoken.

“Ease that shiv out, Frenchy, and let it drop. Try anything and I'll blow your hand off.”

Beauvais stood absolutely still. His eyes burned. The big man faded backward, just the shadow of a movement.

Clive said, “All I want from either of you is talk. I can shoot you both in the belly and still have all the time I need.”

They stood, the two of them—not stirring, not breathing, staring down at Clive. He waited. Beauvais let the knife slide out from under his sleeve.

“Kick it,” said Clive. “Hard.” Beauvais kicked it. “Now, both of you. Raise your hands slowly and clasp them behind your heads. Yeah. That's right. Now sit down. Keep your hands where they are.”

Beauvais said, “There isn't room.”

“Make room.”

Beauvais sat, bending at the knees like a panther bellying down under the whip. Big Fella got down beside him. He wore loose slippers and dark pants and a heavy sweater. His hair was cropped close to the scalp, curling tightly. His face was heavy, sullen, and without expression, the flesh scarred and lumpy. He was big. He made Beauvais look like a growing boy.

Clive said, “We'll have some law here any minute now. So just relax.”

“You duty double-crossing bastard,” whispered Beauvais. “You goddam...”

“Di.” Big Fella turned his head. “Di, listen.”

Clive knew that voice. His guts knotted inside him.

Beauvais snarled, “Shut up.”

“You tried to shoot me, Di. You hadn't ought to done that, not without lettin' me tell you.”

“Shut up!” Beauvais's head jerked back and forth and his feet kicked.

“But I didn't kill her, Di. Hear me? I didn't kill her.”

A peculiar stillness settled on the three of them.

Beauvais looked around, moving nothing but his head. “You're lying.”

“No. No, I ain't.”

“God damn you, you're lying!”

“Listen, Di.” The big man's manner was as gentle and patient as a woman's with a sick child. “Back there in the cell I used to watch you sweat, thinkin' about this dame. You used to talk about her when you was asleep, and cry and yell till I'd stuff the blanket in your mouth to keep the screw from hearin'. It got so I didn't like seein' you sweat over this no-good bitch. I says to myself, he'll never stop thinkin' about her while she's alive. He'll kill himself, thinkin' about her. So I says to myself, I'll find her and put her down for good, so he can forget her and maybe sleep nights again.”

“She was mine,” Beauvais said. “Nobody else had a right to touch her.”

“Sure. But they'd of shagged you, Di. You couldn't never have made it. The Johns would of sent you up to the gas-box without even askin' you if you was guilty. But me—hell, they don't know I'm alive.”

Beauvais sat still, his dark eyes wide and queer. There was no hint of a siren. Clive heard muffled thunder, and realized that it was the beat of his own blood in his ears.

Beauvais said, “Go on.”

“I bummed around a long time after I got out, but I couldn't get no line on the dame. Finally I had to come out here to get dough from my cousin, and right away I walk down a street and see a picture of this black-haired broad in front of a joint where she sings. It looks like the picture you carry, Di, but she's different with her hair black. I got to be sure. So I hang around and find out where she lives, and then I pull a job in the apartment house. I take five or six places, so she won't worry about it, and I find your picture, Di, and the marriage license.”

Big Fella's painful whisper was coming faster now. “I fix up the door so I can get in any time. I know I got to hurry because pretty soon you'll be out and you won't maybe have a good alibi. I go up there several times, but there's always some hitch. People hangin' around, a party across the back porch. Then this guy—” he jerked his head toward Clive—“gets back in town, and it's walkin' out time for you, and I know I got to do this job that night if she's got the whole Marine Corps in her room. So I go up there.”

Clive was tensed forward. Sweat mixed with the fog-rime on his face. He wasn't listening for the siren any more. He was hearing Laurel's drowsy voice saying, I'm glad you're here. Ed. I'm so glad you're here.

“It looks like a cinch. The gimp goes to sleep. She goes to sleep. And then this guy—” Big Fella laughed, a strange little sound with no mirth to it—“he goes to sleep, too. Easy, like knockin' down a butterfly. I start out of the kitchen. Somebody's tryin' a key in the front door, but it's bolted and the girl don't wake up, and pretty soon they go away. And then this Hammond guy comes out of the bedroom....”

Clive took one step toward him. He said, “You're lying.”

Big Fella laughed. “Sure, pal. Prove it. Let the Johns prove it.”

Dion Beauvais said, “Go on.”

“Hammond looks around. He thinks it's funny his pal ain't there. He calls a couple times and even looks into the kitchen, but he don't see nothin' but darkness. He decides maybe his pal went out for a beer. Anyway, he's happy 'cause now he don't have to slug him like he was goin' to. He picks up his stick off the table and shakes the girl awake. She looks at him and all of a sudden she gets scared and tries to run. And he hits her in the back of the head with the stick. He makes sure she's dead. Then he wipes off the stick with his handkerchief and lays it down and goes over and opens the front door. Nobody's around. He wipes off both knobs and the bolt and closes it again, leavin' the bolt off. Then he goes back to bed again, all fixed up.” He gave a brutal chuckle. “We're all fixed up. Him and the girl and me and my pal here. I wake him up to tell him the good news and put him to sleep again. Easy. He's a tough guy. He don't scare. But he handles easy.”

He kicked off his slippers, one after the other like machine-gun bullets, into Clive's face. Clive fired twice by sheer instinctive reflex at the sound of their bodies tumbling off the steps. Beauvais yelled. There was a sort of animal grunt from the big man, and then there was no sound at all, no movement, no sight of anything in the smear of light by the doorway.

Clive faded sideways into the dark. He hadn't forgotten Beauvais's armament lying somewhere on the sand. You could find things again, and Beauvais hadn't sounded like a man ready for the cooling board when he yelled.

He crouched, listening, shaken with anger so cold and overpowering that it caused a physical nausea. There was still no siren. He crawled forward, slowly.

Sand came flying out of the night. It hit him squarely in the eyes, and he was as blind as Samson. Somebody's feet scruffed, running fast. He snapped a shot at the noise, shaking his head and blinking. The fine grains scoured his eyeballs and set the tears flowing.

Somebody came up behind him. Clive turned to fire, and somebody dived in low and knocked him backward. He twisted and clawed, trying to find something to shove his gun against and pull the trigger. A hand caught his wrist and pushed it up, and Beauvais yelled, “Hit him! Hit him!”

Clive swung a left-handed haymaker at the sound of Beauvais's voice. It connected. Something broke under his knuckles. The weight shifted on his legs and Beauvais cried out harshly. He didn't let go of Clive's wrist. Clive doubled his knees up into his chest and let go.

He got both heels under Beauvais's jaw. Beauvais rose up and fell backward. The force of the kick turned Clive clear over. His wrist tore loose from Beauvais's grip, and he was still hanging onto his gun. He was halfway to his feet when the edge of Big Fella's hand took him across the back of the neck like a poleax.

Clive fell on his face. Big Fella stooped over and took his gun and then kicked him in the side, not especially hard.

“Easy,” he said. “Tough, but he handles easy.”

He stood still a moment, listening. Beauvais was on his knees, slobbering blood through his fingers.

Big Fella said suddenly, “I hurt. God damn you, you burned me.”

He leaned over and hit Clive twice under the ears, like a child in a tantrum. Clive's body jerked. He moaned slightly. Big Fella hooked his hand in Clive's collar and dragged him over to the steps, throwing him down on them like a sack of wheat. He went back to Beauvais.

“Di. Did he hurt you, Di?”

Clive got his eyes open. There was sand in them, and more of it in his mouth. He got his hands under him with great effort and pushed up, and then twisted his hips so that he was sitting on the stairs instead of lying on them. Presently he could see, not very clearly—a couple of dim shapes in the dirty yellow fan of light.

Big Fella had one hand pressed to his side. The other one held Clive's revolver. Beauvais got up off his knees, unsteadily, holding his jaw together with his hands.

He said thickly, “I'm okay. You get him?”

“Yeah.”

“What took you so long?”

“He burned me. He had me down for a minute.”

Beauvais took his hands away slowly from his face. His lips were mashed. He had bled over his chin and down his shirt.

He said hoarsely, “Were you lying about not killing her?”

“I didn't, Di. I swear to God I didn't.”

“Give me that gun.”

Big Fella held it out. Beauvais took it. He stepped in close and shoved the muzzle into the big man's stomach.

Big Fella's hands stayed limp at his sides. “I'm tellin' you, Di,” he said simply. “I didn't kill her. I was there, but I didn't kill her.”

Beauvais stared up into his eyes. Clive tried twice to get up and bruised himself falling back again. He thought, Mom always told me it was too lonesome to play down here. She always said I'd get hurt.

Beauvais shuddered and let the gun drop. “And I almost killed you. You got a long record in this state. You might have got the book for the apartment job alone, but you did it anyhow.”

“Sure.” Big Fella coughed, rubbing his throat. “Sure, Di.”

Beauvais made a sound that was almost a sob. He whirled toward Clive.

“We'll go, Big Fella. We'll take his car. But I got something to do first.” He raised the gun.

Big Fella knocked it aside. “There ain't no rush, Di. He was kiddin' about cops. The bull house ain't more'n a mile away. They'd of been here a long time ago if they was comin' at all.”

He moved forward, stumbled, and looked stupidly at his feet. There was nothing under them. He shook his head and went on. His eyes were little curved gashes in his face, glittering and colorless as window glass seen through slits in a curtain.

“Plenty time,” he whispered. His face screwed up. “I hurt, Di. He burned me, and I hurt.”

Beauvais raised the gun again. “We'll hurry and get a doctor.”

“No. I done all the time I'm goin' to. Ain't easy findin' a croaker that won't spill his guts. I'll heal up without one. I done it before. Only I'm takin' this guy first.”

Beauvais ran his tongue over the crusted blood on his lips and laughed. He took his finger off the trigger and laid it along the barrel.

dive's face tightened. He pushed his shoulders forward, clawing at the bottom tread. His skin was greasy with sweat.

Big Fella walked slowly, ahead of Beauvais. Clive got up off the steps. Big Fella put his hands out, in a clumsy sort of way. He was smiling. Clive tried to go past him to get at Beauvais. Big Fella's fists moved so fast they blurred. Clive went back and cracked his head on the doorsill.

The pain jarred some of the numbness out of the nerve centers along his spine, and it made him mad. He rolled over, making his feet come in under him. Big Fella laughed.

“Get him, Di. He's tough. He don't stay down.”

Clive turned and threw himself into the big man's knees.

Big Fella's hands slid along his back, just too late. The two of them overbalanced and fell. Clive let go. Big Fella's knee hit him in the chest. Clive coughed his breath out and twisted sideways, aiming in a low kick.

It never landed. Beauvais came in and laid the flat of the gun along Clive's temple. Clive dropped heavily. Beauvais kicked him. He held his broken jaw in his left hand and tried to boot Clive's face in. Clive covered up, but it hurt. He tried to stand, and Big Fella hit him across the buttocks, knocking him flat.

Clive rolled over on his hip and swung his legs in a circle. They took Beauvais below the knee and staggered him, and before Big Fella could do anything about it Clive had grabbed Beauvais's ankle and brought him down. Beauvais screamed, protecting his jaw. Clive kneed him in the stomach. They rolled. Clive tried to get Beauvais's face, but all he hit was a couple of muscular forearms. He got hold of Beauvais's right hand and tried to pry the gun out of it.

Big Fella caught Clive around the neck from behind. Clive let go of Beauvais. He reared backward and pushed himself up, trying to get his heel in the big man's crotch. Big Fella turned his hip. He hit Clive in the kidneys, tightened his elbow lock not quite hard enough to snap dive's neck, and then loosed him, stepping back.

Clive staggered and turned around and took both of Big Fella's fists under the jaw. He fell down. After a while he tried to get up again.

Big Fella said pleasantly, “You hadn't ought to work so hard, pal. You'll wear yourself out.”

Clive snarled. He could see nothing but lights where there were no lights. Big Fella waited until he was on his hands and knees and then kicked him in the stomach. He watched patiently while Clive threw up his dinner and then kicked him three or four times more, not hurrying, choosing his spots.

Clive retched and sobbed and pushed himself away from the sand, two or three inches.

“Hard boy,” said Big Fella. “Very tough. But you handle, brother.”

Beauvais said, “Turn him over.”

Big Fella lifted Clive like a cat lifting a kitten and rolled him on his back. Clive hit him twice in the face. Big Fella laughed. “Get the pansy,” he said. “Pattin' my cheek.” He laid Clive across his knee, holding his head back by the hair, and took both wrists in his right hand.

Beauvais said, “Clive.”

Clive looked up, not as though he saw anything clearly. His lips pulled back from his teeth.

Beauvais called him three names in a voice as soft as a lover's touch and hit him left and right across the mouth with the barrel of the .38.

“That's for the two you gave me.”

Blood ran down Clive's throat. He started to strangle. Big Fella let him drop in the sand.

“Let's go,” he said. “I hurt. I wanta go somewheres and lay down.”

“Sure,” said Beauvais. “Sure. We'll just haul him over to the canal and throw him in. He'll like that. He used to swim there when he was a kid.”

Big Fella chuckled. He nudged Clive's jaw with his boot. “Hear that, pally? We're goin' for a swim.”

Clive let his breath out harshly and jerked as though he might still be trying to get up. Big Fella laughed, grabbing a handful of his coat collar. He dragged him away toward the black water sliding in under the fog.

A horn began to scream frantically, up on the highway. Big Fella stopped. His mouth twisted. He let go of Clive and put both hands to his side. “For Chrissake, what's that?”

Clive's face touched something hard, lying on the sand.

Beauvais stood listening. The horn blew and blew. Clive heard it dimly. It didn't mean anything. The hard object under his cheek was cold. There was something familiar about it.

“The goddam fools!” said Beauvais. “They'll have somebody down here. Kick him in and let's go.”

Big Fella lifted him by the collar again, and Clive saw the shape of the hard thing, black against the paler sand.

A gun.

His hands trailed past it as Big Fella walked. He picked it up, with infantile clumsiness. He could smell the water, cold, heavy with salt and oil. He was afraid of the water.

The horn stopped blowing.

Big Fella stumbled, and Beauvais said, “Hurry up.”

Using both hands, Clive raised the gun and fired it into the gray thickness of Beauvais's body. Beauvais did nothing for a moment, except to tip sideways a little with the force of the bullet. Then he folded up at the joints and pitched down.

Big Fella stopped. He let Clive fall and stood staring at Beauvais.

“Di. Di, what happened?”

Beauvais moaned. Big Fella bent over him. Clive tried to pull his gun hand out from under him. He wanted to shoot Big Fella. He wanted it so badly that he cried.

Big Fella said, “Oh, Christ,” very softly. He staggered, pressing his side. Beauvais coughed, a slow deep spasm. Blood poured out of his mouth. Big Fella put an arm around his shoulders.

“We'll find a croaker. Take it easy, Di. Just take it easy... .”

It took him a long tune to get Beauvais up into his arms. Clive watched him lurch off into the fog and cried because he couldn't pull the gun free.

After a while he stopped crying. The canal rustled close to his head and the night was cold and he hurt. He wanted to sleep. There was some reason he shouldn't—something to do with Mick. The incoming tide swirled around the lock. Maybe that was it. Maybe Mick had slipped on the stringer and fallen in and been pulled under the gate. There were barnacles down there, on the sharp red rocks.

Clive moaned, and the blood ran sandy in his throat.

Somewhere, far off on another planet, someone screamed.

The dark shut down.

Chapter 14

Edmond Clive's conscious mind broke the surface suddenly like a flying fish, with the same effect of spray inside his skull. He opened his eyes, and then everything was white.

He stirred. Very slightly, but too much.

A piece of the whiteness detached itself with a rustling noise and leaned over him. He squinted, trying to focus.

After a while he whispered, “Your face is on upside down. Take it away.” He retched, and the sweat rolled down his cheeks.

The nurse wiped him with a cold towel and said, “Just lie still, Mr. Clive.”

“My God,” he said. “Mick.” He started to get up. The pain hit him then. Really hit. He lay under it dazed and quiescent, and it was a long time before he heard the nurse again.

“That's better. Everything's all right. Lie still.” He began to curse her. He was almost crying.

And then a masculine voice said heartily, “Now, now, we can't have any of that. You've taken quite a beating and you'll just have to be good for a while whether you like it or not.”

A tubby little man in white clothes stooped over the bed. He had a round red face with glints on it where the glasses were.

Clive said carefully, “There's something I have to do.” His lips felt as though someone had put them through a meat grinder.

“It can wait. Now behave yourself, or I won't let you see your visitor.”

“Visitor?”

“A Mrs. Hammond. She's been waiting several hours for you to wake up. Feel like seeing her?”

Clive shut his eyes. “Not now or ever,” he said. “But bring her in.”

The nurse peeled back his sleeve and swabbed a spot on his arm. There was the glitter of a hypodermic needle.

“What's that for?”

“Sleep,” said the doctor. “It'll give you ten or fifteen minutes with Mrs. Hammond, and then back to dreamland.”

Clive decided not to fight it. “How long have I been here?”

“Something over forty-eight hours.”

“Will I live?”

“Well, for a while we thought the easiest thing might be to throw you away entirely and start fresh.” The hypo needle jabbed and stayed there. “But the X-rays didn't show anything but three cracked ribs and some minor internal injuries. God knows why.”

Clive said unemotionally, “They wanted me to know what was going on all the way through, right up until I finished drowning. You don't kick a man too hard when you want him to last.”

The nurse looked a little sick. She pulled his sleeve down again and went away.

Clive asked, “How long am I in for?”

“That depends. Aside from everything else, your nerves are in bad shape and you need the rest.”

“Rest,” said Clive. “Yeah.”

The doctor left and Jane Hammond came in. She stood by the bed in a wash of golden sunlight from the windows. She wore a plain moss-green dress and a simple hat. She was cool and lovely and it hurt Clive to look at her.

He knew without asking, but he said, “They lived to talk?”

“Only Beauvais. He died the next day.”

“That was long enough.” Clive turned his head away.

Jane Hammond sat down on a white chair beside the bed and took his hand. “Ed—please don't look like that. You couldn't help it.” She touched his forehead gently. “Your poor face. They must have hurt you terribly. To go through all that, and then...” Her head was suddenly down close to his shoulder. She wasn't crying. She was breathing too deeply, and the sound had an edge on it, like the breathing of a child exhausted beyond tears.

Clive put his hand on hers.

Presently she said quietly, “I've been with Mick all they'd let me. He still says he didn't do it. I believe him.”

The light on Clive's face made it hollow like a skull under the hard bones. He said, “If you were someone else I'd lie to you.” He felt her lift her head, but he kept his eyes away. “The big man didn't murder Laurel. Beauvais was on the kill about it, and he convinced Beauvais. You know the truth when you hear it, Jane, whether you like it or not. We both heard it, that night.”

Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Then you think...”

He turned to her now, a level, searching look. “You're the only one, Jane, who could know whether Mick had a motive.”

She held his gaze a long time, without wavering. “He had no motive.”

“All right. No, I don't think Mick's guilty. I think the big man was lying about him because it was the easiest story to tell. I think the murderer is the third person, with the key. But that doesn't help us. It doesn't help Mick. It doesn't swing any weight with a jury.”

“No.”

They were silent for a while. Then Clive sighed and rubbed his palm across his eyes and winced.

“Got a cigarette?”

She lighted one for him, with fingers as steady as marble. “Mick's innocent. There must be some way to prove it.”

“It looks as though it'll take a bigger man than I am to do it.”

“Then you'll have to be a bigger man,” said Jane. “You're the only man there is.”

He looked at her. “My God,” he said, and smiled somberly. “That's putting it square in my lap. Okay, Jane. We'll try.”

“Thanks, Ed...” After a minute she said, “Vivien's been haunting the hospital. I finally made her go home and rest. I think you've made a conquest.”

“Yeah?” He laughed. “God, I'm getting sleepy! Where's Johnny?”

“He's been in and out, acting like a hen with one chick. He'll be furious that he missed you.”

Clive's eyelids flickered down. The cigarette drooped in his mouth. “There are questions I want to ask, but I guess they'll have to wait...” The smoke tasted good. The pain was getting dull and far away.

Jane said, “There's one more thing. They—buried Laurel this morning. Beauvais made the arrangements before he died.”

dive's face showed a brief shadowing. Jane said gently, “I was there, for both of you. She looked very lovely.”

She went and stood by the window. Clive seemed to be asleep, with the smoke drifting up idly from the cigarette. Then, without opening his eyes or moving, he said in a slow half-whisper:

“Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast...”

Jane turned around.

“... Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest...”

“Ed!”

He raised his lids a crack. “Huh?”

“You were quoting Shakespeare!”

“My God. Shows what dope will do...” He smiled foggily. “Don't tell it around. The hard boys would keep undressing me to see the lace on my drawers.”

The last words came very slowly. When she reached the bed he was across the gulf and away. Jane leaned over and took the cigarette from his lips. She didn't make any noise going out.

Clive slept well into the next morning and woke up feeling pretty good, all things considered. Jonathan Ladd Jones came in, bringing Gaines with him.

“All right,” said Clive. “Do your gloating quick and get out.”

Gaines examined him like a man studying a work of art.

“Nice job they did on you, Clive. A very nice job. What did he use on your kisser?”

“The barrel of my own gun. Go ahead and laugh.”

“I already have.” Gaines shrugged. “You should worry. You plugged 'em both. Did you know you nearly got Beauvais the first time?”

“I heard him yell.”

“You creased his back. It was that close. And the big guy was filling up inside all the time he was playing with you. Jesus, the vitality that gorilla had!”

“I'll pat myself on the back when I'm not so sore. Where the hell were you flatfeet, anyhow?”

“That's right, you wouldn't know, would you?” Gaines sat down beside the bed. Johnny leaned on the windowsill, smoking.

“First off, I want to say that what you did to my tail car wasn't funny. I won't kick about you wanting to go alone with Beauvais—I guess you had to play it that way, then. But slashing tires just isn't patriotic!”

Clive stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“You sneaked up and cut the rear tires on the tail car that was waiting across the street from your apartment house.”

“You're crazy.”

Gaines sighed. “Okay. I can't prove you did it, and I don't at this time give a damn. I'm through playing games with you. I don't have to any more. You gave me what I wanted on a silver platter. You're cleared—and the way it happened, by God it's worth it!”

Clive's mouth twitched. He said nothing.

“Well,” Games said, “it seems that the guy you told to call the cops tripped over his own feet going across the way to phone. He cracked his skull. His wife found him and called a doctor, but he was out for a couple of hours. When he came to it was a while longer before he could make anybody understand, and by the time the boys at the Venice station finally did get word, it was all over but to call the ambulance and the morgue. You were out cold with your head in the canal, Beauvais was beside the road, also out cold, and the big fellow...”

Gaines chuckled. “Funny about him. He'd of died anyhow in a couple of hours, but your car didn't seem to want to take any chances.”

“My car?”

“Yeah. You left it parked on the hill, remember? Must of been careless about the brake, because she broke loose and drifted down on top of him. He'd had to put Beauvais down and was crawling up toward the highway, and your car caught him square before it went off in the sand. Dead as a mackerel with the tire treads marked plain across his neck and back.”

Clive said, “Just a minute.”

Johnny straightened up. Gaines's eyelids narrowed.

Clive said slowly, “I distinctly remember setting the hand brake hard and then putting the gear in reverse. She couldn't have drifted.”

Gaines lifted his beefy shoulders and dropped them again. “She did.”

God damn it, I know what I did! And I know something else, too, if you'll shut up and let me think.” He closed his eyes and scowled.

“I had a feeling somebody was following us when we went down there. Didn't see anyone—it was just one of those notions you get. And then, some time before I passed out, I heard a horn up on the highway, screaming its head off. It bothered the boys a lot, and it saved my life, because that was when they stopped to listen and Big Fella threw me down on top of the gun.”

Gaines nodded. “Quite a few people heard that horn. A couple of men even went out to see what was up. But the fog was thicker than a suit of woolen underwear and it was late and nobody wanted to stick his neck out too far, so I guess they didn't look very hard. Anyway, nobody saw the car and the horn quit blowing, and that was that. Probably some local wolf having a scrap with his girl friend.”

Clive said stubbornly, “My car couldn't have drifted.”

“For Chrissake, what are you trying to hand me now? You cleared yourself, and it's not your fault your pal double-crossed you. We've got the right guy, the girl's paid for, and so why don't you relax?”

“I saw Mick Hammond after the killing, Gaines. He didn't do it.”

Gaines stood up. He rubbed one thick scarred hand through his hair and said slowly, “I'll be a son of a bitch.”

“You were a long time ago. God damn it!” said Clive furiously. “Mick didn't have the ghost of a motive!”

“So the big guy was lying.”

“About who killed her, yes.”

“You know how that sounds.”

“Sure. Like Beauvais kicked me harder in the head than he did. But somebody cut the tires on your tail car, and whether you like it or not, it wasn't me!”

Gaines blinked his pale eyes. “I'm getting old, Clive. I can't take it any more. I got to get out of here before I fall down and start frothing.” He put his hat on and took hold of the knob. “It must be the dope they gave you. I hope so. I guess I hate your guts as much as anyone I know, but I don't like seeing anybody crack up.”

Clive snarled and reached for the clock on the bedside table. The pain in his belly muscles doubled him up, and by the time he could breathe again Gaines was gone.

Jonathan Ladd Jones came over and put a cigarette in his mouth and held a match. Clive lay back, blowing smoke and holding himself together with his hands.

Johnny said, “He's right.”

“He's wrong. Somebody followed us that night—somebody who didn't want the law butting in—somebody who fixed the tail car so it couldn't follow.” He looked at Johnny. “You think I'm lying?”

Johnny studied the toes of his small shoes. “Way I figure it Ed, Hammond was your pal once. You're pretty soft on his wife, too. So...”

“You think Mick's a good enough actor to put over the show he's been giving?”

“I don't know.”

“Well I do. He's not. He didn't have any reason to kill Laurel...”

“Jane Hammond could be lying.”

“She could. It doesn't change things any. Mick didn't know it. He was ready to kill himself over the idea of losing her, but all he could say was how she'd stood by him.” Clive pitched the butt savagely across the room and doubled up again, gasping.

Finally he said between his teeth, “Mick wasn't acting in Laurel's dressing room. He'd have told me then if Jane had ever said anything about leaving him.”

Johnny went over and stepped on the cigarette. “All right. But why would the big fellow lie?”

“Beauvais had Big Fella figured for the job, and he was the most kill-crazy guy I ever looked at. All right. Big Fella didn't do it, but he knew he'd have a time convincing Beauvais. So he told the simplest story. Mick was already taking the fall. Why change it? Why drag in some third party that he probably never saw before, maybe couldn't even name? The newspapers had the crime all worked out and tagged for him. He just quoted, built it up a little, and put all his energy into getting over the one thing that mattered to him—clearing himself. And Beauvais believed it where he mightn't have believed any other yarn.”

“That's another of those 'could he's,' Ed. The jury isn't going to think much of it.”

“No, God damn it. Like the searching of Laurel's apartment two or three days before the murder, and the guy with the key who might or might not have got in. Like Sugar March. Like the keysmith, and my car drifting with the gear and the brake both set, and just happening to hit Big Fella, who was the only man who knew whether there was anyone else in Laurel's apartment that night. Like the horn that blew, and the guy that fell down on his way to call the cops, and the cut tires on the police car... Shadows, Johnny. Murder with no face. You feel it. You know it's there watching you, but you can't see it. You can't hear it. You can't even talk about it, because when you do what you say sounds farfetched and silly even to yourself. And Mick's going to die in the gas chamber because the murderer's smarter than I am.”

Clive stared at Johnny with bitter dark eyes.

“He's watched me from the beginning. He's let me front for him, let me grab at leads that didn't go anywhere, let me lock the door tighter on Mick with every step I took. Never showing himself, but always pushing things around so they broke just right for him and left me looking like a fool.” He laughed, a small hard sound in his throat. “He must have enjoyed himself that night, watching me convict Mick Hammond when I thought I was going to clear him, and then eat boot leather and the barrel of my own gun. God damn him down to hell.”

Neither said anything for a while. Johnny came back and sat down, not looking at Clive.

“What do we do next?”

“Johnny... you don't have to stick.”

Johnny rose. “Listen, Ed. It doesn't matter a goddam bit what I think. I'm only your stooge anyhow. Now tell me what you want me to do and I'll start earning my wages.”

Clive laughed. “Sure, sure. Only don't get tough with me. I'm a sick man.”

Johnny rubbed his nose and turned away.

Clive said, “The only definite thing we have to go on is the tire-slashing. It's just barely possible that someone may have seen...”

Lieutenant Jordan Gaines opened the door.

“Just like a cop,” said Clive. “You ought to knock. I might have been in conference or something.”

“I called headquarters,” said Gaines. “I wanted to check on that tire business.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The Hollywood Division reports that several cars in that block were slashed that night, apparently the work of one of these kid vandal gangs that have been giving us such a headache since the tire ban. Several cars, Clive. So I guess that clears that up, doesn't it?”

Clive said, “Yes. Yes, I guess it does.”

Gaines watched him. Presently he sighed. “Jesus, that dead pan of yours! I'd like to borrow it the next time I play poker. The hell with you.”

He closed the door behind him. Clive lay perfectly still, without speaking.

After a long while Johnny said, “Well...”

Clive stared at the ceiling. “I'm getting old, Johnny. I'm eating dirt.”

“There's a long time yet before the trial, Ed. Maybe—”

“Are my clothes in that closet over there?”

“Hey...”

“Go get 'em.”

“Now look, Ed...”

Clive pushed the covers back. Johnny walked over to the bed. “You weren't thinking of going anywhere?”

“You try and stop me, small size.”

“Sure,” said Johnny. “Sure, Ed.” He slapped Clive fairly hard across the belly. Clive turned green and stopped breathing. Johnny pulled the blanket up, smoothed it, laid a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table, and put on his hat.

“So long, Ed. Be good.”

Clive's eyes burned. Johnny waved cheerfully and went out. Clive lay sweating quietly. Presently he grinned.

“The little bastard. I'll fix his wagon for that!”

Someone rapped on his door, a small rap. He said, “Come in.”

Vivien Alcott slid herself in through the door and shut it as though it were made of porcelain. She wore a red wool dress under a short camel's-hair coat, high-heeled red pumps, and no hat. She stood with her hands in her pockets, smiling hesitantly.

Clive said, “Hello. Come on in.”

She showed her little white teeth. “Are you sure you don't mind?”

“Sure.”

She walked across the room like someone tiptoeing on thin ice. Clive laughed, being careful not to jiggle his stomach.

“Relax! I won't break.”

She giggled. “I brought you a present.” She pulled a flat pint of rye out of her coat pocket and held it up, shaking it slightly so that Clive could see the bead in the light.

“Well!” said Clive. “Sit down, baby. Sit right down and make yourself at home!”

Chapter 15

Vivien found a couple of medicine glasses and brought them over.

Clive said, “Take your coat off. You make me hot just looking at you.”

She smiled and laid it across the foot of the bed, and then bent over the table, pouring the drinks. Clive watched her, faintly comic with surprise.

She looked nice. She looked very nice indeed. The soft wool of her dress was gathered and bloused, so that her full sharp curves were hinted at rather than seen, and the way the whole thing was cut made her look taller and slimmer. The red color was deep and warm without being garish, and it reflected a most becoming glow across her brown cheeks. Clive noticed that she had one of those strong vibrant necks that would be pleasant to touch.

She knew he was admiring her. Her eyes had a depth and glow he had never seen before. She handed him his drink. Her nails were short, very clean, and covered with an unobtrusive polish. This time, when their fingers touched, hers were warm and electrically alive.

Vivien grinned suddenly, wrinkling her nose. “You smell funny.”

“Chloroform liniment. Between that and the hot Epsom salts they've been soaking me in, I feel like a boiled potato.” He raised his glass. “Here's to crime.”

She sipped her drink, studying him. “You don't really mean that—about crime?”

“Sure I do. How else could I make a living?”

“Ed—Mr. Clive...”

“You were right the first time.”

“Ed, then. How did you happen to become a detective?”

“Well, it's kind of a silly story. Happened a long time ago, when Mick and I were kids. We had a couple of rafts knocked together out of railroad ties and packing boxes, and we used to paddle them around on the canal.”

“The same canal, where they almost drowned you?”

“Uh-huh. Only there wasn't any oil in it then. Anyhow, one day five or six big boys happened along and stole the rafts from us just for the hell of it. They couldn't have had any use for them. It nearly broke our hearts. I remember Mick squatting up on the lock stringer crying and calling them every name he knew. I got hold of one guy in the pool and tried to drown him, I was so mad, but he was about four times my size and it didn't bother him too much. He just held my head under and then went away. I think right then I made up my mind that when I grew up I was going to do something about big boys that went around swiping things from little boys.”

“You fought them,” said Vivien.

“I always did have a nasty temper.”

“Mick didn't fight, though. I'll bet he never fought. I'll bet he was just tagging around after you all the time.”

“You'll lose your money. I hero-worshiped Mick. He was everything I wanted to be.” He chuckled. “Mick's mother was always a little condescending to my mother.”

“She just didn't know,” whispered Vivien.

He glanced up at her and grinned. She held his gaze briefly and then flushed, turning away.

“You're laughing at me. You think I'm a fool.” Her lips quivered. “I'm not. I'm in love.”

“No,” said Clive kindly. “I'm just a new kind of animal, and you've got me mixed up with Dick Tracy and a couple of other glamour guys. That's all.”

She turned. Her face was a little girl's face, desolate with the fear of misunderstanding.

“No. You're a man, Ed. You've got hard hands that can hurt, and a hard body. I've felt you tremble. I've felt your rough tweeds on my skin, and heard you breathe, and touched the hair on the back of your wrist. You're real, Ed. You're alive, and I...” She caught her breath harshly. “If I were a nice girl I wouldn't say things like that. But I'm not a nice girl. And I've been thinking about you, all alone there in the fog and the darkness, being hurt...”

Her jaw locked and her head went back. Then quite suddenly she relaxed and finished her drink and said flatly, “I'm a goddam fool.”

Clive stirred uncomfortably. “I'm sorry, Vivien.”

“Oh, hell, no!” She made a motion almost as though she were going to throw the glass at him. “Curse me, hate me, do anything at all, but don't be sorry for me!”

“I didn't mean it that way.”

She bit her lower lip and hiccuped slightly. “I know. I guess—” her face crumpled between tears and sheepish laughter—“I guess I have a mean disposition, too.”

Clive said solemnly, “Just a pair of heels without a soul between us. Who shall we go and stamp on?”

“Whom.”

“You go around throwing grammar in my teeth and I'll throw something right back at yours.” He snapped his fingers suddenly. “Baby, how would you like to be assistant to the great Edmond Clive? Limited engagement, and at no salary, but think of the prestige.”

Her eyes grew shiny with excitement. “I don't understand.”

Clive laid a tender hand on his middle. “Johnny's left me in the lurch. I want to get out of here, right now. Will you help me?”

“Oh, I don't know! Do you think you ought to?”

“Hell, yes! They've boiled most of the soreness out of me, and the rest will work off when I get moving. Anyway, God damn it, I've got too much to do!”

Some of the youth and animation left her face. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Jane told me how you felt I don't think I really believed her. Ed—” she leaned toward him, serious, searching—“Ed, are you sure you're not letting this get you, because of what Mick used to mean to you?”

“Mick's innocent, Vivien, and what I said before still goes.”

She dropped her head, so he couldn't see anything but her clean, shining hair. “1 believe you, Ed. I'll help you.”

“You don't hate Mick any more?”

“Hate him!” She rose and went around the chair and stood with her hands clenched on the back of it. Her eyes blazed palely. “Yes, I hate him! And I hate Jane, too. I'll always hate them. I've suffered, Ed. Maybe you wouldn't understand, not being a woman. But it goes deep.”

“Then why are you going to help me?”

She clung to the chair, rocking on her red heels. Her mouth was sullen and cruel. After a long time she whispered, “Because you make me.”

Clive watched her somberly.

She whimpered and beat the chair legs up and down on the floor. “You're cruel. You like to make people suffer. I hate you!... Nothing's the same any more. You've broken everything to pieces for me. It isn't fair for one person to come up to another person and speak and go away again, and change everything just by having done it. Anybody else wouldn't have mattered. But it had to be you. You—your voice, your face, the way you walk, and the look in your eyes—and something inside you. Something that frightens me. Something that could kill me. And yet I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my Me. Strength, Ed. A thing I never had.”

He said quietly, “You can be strong, if you want to be.”

She looked away. “Maybe. Maybe...”

“You could quit hating, too, if you wanted to.”

“Maybe.” She shuddered, drawing her chin in and twisting it up toward her shoulder. “Maybe I'm finding something better than hate.”

“There's nothing better than hate,” he said, “if you hate the right things. And nothing worse if you don't.”

Vivien relaxed her grip on the chair, drooping wearily. “Jane's been good to me. It isn't her fault she's Jane. But it isn't my fault I'm me.” She put her hands over her face. “Pour me a drink, Ed.”

The bottle was where he could reach it. He poured her one and she gulped it down, walking over to the window and back. Then she laughed.

“If you don't have a relapse,” she said, “it won't be because I haven't tried.”

The hall door opened suddenly, right on the heels of a rap. The nurse poked her head in. The face on it reminded Clive of a lemon pudding—thin, pale, sour.

“The doctor won't like it, Mr. Clive, if you tire yourself.”

“The doctor,” Clive told her, “would be surprised if he knew just how tired I plan to get.”

“I don't know that he would.” The nurse looked at Vivien. Vivien colored and looked at Clive.

Clive said gently, “Miss Nightingale, in spite of my youthful appearance I am past the age of legal consent. My brow is not fevered, nor am I the least bit uncomfortable. So I don't really need you for a thing.” He gave her one of his sweetest smiles. “There must be some unfortunate around here who has need of you. Suppose you go and look.”

She looked him fair in the eye. “Very well, Mr. Clive. It will probably take me some tune, so if you should want anything, don't bother to ring!”

She closed the door firmly. Clive shuddered. “A hospital,” he said, “is no place to be sick in. A man needs all his strength just for things like that.”

Vivien giggled. Except for a streaky appearance under the eyes she was normal again.

“Okay, chief,” she said hoarsely. “Let's take a powder. What do I do first?”

“Oh, God—you go to the movies, too. Well, okay, babe.” He sounded very tough indeed. “Grab de raggery out'n de closet and den scram. Stake out inna hall an' tip me quick if we catch a rumble from Dog-Eye.”

She stared at him. “Huh?”

He leaned back on the pillows, laughing. “The clothes, honey. Out of the closet. Then go outside and let me know if you see the nurse coming back.”

She said, “Oh!” and went across the room. Clive sat up, very, very carefully, bending a little at a time.

“Whew!” he gasped. “That guy sure had big feet.” Vivien put his clothes on the chair and hovered over him. He nodded. “Untie the nightie and then beat it.”

She loosened the knots down his back. “Hadn't I better stay and help? You can hardly move.”

“Outside, darling.”

She pushed the hospital gown petulantly over his shoulders and started for the door. “All right, but you don't have to be coy. I'm not...”

“I don't care if you're the entire staff of a nudist colony. I still wish to put my pants on in private.”

“That's all right with me,” said Vivien stiffly. “I'll bet your legs aren't pretty anyway.” She wrinkled her nose at him and went out.

Clive whistled softly, grinned, and shook his head. He began to dress himself, very gently indeed, as though he were made of thin Venetian glass.

Presently he called, “Vivien. Oh, Viv!”

She came in quickly. “No sign of Dog-Eye.”

“Swell.” Clive was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the bottle of rye. He had on his shirt and pants and one sock. “Finish with the feet, baby. They're too far away for me.”

She got down on her knees. “H'mph! I thought you were tough.”

“Only during office hours. Other times I'm strictly the pattycake type.” He tilted the bottle and winced. “Oi! I'm stiff all over.” He drank.

“What's that for? Oil?”

“Nuh-uh. Heat's good for bruises. I'm trying it from the inside.” He felt better.

By the time Vivien got his coat on him he felt swell. He even felt good enough to grin at Dog-Eye when she opened the door after another of her double-time raps.

She took one glance and went out again.

“Rumble,” said Clive. “Let's lam outa here.”

“Sure t'ing, chief. Here's ya hat.”

“Caster,” he corrected. “Leave us keep in character.”

He put his arm around her shoulders, as much because they were a nice shape as because he needed the support. He had hold of the knob when it was jerked away from him, hard. Clive let go a strangled howl.

“For Chrissake, what are you trying to do, kill me?”

The doctor planted himself in the doorway. “I won't have to if you don't get back in that bed.” Dog-Eye was behind him, looking nasty.

“Sorry,” said Clive. “I've got things to do.”

“Listen, Mr. Clive. You've taken a bad beating—”

“All right. It's my beating, isn't it? I can do what I want with it.”

The doctor studied his face, swallowed, and tried again. “Mr. Clive, please. I won't be responsible—”

Clive stepped closer. “You got it, pal. You won't be anything but sorry if you don't get out of my way.”

The doctor was stubborn. He glared at Clive. Clive glared at him. He could feel Vivien trembling against him, red-faced with laughter bottled up in her. He took another step and placed his forefinger on the doctor's pudgy chest. He smiled genially, giving off strong alcoholic fumes. The doctor began to sweat.

“I'm a little drunk,” Clive murmured, “Sometimes I get very nasty indeed.”

The doctor moved backward. Clive followed. They lock-stepped some way down the corridor.

Then Dog-Eye snorted. “Let him go. The Department of Sanitation will take care of him if he dies in the gutter.”

“Very well.” The doctor side-stepped. “On your own head be it. If you're still alive, for heaven's sake come back for a check-up at your earliest opportunity.”

“Sure. You know where to send the bill.” Clive tipped his hat to Dog-Eye. They went out. Clive had to support Vivien most of the way. She was helpless with laughter.

When she could see again she said, “I have my car. Where do you want to go?”

All the humor was gone out of Clive now. “I want to see Mick,” he said. “But I can take a cab.”

“No. I'm in this, and I'm going to stay hi.”

She drove well, too fast but with an instinctive sureness rare in a woman. Clive said something about it, and she smiled.

“I used to belong to a hundred-mile club. I got pinched for it twice. They didn't let me drive for eighteen months.” The unhappy look came back in her face. “I suppose,” she said abruptly, “you've been wondering why Jane puts up with Richard and me in her house.”

“I haven't asked, have I?”

“I'm going to tell you anyway. She has to. Father's will said she had always to provide a home for us. He thought she could make us into human beings, maybe. The damn fool!”

Clive said gently, “Look, Viv. Why don't you stop kicking yourself around? Why don't you just relax and be a nice kid? You could, you know.”

She bit her lip. “Not any more. I've done—too many things.”

“I think,” said Clive, “you're kidding yourself.”

She sighed. It was almost a sob. Her face was very young and very tired. “Maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything any more. I—just feel. And I'm weak, Ed. I told you that. I haven't any strength at all. Jane got that, too.”

They didn't speak again. She stopped the car presently and Clive got out by himself and went into the City Jail. The agony of motion lessened slightly as time went by, but the whisky was dying in him and mentally he felt like hell. He followed the jailer slowly down the corridor to Mick's cell.

Chapter 16

Mick Hammond was lying on his cot with his eyes closed, but he looked around when he heard the cell door open and then sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. Clive came in. The door rang shut behind him and the jailer's boots went away down the corridor.

Mick said, “I knew you'd come.”

“Mick... about what I told Gaines that day...”

“Jane and I figured that out, Eddie. You had to, the way things were.”

Clive sighed. “That's okay, then.”

“Sure. How do you feel?”

“A bit sore in the tripes—and a lot sorer in what is sometimes called the soul. I've done you a hell of a lot of good so far.”

“I'm not worried.” Hammond smiled faintly. His eyes were exhausted, but there was no hysteria in them.

Clive studied him. “You've grown up, Mick.”

“Well, I figure it this way. If I get out of this I'll be grateful. I want to live as much as the next man, and I want to be happy, and I'd try awfully hard to build something worth while. But if I don't get out of it—well, if I'd behaved myself I wouldn't be here. I haven't anyone but myself to blame.” He laughed. “Oh, I didn't feel that way at first. But I got to thinking, and that's the way it came out.” He added soberly, “The worst of it is Jane.”

“Jane's holding up too well, Mick.”

“She's all right, Eddie. I know her better than you do. She's all right.” He grinned at Clive. “You haven't done any breaking, either.”

Clive stared at him, blank-faced and faintly surprised. He said, “I guess I haven't had any time.”

That pleased Hammond immensely. “Sit down and have a cigarette.”

Clive found the one low stool and sat down, pushing his hat back. The smoke tasted good.

Hammond said matter-of-factly, “Do you have any hopes of saving me?”

“I'm still trying. But I won't kid you, Mick,”

“You'll do it. You'll do it for Laurel.”

Clive said slowly, “I don't know.”

“I'm not worried.”

“Hey, quit with that!” Clive laughed. “I'm supposed to hold your hand, not the other way around.” He rose and wandered around the cell. “What was the name of the woman who got you your job in the store, Mick?”

“Krebs. Mrs. Julia Krebs. Why?”

“Thought I'd like to talk to her. Know her address?”

“Cardiff Towers, over on Rossmore.” Hammond leaned back against the wall. “Funny thing, Eddie. That job was what really held Jane to me. She said it proved I could work and be somebody if I wanted to.” He frowned down at his hands. “People talk a lot about love, Eddie. Most of them don't know what the word means.”

Clive said, “No.”

“I never did before. I didn't even realize that you were in love with Marian. God, what a fool I was.”

“Marian got over it. She married some kid from the East the year after you walked out on her.”

“But you didn't get over it.”

“I did all right. It was you going back on me like that that hurt the worst. It made me out such a chump. I guess you did me a favor at that, Mick. I quit hanging the rainbows on things—and people.”

“Yeah,” said Hammond softly. “I'm sorry.”

“Oh hell, let's forget it!” Clive's sudden grin took the edge off his words. “Sit tight, kiddie, and eat your spinach, and Uncle Eddie will see if he can find a can opener for you.” He shook Hammond's shoulder, hard enough to make him wince. The jailer was already hovering in the background.

“Oh, Mick—I wanted to ask you. I noticed a long sort of gash on that blackthorn stick. Care to tell me how it happened?”

“I—well, why not? Vivien has a talent for needling people, my nerves were all shot after the accident. I hadn't slept much for over a week, and she just got to me one night, out on the terrace. I—tried to hit her. I didn't know what I was doing. Fortunately I hit some ornamental stonework instead.” Hammond made a wry face. “That wouldn't sound so good to a jury, would it?”

“Not from your lawyer's point of view, no. By the way, is—”

“Benson is still defending me, with no hope at all.”

“That's great,” said Clive dourly. “Did Gaines ask you about the stick?”

“I told him I shut it in the car door. I don't think he believes me. Vivien may have told him the truth anyhow. But it doesn't really matter.”

The jailer unlocked the door.

“Well, so long, Mick.” Clive started out, then stopped. “One more thing. Does this Krebs dame do any kicking?”

Mick laughed. “No! Why?”

“Because,” said Clive grimly, “from now on I'm carrying a gun. And the next person that tries to feed me boot leather is going to get lead in him before he gets his toe off the ground!”

Vivien was waiting patiently outside. She reached over and opened the door for him. “Okay, chief. Where do we go now?”

“Home.”

“Home! I thought we were going sleuthing.”

“Sure. But first I want a bath, so I don't stink of liniment. I want a clean shirt and a suit that doesn't have blood all over it. The first rule of a successful private eye is always to look like a gentleman. You may fool somebody when you least expect it.”

They went home. Chuck was very solicitous about helping Clive out of the car. Clive thanked him and then turned to Vivien.

“Come on up and have a drink. You've earned it.”

She bounced out happily, walking close to him and enjoying the stir they made going through the lobby. They had their drink upstairs, and then Clive said, “Thanks for everything, Viv. And now...”

“And now I'm getting the brush-off.” She stood up sulkily. “All right.”

Clive laughed. “Don't be sore at me. It's just that I'm liable to have trouble enough carrying my own weight, that's all. And it wouldn't be any fun for you. Believe it or not, ninety-five per cent of the detective business is duller than hell.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Fish around and see what I get. I've got nothing to lose anyway.”

“Just one thing.” She came to him, her eyes big and tender. “Yourself, Ed.”

“You can't worry too much about that.”

“But I do! Ed, listen. If what you say is true and the murderer is still loose... well, he's safe now, except for you. He isn't going to let you get close to him.”

He could see a mist of tears in her lashes and the quiver of her brown throat. He put his arms around her and kissed her. She lay close against him, not moving except for the lift of her round breasts.

“Kiss me again,” she whispered. “Please.”

She put her head back. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted and hungry. Clive bent to her. Her body arched under his, her arms going around him, tight, inside his coat. Strong round arms and a strong round body, and a mouth that bruised his mouth with the cuts half healed across it.

Pain.

He pushed her roughly away and caught the back of a chair and stood bent over it. Vivien leaned against the door, where the force of his thrust had thrown her. He couldn't see her. He couldn't see anything at all for a moment. But the sound of her breathing came to him clearly. It was hoarse and guttural, like the breathing of an animal after a fight.

She wrenched the door open suddenly and ran out.

After a while he went and closed it. Then he poured himself a long drink and began to strip.

He treated himself to a lengthy soaking in a hot tub, finished with a cold shower, and shaved. He dressed carefully in a fresh shirt and striped tie, and a suit of brown Harris tweed. The easy hang of the coat concealed the bulk of the Colt automatic under his left armpit. His step was almost as springy as usual when he went downstairs.

Jonathan Ladd Jones had seen that his car was brought back after the police were through with it. He drove down to the Boulevard, not hurrying. No car followed him.

The light held him up at the corner where Sugar March had died. He scowled at it, whistling absently, until a snarl of horns behind him moved him on. No car tagged him on the way down to Vine Street. He parked and went up to his office, walking softly. He flung the door open quickly.

Jonathan Ladd Jones jumped three feet behind the desk. It was a neat trick, because his feet were crossed comfortably on the blotter. A bottle of Gilbey's Spey Royal teetered perilously beside them.

Clive shut the door. He hitched up his pants, hooked his thumbs in the waistband, and smiled.

“Well for Chrissake,” said Johnny angrily. “That ain't fair. I left you flat on your back...”

“That you did. And if I didn't need all my strength I'd leave you flat on yours right now. Of all the double-crossing little rats!”

Johnny slid the bottle into the desk drawer and shut it with his foot. He said solicitously, “How do you feel, Ed?”

“Like beating your head off. You don't know what you got me into.”

“The Alcott dame, I'll bet. I passed her on the way out. So she helped you crash out, huh?”

“Yeah.” Clive lighted a cigarette with quick, jerky hands. “Get Gaines on the phone and ask him what they found out about those letters.”

Johnny stared at him and then picked up the phone. Clive stood by the window, smoking. Johnny asked questions, listened, and then hung up.

“The letters were pretty hot stuff, it seems. Up to and including a Mrs. Julia Krebs. Typed on dune-store paper with a Royal that cuts the capital Y's and E's in two. No prints. The D.A. was very grateful for the carbons.” Johnny settled back in the swivel chair. “Look, Ed. Supposing you're right about Hammond being innocent, what have those letters got to do with it? It was Laurel Dane that got killed, and she didn't know Hammond much over two weeks. And how do you know the framing of Hammond was intentional? I think the killer just got a lucky break.”

“An assistant,” said Clive, “is supposed to assist.”

“Sure, sure. But Laurel was the kind of a girl that—well, you know what I mean —”

“I know. Laurel bruised a lot of masculine egos in her day. Some of them might have stayed just as sore as Beauvais's. So we're right back where we started, and with a damn sight less to work on.”

“Less! I'd say nothing.”

“Yeah. Well, if that's the way the game's stacked, that's the way we'll play it.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing right now, except stay where I can get hold of you when I want you.”

“I'll be here all day. I'll stay home nights.”

“If you have company in, chum, keep one hand free for the phone and don't get too high to reach it.”

Johnny grinned. “Sure. And take it easy, Ed. If you're right about Hammond, the real killer isn't going to—”

“That's already been pointed out to me.” Clive turned the knob. “So long.”

Johnny said glumly, “So long.”

“If you finish the bottle, call the liquor store and have 'em send up another. Have your meals sent up, too. You stick by that phone.”

“Well for cripe's sake,” said Johnny. “It's a good thing I don't have to go down the hall to...”

Clive slammed the door and went downstairs. A man stepped quickly out of the janitor's closet and pressed the muzzle of an ancient horse pistol into his belly. The man was Richard Alcott, and he was cold, stony sober.

“In here, Clive.”

Clive obeyed. The janitor's closet was long and narrow with a small window at the end. Alcott locked the door.

Clive said, “So you did kill her, after all.”

“That doesn't matter.”

Clive nodded at the pistol. “That relic is apt to kill both of us if you fire it.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Of course I am.”

“So am I,” said Alcott slowly. “But that doesn't matter, either.” He studied Clive for some time, as though searching for an answer, an explanation. He had not slept well, and his sobriety made of him a different and rather terrifying person. Clive realized presently what the unfamiliar quality was. It was dignity.

“What made you think I suspected you, Alcott?”

“I haven't thought about it. The murder isn't important now. There's something else.”

“Yes. Yes, I'm beginning to see. I manhandled you twice. That's it, isn't it?”

“Partly.”

“And partly,” said Clive, “the thing you've been running away from all your life finally caught up with you, and there was no place else to run.”

“Yes,” said Alcott, “that's it. No place else to run. That's why I haven't had a drink since that night in the park. Drinking is no use any more.”

“And are you sure that killing me is going to prove your manhood?”

“That's what worries me. I don't know.”

“I can tell you. It won't.”

“Why?” He was asking the question seriously, as though he were a pupil and Clive the teacher. The big clumsy revolver remained centered on dive's belt buckle.

“Because life doesn't work like that. It doesn't come in nice sharp climaxes that tie up your problem neatly and file it away in a drawer. The next day comes, and the day after that, and you think. And you're not sure. You're never sure.” He indicated the gun. “You're calling in outside help, Alcott. That thing isn't any part of you. Anybody can pull a trigger.”

“That's true,” said Alcott. “But you did abuse me, contemptuously, as though I were not a man like yourself. If I kill you—”

“You'll prove you can shoot an unarmed man. And that's all.”

Alcott said, “You have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Take it out.”

Clive stared at him. “No,” he said slowly, “I won't do that You know, Alcott, sometimes dying is the easiest way out Sometimes it takes the real guts to go on living.”

Alcott whispered, “I should have killed you before you said that.” He let the gun slip out of his hand, leaning back against the door. “I'm tired.”

Sweat stood out on Clive's forehead. In spite of himself he was trembling.

“What is it you and Vivien are afraid of?” he asked.

“Jane. We were born and bred in her shadow.”

“Why don't you get out of it?”

“Their attitude—Father's and Jane's—has always been that Vivien and I should stay near her. Good influence, a good home. She's afraid of what we'll do if we're turned loose.”

“Good God, you're over twenty-one!”

“Jane controls the money. You see?”

“Yeah. Then in plain English you've always been afraid to risk going hungry in order to make your own life.”

“That's it.” Alcott laughed, without humor. “Things are funny, aren't they? Jane's so damned good, so perfect, so capable that Vivien and I practically in self-defense developed all our worst qualities. If Jane had had faults like anybody else...”

“Maybe you wouldn't have committed a murder.”

“Murder?” Alcott glanced up. “Oh, the girl. I told you that night I didn't kill her.”

“I know you did.”

Alcott spread his hands. “There's no way I can prove it.” There was no fear in nun now. There was nothing but exhaustion.

Clive said, “I can get rough again.”

Alcott's gaze met his steadily, and held it.

“It's a strange thing,” Alcott said. “I don't think it would matter if you did. It isn't the body that's important.”

Clive smiled. “I believe you.” He picked up the pistol and gave it to Alcott “You don't want me to talk to Jane, do you?”

“No. I can't get into the Army, but there must be other things. I'm going to find out, by myself.”

He held out his hand suddenly. “Thanks,” he said, “for the beating.” He turned the key and went out.

Clive watched him. “My God,” he whispered. “People!” His dark eyes had an unfamiliar softness.

He went upstairs again and told Johnny to put a man on Richard Alcott's tail.

Driving south on Vine, Clive saw that there was still no one following him. Below Sunset he hesitated and then turned down a side street toward Sugar March's apartment. There was a new For Rent sign in front—Rear Apt., 3 Rms Furn, $27.50. Apply #1. Clive went up the cracked and settling steps and punched the button.

The hard-faced woman who had watched him and Gaines opened the door. She was still wearing soiled blue pajamas. Her mouth and hair were the same dry terra cotta, and her hands were stained with tobacco smoke.

“Did you want to see the apartment?”

“No,” Clive said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Yeah? Well I'm busy.”

Clive held the door with his shoulder. “Don't make it tough for me, sister. I don't give a damn what kind of a place you run. I only want to ask a couple of questions.” He pushed his way in.

She said harshly, “You get funny and I'll call the cops.”

He laughed. The room looked just like her. It smelled the same, too, smoky and unaired.

She said, “Law?”

“Private.”

“Private! You got your nerve!”

“I want something. If you've got it I'm willing to pay.”

She dragged nervously on her cigarette. “How much?”

“Maybe nothing. Depends on what you have.”

“Maybe I don't sell anyhow. I mind my own business.”

“I'm not asking you to stool. All I want to know is who brought Sugar March home the night before she was killed.”

Her eyes opened wide and then blinked shut. She let smoke out of her mouth very slowly. Clive drew a bill from his pocket and began to smooth it lengthwise between his fingers.

She said, “What do you care about the March kid?”

“I care ten dollars—maybe.”

She laughed, sneeringly. “Cheap skate.”

“I always scale to size.”

She stared at him for a moment, furious. “Get out,” she said. “Get to hell out, you cheap little bastard.”

Clive shrugged. He put the bill away and turned the knob.

“All right, all right! If you want to act like a kike in a hockshop...” she screamed.

Clive came back again. She paced up and down in a cloud of smoke.

“Some guy brought her home,” she said. “The driveway goes right under my bedroom window. I heard 'em talking, and it made me sore because sometimes I got insomnia and I was just drifting off when they came in. I looked out the window. I was gonna tell 'em to shut up, but by that tune they were almost back to the garages. The girl sounded pretty sore about something and this guy was kidding her along, like he thought she was right and ought to do something about it. I couldn't hear any words. There's an echo out there. You can hear voices loud, but the words break up.

“Anyway, all of a sudden the March kid laughs, real nasty, like she's got somebody right where she wants him, and the guy laughs and pats her on the shoulder. They go upstairs and he kisses her and she goes in and shuts the door. And he goes away.” She came to Clive and thrust her hand out. “That's all.”

“What did the man look like?”

“For twenty I might remember.”

Clive smiled. He folded the ten carefully and shut his fingers on it. “The man was tall. He wore a black coat and a black hat pulled down over his face. And there was no moon so you couldn't have seen what he looked like if he'd been stark naked. Am I right?”

She cursed him.

“Sure,” said Clive wearily. “Sure. I'm not even very smart. I was just repeating something I heard before.”

He threw the bill on a table and went out. At the corner drugstore he stopped to call his office.

“Johnny, get busy on the phone and find out if anybody at the Skyway Club saw who Sugar March went home with the night before she died.”

Johnny groaned. “You hand me the sweetest jobs! Got something new?”

“Our pal in the black coat. He was with her when she got home. He still hasn't got a face.”

“Hey, that ties up with the keysmith. But there wasn't any tall guy in black, or anything civilian, near her when she fell.”

“Maybe,” said Clive reasonably, “he's really two midgets. I'll call you back.”

He bucked traffic at a modest twenty-five down Vine to Rossmore. He was still all by himself. A couple of butterflies began to play tag in his stomach. He thought, Hell, I've been in this game too long. Pretty soon I'll be looking under my bed nights instead of in it.

He stopped at a drive-in and weighed the butterflies down with some solid food. They were still fluttering when he went into the Cardiff Towers to see Mrs. Julia Krebs.

Clive took his clean shirt and expensive tweeds across an acre and a half of deep mulberry carpeting and gave his card to a sleek middle-aged man behind a circular desk.

“I'd like to see Mrs. Julia Krebs.”

The man lifted a telephone, making the diamonds sparkle on his fingers. “Six-A, please. Six-A? This is the desk calling. There is a Mr. Edmond Clive to see Mrs. Krebs.” He turned to Clive. “In regard to what did you wish to see her?”

“In regard to a Mr. Michael Hammond.”

He repeated that into the phone. There was a pause. Clive counted the silver-fox coats going in and out. Presently the man said “Thank you,” and turned again. “Mrs. Krebs is not in. Will you leave a message?”

Clive said pleasantly, “Tell the maid to tell Mrs. Krebs— when she comes in—that there is a matter of some correspondence that has become rather urgent. Mr. Hammond is anxious to have it taken care of right away.”

There was further conversation with the telephone. This time the sleek man hung up and gave Clive a peculiar look.

“Mrs. Krebs will see you, sir. Sixth floor, Apartment A. The elevators are on your left.”

“Thank you.” Clive's face was blandly innocent. “She made a quick trip, didn't she? Modern transportation is a wonderful thing.”

The maid let him in. She wore an ugly uniform, but the loose cut couldn't hide what was underneath. She had no make-up and her hair was drawn tight under an unflattering cap, but even that didn't spoil her much. Brown curls sneaked out anyway, her eyes were lively, and her lips were pink and full. Clive smiled at her when she took his hat. She wanted to answer it, but didn't. He went on in.

The apartment was one of those modernistic movie sets where the newly rich like to bask. White rug, thick square furniture with shaggy upholstery in unpleasant colors, shapeless art pieces, and miles of plate-glass windows. There was a nice view of the golf course. Mrs. Krebs was occupying center stage in front of it.

She fitted the place like a decorator's piece. She wore something flowing and informal in black velvet with a wide gold belt that showed off her perfect corseting. The neck was cut very low. Her black hair was dressed short, her hard, predatory face carefully made up and set off with gold earrings. She had nice hands and called attention to them by carrying a cigarette in a six-inch ivory holder. She wasn't as young as she hoped she looked, but for a certain type of man she would still have a lot of attraction.

Clive wasn't the type. He waited patiently until she got tired of trying to stare him down. Finally she turned to a pale green sofa and laid herself into it cornerwise, so that her long clean lines showed to advantage.

She said coldly, “I don't believe I understood your cryptic remark, Mr. Clive. I don't believe I liked it.”

Clive sat down in a chair, without being asked. “May I smoke?” Mrs. Krebs nodded curtly. Clive lighted a cigarette. He seemed to have all the time in the world. She watched him with impenetrable black eyes.

Clive said, with no particular emphasis, “Persecution, Mrs. Krebs, is a serious offense. The victim can collect quite a sum in damages.”

“Will you please come to the point!”

“Michael Hammond is innocent of the crime with which he is charged. When he's acquitted, he's going to take steps to end a particularly unpleasant type of mental blackmail.”

“I don't understand you!” She rose and faced him accusingly. “Innocent! Mick Hammond killed that girl and you know it. I remember your name now, Mr. Clive. I know what your game is. Mick needs money for the trial. I imagine his wife isn't going to pay for it! And you've decided that I'm the logical victim.” She made a vicious gesture with the ivory holder. “The bastard,” she whispered. “He told me he destroyed those letters. I should have known.”

“You should have known better than to write the ones you've been writing for the past six months.”

She said nothing for a moment, trying to probe Clive's hard eyes. “What are you trying to do?”

“I've been hired for a certain job, Mrs. Krebs. I'm trying to complete it.”

She wasn't a show piece any longer. She was an angry woman, not very handsome and fairly scared. “I won't pay blackmail, do you understand? I'll fight you. I'll see that bastard Hammond put where he'll never do any more harm, and you with him. Do you understand that, Mr. Clive?”

Clive smiled with his mouth. “You have this a little mixed, I think. Hammond is the one who will sue you.”

“Sue me?” She laughed. “This is a brand-new approach.”

“They found several clear prints on those letters. Will you object to having yours compared?”

“But of course my prints were on them... Who found them?”

“The police. And a typewriter is as identifiable as handwriting. Where do you keep your Royal, Mrs. Krebs?”

“But I wrote them by hand...” She stared at him, running slender red-nailed fingers along the neck of her gown. “Mick showed them to the police? I don't understand.”

Clive stood up impatiently. “Let's stop playing games. I don't care about any romantic swill you may have written Mick. I'm talking about the letters you've been sending his wife. You hate Mick. He used you, and that didn't go down very well. You wanted to get back at him. So you hired somebody to check up on his past and started feeding the details to Mrs. Hammond. You even told about yourself. A nice little touch of vengeful masochism there, Mrs. Krebs. You probably thought that would relieve you of all suspicion.” He picked up the phone. “I think it's tune we had some law in on this.”

She gestured sharply. Her white breast lifted hard, and her nostrils were pinched. Clive held his hand over the mouthpiece.

“I didn't write any letters like that,” she said. “I don't know anything about them. I haven't touched a typewriter in years. I don't own one. If there are prints on the letters they aren't mine. I don't mind having them checked. But I don't want any scandal. Please don't send the call through the switchboard. I'll go with you. I'll be glad to—”

“You'll have to do better than that, Mrs. Krebs. You didn't have to write the things yourself. The man who did your snooping for you—your maid—your secretary. The police are very thorough. They have ways of finding out.”

She straightened. Her face was composed again, the shrewd cold face of a woman who knows how to climb up in the world.

“Very well, Mr. Clive. Call the police. I shan't object to anything. I shall only say this: When everyone is quite satisfied that I had nothing to do with those letters I shall sue the police department and you personally for the highest damages my lawyers recommend.”

She turned her back on him, returning to her original position by the windows. Clive laid his finger carefully on the connection lever, holding it down. He spoke into the dead phone, watching her.

“Police headquarters? Clive speaking. Get me Lieutenant Gaines.” He waited. Mrs. Krebs didn't move. Clive put the phone down and laughed softly. “All right,” he said. “If you're bluffing, it's good enough to take me this tune. I can always come back.”

She didn't look at him. “Get out.” At the entrance into the hall her voice stopped him again. “I just want to say this. I'm glad someone sent Mrs. Hammond those letters. I wish I had thought of it myself. I hope that you will never find who did it And I hope that Mick Hammond will be convicted whether he's guilty or not.”

“Yes,” said Clive quietly. “I rather thought that was how you'd feel.”

The maid wasn't there. He picked up his hat and went out.

He found the service door down the hall. It let him onto a clean concrete landing with iron stairs running up and down and four white doors facing each other. He rapped on the one marked 6-A. The maid opened it.

She was startled. Clive took the door out of her hand and came inside and closed it.

“Don't be scared, honey. I only want to chat a while.” He removed his hat and let his eyes admire her. She flushed and looked away, patting at her hair.

Clive said, “For Pete's sake, why do you go around hiding under that burlap?”

She jerked her head toward the apartment. “She makes me.”

“I'll bet I know why.”

She had lovely teeth, and two dimples. “You do?”

“Sure. She doesn't want you stealing the scene from her.”

She laughed, bending over a brilliant kettle on the electric range. Clive sat down on a white enamel stool and sniffed at a plate of cookies laid out on a tea tray.

“Have one,” the girl said. “There's plenty more.”

It was crisp and had lumps of chocolate candy in it “Good,” he said. “Any chance of Her Nibs coining out here?”

“Not her! She wouldn't duty her feet walking into the kitchen.” The girl banged a cup and saucer down. “And I happen to know she used to work in a bargain basement in the Bronx!”

Clive picked up another cooky. “Been with her long?”

“Nearly eight years. Jobs weren't so easy to get for a while. But the way things are now...”

Clive let his eyes wander again. “I'll bet you'd look cute in coveralls, riveting.”

She giggled, passing close to him to set the tray.

He said casually, “I guess you know a lot about Mrs. Krebs.”

“You bet I do! I...” She stopped suddenly and turned on him. “Who are you? What do you want?”

He slid off the stool, smiling. “Take it easy, kid. I'm just a little guy with a job to do, and it doesn't have anything to do with tattling to Mrs. Krebs. In fact, I wouldn't blame you if you sneaked all her girdles into the rubber drive.” He pushed the remaining half of his cooky between her pouting lips. “Right now,” he added, watching her mouth move, “I'm enjoying my work.”

He leaned over and kissed her, keeping his hands between them. She squealed and colored, fumbling at the neck of her dress.

“Ooh!” she gasped, feeling the crackle of paper money. “What's that for?”

“Who bought the story of Mrs. Krebs and Michael Hammond from you?”

She stared at him, frightened.

“No one will ever know. I promise.”

She glanced at the dining-room door, and then back again. “All right,” she said hurriedly. “He said his name was Bill Kennedy, and he was a private detective. He met me down in the areaway one night and asked a lot of questions, and gave me a hundred dollars.”

“Could you see what he looked like?”

“Well, it was dark, and he kept his hat pulled down. But he was tall, taller than you are a lot, and bigger. I think he was wearing evening clothes. He had a nice voice and—well...” She flushed, laughing. “He had a mustache. I know that.”

Clive laughed, too. “Dark or light?”

“I couldn't tell by the feel of it. But I do remember that his skin looked as if it must be awfully dark, because I could see his teeth when he smiled in spite of there being hardly any light.” She frowned, pausing. “It seems to me I can almost remember almost seeing his mustache, once I knew it was there, like it would be lighter than his skin.”

Clive stood for a moment, looking at her and not seeing her. She caught her breath and drew back.

“What is it? What have I...”

Clive began to smile, almost caressingly, but not at her. “Nothing,” he said. “Only—you just started to put a face on Murder.”

Chapter 17

The road that Clive had chosen to take to the beach was narrow and not much traveled at this hour. He jammed the throttle down hard. Fields raced by beyond a deep ditch. Plowed land, and long straight rows of green. Presently, from a ramshackle little farmhouse up ahead, an ancient truck wheezed onto the highway with a load of celery.

Clive drove his foot down on the brake and his hand on the horn ring. The old truck didn't move any faster, finishing a left turn. Clive swore and pulled back on the emergency.

He wasn't doing more than twenty-five when the front wheel came off. The car slewed off into the ditch, churning mud with its rear wheels. The celery truck trundled away without stopping. Clive killed his motor and sat still with his eyes shut, gripping the wheel.

Somebody yelled, “Hey! Hey, there! Are you all right?”

A black sedan had pulled up on the edge of the road. A heavy-set man who looked like an oil-field worker stood at the top of the ditch.

“Yeah, I'm all right.” Clive got out stiffly, holding one arm tight across his middle. The man leaned over and gave him a hand up.

“Lucky for you that truck slowed you down,” he said. “If you'd throwed that wheel while you was travelin' like you was when you passed me...” He whistled.

“Yeah.” Clive looked at his car, and then at the wheel lying fifty feet away in the mud. His mouth twitched. “Can you take me to Del Key?”

“Sure, goin' home that way.” He helped Clive in. “Brother, you're sure lucky! Sure you're okay? You look kinda white around the gills.”

“Knocked my wind out, that's all. Get going.”

“Sure,” said the man in a hurt tone. “Sure. Only 7 ain't breakin' no speed laws.” He drove thirty-five miles an hour and no faster. He didn't speak again.

Clive loosened up enough to thank him when he reached Del Rey. He called his auto club and arranged a tow, and then got a taxi. He left it at Avenue Thirty-seven and said, “Wait.” He climbed the steps of the little house where he had gone three nights ago while Dion Beauvais waited in the fog.

The thin young man opened the door. He was still wearing his denim pants and his faded jersey and his cigarette. There was a large mottled bruise on the right side of his forehead.

He stared at Clive. “Jeez! I thought you was in the hospital.”

“I didn't have time to stay.” Somewhere out back a child was having a tantrum and a woman was yelling in a high, strident voice. The young man grinned.

“Home sweet home. Phooey. Come hi?”

“No, thanks. There was just something I wanted to ask. When you fell that night—how did it happen?”

“Well...” The young man scowled down at the sandy, oil-stained pavement at the bottom of the steps. “I ain't just sure. I got down the stairs okay, and then the walk just seemed to yank itself out from under my feet. I went down flat. I must have been stunned, because I seem to remember trying to get up and then it was like somebody hit me from behind.” He turned his head. “I gotta bruise under the ear. See?”

“Yeah. You didn't see anyone or hear anything?”

“Naw. It was blacker'n the inside of a cat. Hell, it was just one of those things, I guess. I still don't see how I cracked both sides of my bean, but you do funny things when you take a spill. I remember once when I was a kid...”

“Sure,” said Clive. “You used the word 'yank.' Why?”

“That was what it felt like. Like somebody pulled the sidewalk out from under me.” He shook his head. “Damned if I can see yet what I tripped on.”

Clive stood for a moment looking hard at nothing. Then he smiled and fished a bill out of his pocket. “Look, fella—I feel kind of responsible. Buy yourself some headache powders on me.”

“Jeez! I can drown myself in 'em for that. Well, thanks, pal!”

“Forget it. And the next guy that asks you to call the cops ' for him, boot his teeth in.”

“I ain't sure that would be any healthier! Hey—can't you ' tell me what goes on here? I mean, being practically in the middle of it, like...”

“Read the morning papers in a couple of days. By that time the news can't do you any harm.”

Clive went back to the cab. The child was still screaming. A dog barked savagely somewhere between the faded houses. The sun was bright, the sea smelled clean and strong and sharp with salt, and there were sea gulls crying. None of those things had changed any, in spite of the sprawling black stains on the sand.

He experienced, as always down there, a strange moment of duality. He was two people walking down the street: a boy in overalls who had not seen anything yet but the brightness and the cleanness and the soaring gulls—and a man named Ed Clive, who had.

He looked at the black stains without hostility. They understood each other.

Back in Hollywood, he left the hacker waiting and went up to his office. Jonathan Ladd Jones was nursing the Scotch and brooding at the telephone. He began to speak, slowly and with care.

“I hate Alexander Graham Bell. I hate his father, his mother, and his grandparents. I hate the telephone company. I hate the guys that string the wires on the poles.” He took a deep breath and lifted his gaze to Clive. “I am getting so I hate you.”

“There seems to be a general swing of opinion that way.” Clive was busy with a cigarette.

Johnny watched the way his hands moved and said, “What happened?”

“Somebody unscrewed the lugs on a front wheel and piled me in a ditch.” Clive sat on the corner of the desk and picked up the phone. The switchboard girl at his apartment house answered.

“Hello, honey. Clive speaking. Look, will you and Chuck and whoever else happens to be free get busy on something for me? Somebody got into my garage after my car was brought back... . Yeah, a little tampering job. Will you find out if any of the tenants who came home late that night happened to see anyone? Thanks. Call me back at my office as quick as you can. If I'm not here I'll get in touch with you later.”

He hung up and began pacing. “What did you find out, Johnny?”

“Like always. One of the waiters saw Sugar get into a car, but he couldn't see who was driving except that it seemed to be a man in black, like he might have on evening clothes.”

Clive smiled.

Johnny said patiently, “Okay, Ed. You've got the twitches and you're walking like a tomcat on hot bricks. What gives?”

“I don't know yet.”

“All right, make like a wooden Indian. I just work here. Mrs. Hammond called three times. She found out you'd skipped the hospital and she wants to be sure you're all right. If you can sit still that long, you can call her up. I'm not touching that damn phone again. The next time I do it'll bite me.”

Rather slowly, Clive dialed O and gave Jane Hammond's number. Mulligan took the call. Jane came quickly, as though she'd been waiting close by.

“Ed, you shouldn't be out of bed!”

“I'm doing fine, thanks.”

“Well, please be careful! I don't know what we'd do without you.” She paused, and then said so low he could hardly hear, “Are you going to save him, Ed?”

“Yes. Yes, Jane, I'm going to save him.” He heard her sharp intake of breath, and then the empty humming of the wire. “Is Vivien there?”

“I—I don't know. Oh, Ed, do you mean that?”

“I mean it. Will you find out if Vivien is there?”

He heard her call to Mulligan, and then she said, “Why do you want her? Is something wrong?”

“No. Look, Jane. I'd like you and Vivien to stay home tonight. I'm sending Johnny over.”

“Then—you must be afraid of something...”

“I don't know. I just don't want to take any chances.”

Clive put another cigarette in his mouth and lighted it from the butt of the last one, moving restlessly within the reach of the phone cord. Presently Mulligan came back and Jane said, “Vivien is down in the pool. Do you want to speak to her?”

“No, thanks. Just see that she stays there with you. I may have some news, later on.”

Jane whispered, “We'll wait, Ed. Be careful.”

He hung up. Johnny was getting his hat and coat. He glared.

“Now I know I hate you. Parking me with a couple of dames just when things start breaking. I oughta go on strike!” He jammed his hat on. “Besides, Ed, I ought to stay with you and you know it.”

Clive smiled briefly. “I need you right where I'm sending you. Take your gun and make sure it's loaded.”

“Trouble?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Farrar?”

The phone rang. Johnny started back hopefully. Clive said, “Get the hell out, will you?”

“I know,” said Johnny nastily. “For what you're going to do you don't want any witnesses.” He slammed the door.

The switchboard girl was on the other end of the line. She was breathless with excitement. “The Bevises. They came home about two o'clock from a friend's house and picked up a man with their headlights just as they turned into the drive. They almost hit him. He ducked around the corner real quick and went off down the street.”

“Could they see what he looked like?”

“He was a tall man, wearing a black coat and a black felt pulled down. But Mrs. Bevis said she saw the lower part of his face. He seemed to be quite sunburned and had a fair mustache. Does that help you, Mr. Clive?”

“It's just what I wanted. Thanks, honey.” He pressed the lever down and then slowly and deliberately dialed another number.

A feminine voice said, “Wilshire Crest Apartments.”

“What time does the night clerk—Gibson—come on?”

“At six, sir. Is there a message?”

“No, thanks.” Clive hung up and looked at his watch. It was five thirty-two. He got out the Scotch, noticing as he poured it that his hand shook slightly. Then he locked the office and went down to the waiting cab.

“Wilshire and Fan-fax, and fast. I've got a damned important errand before the shops close at six.”

They made it in twelve minutes. Clive shoved a bill at the driver. “Know any prayers, bud?”

The man stared at him. “I was brought up Catholic, and I married a Jew. I know all the prayers there are.”

“Well, say 'em for me.”

He walked away, looking at signs on the store fronts. May's Wilshke towered above the crowds waiting for buses on all four corners. The gold clock on its onyx front said five-forty-five. Two blocks up the Boulevard the modernistic windows of the Wilshire Crest burned flame-yellow in the low sunlight.

There were two cleaners-and-dyers in opposite blocks. Clive went into the nearer one. There was a girl about sixteen behind the counter, wearing the inevitable Sloppy Joe and an upswept hair-do trimmed with flowers. She smiled at Clive out of a wide face covered with freckles like rust spots.

Clive said, “Does a man named Kenneth Farrar bring his cleaning here?”

She kept on smiling. It didn't seem to mean anything. “I really couldn't say. I'm just helping out here while...”

“Could you find out?”

“Well, I don't know. I don't know just where my father keeps his records and everything. You see I'm just helping...”

“You said that. Is—”

“Could you come back tomorrow?”

“I could not. Isn't there somebody out back there?”

“Father's just putting some early deliveries in the truck. We're really ready to close...”

Clive put his hands flat on the counter. He said carefully, “Go out and ask your father if he has a customer named Kenneth Farrar. If he has, tell him to come here.”

She stopped smiling. “Now you wait a minute, mister. This is our shop, and if we—”

“This is a homicide investigation. Will you get your father or shall I?”

She let her mouth stay open while she looked at him. Then she whirled around and went out.

When she came back with a stubby, bald, freckled man who held her protectively behind him, the clock on May's Wilshire said five fifty-three. It took the stubby, bald, freckled man exactly three minutes more to go through the F's and make sure that he did no cleaning for anyone named Kenneth Farrar. He seemed pleased about it.

Clive went out again.

He had to cross two intersections to get to the other shop. He reached it just as the woman inside turned the hanging sign around to CLOSED. The door was locked. Clive rapped on it. The woman shook her head. She was a small, alert, and very business-like brunette in neat green pants. She started away through the back of the shop.

Clive swore. He knocked again, furiously. The woman looked angrily back and he flashed his illegal badge.

The woman returned and unlocked the door. “Well?”

“Police business. I want to ask you some questions.”

She let him in, reluctantly. “John,” she called. “Oh, John.” A big sandy young man came through from the inside room. She said, “He's a policeman.”

“What do you want? We haven't done anything.”

“Homicide investigation,” Clive said. “Do you do cleaning for a man named Kenneth Farrar?”

“Homicide!” said the brunette. Her eyes grew very bright. “Has he committed a murder?”

“Then be does bring his cleaning here?”

“Oh, yes. He's a steady customer. Lives right up here at the Wilshire Crest—”

“Did he bring in a black coat recently?”

“Seems to me he did....”

Clive watched her. The place was hot, choky with steam and chemicals. He was sweating heavily, and the nervous tic pulled his facial muscles at intervals.

“Why, yes,” the woman said. “I remember. He showed me some grease spots on it. Said he'd had to change a tire on the road and could I get the stuff out.”

“Has it been cleaned yet?”

She looked inquiringly at the sandy young man. He shook his head.

“We're so far behind on our work it isn't even funny. You can't get help these days, I have to do all my own pressing—”

“Sure, sure! May I see the coat, please.”

The young man shrugged and went into the back room. Clive walked up and down, smoking. He didn't look like a man who wanted to talk. The woman kept quiet. After a while the man came back with a black topcoat.

Clive spread it on the counter. There were two or three streaks of grease on the skirts, outside. They might have come from changing a tire, or doing something else to a wheel. He turned it over and looked at the inside.

There were two distinct places where the cloth was bruised and scraped as though from heavy friction. It had been brushed, but the broken fibers showed plainly. There was sand worked deeply into the fabric, and one big smear of oil.

Clive took his hands away and smiled.

The woman drew back against the wall. “My God. You look...”

He started, laughed, and began folding the coat. His fingers touched it as though it were the naked skin of some woman he was very fond of.

“Wrap this,” he said. “Put it in a safe place and don't touch it again. Someone will be around from Headquarters in the morning to pick it up.”

She moved toward it, still staring at Clive. The pleasant excitement had all gone out of her.

The lobby of the Wilshire Crest Apartments was small, expensive, and empty except for the man behind the desk. He was plump and pink and baldish, wearing a very neat conservative dark suit and steel-rimmed spectacles. “You're Gibson?”

“That's right, sir.”

Clive handed him a card. “I'm working on the Hammond murder case. I want to talk to you—in private.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed, Mr. Clive! I spoke to you once before, I believe, over the phone.” The same note of thrilled excitement was in his voice again. Middle-aged suburbia whose chief relaxation was reading murder mysteries. “Has something new come up?”

“Yeah. Where can we talk?”

“The manager's office, right over there. I'll have to call the boy to take over the desk.” Gibson pushed a plunger on the switchboard.

“Is Kenneth Farrar here now?” Clive said. “He went out not five minutes ago.”

Clive nodded and went across to the door marked Office. He paused a moment, studying the lobby. The desk was to the right of the doorway, the elevator and stairway directly opposite, to the left. The elevator was automatic.

The office was a neat, impersonal little room, containing nothing but a desk and three chairs. Clive walked around it restively until Gibson came in.

“Now, Mr. Clive, what can I do for you?”

“Sit down.”

He sat. Clive went on walking.

“You told the police that Farrar came in about a quarter to one on the night Laurel Dane was murdered, and didn't go out again.”

“That's right.”

“How do you know it was Farrar?”

“I—why, I just know it was, that's all.”

“Did he come up to the desk?”

Gibson's pink face was beginning to look frightened. “Why—no, he...”

“Did he speak to you?”

“No. He seemed surly—perhaps a trifle, well, under the weather.”

“Did you see his face clearly?”

“Well, yes. That is, I...”

“Did you!”

“I... he had his hat pulled down over his right eye. He always wears it that way. But I know it was he!”

Gibson was sitting on the edge of his chair, his plump fists clenched on his knees. Clive came and stood over him. His face was impassive, hard with a hardness that Gibson had read about but never seen. He said slowly, “The man didn't come near you, he didn't speak to you, you didn't see his face, but you know it was Farrar.”

Gibson ran his tongue twice across his lips. “But it never occurred to me that it could be anyone else.”

“Exactly.” Clive seemed faintly contemptuous. “I'll tell you what you saw, Mr. Gibson. You saw a tall man, of Farrar's build, dressed in Farrar's clothes. At that hour in the morning—what tune do you go off duty?”

“Two o'clock. I live in the building.”

“All right. At a quarter to one your powers of observation are not very alert. You have no reason to suspect that what you're looking at is other than what it seems. You see a man resembling Farrar, wearing his hat and topcoat. You see him walk across the lobby with his back to you, toward the elevator. His hat is pulled down over his face and he is apparently somewhat drunk. Therefore you do not think it strange that he doesn't speak, and any dissimilarity in carriage you automatically put down to the influence of liquor. Am I correct, Mr. Gibson?”

Gibson ran distracted fingers through his thinning hair. “I don't know. I'm all confused. When you put it that way, I...” He glanced up. “I just know it was Mr. Farrar!”

Clive looked at him sullenly. “Mr. Gibson!” He leaned across the corner of the desk. It was as though he were the defense attorney and Gibson a witness on the stand.

“Mr. Gibson, this is a murder case. At least three lives have been taken. Attempts have been made to take others. From my own personal knowledge I can say that my client is innocent, and I have definite, concrete proof of Kenneth Farrar's involvement. Your word is all that stands between one man and the gas chamber.”

He bent closer. His voice had an impersonal ruthlessness. “I'm only a private detective. In the courtroom you will face expert legal men. Can you go honestly into court, knowing that a man's life depends on you, and give your sworn testimony that the man you saw on the night of the murder was Kenneth Farrar?”

He stopped. Silence closed in, very still, pressing silence. Gibson closed his eyes. There were beads of sweat on his bald forehead. After a while he relaxed, with an air of letting go.

“No,” he said quietly. “I don't suppose I can. And after talking to you I can see that it would do me very little good if I did.”

He rose, looking at Clive with direct and simple dignity. “I am still sure in my own mind that the man I saw was Kenneth Farrar.”

Clive gave him a smile of surprising gentleness. “Murder, Mr. Gibson, is only fun to read about—for most people. If it's any consolation, you've saved an innocent man.”

“I hope so. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Can you find me some paper and an envelope?”

“I believe there's some in the desk.” He laid it out on the blotter. Clive wrote hurriedly, sealed the envelope, addressed it to Detective-Lieutenant Jordan Gaines, Homicide, put a stamp on it, and handed it to Gibson.

“I noticed a box just outside. Will you drop this in for me?”

“Of course, but...”

“I'm leaving by the back way. In case I was seen coming in here, it's a little less public.”

Gibson went rather white. “You mean...”

“Exactly.” He patted the little man kindly on the shoulder. Gibson stared at him as though he were something strange and not quite human.

“Down the hall to your left,” he said flatly.

Chapter 18

It was almost dark, with a scatter of huge stars burning on a deep blue sky. There was a broad paved area at the back of the building, with the garages beyond. To the right of the back steps a short flight led down to a door marked Janitor. Subdued light spilled out over the pavement from windows set flush with the ground.

Clive went down and rang the bell.

A stocky little man with a tough, good-natured face opened the door. His speech had a definite tang of Billingsgate.

“What'll it be, sir?”

Clive looked past his shoulder. There was a radio playing popular music. From a half-open door across the living room came the usual sounds and smells of dinner cooking. There was no one within hearing. Clive identified himself.

“Gawd!” said the janitor. “I read the papers. Guess they've got Hammond right where they want him now.”

“They've still got the wrong man. Do you want to help me prove it?”

Bright, shrewd eyes studied him. “How?”

“I need a passkey.”

“Here, now! I can't...”

“Of course not. But people drop things sometimes. I think I just dropped a bill there on the steps. Maybe you dropped the key.”

The janitor grinned slowly. “Maybe I did,” he said. “Now maybe I did, at that.”

Clive turned his back. He heard a metallic rattling and then something rang on the concrete near his foot. He picked it up.

“You should get that hole in your pocket fixed. Good night.” He climbed the steps. On the way his shoe pushed a folded bill down into the light. The man laughed.

“I like it better this way. Thanks, and good hunting, pal.”

Clive waited for a couple coming from the garages to precede him into the apartment house, and went unnoticed up the back stairway to the third floor.

There was no one in the hall. There was only the usual murmur of voices, radios, and people moving around. Clive unlocked Farrar's door and locked it carefully again behind him. He didn't turn on the lights. His pocket torch gave him all he needed.

He worked quickly. The apartment was neat with the sterile neatness of a man who kept nothing, not the smallest scrap of paper, except what might be locked away in a safe-deposit box. The only thing Clive found in any of the desk or table drawers was a medium-caliber revolver.

It was the same with the bureau and the dressing table. Even the pockets of the suits hanging in the closet were stripped clean. Farrar was a businessman, and a good one.

Without much hope, Clive dragged a small suitcase out of a corner of the closet and opened it. The things in it had evidently been thrown there in a hurry. He pulled out a pair of soiled blue pajamas, slippers, and a silk dressing gown. There was nothing else. He went through the pockets of the gown. The first one was empty. The second held a handkerchief with a smear of lipstick on it, and a crumpled penny postcard.

It was a commonplace, unimportant thing. Something pocketed for future attention, and then forgotten. Just a form notice from the gas company that the monthly bill was overdue. It had been mailed two days before the death of Laurel Dane, and was addressed to Mr. William Kennedy, on Lookout Mountain Avenue.

Clive's hands began to tremble.

Moving very quickly, he shoved the card in his pocket, put the bag back in the closet, and went to the telephone in the other room. He called a taxi, giving instructions for it to stop on the side street. When he went down the back stairway to meet it he was smiling. His eyes glittered like agates in the light.

He found the cab, parked in heavy shadow under a line of trees. There were several cars along the curb and more half a block away on Wilshire. Any one of them might have had a watcher in it. Apparently no one followed the taxi, but between the darkness and the dimout a car without lights would have been hard to see. Once on Fairfax there was enough traffic to make it impossible to tell.

Clive chain-smoked all the way up Fairfax to Laurel Canyon, and then up a winding narrow road between the hills, climbing Lookout Mountain past little dim cabins clinging to the canyon walls. He had the itch between his shoulders again, as he had that night in the fog, with Beauvais.

The driver stopped high up toward the crest, setting the brake hard.

“That's it, ahead there. The last house on the road. If I go any farther I won't be able to turn around. Want I should wait?”

“Yeah. Turn off your lights.”

The road behind them was a tunnel of solid black twisting down the mountain. There was no other house closer than three hundred feet, and that was deserted. There were no sidewalks, no light but the pale shine of stars with mist across them. The air was cold, sharp with sage and eucalyptus, and it was quiet—the crisp, brittle quiet of a place where little furry things make all the noise there is.

Clive transferred his automatic from the holster to the front of his waistband, leaving his coat open. He walked up toward the crest.

Presently he made out the shape of a low roof and the heavier darkness of shrubs below it. His shoes grated softly on gravel, and then there were steps, rough wood, and a handrail greasy with dampness.

The front of the house was three stories high, with a garage on the bottom and the living room on top, and something with no windows and a padlocked door in between. The lock was rusted far beyond opening.

The front door was locked, too. Clive followed a flagged path back into a small garden. There was nothing but stillness between the crouching shadows of the plants. He found a rear door. It was fastened tight, but it was made of glass. Clive used his gun barrel to smash the small pane by the lock. It made a hellish racket. He waited. Nothing moved anywhere. He reached in and turned the key.

Inside there was pitch blackness and stale warm air. Clive locked the door and put the key in his pocket. The slats of the Venetian blind were already pulled shut. There was a roller shade on the one large window. It was down. Clive flashed the tiny beam of his torch.

There was a double bed with a spread of red satin pulled half off and trailing on the floor with a tangle of bedclothes. The pillows and the lower sheet were rumpled. There was a thin layer of dust on them. A woman's filmy white negligee lay on the floor across a pair of satin mules.

Directly opposite him was a door leading into a long, narrow hallway. Beside it, the wing mirror catching the torch beam in a maze of reflections, was a low dressing table. There was a picture on it: Jane Hammond in a silver frame.

Clive went quietly down the hall.

There was a big window with curtains of striped crash drawn across it in the left-hand wall. On the right were doors to a small bath and a midget kitchen, and an open arch to a dining alcove. At the end were two steps leading down into the living room.

It ran the width of the house. Rustic ceiling, knotty pine walls, wide windows covered with the striped crash, bookcases, a few pieces of light furniture, and a couch before a huge stone fireplace. Clive stood listening. There was no sound but his own breathing.

The front door had a bolt, but he left it undrawn. There was a string of Persian camel bells on the wall, the horsehair tassels brilliant turquoise against the wood. He took them down carefully, so that they gave off only a faint chiming. He hung them on the handle of the door and tied them there with his handkerchief. Then he returned to the bedroom.

Jane Hammond's picture threw bright glints at him from its silver frame. He went through the dressing table. In the middle drawer were a comb, a brush, a box of powder, and a lipstick. They seemed unimportant to him and he left them alone. In the lower right-hand drawer, flung in as though in anger and hanging partly outside, was a transparent nightgown of some silky white stuff. There was no laundry mark on it. The label bore the name of a good, but not exclusive, maker. Clive dropped it back and turned away, unconsciously rubbing his hand across his thigh as though he had touched something not quite clean. He picked up the negligee. There was a cleaner's tag on an inside seam. He laid it on the bed and reached for the mules—5 1/2 M, from an expensive shoe company. Clive put them with the negligee and swung his light around.

A bureau. Nothing on the top, the drawers half open and empty. A closet, also empty. Nothing more anywhere.

Clive folded the negligee, laid the picture on it, put the satin slippers on the picture, and rolled the whole thing into a neat bundle, tucking it under his arm.

In the bath there was only an impersonal collection of soap and toothbrushes. The kitchen had not been used for some time. He went into the living room, snapped off the torch, and stood listening to the crickets singing outside in the brush.

Using the light again, he found a door in the front corner of the room. There seemed to be only an empty closet beyond, until he saw that part of the left-hand wall had been cut away and there were steps going down, like a ship's ladder. The closet floor creaked as he walked over it.

Below was a big unfinished room, to which belonged the door with the rusted padlock. Rough empty shelves, a couch, a scarred table and chair, and a green-shaded lamp hanging from the ceiling. Probably in the beginning it had been a writer's workroom. Clive leaned over the table.

There was nothing on it now but a film of dust. By shining the light obliquely he could see the faint smudges left by the rubber-padded feet of a typewriter. There was a trace of fresh eraser dust in the cracks. Otherwise the place was stripped clean.

Clive went upstairs again. There was no sound in the living room, no faintest chime from the bells. He returned to the bedroom, turned the key noiselessly, pulled the automatic out of his waistband, and stepped into the garden, moving fast and making no more noise than a cat. It was still empty of anything but shadows.

The air struck cold on his skin, with a smell of sea fog under the bitterness of the damp hills. He walked along the path to the front and halted. The roadway below made a blacker streak against the rough ground. He could make out the shrubbery around the steps, and off to the left the lighter blob of the yellow taxi. The driver was smoking. The tiny red coal of his cigarette glowed and paled behind the windshield like a lantern seen at a great distance down a railroad track. The crickets chirped drowsily.

Clive stepped out into the starlight.

The stairway was narrow, long, railed in, and naked. His body made a moving patch of shadow. The light touch of his feet on the treads sounded loud, like a man walking in a church. He reached the bottom, covered with cold sweat.

He crossed the gravel path to the road. The little red glow of the hacker's cigarette dimmed and brightened, dimmed and brightened. Clive gave himself a crooked, self-derisive grin. He let his gun hand drop to his side and walked on down the hill.

The driver flipped his butt away, an arc of fire against the night. The motor snarled, coughed, and settled to an even purring. Clive quickened his pace. The lights blazed on. Bright lights, the big beam, a blinding white glare.

Clive jerked up a startled hand to shield his eyes, and before it could get there the motor roared into gear and the lights were rushing at him.

He yelled. Sheer muscular reflex sent him leaping for the ditch. A tremendous weight struck him glancingly on the hip. He went down in a spurt of stinging gravel and a cloud of exhaust fumes, rolling over on brush and rocks and hard earth.

For a moment everything went away. Then, down at the end of a long spinning funnel of blackness, he saw the taxi again. It rushed backward obliquely down the hill, shining its red tail lights, carrying the white beam of its lamps behind it like a bride's train. It was coming for him, in the shallow ditch.

Clive was still gripping the automatic. He raised it and fired twice through the rear window, so rapidly that the slam of the shots blended into one echoing crack against the sleeping hills. Then he threw himself out of the way.

The taxi swerved and crashed the ditch beside him, so close that the impact jarred him clear to the heart. The motor died. The headlamps blinked and then went on shining, a hard-edged path across the hillside. The crickets had stopped singing.

The door by the driver's seat swung open.

A man came out, slowly, the upper half of him first, sliding face down along the edge of the seat, his knees still under the wheel. His hands slipped over the running board, tightened, and gripped it. There was blood on them. It looked black in the reflected light. The hacker's peaked cap fell off his head. He had fair hair, but the whole left side of his face was black—black, and glistening.

Presently he fell the rest of the way, into the gravel on the edge of the road, and lay still. He was not dead. He breathed, an agonized sound.

Clive stood up. He was very slow about it, but reasonably steady. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and turned the beam full in the man's face.

He must have been twisted around, watching over his shoulder through the rear window, steering with one hand. One of Clive's bullets had taken most of his cheek away.

He was still recognizable as Kenneth Farrar.

Clive flashed the torch into the cab. The hacker lay in the luggage space, his head propped up in the corner under the dash, his knees doubled onto his chest. He didn't mind the discomfort. He didn't mind Clive's light in his eyes. He had bled slightly from the nose and ears.

Clive put the flashlight away. He got a cigarette and lighted it with his left hand, watching Farrar in the reflection of the headlamps.

Farrar began to pull his hands and feet in under him. It took him a long time. He lifted himself up onto the running board finally, leaning back against the seat. He made a vague gesture toward his face, but did not finish it. He seemed not to want to know what had happened there.

Clive said, “You almost had me.”

Farrar's eyes had a curious bleached pallor, as though the color was running out of them with the blood. They were not so different from the eyes of the dead man behind him. He tried to speak. He didn't go on with it.

Clive said, “You saw me going into your apartment house.”

Farrar nodded. A lock of blond hair had fallen over his forehead. A handsome, devil-with-the-ladies lock.

“You waited for me. You knew you'd been seen the night you loosened the wheel on my car. You knew I'd know who it was even if I couldn't prove it to the police. You felt me walking up on your heels, Farrar. So you waited. You followed me. And I walked into it. I don't really deserve to be alive.” He paused. “Too bad you had to kill the hacker. It wasn't his fight.”

He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. Farrar watched him. There was a cold understanding in his eyes. He tried to speak again.

“I'll tell you,” Clive went on. “You didn't pay your gas bill. You shoved the card in the pocket of your dressing gown, and then Laurel was killed and you forgot it. Such an unimportant little thing. Bad luck. But you've played in bad luck right along, haven't you? You were seen when the keysmith died. You were seen with Sugar March. No face. Just a tall black shadow. But even a shadow can be traced. I found your coat, Farrar. It hadn't been cleaned yet. The police will have it tomorrow.”

Farrar moved his hands up to his belly. They were half closed and lax, the wrists pressing in. His eyelids had drawn narrow. Clive gestured toward the house.

“She didn't take her things away. She's been too busy.”

Farrar leaned forward. His voice came out, but there was no shape to it. Clive nodded slowly, and smiled. Farrar began to laugh. He laughed until he choked on the blood running down his throat. After that it was still again.

Clive put another cigarette between his lips and lighted it, left-handed. In the quick flame his eyes were steady, dark, without emotion. Farrar's hands crept higher. Clive took the cigarette in his left hand and held it out, butt foremost.

“Smoke?”

Farrar nodded. He raised his right hand and wiped the back of it across the side of his mouth that was still there. Clive leaned over him and placed the cigarette carefully in the corner of his lips.

Farrar's hand dropped down, fast, inside his coat.

Clive let him get the automatic in his palm, clear of the holster, clear of his coat. Then he shot Farrar once through the center of the forehead.

He stepped back.

The body fell slowly forward and lay quietly in the dust. Clive's eyes widened, suddenly hot, with the reddish blaze that brown eyes get at times. Presently he put his gun away and went back to the ditch.

He found the filmy robe and the slippers and the picture where he had scattered them in his fall and wrapped them together again. Walking diagonally up the road to where it ended, he selected a place where rainwater had channeled the hillside and hid the bundle under a pile of dead brush and debris. Then he returned to the house.

The crickets were singing again. Down the road there were two men who didn't hear them. The crickets didn't care. 'The hills didn't care. Nothing, here, would ever care.

Chapter 19

The camel bells were back on the wall. The front door stood open to the night, throwing a hard electric glare across the damp shrubs outside. Men with heavy boots tramped on the wooden stairs. Down the road there were lights and voices and men moving around, the white explosions of flash bulbs, a jam of official cars, and the morgue ambulance. There was a cordon across the road, and beyond it a surprising number of people who had followed the sirens up from the main road.

In the living room Edmond Clive sat in the one big chair, smoking. He had his hat pushed back and one leg hung comfortably over the chair arm. Lieutenant Gaines leaned on the edge of a table, looking sullen, suspicious, and annoyed.

“All right,” he said, “it all checks, and I suppose it's a clear case of self-defense.”

Clive smiled with innocent pleasure.

Gaines sighed. “You goddam son of a bitch. Okay. Go ahead and draw me a diagram.”

“Sure thing, sonny.” dive's attitude was kindly. “There has been from the beginning a tall dark shadow mixed up in everything connected with Laurel's murder. He was around the night the keysmith was killed. He was with Sugar March before she died. There was a distinct odor of him that time at the beach when Beauvais and his pal took me to the wall. Then he had a stroke of bad luck. Up to there he was just a shadow. But he tinkered with my car, and somebody saw him. They put a face on him for me. Farrar's face.”

“You've got witnesses, of course.”

“I'll give you the list tomorrow. I checked the cleaning shops in Farrar's neighborhood and found a coat he had brought in. You can get it in the morning. There's grease on the outside that will check with the grease on the front wheel of my car. On the inside, you'll find something much more interesting.” He paused, glancing up at Gaines. “I'm afraid you'll have to let Hammond go.”

“For Farrar? He had an alibi.”

“Yeah. Had an alibi. Check with Gibson.”

Gaines settled his big body on the table edge. “All right, Clive,” he said. “This will have to be good.”

“It's good enough.” Clive leaned back in the chair. He looked drawn and tired, and there was no mockery in his voice now. “Farrar dropped into the Skyway Club one night and heard Laurel sing. He fell for her, fell hard. He tried his best to make her. But Laurel couldn't see him, and Farrar didn't like that. He was used to getting any dame he wanted. He kept on trying, looking sillier and getting madder. Probably Laurel gave him the rough side of her tongue—she had one. So Farrar decided he was going to break her, or else.

“He paraded as a private dick, and he was a good one, but it was only a professional means to an end. His chief income was from blackmail. I knew it. You knew it. We all did. He was just too damned smart to give us anything to prove it with. He guessed, the same way I did, that Laurel had a past and that she was afraid of someone. He decided to find out about it and use the knowledge to club Laurel into doing what he wanted her to.

“I was out of town all that time, but he must have known he'd have to tangle with me. He was willing to. He'd gone too far to back out without making a fool of himself, and he was no canary. He figured himself for a very hard boy, and he was. Besides, we'd been drifting toward a showdown for a long time.

“He got Laurel's apartment key out of her dressing room, had it duplicated, and then searched her place. He found the same thing Big Fella found—the marriage license and the picture of her and Dion Beauvais. He was all set to put the screws on. Then I got back in town.

“Laurel was scared, not of Farrar, but of Beauvais. She knew her apartment had been searched. Naturally, she connected it with her husband. She wanted my help. Mick Hammond was rung in. Things began to look more complicated. Perhaps Farrar began to get a little nervous.

“He and I boxed our opening round that night at the Skyway Club. After that I have no way of knowing exactly what went on in Farrar's mind, except that he was sore as hell at me and annoyed because his plans had got bitched up. Korsky checked him through several bars—he was dosing his grouch with alcohol, and that never helps much. Maybe he knew then that he was going to kill Laurel. Maybe it had reached the point where he had to have her or kill her. Maybe he wasn't sure what he was going to do. But he was a cautious bastard. He was already closely identified with Laurel, and he had, in an unguarded moment—Farrar was human, he got tight at times, and he had an ugly temper—shot off his face to Sugar March. Probably all he said was that Laurel was too damn snotty and needed taking down, but still it was unfortunate. Whatever the reason was, he fixed himself an alibi, just in case. In case, maybe, that he ran into me and had to do something permanent about it.

“He got some guy, probably a small-time mugg who had done things for him before and could be made to keep his mouth shut, to put on his, Farrar's, hat and coat and go home to the Wilshire Crest. He figured that at one A.M. the clerk would accept any man of his build, wearing his clothes, and appearing slightly drunk, as Kenneth Farrar, if he didn't speak to him or see his face clearly. Then Farrar went up to Laurel's apartment.

“It was dark and quiet. He decided Laurel was alone and tried to get in with his key, but the door was bolted. I got knocked out about then, but Farrar must have waked Laurel by knocking. He forced her to let him in, threatening her with what he knew. She wasn't really frightened. She must have wondered where I was, but she knew I wouldn't leave her. She thought I'd be right back.

“Farrar may not have realized right away that Mick was in the bedroom. He put the squeeze on Laurel. I suppose that first she was angry, and then she began to get scared. I didn't come back, and I had her gun...”

Clive's gaunt face tightened. There was a thin film of sweat on his skin.

“She tried to wake Mick, and Farrar hit her with the blackthorn stick, lying so handy on the table. Maybe he didn't mean to kill her. Maybe he just wanted to shut her up. Maybe he was so damned mad at her he didn't care. Anyway, he hit her too hard. It's easy to do, at the base of the skull. She died, and he was there with a murder on his hands.

“But it was a pretty good murder. He'd used Mick's cane. The act didn't look premeditated and he had an alibi. There was nothing to connect him with it except the key he'd had made, and a tottery old guy like the keysmith would be easy to get rid of. He wiped off the stick and the doorknob and went away, leaving Mick framed for the kill.

“It was no trick to push the old man downstairs. Farrar was clean. I might have suspicions, but he could handle me. He was sitting pretty. And then the news broke about the guy in the kitchen.

“That bitched him, right there. He must have sweat blood. He wasn't in any danger from Big Fella, but he couldn't know that. He had to find out who the man was and get rid of him, and that wasn't going to be easy. However, the guy didn't spill over to the police, and that meant to Farrar that he was holding out for blackmail. But nobody approached Farrar. Then it occurred to him that I was the logical one for the mystery man to make a deal with. With my personal involvement I'd be willing to pay him highly, offer him the most protection, and have no motive to bump him off.

“So Farrar started tagging me around. He must have seen Beauvais going into my place. He fixed up your prowl car so it wouldn't interfere, fixed up a couple more so it wouldn't look deliberate—Farrar had a well-developed accident technique—and followed us down to the beach. He knew, of course, that Beauvais was clean, so he was pretty sure we were leading him to the man in the kitchen.

“We did. I'll give Farrar credit for being able to tail us in that fog. The guy was a genius at it. He followed me up to the house where I found out where Big Fella was living, and then another complication came up. He was close, a lot closer than Beauvais, and he heard me tell the young guy to call the cops. He didn't want cops. He didn't want another murder, either—one there couldn't be any reason for. He didn't, above all, want the guy just knocked on the head, which would have made it obvious that somebody besides Beauvais and me was in on the deal. He didn't, of course, have any idea how the business was going to turn out. So he arranged another accident.... I wrote you a note about it, in case I got the worst of this game.”

“You gave yourself plenty of tune to play it alone.”

“It was black as hell down there. His coat was dark. He laid it down at the bottom of the steps, waited till the young fellow came out, and then pulled it out from under him. He took a nasty fall, and Farrar gave him one under the ear just to make sure—an extra bump he might have got hitting a step or something. You'll find sand, oil, and friction burns on the inside of Farrar's coat. Then he went down to Big Fella's cabin, crawled up close in the fog, and watched the fun.

“Everything worked out swell, for him. Big Fella was playing his own game. All Farrar had to do was ride my car down over Big Fella's neck. Another accident, sweet, clean, and simple. He left Beauvais alive to nail the gas-box shut on Hammond. He didn't know whether I was still kicking or not, but he didn't think it mattered. He supposed even I would be convinced.”

Gaines said, “What about the horn you heard blowing?”

“As you said.” Clive shrugged. “Some local wolf having trouble with his girl. Probably that's another reason why Farrar didn't stop to bother with me. He was afraid somebody might come. He was sorry afterwards. I wasn't convinced. And with all the other suspects eliminated, that left Kenneth Farrar sticking out like a beacon in a blackout. His guilty conscience began to work on him. Just the police wouldn't have bothered him so much, because police have to have proof. He knew I didn't have to. He tinkered my car. Somebody saw him, and I didn't get killed. He knew he'd left traces behind. You can't help leaving them. They didn't add up to anything for the cops, but he knew they would to me. He had to get me before I got him, and before I could convince anyone else that he was guilty.

“He had a stroke of luck. He saw me going into his place. He waited for me, followed me up here, and got all set. He wanted me dead by accident. It might look just a little queer if I was murdered. Also, bullets can be traced and there was no ideal place to hit me over the head from behind. Besides, he couldn't afford to have signs of violence around this house—it could be traced to him through the rental agent, who could identify him, and Kennedy is an alias he's used before. That's one reason he had to kill the cabby too, poor bastard.

“He was going to run me down and then put me inside and ride the cab onto some other road and off into a gully. If it didn't catch fire by itself he could always throw a match in the gas tank. Regrettable accident. Poor Eddie, the son of a bitch. I hope he's in hell. You and Farrar could have wept a little on each other's shoulders. And from there on out he was as clean as a whistle. Only it didn't work, quite.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

Gaines said morosely, “Why did you think this house might have something to do with Laurel Dane's murder?”

“I didn't. I was just fishing for anything I could get. The coat and the broken alibi were good, but maybe not quite good enough for a jury. The house turned out to be just another love nest, but Farrar convicted himself.”

Gaines fingered the transparent nightgown on the table. “He must of had some fun up here, at that. What about the March dame?”

“Maybe he was planning to kill her, maybe not. Anyway, she did it for him.”

“Uh-huh. And the nasty letters. They were just a side issue?”

“Yes. Mrs. Hammond can do something more about them or not, as she pleases.”

“I don't suppose Farrar was mixed up with those letters.”

“There doesn't seem to be any evidence one way or the other.”

Gaines shifted his weight slowly onto his feet. “We'll check all this. Up, down, and backward.”

“Go ahead, kiddie. It's all yours.”

“All right,” Gaines said sourly. “I guess you hold enough aces to take my hand.”

Clive nodded pleasantly.

Games said three words with careful distinctness and turned on his heel. Clive laughed.

“Give my love to Korsky.”

Gaines went out. Clive rose and telephoned the Hammond house. Mulligan answered.

“Everything all right there?”

“Yes, sir. The ladies are with Mr. Jones in the library. Shall I...?”

“No. Just tell them to stay put. I'm coming right over. And Mulligan—you can tell Mrs. Hammond that Mick will be home in the morning.”

Outside there were sounds of breaking up and going away. A plain-clothes man waited impatiently to lock the house. Clive called a taxi, and went out.

The noise, the lights, the cars, and the people drained back down the black funnel of the road. For a few moments he was alone. He threw his head back and struck his fist against the side of the house and laughed.

He got the filmy white bundle out of the brush and walked down to meet the taxi.

Chapter 20

Jane Hammond said softly, “So that's how it was.”

She sat in one of the rose-colored library chairs, looking long and slim and lovely in blue. She had a radiance about her that did not come from the lamplight.

Clive nodded. “That's how it was.”

Jonathan Ladd Jones, hunched up sullenly by the fireplace, turned to glare at him. “I should have been with you. I told you that. What if you'd been killed?”

“You'd have been out of a job and a quart of free Scotch a day.” Clive stood up, glancing over at Vivien. She was curled in a corner with her feet under her, her face in shadow. She watched him with silent intentness.

Jane said, “Why were you afraid for us, Ed? You should have had Johnny with you.”

“I had a reason at the tune.” He grinned. “It turned out not to be a very good one. Even a genius like me can make mistakes.”

She rose. “And Mick's all right. Everything's all right. Oh, Ed... God bless you, Ed.” She came into his arms.

He kissed her, drawing her close, very gently. It was a long time before he took his mouth from hers. She drew back a little and looked up into his eyes.

“Ed,” she said softly.

She put her hand up against his cheek. He took it in his own and said with rough good humor, “Beat it upstairs and cry.”

“Yes. Yes, I can do that now, can't I?”

She smiled at him through a bright mist and went out. Vivien had not moved. Clive went over and put his hand on Johnny's small hard shoulder.

“Time to go home.”

Johnny got up. He opened his mouth, remembered Vivien, closed it again, and breathed harshly through his nose. Clive chuckled.

“You can beat me up tomorrow. I'll sit still for it.” His eyes had no laughter in them.

Johnny stopped glaring. He frowned. Clive said, “I'll be in the office sometime after noon.”

Johnny's mouth moved uncertainly. He looked at Vivien and then back at Clive. He said, “Good night, Ed,” and went out.

Clive stood with his back to Vivien, smoking quietly, until he heard the outer door close and the faint click of Mulligan's heels going back into the service regions. Vivien neither stirred nor spoke. The soft, regular sound of her breathing was the only sound in the room.

Clive said, “I have something for you, Vivien.”

Her breathing stopped. Not as though she were frightened, or even surprised, but as though she wanted to be sure she heard what he said next.

“I left it down by the pool when I came in.”

Her legs made a rustling against the chair as she unbent them. “I'll get my coat.” She went past him and up the stairs.

Clive crushed out his cigarette and walked down the hall to the French doors. He stood there, waiting. His face began to twitch, and he put up his hand to stop it.

Presently Vivien came down, wearing the same short camel's-hair coat she had worn that afternoon at the hospital. Clive held the door for her.

They crossed the terrace in a heavy fragrance of stock and roses under salty dew, and then followed the flagstones beside the black loom of the hedge. The bitterness of evergreen replaced the cloying flowers. A dim moon hung behind the mist, striking a glint of tarnished silver from the pool. There was no wind, and it was cold in the hollow.

They walked over slippery tile at the water's edge and went into the pavilion beside the dressing house. It was no more than a slanted roof upheld by slender pillars. There were big rough chairs cushioned in canvas and wrought-iron tables supplied with smoking things and magazines. Clive found the small white bundle and spread its contents on a long chair.

“I thought you might want these back.”

She looked at them, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. “How do you know they're mine?”

“With that photograph, it had to be either you or Jane. The negligee is too short for Jane, the slippers are too small. That leaves you. Besides, the bedspread was your color, not hers.” He touched the silver frame. “A psychologist would be interested in that. Love and hate are so close together, aren't they? It was almost like having Jane there in person to throw your sins at. Homeopathic torture—a nice primitive touch. You're a masochist, Vivien.”

She shrugged, turning away. “I didn't suppose anyone would find them. I didn't want them any more.”

“No. No, you wouldn't, would you?”

“Don't be cryptic. I hate people being cryptic.”

“All right, I'm answering both statements. You wouldn't suppose anyone would find them because—count me out, I wasn't supposed to live—because no one had any reason to look for the house, or even to think there was one. And as far as you both knew, there was no way to trace it even if anyone did. Farrar just slipped up a little on that postcard. And can you blame him?”

She made a small harsh sound that might have meant anything.

Clive went on, “And we both know why you wouldn't want the things any more.”

She glanced up at him from under the corners of her lids.

Clive said, with a peculiarly brutal softness, “It hit you right where you live, didn't it, when he walked out on you for Laurel Dane?”

She studied him silently for a long moment, and then laughed. “You bully,” she said. “You cheap little bully.” She sat down, leaning back against the canvas cushions. The moon touched the high surfaces of her face with a chill whiteness. Only her mouth was dark, moist and glistening.

Clive said, “You don't love me as much as you did this afternoon.”

“No. No, I don't.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I think it was the way you kissed me. Very kindly, as you'd pat a dog on the head, not even your dog that you were fond of, but just any dog. Ed Clive, handing out a favor. God on a mountaintop, being kind to a miserable sinner.”

“You must have been sorry then,” Clive said mildly, “that you saved my life down there at the beach.”

Her lids opened wide. The eyes behind them were cold, shrewd, aware. A little surprised, but even then not afraid. She leaned forward to speak.

“Shut up.” Clive held his voice low, but it was harsh with violent anger. “God damn you, shut up! I'm talking now. Me, Ed Clive, the guy you and Farrar thought you could use for a football and get away with it.” He bent over her. “I threw Farrar to the wolves. I wanted it that way. I was going to frame it that way, but I got the breaks and I didn't have to frame it, much. All right. I gave Gaines a story, a good story. It's got holes in it and he's going to worry about them, but it's close enough to the truth so he'll have to take it and like it, because there isn't any evidence to show anything else. And he doesn't have to worry about taking it to court. Farrar isn't going to stand trial. I took care of that But I held out a little on Gaines. A couple of small items that make a story with no holes in it at all.”

She was unmoved. “Items like those?” she said, and nodded her head at the long chair. “So I was living with him. He wasn't the first man, nor the last. So what?”

“So you have guts, Vivien, a damn sight more than I gave you credit for.”

She smiled. “You're enjoying yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Men never grow up. They're always just little boys, puffing out their chests and showing their muscles.”

“But little girls do, don't they? They go along for years, stamping their feet, pulling their sisters' hair, smashing their dolls, and screaming. And then all of a sudden they find the thing they've always wanted, and they're grown up. They're people, finished, mature, with the door shut forever on the nursery.”

She lay relaxed against the cushions, not even her eyelids moving. Clive laughed. He got cigarettes from a box, lighted one, and passed it to Vivien with an oddly intimate courtesy. Then he lighted one for himself, sitting on the edge of the table, facing her.

“Farrar cleaned up very nicely after the letter-writing. Gaines looked down into the workroom, but he didn't even bother to go in. Your fingerprints are all over the place, of course, but why should Gaines care? One trollop more or less... And how could he ever identify them, anyhow? The negligee and slippers might have tempted him... and besides, I had another use for them.”

Her mouth twisted, blowing a contemptuous plume of smoke.

“I'm not trying to trap you, Viv. Nothing as childish as that. I know. Bill Kennedy had to ask people about Mick. Some of the people remembered it”

She stopped smoking, stopped breathing, and then she shrugged.

“All right. I hired Kenneth Farrar to look up Mick's past for me. I loved Mick. I told you that. When he married Jane I thought I couldn't stand it.” She laughed. “The child, screaming for a toy somebody had stolen. I'd met Ken at some party or other and I thought he'd be a good man for the job. I was rotten enough to know that he was rotten, too.”

Clive nodded. “You figured that one of two things would happen. Either Mick would kill himself, or Jane would divorce him. This was after the accident, of course, when you knew the marriage would never break up by itself. It was a beautiful way to get revenge, and you weren't taking too much of a chance. Only then you fell in love with Farrar.”

Vivien gestured impatiently. “All right, you're a brilliant detective. I left a lot of neon signs up there in the cabin and you read them. Once again, so what?”

“So this. Farrar wanted your money, and he was willing to take you too if he had to, to get it. Everything worked out swell until Mick got the idea of going to the Skyway Club after me. Farrar followed Mick, thinking he was on the trail of an especially fresh and nasty story, and incidentally met Laurel. Pretty soon the incident got to be the whole thing, and that left you sitting up on a dark mountain all by yourself. You didn't like that, did you?”

“Would anyone? Did you, when that black-haired bitch took somebody else to bed with her?”

He leaned over and slapped her across the mouth, not hard. Curiously, not hard at all. Her eyes blazed at him.

“God damn you!” Then she laughed, deep in her strong throat. “You sentimentalist! Because she's dead, she did no wrong and I'm not fit to speak of her. Oh, Ed!”

Clive said nothing.

“All right!” She sat forward on the chair. “Is this any of your business, any of it? You've done your bragging. Now what more do you want?”

“All right, Viv. We'll finish it. Why do you think I held out on Gaines?”

“Not for my sake!”

“No. For Jane's. For Mick's. And for mine.”

“For yours?”

“Yes. I could have taken you and Farrar into court together. But courts are uncertain. Juries are uncertain. Do you know that out of ten thousand murderers every year, only two per cent ever reach the death chamber?”

She straightened up slowly, in withdrawal. Her hands slid back into the deep pockets of her coat.

Clive said, “That's what Farrar was thinking when he killed the keysmith. It would be awfully hard to pin that murder on him. But if the letter business ever broke in court, he was a dead pigeon. He couldn't have beaten that blackmail rap, nor the other ones that would have followed right on its heels.”

Vivien said very carefully, “I thought Ken killed the old man to cover Laurel's murder.”

“He did.”

“Then you're not talking sense.”

He smiled at her, a strange, intimate smile. His eyes were almost warm.

After a while Vivien whispered, “You can't scare me, Ed Clive. You can't do it.”

“That's what makes this such a good game. Answer this one, Vivien. What motive did Farrar have to kill Laurel?”

She moved abruptly as though to rise. Clive put his hand out, and she relaxed, with sullen pettishness.

“You told us yourself.”

“It wasn't a very good motive, though, was it? That's the biggest hole Gaines is going to see—not that it'll help him any. With the setup what it was, Farrar would have had a lot more reason to kill me. He might have got around to Laurel later, if she proved stubborn, but not then. Not that night, right off the bat, with that keysmith to identify him and everybody in the Skyway Club ready to tell the world that he was crazy about her. He was a cold-blooded bastard, Farrar was. He'd have done a better job than that. He wouldn't have left anything to chance, like finding Mick in her apartment. It would have been perfectly planned, with every angle covered in advance. And particularly, and especially, there wouldn't have been Sugar March.”

“What do you mean?”

“Farrar wasn't the type to run off at the mouth, especially to a dame like Sugar. And if he had, all the more reason not to kill Laurel before Sugar was taken care of. Loose ends, Viv. Too many of them. Farrar was a tidy person. That's why nobody could ever get anything on him.”

“Then why did he frame that alibi? You're not being—”

“He didn't frame any alibi. Gambler's luck, Viv. I got it, and he didn't.”

Her mouth opened, and then closed again.

Clive said, “He went home sulking and a little drunk, and he didn't speak or show his face. Farrar wasn't near Laurel that night, after he left the Skyway Club.” He inhaled deeply and let the smoke idle out with his words. “You want to take it from there, Viv?”

She said, in a peculiarly calm voice, “You're doing all right. Go on.”

“You're grown up now, but a few days ago you were still a violent, emotional, unbalanced sort of person. You loved Mick enough to want to kill him when he married Jane. You admit the letters.”

She nodded slowly, “Yes.”

“You admit you fell in love with Farrar, lived with him, and took it pretty hard when he walked out on you, emotionally at least, for Laurel.”

She nodded again.

“You fought Farrar about her, I imagine. You must have suffered. Laurel didn't have anything to offer but herself, and still Farrar preferred her to you and your money. You brooded about it, and probably drank too much, and finally you went down to the Skyway Club to see what you could do about it. But Laurel wasn't there. There was only the hat-check girl. And you blew off.

“The landlady heard something of what Sugar and Farrar were saying when he took her home that night. Sugar didn't have anything on Farrar. She had it on me, and what she had was you. Farrar was checking up on her to see whether she remembered and what she was going to do about it. She was going to use it to get me. Only you got her first.”

Vivien said, “She died by accident. She tripped off the curb.”

“Sure. You tripped her. You were right behind her in the crowd, but you're short and Johnny's short, and he didn't see you. I imagine you weren't wearing that bright red coat. You didn't want Sugar's death to look like murder, of course. Farrar didn't want to risk it, and besides, you wanted the fun of it. I remember how you came home that afternoon and went swimming, like somebody high on dope and dreaming.”

She shivered, a shallow twitching of the skin.

Clive leaned forward and said softly, “You found something, didn't you, when you killed Laurel Dane? The ultimate sensual thrill, the closest thing to being God. You found your strength, Vivien.”

She stared at him with wide pale eyes. And she smiled. After a long time she said, “You can't prove any of this.”

“Maybe not. But let's see if I'm right. You stole the key to Laurel's apartment from Farrar. You went up there that night, and woke her, and she let you in—and you made a scene. She started to get Mick, and then you were scared because you didn't want it to come out about the letters. Or maybe you'd have killed her anyway. You picked up the blackthorn stick on the table and hit her with it, and she fell down, and you knew she was dead. And a whole new world opened up for you.

“But you'd put Farrar in a spot. He must have been furious with you. He had to kill the old man to cover himself, and Sugar had to be killed to cover you. And it would have been all right, with Mick taking the fall, only for the man in the kitchen. The man who stood out there in the darkness and watched you kill. And from there on the game got harder and harder, and the more things you and Farrar did to cover up, the more things there were to do.

“But you had fun, didn't you, Vivien? More fun that you ever had with hundred-mile clubs or men. You were discovering your hidden talent. Resourcefulness, turning any little spur-of-the-moment thing to your own advantage. Excitement, playing a secret game and playing it well. And above all—there was murder.”

She was leaning forward now, and she was still smiling.

“You were going through a transition, an emotional coming-of-age. All your life you'd been tortured by a sense of weakness, a lack in yourself, a hatred of the strong and the beautiful and the good because they had something you couldn't find in yourself. Now you stood beside them, feeling the warmth of their flesh, hearing them breathe, and you thought, I can stop that. With my hands and my brain and the power in me I can stop all that, forever.”

He tilted her chin, gently, holding her face in the moonlight, and brought his lips close to hers. “There was only one thing wrong. You fell in love with me.”

He kissed her.

She gave herself. Then she thrust him away and sprang up, trembling. He sat back on the table edge and laughed.

“Jane told you I was still bent on saving Mick. You told Farrar to jimmy my car, but this afternoon you had to come and see me, just the same. I remember so well what you said. Viv. 'You've broken everything to pieces. Anybody else wouldn't have mattered, but it had to be you.'“

She cursed him, whispering.

“And then I said you could be strong, and you said, 'Maybe.' And you said you'd found something better than hate.”

He rose suddenly and took her by the shoulders and bent her back, looking into her eyes. “Does it still frighten you, Vivien—the thing in me that you once said could kill you?”

For a long still moment they stood, and then she said quietly, “Nothing will ever frighten me again.”

“Because I kissed you this afternoon, and you knew that the world I stand for was gone forever. You crossed over into your own place, and you'll never look back.”

“No.” She moved from under his hands. “I'll never look back.”

He bowed to her slightly and turned and sat down on the end of the long chair. She laughed.

“I've admitted it, haven't I? All right, Ed. But we made a good run of it, didn't we?”

“Yes. A good run.”

“I did most of the planning. Ken was too methodical, as you said. I thought you must know something when you sent Johnny over, but I couldn't be sure.”

“The letters, plus the timing of the job on my car, plus the emotion pattern of the crimes that didn't fit Farrar's type, added up to either you or Jane. Partners in crime are always having trouble—I didn't know what minute one or the other of you might decide to call it off, permanently. And I wanted both you and Jane pegged down tight so I wouldn't have to watch anybody but Farrar. I think,” he added, “that it was the way that horn blew down at the beach that first made me think of you.”

“I was quite close, hidden in the fog. I watched them beat you. I loved you very much.”

“The aphrodisiac of pain.”

“I begged Ken to help you. He wouldn't, and I began to blow the horn. It was all I could think of to do.”

“And then you rode my car down over Big Fella.”

She nodded. “It was the other man who screamed. I thought for a moment he'd seen me. Then I realized the lights were in his eyes. He tried to get up, and then he fainted.”

She leaned back against a white pillar, her hands deep in her pockets. “All right, I've confessed. But you can't do anything about it now. I'll deny it. Ken's dead, and without him you can't prove any of this.”

“Do you know why I did that?”

“I think so. Partly you wanted to get Ken yourself, but mostly you were thinking of Mick and Jane. You're a sentimentalist, Ed, for all that hard-bitten front you put on. You figure they've suffered enough, and for their sakes you'll cover me. You knew what a nasty, scandalous mess all this would make in court. You knew how Jane would feel about it. You knew how it would go on and on, trials and appeals and newspaper stories. Oh, I've thought a good deal about what would happen if I got caught. With a good lawyer, a really good one, and a psychiatrist, I hardly think I'd get the death sentence. Women usually get the balance of sympathy. The first crime was unpremeditated, more or less—they couldn't have proved more than second-degree murder. And I could so easily have blamed the rest on Ken. Sugar March and the big man nobody could ever have proved one way or the other. I might even have wangled myself clear of prison entirely, with a stretch in a sanitarium to correct my tragic psychosis. It's happened before, in crimes of passion. I've made a study.”

“So you think you're pretty safe.”

“I think so. Jane's better off not to have a sister in prison or a mental home. She's stood a lot. I suppose there's a limit.”

“And for the future. You know what happens to a dog when he takes to killing sheep.” Clive got up. “Do you think you're safe to run?”

Her lips gave a sensual little movement. “I don't know. Perhaps I won't ever have the need or the desire again. But—I don't know.”

She glanced up at him sideways, under her lashes. “But you don't have to worry about that, do you? It's all out of your hands, now.” She laughed. “Poor Eddie! Defeat in a good cause, but still defeat. It doesn't taste nice, does it?”

He turned away sullenly.

“Never mind, Ed. Think of Mick and Jane, lying safe and happy in their little nest. I don't hate them any more. I don't have to. Think of them, Eddie, and you'll feel better. You saved them, single-handed, all by yourself.”

She walked out into the moonlight, onto the bright moist tile. Clive followed, not speaking. The pool lay flat and still, looking at the sky.

She stopped and turned. “Ed.”

“Yes?”

She put a hand on his sleeve, blocking his way with her body. A curious softness had come into her face, something of the trembling childish look she had lost.

“Ed, I... Oh, nothing makes sense, you think you have the pattern and you'll never lose it, and then all of a sudden something won't fit....”

He pushed against her, and she gave back a step or two, toward the corner of the pool.

“Ed, please.”

He stopped.

“I don't know why, Ed... People don't go on all the time being detectives and murderers. Sometimes they have to stop and be just men and women. Ed, you kissed me this afternoon, and you kissed me just a moment ago. Perhaps I can't explain, but you mean something to me, something I saw when I was a child, perhaps, and could never find. I didn't like either of those kisses, to be all of you I ever had to remember. I mean the inside you, the you I loved—the you I think I'll always love, in some corner of my heart.”

He said slowly, “I'll be God damned.” He tried to get past, pressing her back on the tile.

“Ed, please... just for a minute let's not be Ed Clive and Vivien Alcott, hating each other.” Her hands, her body clung against him, warm and pleading. “Kiss me just once more, for what I might have been. For what I wanted to be, before it was too late.”

He said somberly, “I thought you weren't going to look back.”

“This isn't back. This isn't anywhere. It's just now, a little piece of time that doesn't fit, and that I want to keep forever. Kiss me just once—the me that might have had a right to you...”

Her hands fell away from him. Her eyelids drooped, leaving an unseeing, dreamy darkness, dive's face twitched sharply. He put his arms around her. Her breath went into his mouth, and her left hand slid back under his shoulder, drawing him tight. Then, almost shyly, her lips found his.

His left hand dropped downward, a single violent movement.

They stood close together, the touch of their lips not broken. Clive's left hand held her right and twisted it, the strength of his wrist against hers, outward and upward. Her breath panted against his. He could feel her teeth, small and sharp and predatory.

Something fell on the tiles with a flat, hard clatter. A little gun. A lady gun, but big enough.

Clive laughed, without sound.

“I wanted powder burns on you,” she whispered. “Powder burns, so I could say you attacked me. Did you think I could let you live? Did you think I wanted to let you live?”

He said softly, “No.”

He held her, the living, furious strength of her. She gave back, one step, two steps, looking up into his face. There was no fear in her.

“It was a good run, Ed. A damn good run.”

He did not answer. In the bleak light his face was without eagerness or cruelty or even hate.

“Your eyes are triangular, Ed. I never noticed that before. A killer's eyes.” She laughed, raising her head on the strong column of her throat. “Even this won't bring her back, Ed. She's gone. Forever, gone.”

He let her go.

His belly and loins pressed her, no more strongly than with the force of a deep breath drawn in, but enough. Her heels slipped on the wet tile and went over the edge. She did not scream. Her body fell across the angle of the pool and her head struck the hard rim of the corner. He could hear her skull crack. There was no great splash when she went under.

Water came out over the deck almost to Clive's shoes, and drained back again. One great bubble rose and burst, then smaller ones, a string of them, and then nothing. The ripples died. Clive took off his coat and hung it neatly on a chair back. Using his handkerchief, he picked up the little gun and dropped it into his pocket. Then he kicked off his shoes and dived in.

He swam easily and well. It took him some minutes to find the body, in eight feet of water and the darkness of the bottom. When he did he towed it to the shallow end, lifted it up onto the deck, and climbed out. She was quite dead.

He put on his shoes again and hung his coat over his shoulders. He began to shiver in the cold air. He rolled up the bundle of slippers, photograph, and negligee and put it under his arm, hidden by the coat.

He walked away across the dark lawn, and did not look again at Vivien Alcott.

The house was silent. He met no one in the hallway, nor on the stairs, nor in the upper hall. He walked very quietly on the thick carpet. One door had light under the crack, and that was Jane's. He knew where Richard's room was. The second of the other doors he opened proved to be the one to Vivien's room. He went in and turned on a small lamp.

He hung the negligee in the closet, somewhat apart from the other clothes so that it would dry where water from his shut had soaked it. He placed the mules on the shoe rack and Jane's photograph on a low table. Protecting it with his handkerchief, he laid the little gun in a bureau drawer under a pile of lacy underthings. Then he turned out the lamp.

He went out silently, and silently down the stairs. The darkness of his tanned skin showed through the thin wet fabric of his shirt. He pulled the coat closer around him. Drops of water ran down his face from his dark hair.

Mulligan was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

He looked at Clive, and past him up the steps, and then back again. He said nothing. His face showed no surprise. There was something curiously timeless about his being there.

Clive stopped by the graceful newel post. He said quietly, “Miss Vivien has had an accident. She slipped at the edge of the pool. She's dead.”

Mulligan looked again up the stairs. “Will you tell Miss Jane, or do you wish me to?”

“I'll tell her, after I've phoned.”

Mulligan inclined his head. Clive went past him, out onto the polished floor. Mulligan said with an odd, shrewd softness, “Perhaps it's the best thing, after all.”

Clive stopped. The set of his head and shoulders was that of a tired man.

He said slowly, 'There's an old saying, Mulligan, that of all things, never to have been born is best.”

He walked on across the hall, to the telephone.

Murder Is Bigamy

(1945)

Murder Is Bigamy

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

They take you into a little room. There's a big window of thick glass, and people outside it, looking in. They sit you down on a chair and buckle the straps. There's a bucket underneath the chair. You can smell the sulphuric acid. The cyanide eggs are dropped in. The door is shut tight, and outside the window a man takes out a watch.

I was running. I don't think anyone was after me then, but I was running. There was fog, and the beach road was dark, and my heels made a sharp noise hitting the asphalt. I guess that's why I didn't see or hear the girl.

She was crouched down, sobbing, where the wind had blown a thick spit of sand across the road. I fell almost on top of her. She screamed a muffled scream, like something crazy with fear.

"Take it easy!" I held her tight and panted. "I just didn't see you. Take it easy."

She lay quiet after a minute. Maybe I was crushing the wind out of her. But she didn't relax. I could feel her muscles taut as fiddle strings.

"George," she whispered. "George?"

"No. My name is—" I stopped. "I'm not George."

Where my hand touched the side of her face and neck, for all the chill fog, her skin was hot and moist. I could feel the big vein pounding hard with her heartbeat. She wasn't sobbing so much with emotion as with trying to get her breath.

She began to struggle again.

"Let me go."

"Wait a minute. George who?"

"Let me go—!"

"George Everetts?"

She jumped like I'd gaffed her, and then she was still, very still.

"What do you know about George Everetts?" I insisted.

"You're breaking my wrist," she said without emotion.

Somewhere back the way I had come, a car started, the motor coughing and banging in the cold. Faintly, men's voices yelled. I got up and pulled the girl with me. She was tricky. She was strong. She almost got free, and I had to clout her one.

"They're coming," I told her. "They'll find us here."

That seemed to penetrate. She came along, with me still gripping her wrist.

We ran along an alley, away from the beachfront and the naked road, and then we stopped in the sickly yellow glow of the sodium light at Avenue 35. I wanted a look at her.

She wasn't beautiful, nor the type to be pretty, but she had a lot more. Color and line and vitality. A young face that had learned about life the hard way, and sweated off its baby softness in tears and anger, but hadn't yet learned submission. I could see her brain crouching back of her dark eyes, waiting, watching, testing what was in the air.

She was dressed not expensively, but in good taste. The thick pile of her light-colored coat was clogged with sand.

Her bare head was damp from the mist. Her stockings were both torn, the right one with a big hole at the knee and a brush burn on the flesh underneath. She wasn't wearing any shoes.

I turned her palms up and studied them.

"Did you jump out of the car?" I asked. "Or were you thrown? Whose car was it, and where was it going, and how long ago? And why did you think I was George Everetts?"

"They'll be along here in a minute," she said. "They'll think of searching this road, too."

"So you have got something on your conscience!"

I laughed and we ran again, down into the flatlands beside the old canal, where there was nothing but the groan and creak of hidden oil wells, spaced wide on the dunes, and the heavy stagnancy of sump water on the salt air. There were no houses.

I pulled her down into a black hollow behind broken concrete blocks where a rig had come out.

"Listen!" she whispered.

Sounds came like they do at sea in the fog, eerie, sometimes too close, sometimes too far away. Shouts. Automobile horns. I leavy feet, running.

And then, coming south from Venice, came the cat-wail of a siren.

"Yeah," I said. "I hear." I got hold of her coat, high on the neck where I could feel her cool soft hair brushing my hands. "All right, honey. Who are you? What were you to George Everetts? What happened to you, and why were you where I fell over you, almost on George's doorstep and saying George's name?"

or a long time there was no answer.

"Who are you?" she countered then. "What's happened?" "You tell me."

"How could I know? Who are you?"

"Just a gent. A gent who went to see George Everetts to talk over business and old times. We finished our business, talked our talk and had a few drinks and went to sleep, and then all of a sudden a shot wakes me up and I go downstairs and find something that makes me a gent headed straight for the gas chamber." I tightened my hold on her. "You see why you're going to talk to me?"

"No, no, I don't know anything! Not anything at all. Let me go!"

"Sure," I told her slowly. "We'll both go. Back to George's house to see the cops. An empty hand is no gamble at all, that's why I ran away, but I got a card now. A queen. And any kind of a gamble is better than trying to sit it out when you're playing with law."

I started to get up, still holding her coat. She seemed to have gone slack under my hands. She came readily enough, as though it was no use to fight me any longer.

It was dark, very dark. She came readily. Too readily. I sensed her arm swinging and I didn't have any way to dodge it, for I was holding on to her. She must have found a chunk of concrete just the right size. I let go of her, but not soon enough. She hit me behind the ear.

It fixed me, all right. But it didn't put me quite out. Not so far that I couldn't hear her running away across the sand.

She was too smart to try the main road. She crossed the canal on the stringer of the lock that controlled the flow from the tidewater inlet into the banked canal. There was nothing but marsh between there and Culver City. It was a long walk to Culver City, but I knew she'd make it before dawn, even in her bare feet. There hadn't been any rain, and the marsh was dry.

After that, things were hazy for a while, and then I heard some of the men who were looking for me circle around and come my way.

The whoop and holler they were making was enough to have roused everybody between Venice and Del Rey. The streets, the alleys, the beach and the dunes were swarming with men, talking and flashing lights around. There were more sirens, and the population was getting thicker every minute.

It looked to me like my only possible out was the marsh, the way the girl had gone. There was no way to get a car across it, and if I got enough start, they couldn't head me off on foot. There was also just a bare possibility that I might catch up with her.

I slid off the log, feeling shaky and hollow.

George's whiskey inside me was deader than George, and my head felt like a dropped melon. My bum leg was aching from the cold. And all those men were hunting me. I came close to bawling like a scared kid.

Somebody got to the lock ahead of me.

They tramped across the stringer and began looking for prints on the other side. The men already coming behind me kept coming closer, and then I heard voices and saw lights in the fog off to my right.

"Any sign of him?" somebody yelled.

"Naw!"

They closed in around the lock like a bunch of sheep, and I did the only thing I could do. I went in the water. I didn't splash any. I just slid over against the lock gate, which was closed, underneath the stringer. I held onto a slimy post, trying to keep away from barnacles.

The two who had been on the marsh side clomped back overhead. You could tell from their feet they were cops. They stopped right over me, by the rusty iron wheel, and I heard a match sputter.

"Ah, rats! The bird's probably halfway to L.A. by now."

"Yeah. Pitch dark and this fog, what do you expect!"

"And no description."

"No. But there's bound to be fingerprints on those glasses."

"Sure, sure! But suppose he don't have a record?"

"Ah, the devil, let Fearon worry about that! Come on, I got a bottle in the car."

That sort of broke up the meeting. I stayed in the water, too chilled even to shiver, while everybody trailed off to get drinks, to get warm. They thought they were cold! What I had inside me made the outside look almost hot.

But suppose he don't have a record Oh, but I have, I thought. Oh yes, Mr. Policeman! Maybe not the kind of record you're thinking of, but good enough. You send my prints from the glass back to Washington and they'll tell you right away who I am, and after that I'm cooked. If I run, or stay, or give myself up, I'm cooked.

Unless I could find that girl!

I probably had twenty-four hours before the F. B. I. would wire my name from Washington.

Twenty-four hours.

The searching men were all gone, now. It was safe to come out. I crawled up onto the marsh-side bank. It won't matter anyway if I'm caught, I thought. I'll die of pneumonia.

My leg had stiffened up on me. I needed a smoke bad, and all my cigarettes were soaked through. I limped away, figuring to hit the highway far enough above Venice to be safe, and then double back toward Santa Monica, where I was staying. It was too late to catch up with the girl now, even if I'd been running.

Twenty-four hours in which to find her, and I didn't even know her name.

I made it home, safely, just before daylight. I dragged out a quart of bourbon and took it to bed with me. I took my bourbon with aspirin, and I could feel my brain wheeling round and round in my skull as I lay. After a while, I was afraid my whirring brain would wear grooves right through the bone. But the aspirin made me feel better.

Still, I had a cold when I went out to get the early afternoon papers with the story of the murder in them.

Death in the Tub

The desk sergeant told me where I could find Mike Fearon, the officer in charge of the Everetts case. I went up a flight of steps that were worn concave from being tramped on by size thirteen boots, and turned right. There was a small office at the end of the hall, floored with mud-colored linoleum, and furnished with golden oak and a spittoon.

"Lieutenant Fearon?" I asked.

"That's right."

He was sitting behind the desk, in the angle of the window and the east wall. He was a big man, very beefy in the neck and shoulders, sunburned with big rusty freckles sprinkled around, especially on his head. What little hair he had left was reddish brown, or had been before the sun and the sea-salt got to work on it. He would have looked more natural in sweatshirt and denims than in the cheap dark suit he was wearing.

His eyes were no particular color, and there was nothing particular in them. He looked like a heavy, placid man who wished he was away from there, fishing.

Murder Is Bigamy

"My name's Sullavan," I said. "Frank Sullavan–Sullavan with an 'A'. I used to own a boat with George Everetts."

"Well," Fearon said. "Sit down."

I sat down. He lit up a cigarette. So did I. Outside the fog-smeared, streaky window was Windward Avenue. Dingy arcades with pigeons nesting in them, little stores, beer joints. Mostly beer joints. There was bright sun, but winter was on the place. The town looked like a drunken old hag lying dead in a gutter, gray, bleary, and hopeless.

"I read about the killing," I said.

"What did you think of it?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen George for two years. He was a low heel, but he was a good man in a boat. I knew him pretty well. I don't know. Maybe I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not."

"Any idea who might have done it?"

"Like I said, I haven't been around for two years. Lots of gents have taken pokes at George. Including me. But I thought if we talked it over we might get some ideas."

"If he was a heel, what do you care?"

"He was my partner," I said. "He was a good man in a boat. And he saved my life once, when we were diving for abalones together and one shut down on me."

"I see," said Fearon. "Well, what do you want to know?"

"Just tell me what happened, first."

"It's all in the papers."

"Maybe. But telling it is better."

"Okay." Fearon sighed and leaned back. "A couple of the neighbors saw a man crossing the vacant lot to Everetts' house last evening, but it was after dark and foggy and they couldn't even see what size and shape he was. Apparently this fellow went inside, because Kraus–he lives next door to Everetts--heard voices. Then after that there was nothing until about two forty-five this morning when a rifle shot woke up the neighbors. Kraus sticks his head out the window and sees a man light out of Everetts' back door and head down the Speedway like his pants were on fire. Kraus and some others started chasing him, but he got away.

"Okay. So inside the house there was George Everetts with most of his head blown off. His own rifle was on the floor. He was lying beside a table where two men–himself and one other–had been drinking and smoking for a long time. There was no sign at all of who the other man was, but there were prints on both the rifle and the glass he used–yeah, and on the bottle. So maybe we got a chance."

"Well, that's something." I sneezed. I nearly blew the top of my head off.

"Got a cold?"

"Sure," I said. "Who hasn't?"

"Lot of 'em going around. My wife's been sick–"

"That's too bad. Look," I said, "did you get any line on what George has been doing lately? Who his friends are, if he's fought with anyone?"

"For cripe's sake, the man was only killed a few hours ago! But we did find a few things in his effects. Gee, have you got a cold! Come on real sudden?"

"No, I been fighting it for a week. What did you find?"

"Well, a picture of you and him in front of a boat, for one thing. We'd have been looking for you to ask questions if you hadn't come in. Questions about George, of course."

"Of course."

"Seems from some letters and other stuff that George Everetts spent about fourteen months in Seattle. Got married up there."

"Married?"

"Why not? A lot of men do it."

"But he was already married." I said. "Got a wife in San Francisco he never got divorced from."

Fearon made marks on a paper.

"We'll check on that," he said. "What's his wife's name and address?"

"Billie Everetts is her name. I don't know the address. She's a burlesque pony, or was."

"H-mm. Well, anyway, Everetts married this girl Frances Sparling in Seattle." Fearon hunted around in a folder on the desk and held out a photograph. "Really something, isn't she?"

I was hanging onto myself pretty hard, and wasn't really surprised anyway when I looked at the picture. She was something, all right. Even more so than when I looked at her under the sodium light on Avenue 35, because in the picture she was happy and smiling.

George was there, too. I wondered why it was a gent like him could always make the women trust him. Love him, sure. He was that dark, laughing, wild-stallion type they always fall for. But trust him?

I thought I would rather remember George as he was in the picture than the way I saw him last. He'd been shot through the back of the head. He wasn't very handsome now.

Fearon asked me if I'd ever seen the girl before.

"No." I handed the picture back to him. "George could always pick 'em. That's what made him most of his trouble. Anything else?"

"Yeah. I just got a wire from Seattle. The Sparling girl was married before, too. To George Starke. Ever hear of him?"

I sneezed again. I was glad I did. George Starke, huh? George! My poker face was beginning to slip.

"Yeah," I said finally. "I think so. Gambler, isn't he?"

"Uh huh. Very tough boy. Very slick. We're trying to get a line On him, but I don't think it'll do us any good."

"Well, you still have your prints. I suppose there was no third set on the rifle?"

"Only Everetts' and the stranger's. Not even any smudges where the gun might have been handled with gloves." He looked up at me. "You get any ideas?"

"I been away too long, I guess. Lost touch. Maybe I will later. Well, I guess that's all."

I got up. Fearon nodded his freckled dome.

"So far. Except about you, Mr. Frank Sullavan with-an-A. Where have you been the last two years?"

"In the Marines. I just got back to L. A. a couple days ago." "See George Everetts at all?"

"I told you that. No."

"Why not?"

"I was tired, I was busy, and I didn't have any particular reason to see him."

"This undivorced wife of his, Billie. You know her?" "Some," I said. "Haven't seen her for several years."

"You didn't know her very well? Not well enough to fight

with Everetts on her account, maybe?"

"George and I had a lot of fights. I told you that, too." "Um h-mm. Alibi for last night?"

"Blazes, why should I have an alibi! I went to bed early, all by myself, and slept late. What is this, anyhow?"

"I'm just being a cop," said Fearon apologetically. "I make my living at it." He was looking at my leg. "Medical discharge, eh?"

"Yeah."

"Stiff like that all the time?"

"More or less. It's supposed to go away eventually. If it's any of your business."

"None at all." He was still apologetic. "You wouldn't mind leaving your name and address, would you?"

"Not at all."

"I–uh–you wouldn't mind leaving your prints, either, would you? Just for a check."

"That I would mind. What the devil is this, Germany? If I'm under suspicion, book me. If I'm not, I don't have to go around crawling to every cop I see." I let myself go. "I came in here to see if I could help, and you treat me like I'm John Dillinger with a case of scarlet fever! Asking a bunch of fool questions!"

I cussed him out. He took it sitting down, blinking a little. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sullavan," he said mildly. "I thought you wanted to cooperate."

"Not so far that I want to be as good as accused of murder! Listen, I've been ducking Japanese lead all over the South Pacific for two years so gents like you can hang onto your jobs, and I don't like being practically told I shot a pal of mine in the back of the head."

"Now, now, Mr. Sullavan. I didn't mean it like that. But, of course, it's up to you." He rose with clumsy courtesy. "You've been a lot of help, Mr. Sullavan. I appreciate you coming in." I let myself calm down, scowling at the floor.

"Sorry," I said curtly. "I guess my nerves are still a little jumpy."

"Sure. Forget it."

He sat down again, and I went out. The last I saw of him he was slumped back peacefully, still looking like a man who wished he was somewhere fishing.

I felt like a man who wished he was anywhere, doing any-I thing, but what I was doing. My neck was stuck out so far I could feel the tendons crack.

That'Il stall him for a while, I thought. He can't do anything about it, but oh brother! He is not thinking about fishing.

My twenty-four hours were getting shaved down. I had chiseled a couple of sign-posts out of Fearon, but I couldn't see that they pointed anywhere–especially away from me. George Starke. Frances Sparling. So I knew a couple of names. So what?

Just for luck, I stopped in a drug store phone booth and pumped the directory. It didn't tell me where Mrs. Frances Sparling Everetts lived. I hadn't really thought it would. She could be calling herself Elmira Zilch and camping at the Y. M. C. A. for all I knew.

When I came out of the drugstore I found I had a shadow. I wouldn't have noticed him at all only I knew there would be one, after that interview with Fearon. And after looking for Japanese snipers a police shadow wasn't so hard to see.

I didn't care. I wasn't going anywhere but home. I needed to think.

A little later, I walked up the path to my shack. It wasn't much, just a trailer-sized frame cabin that needed paint. But I owned it, and I could do what I pleased in it.

I had the door half open before I noticed there was a trickle of water down the steps. More ran out then, over my shoes. It had a queer rusty tint to it. The floor of the small main room was flooded, and there was a steady flow from under the bathroom door. I could hear the tap running in the tub.

I had had enough water the night before to last me for a while. I had not taken a bath that morning.

I crossed the room, splashing. There was an unclean coppery stain where the moisture had crawled up the walls. I pushed the bathroom door open.

It is a very small bathroom with an ancient white iron tub on legs, and a cracked washbowl. The bowl was full of a woman's clothing, wadded up and tossed in with a handbag and a pair of high-heeled pumps on top. A woman's fur coat hung from a wall hook.

The woman it belonged to was in my tub.

The running water was very cold, but she didn't seem to mind it. She lay back comfortably, her long perfect legs stretched out, her long lovely body relaxed. I could see her body as a sort of surrealist's dream of a woman half veiled with an intricate swirling pattern of red in the clear bath.

Her corn-yellow hair floated around her face, but I knew her, all right. Even with her eyes half-lidded in the idiot stare of death, her lips a vivid scarlet against the drained, hollow whiteness of her cheek and jaw–I knew her!

Billie, Billie, how can you marry that skunk Everetts when you know I'd go through anything for you?

The motion of the water swept the hair aside. Somebody had done it with a long thin knife, thrusting it through her throat from side to side and then ripping outward, the way you opened a fish.

She would have bled more if the water had been warm. She had bled enough.

I reached out and turned the water off.

A Little Surprise

A broad black river was rushing over me, and a man was standing on the other side of it, talking. His voice came with a queer singing clarity, like struck crystal. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him, even through the racing noise of the river.

"Police Headquarters," he was saying. "Hello, Sam. Vetch speaking. Yeah, a little murder. Let me talk to Fearon."

I tried to make my head break the river's surface and suddenly it did, and the darkness was gone. I was on my knees in cold water, my hands on the edge of the tub, my head between them. My face and neck, my body, were covered with freezing sweat.

I knew where the man was now. He was behind me, in my shack's living room, talking on my phone. I rolled my head slightly to look over my shoulder. He saw the movement. He was watching me. He had a gun.

I got up slowly and went into the living room. He watched me, holding the phone in his left hand and the receiver between his shoulder and his ear, and went on talking to Fearon. I sat down.

"Okay, we'll wait," Vetch said over the phone, and then set it down. "You look sick," he told me.

"I feel sick."

He nodded.

"Most of 'em do after the excitement's over," he said. "How'd you come to leave the water on? I wouldn't have followed you in if I hadn't seen it running down the steps."

"There's a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard there." I pointed. "Give me a drink, will you?"

"You feel like passing out again, go right ahead and do it." He hitched one leg up on the table. "You don't have to walk to the station, anyhow."

I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. Vetch had closed the front door. My place was fairly isolated, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, with a lot of tall angry cypress trees hedging it. Nobody had noticed us, or the flooding water. This last was draining out now, leaving that ugly stain in streaks on the carpet.

I know that table Vetch was sitting on. I'd had a party once, and the table got knocked over and a leg broken off. I'd patched it, but it was still weak.

I let myself go forward.

Vetch didn't shoot. He thought I had passed out again, and by the time he saw he was wrong it was too late. I slammed my body against the shaky table leg, felt it crack, and kept rolling. The table top came down, the edge hitting the floor behind me. Vetch yelled and came with it.

The place shook when he landed. I rose up under the edge that was tilted up, grabbed the legs and threw the whole thing over on top of him. He didn't want to stay down. He was almost in position when I kicked him under the jaw.

I dropped his gun into my pocket, and then I heard the first distant screaming of a siren. There would be Santa Monica cops, too.

I stripped off my wet pants and shoes, pulled on dry ones–the shoes were moccasins and didn't have to be laced. I was still fastening my belt when I went back in the bathroom. I did not look in the tub.

Billie's cloth handbag was in the washbowl with her clothes. I clawed the contents out of the bag and stuffed it in my pockets. Then I went through the pockets of the fur coat. Handkerchief, a couple of scraps of paper. I took those and went out through the kitchen lean-to. Vetch was beginning to groan and squirm around.

The siren had relatives now, and they were all close.

The Pacific Electric cars ran into L. A. about half a block behind my place. I heard one coming down from the Santa Monica station and ran for it, cursing my stiff knee. I caught the car, barely, and rode away, watching the police cars pulling up in front of my shack.

I got off at Ocean Park. The cops would have heard the Pacific Electric, too. They would telephone ahead to Sunset or Vineyard to have them hold it for a search. Besides, I didn't have any reason to go to L. A. They had cops there, too.

The theatres were open for the matinee, down on the Front. I went into one of them. There was a very slim audience, mostly kids, at that time of day. I went to the Gent's Lounge, locked myself in, and began to look over what I had taken from Billie's purse.

Billie had been George Everetts' undivorced wife, and George had married Frances Sparling anyway. And now it was worse than bigamy. It was murder. Double murder.

A faint musky sweetness breathed out of everything. I remembered Billie's small angular handwriting, the cigarette case I had given her, the smudge of lipstick on the handkerchief, the vivid red she always used. My head began to go round again.

I took the things piece by piece and studied them. Coin purse, ten or fifteen dollars in bills, an anonymous key, some forgotten shopping lists worn at the creases, the half of a Greyhound ticket that would have taken Billie back to San Francisco where she had been a burlesque pony. She didn't need a ticket where she was going. The city paid for the ride to the morgue.

There were four cards. Three of them were the kind salespeople give you when they have you on the string, all from San Francisco stores. The fourth was from a veterinary hospital in Hollywood. Hours 9 A.M. to 10 P.M.

Billie never owned a dog or cat. She didn't care much for I thcm. I turned the card over and over in my fingers, wondering, and as the light caught the slick surface I noticed faint marks under the 9 and the P.M., as though someone had

pressed down hard with a fingernail.

It seemed as though Mrs. Billie Everetts had a date to meet somebody at Bradbury's Small Animal Hospital, on Orange Avenue, at 9 P.M. There was nothing to tell me what night, or even what year. But I didn't have a wide choice of nights, and a lead was a lead.

I went down and saw the show. There was a Betty Grable picture, and all through it I kept seeing Billie singing and dancing instead of Grable. After a while I couldn't see anything at all. It was just a foggy blear in front of me.

I wasn't hungry. I didn't even think of dinner. I figured I would have a fair chance, even with a general alarm out for me, until the nine o'clock editions hit the street, with my picture and the story of Billie's death. After that, any dumb joe on the street could turn me in.

I sat through the double feature and then repeated on one of them, and then I walked out of the theatre and across the Front, dark and windy between the popcorn and hot dog joints, and took a blue bus into town.

I got off at Pico and La Brea and took a yellow bus north. It was about eight minutes to nine when I got off at Santa Monica Boulevard and walked over one block. No one paid any attention to me, and even in L. A. there weren't enough cops to cover every bus and streetcorner.

I found the hospital. A low white stucco building of modernistic design, the rear part of the lot inclosed in a high wall. The location was several miles from the bright lights and business of Hollywood. Here the street lamps were few and far between. There were broad vacant stretches of land with the new weed-grass already inches high. There were buildings, hut they didn't relieve the desolation. A laundry, a bakery, a lumber yard with sheds and a spur track–all industrial buildings black and lonely with the night. The wind blew and it was cold.

Light came in thin slits through the Venetian blind in the big window of the hospital. Faintly, from inside, I could hear the forlorn, uneasy crying of the dogs.

The street was deserted. I walked toward the door, passing a side yard that had a high wire fence where dogs were evidently turned out for exercise. There was a three-foot hedge along the fence.

Something caught my eye.

It looked like a sheet of newspaper caught in the angle between the hedge and the hospital wall, with a corner of the paper flapping. And then somehow it didn't look like a paper. I went up close to the fence and craned my head. The flapping thing was the skirt of a white surgical smock. There was a man inside it, folded neatly out of sight of any cruising car and almost out of sight of any pedestrian. I couldn't tell whether he was dead or not. There was no way to get to him, or even touch him. I went to the hospital's door and opened

it.

Close warm air breathed out at me. There was no sight or sound of anyone. There was a small foyer, painted black and green. A flight of steps went up to a second story at my left, bending sharply so that the top of the flight was hidden.

A waiting room with red leather seats opened to the right. Ahead were two low steps up, a tiny office, a show case with collars and leads and bottles of vitamins and rabies vaccine, and a door into the back marked NO ADMITTANCE. A neat sign On the wall told me to RING BELL-PLEASE WAIT.

I stood still. The over-warm air smelled heavily of disinfectant, but not heavily enough to kill entirely the musky pungence of animals. A wild smell. The noise they were making out in their neat wire cages was wild, too.

Thin-edged and nervous, the dog-wails were punctuated by the jungle scream of a cat. I began to sweat.

I got the feeling that there was someone on the other side of that NO ADMITTANCE door, poised and listening just like I was. I tiptoed over. I couldn't hear anything. Very carefully I tried the knob, but the door was locked.

All this time I'd been watching over both shoulders, so I saw the man coming downstairs before he saw me. He was fairly young, blond, pink-cheeked, with the solid massive build of a Percheron. He wore a starched white smock, the big right-hand pocket of which sagged deeply, and not with the weight of his fist in it.

He came quietly, carefully, and yet with an air of nonchalance. I figured he had heard the front door.

My gun, or Vetch's gun, wasn't in my pocket. It was right out there staring at him.

"Hold it," I told him. "Spread your fingers so I can see them against the cloth, and bring your hands out, open. Take it slow, and raise the other one, too."

His eyes dilated. He stood perfectly still there on the landing for a moment, and then did as he was told.

"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you–?"

"Turn around!" I cut in. "Put both hands flat on the wall. That's it. Now step backwards as far as you can. Go on, move! That's it. Now cross your left ankle over the other one."

He was now the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle formed by wall and floor, stretched out so that any movement would drop him flat on his face. I went up to him on the landing, took his revolver away, and patted him to make sure.

"All right," I said then. "Stand up."

He did. Beads of sweat stood out on his pink forehead. "Go back on upstairs," I told him.

I was nervous, down there so close to the front door. Anybody might come in at any time. The place was still open forbusiness. There was the back of the hospital, too. Anybody might come in from there, too, and get me flanked. The blond man didn't argue. He took a good look at me, and then started climbing. There was a landing at the top, with a door standing partly open. He went through into a small, comfortable apartment. I followed, and then stopped just inside.

"Well," I said. "Hello, Frances."

Who's a Corpse?

She had come in from another room. Her hair was tousled, her dark eyes heavy with sleep, her face flushed and creased from a warm pillow. She was wrapped in a man's enormous dressing gown, and her bare legs were a lovely shape below it. Mrs. Frances Sparling Starke Everetts.

She said nothing. She looked at the blond man, at me, and at my gun. Her mouth opened, and she put her hand over it.

"All right, now!" the blond man said to me. "Who are you, and what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm Sullavan," I said. "Frances knows me. Frank Sullavan –I used to be George Everetts' partner. I've known Billie a long time, too. I'm keeping this date for her."

"What's happened?" Frances asked as hoarsely as she'd asked me that same question there beside the canal after George's murder.

"Didn't either of you hear the six o'clock news broadcasts?" I looked at both of them.

"I was asleep," Frances said.

"I was doing a hysterectomy on a terrier," said the blond man. And then, irrelevantly, "The animal died."

"So did Billie. In my bathtub, early this afternoon, with her throat cut."

Frances turned slowly white, and then gray, and then she sat down. Her eyes held a terrible realization. The blond man lost the pinkness in his cheeks. He seemed to be undecided whether to go on breathing.

"The police," I said, "want me for George Everetts and Billie both. The funny thing is I didn't kill either of them. That's why I'm keeping this date for Billie–to find out who did." Neither of them said anything.

"You're Bradbury?" I asked the blond man, and when he nodded, "Why were you pussyfooting around down there with a gun in your pocket?"

"I heard the front door," he said. "Billie would have come straight up. A client would have rung the bell. You didn't do either."

"Who did you think I might be?"

"Well, frankly, I thought you might be George Starke. He's been trying to find Frances."

"George Starke, eh? Not George Everetts, perhaps?" Silence burst over that room like a physical slam of power. Silence, and eyes looking at me out of it, and nobody breathing.

"Are you crazy?" Frances whispered finally. "George Everetts is dead."

"Is he?"

"Oh, for mercy's sake." She put her hands over her face. "I can't stand any more!"

Bradbury moved forward.

"Look here, you–" he began.

I stopped him with the gun.

"Did Frances tell you how and where she met me last night?" "Sure. But–"

"She tell you what she saw in George's house?"

"She never got there."

"You believe that?"

"Of course! She–"

"You believe that?" I demanded again.

He looked at me. His mouth opened angrily. It closed again, and he looked at Frances. She got up and came as close to me as I dared to let her. She looked a little crazy.

"What did you mean about George Everetts?" she blurted. "Why did you question that he's dead?"

"There were only two sets of prints on the rifle," I said. "George Everetts' and mine. We'd been handling it earlier. I didn't shoot George. That leaves just one possibility. George Everetts wasn't shot at all. George Everetts shot somebody else!"

Frances clenched her hands together hard. I caught her eyes. "Which George were you expecting when I stumbled over you in the sand?" I pressed her.

She shook her head.

"You saw the body," she said. "You told me yourself you came downstairs and found it."

"With no face!" I snapped at her. "I've never seen George Starke, but he must be about my size, not much larger or smaller, or you wouldn't have thought I could be George Starke. Unless you knew it would be George Everetts, who was, or is, pretty much my size. I don't think I noticed particularly what the body in George's house had on, except vaguely that it was what George had been wearing–brown pants and a tan loafer jacket. But there probably aren't three men on the Coast who don't have an outfit like that." I paused a moment. "All right, Frances, how about it?"

She looked worn out and shaky. She sat down again, and Bradbury, obeying my gun, perched sulkily beside her on the arm of the couch. I was where I could watch all the entrances. I didn't feel sharp and cool and confident. My head was stuffy and aching. My throat was sore. I was tired, and I was scared. All I wanted to do was go to bed and be safe, and sleep for a week.

"Go on, honey," I said. "Talk."

"If you're innocent," Bradbury said, "why don't you call the police and let Frances talk to them?"

"She'll do that, too. So will you, Bradbury. But right now I want a private performance."

"How did you get here?" asked Frances. "How did you know about this place?"

"I found a card in Billie's pocket." I leaned forward. "Billie's dead. And I'm going to find out who killed her."

"There's not much to tell." Frances spread her hands tiredly. "I was married to George Starke. I divorced him."

"Why?"

"Look here!" Bradbury began, but Frances stopped him.

"Why should I mind telling him?" she said. "George was a dog. He was selfish and brutal and inconsiderate, so I divorced him, and then do you know what I did? George Starke was crazy about me, and he wanted me back, and I wouldn't go back because he was a dog and I knew it–and then I fell for George Everetts because he reminded me of George Starke."

She laughed, a desolate sort of laugh that was sadder than tears.

"Can you understand that?" she said. "I thought in George Everetts I had the man I'd always been in love with–the man George Starke had seemed to be when I married him. They say we never really love our lovers, only the image of them we create in our hearts. I guess that's true, or I couldn't have been such a fool, twice in a row."

"Yeah," I said gently. "How did you meet Billie?"

"She found out George was married again without divorcing her, and started to kick up a fuss."

"Blackmail?"

"I guess so. Anyway, I left Everetts, and Billie and I got to be good friends. Sort of a mutual comfort society, I guess. Then George Starke started really trying to get me back again. Billie met him. She was fond of him. Maybe he reminded her of George Everetts, the way Everetts reminded me of Starke. Anyhow, it wasn't funny for me. I was hiding out from both of them, both Georges. They both wanted me back."

I began to think, looking at her, that I could understand a man being crazy to get Frances back. She had it–the something, whatever it is, that hooks you for keeps. Most women you can forget. But some of them–maybe it's just your own dumb brain playing tricks on you, but some of them drop anchor in you and never go away. They're always there ready to stab you with the pain and the loveliness and the wonder of themselves. Billie had been like that. And some men get stabbed too deep.

Frances was going on. It seemed to be a relief for her to talk. "George Everetts was furious at Billie for the trouble she was causing, and both men were furious at me and each other. They both thought they could get me back if I'd quit thinking about the other one."

"You had me," Bradbury said.

"Of course, Brad." She smiled at him. "But it's all been going on for such a long time, and I couldn't impose on you, not then. Besides, you might have been hurt." She added to me, "Brad and I went to school together. I'm afraid he's the man I should have married. But I never had good sense."

"Few of us do," I told her. "That seems to be life. Go on."

"Well, it seemed that every place I went to hide, the Georges would find out somehow. Everetts and I had been living at his place, at the beach, when I left him. I didn't want to go back up north, and I didn't have money enough to go East, and Billie got a job dancing in L. A. to be with me. I'd get a job, and then one or the other of them would turn up and start pestering me, and I'd have to move."

"You know how they'd find out where you were, don't you?"

"George Starke has plenty of money and plenty of ways to find out things. And George Everetts–well, he wasn't exactly broke either, and he was no fool."

"Billie sold you out," I said. "You must have known that."

"Oh, no!" She stared at me with wide, stunned eyes. "You're either very loyal," I said, "or a darn good actress." She didn't look like she was acting. Bradbury was scowling. "Speak no ill of the dead," I said. "Oh, sure. But just the

same, Billie would have sold her immortal soul, if she'd had one. I can say that because I knew her, because I loved her, and because I nearly went off my head when she married George Everetts. So that shows you what good sense I have. Go on."

Frances looked at me for a long time. I couldn't read her eyes. I wasn't sure I wanted to. I was suddenly scared, more than I had been, and in a different way. I couldn't figure out why.

"Yesterday," she said, "George Starke came to my apartment. He said we were going to have a showdown and I was going to come back to him, and George Everetts was going to let me alone or find himself jailed on a bigamy charge. He hung around for hours, and I didn't know what to do. I tried to calm him down, but around two o'clock in the morning he got in his car and said he was going to see Everetts. I went along. I thought maybe I could stop him. But he just got madder and madder, and said he'd have had me back long before if it hadn't been for Everetts, and finally he pushed me out of the car."

She stopped to draw a ragged breath and shiver.

"I was trying to get to Everetts' house to–to do whatever I could, when you fell over me. I was scared. I didn't know what you, or George, might have done. I didn't even recognize you then, though I had seen your picture, and I didn't know whether you were trying to take me to the police or somewhere to kill me so I couldn't identify you. I was afraid to go home, so I came to Brad. I've been here all day, asleep."

"And you didn't see anyone else on the Speedway?" I asked her. "Didn't hear anything?"

"No."

"You're not kidding anybody," Bradbury said to me. "Doubting the identity of the corpse is silly. Only you and he handled the gun, and you're still alive."

"I did not kill George Everetts, or Billie, or anyone," I said emphatically. "Therefore George Everetts is not dead."

"Oh yes he is," said a voice from the doorway. A deep, unfamiliar, masculine voice. "And don't try anything. I've got you covered through the crack of the door."

I had left the door open so I could hear anyone coming in, or moving around below. But the steps were concrete and wouldn't creak, and a man without shoes could be silent as a dropping leaf.

Frances caught her breath.

"George!" she whispered.

I knew which George it was this time, all right. George Starke.

Bradbury rose uncertainly, glancing from me to the door. I was standing still, waiting. Almost at once Starke spoke again, I his time calling loudly downstairs.

"Okay, boys! Up here. I've got him."

I heard doors opening and slamming and a lot of feet in thicksoled shoes, and then the place was full of policemen, headed by a big, freckled, easy-going copper named Mike Fearon.

Instrument of Death

Quietly, without sirens, they had sneaked up on us. There were a couple of Hollywood dicks, and about fifteen men with badges. Enough to keep us all calmed down.

They took my gun, and Starke's, and Bradbury's. Lieutenant Fearon studied them briefly, and shrugged.

"Let's all have a little chat," he said. "Everybody sit down and be comfy."

We sat. But I don't think any of us were very comfy. Down below in the wards the dogs were raising bloody Cain. George Starke crossed the room to a chair. I could see how much he was like George Everetts. The same black, wild-horse look, big and male and striking. He passed Bradbury, who was still standing, stopped, looked him up and down. Then he hit him in the face so hard and fast his fist blurred.

Bradbury fell down. Two cops grabbed Starke from either side. He didn't fight them, but sat down obediently, watching Bradbury stagger up to his knees. He grinned pleasantly. "I'm tired of men cutting in on my wife," he said. "Let that be a reminder."

"I'm not your wife!" Frances was whitefaced and trembling. "And I haven't seen Brad three times since I've been in L. A."

"It isn't how many times, pet," Starke told her, "but what happens during them. And you are my wife. I don't believe in divorce, and if you hadn't sneaked out on me to Mexico there wouldn't have been one. And now that Everetts is dead, we'll start talking some sense together."

Frances tightened her lips to a flat line and said nothing. But her eyes had still not learned submission. Bradbury crawled up into a chair and put a handkerchief over his face because it was dripping.

"Everybody all through?" asked Fearon. "All right. Starke, you called us, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I had a date to meet Billie Everetts here at nine. When I heard the news broadcast and knew she wasn't coming, I didn't know what was going on, so I tried to sneak in the back way. Bradbury must have tipped his assistant, because the lug spotted me and gave me an argument, and I had to clip him. I stuck him in the hedge where he wouldn't be noticed for a while. How is he, by the way?"

"Got a headache," said Fearon. "Otherwise, okay. You may have a little battery charge."

Starke shrugged.

"Well, anyway, I heard this Sullavan gent come in and take Bradbury," he said. "I knew the cops wanted him for Billie and Everetts. I didn't give a hang about Everetts, but Billie–well, Billie and I were friends. So I phoned from downstairs."

Fearon nodded.

"You came here to get Frances, your wife, I suppose?" he offered.

"Yeah."

Fearon looked at me.

"All right, Mr. Frank Sullavan-with-an-A," he said. "Suppose you tell me what you've been doing, what you did last night, and why you gave me that song-and-dance this morning?"

"Well, I went to George Everetts' house last night," I said, "to see about buying back my half-interest in the boat that I sold him when I went into the Marines. He was fishing her out of Santa Monica, and making good dough, and I wanted to get back in. George was willing. We talked a lot, and had a few drinks. He'd been cleaning the rifle, and we played with it, remembering how he had got drunk aboard one time when our motor went out on us and had tried to shoot flying fish with the rifle, and how George had fallen overboard. That's how my fresh prints got on the rifle. George never mentioned Frances, or being married again.

"Well, I haven't been out of the hospital so long, and drinks kind of got me, and I went upstairs to sleep it off. That was about one-thirty. Next thing I knew, this shot woke me up and I dashed downstairs, and kept right on going. George and I had had plenty of bad blood between us, off and on. Besides, I'd been handling that rifle, and it didn't look so good."

"No," said Fearon. "It wouldn't."

I then went on and told Fearon about falling over Frances on the road, and her getting away.

"I thought if I could find her before Washington identified my prints from my service record, I might have a chance," I continued. "But I'd been away a long time, I was all out of touch, and I didn't have a thing to go on to help find her. The only person I could think of I might pump for a lead was you, Fearon. And I was fairly safe, then. You didn't know yet you were looking for me."

He nodded.

"You killed Billie, of course, just before you left to see me," he said.

"I didn't kill Billie. I didn't even know she was in town. And why on earth would I want to kill her?"

Fearon shrugged. "Some men kill for no reason at all." A faint smile hooked up his mouth. "You'd be surprised at the motives we come across."

He began questioning Frances. She told him the same story she'd told me, and then Starke corroborated it.

"I don't know whether I was thinking of killing Everetts or not," Starke said. "I was pretty steamed up. But just as I started to turn up his street I heard a lot of yelling and excitement and I decided I better call my visit off. No point in sticking your neck out for trouble."

"Didn't you try to find Frances again?"

"Sure," he said. "As soon as I could get back through the mob that started charging up and down the Speedway. But she was gone."

"Did you see anybody running from Everetts' house?" Starke shook his head.

"There's a house on the lot across the street," I said. "I must have been behind it, angling across to the Speedway." "Starke," Fearon said, "when did you see Billie today?" "I didn't. She called me up and told me where Frances was –she had thought of this Bradbury fellow and called him–and we were going to give Frances a chance to rest up so she'd be in a good mood, and then we were going to have a showdown talk with her."

"What did Billie think about the murder?"

"She was pretty sore about it. She'd had her hooks into Everetts for a pretty good income, on that bigamy score. But she wasn't crying over him."

"When did you find out," I said quickly, "that Billie had been peddling Frances to Everetts, the same as she had to you?"

Starke gave me a hot, slow look.

"I always knew it," he said. "But she kept me in touch with Frances, and that was all I wanted. Besides, Billie–" "Billie was Billie," I said. "I know."

"Yeah," Starke said. "And you don't look very bright, trying to hang her kill on me. I'm clean. At the time of the murder I was in the Gotham on Hollywood Boulevard, eating. You can check that."

"I will," Lieutenant Fearon said. "And now you, Mr. Bradbury."

The blond veterinarian looked up sullenly.

"Frances came here very early this morning." He talked through his handkerchief. "I took her in. Billie called around nine, said she was frightened because Frances hadn't come home, and thought she might be with me. Then about a half hour later she came in and woke Frances and asked her what had happened, and Frances told her everything she knew. It was quite a shock to Billie. She went away, but said she'd be back tonight."

Frances began to cry, not making any fuss about it. Fearon nodded. He said nothing. He lighted a cigarette and sat staring at the floor, patting the tips of his thick, freckled fingers together absently. Finally he looked at me. "Mr. Frank Sullavan-with-an-A," he said, "you are going to have to be a very fast, very smart talker to get yourself out of this one. No fingerprints other than your own were found in the bathroom, and the wound was suggestive of a fisherman. And as for Everetts. . . . "

He let the silence lie there. So did I. I didn't have anything to put into it.

They were looking at me. All of them. Fifteen men with badges, and the Hollywood dicks, and Frances, and George Starke. Looking at me the way you look at a man who has shot his friend in the back of the head and cut a woman's throat. Bradbury still had his face in his hands, and Fearon's colorless eyes were perfectly empty.

I was tired. I had a cold and I felt punk and I was tired, and nothing seemed to be any use any more. I spread my hands and let them drop.

"I didn't kill Billie," I said, "in my bathroom or any place else. I didn't cut her throat, like a fisherman or any other way. And I didn't kill George Everetts, with that rifle or any other–"

I stopped.

"Or with any other gun," I finished finally.

I got up. Armed cops closed in around me, but I didn't see them. I went over as close to Fearon as they let me, and I called him something I seldom call a man.

He didn't seem to be angry.

"But, Mr. Sullavan," he said with quiet innocence, "have I ever, has anyone ever, even once, said that the rifle was the instrument of death? George Everetts was shot, and the rifle was there, but that's all anyone ever said about it."

Once again there was silence. The tight motionless silence of held breath and waiting, with panic just two jumps away. Everybody was thinking, thinking hard. Bradbury rose and went to Frances, almost as though he were guarding her from suspicion.

"Everetts was killed by a forty-five caliber Colt automatic," Fearon said. "It was fired through the screen of a front window which had been opened to cool the overheated room. We have not found the gun. But we know the murderer did not gain access to the house. The front door was locked and bolted. The back door had a spring latch. Nothing had been tampered with, and all the screen hooks were rusted in place.

"Therefore it's not likely that Mr. Sullavan-with-an-A committed the murder. It would have been hard, and pretty silly, to go outside–giving Everetts some excuse on the way–go round front and wait till he got in position for the shot, fire it, thereby waking up everybody in the neighborhood, race around the house and in the back door again, taking time to fix the latch, and then run right out again when everybody was awake and ready to see him.

"I let the rifle gag stand, because I wanted to see if anybody would make a slip. I was pretty curious about you this morning, Mr. Sullavan. You might have just thought carrying on as you did, and coming to me, was a smart way to avoid suspicion. And when the woman was found–"

"All right," I cut in. "All right." I hung onto a policeman because the floor was dipping under me. "You know I didn't kill Everetts. Billie's killing must have had some connection."

"Probably, but not necessarily. Looks to me like there are enough high tempers and hot passions around here to kill off an army. So here I am. I got Mr. Sullavan, who didn't kill Everetts but could have killed Billie. I got Mr. Starke, who didn't kill Billie, but who was Johnny-on-the-spot with Everetts. I got–"

"If I killed Everetts," Starke burst out, "and knew that rifle gag was phony, would I have stuck my neck out to call you?"

"You might, just to make it look like you wouldn't. All right. I got Frances Sparling Starke Everetts who was within reach of the victim last night. And how about it, Bradbury? Can you vouch for Frances' presence here all day?"

"Of course I can. She was dead tired. She's slept ever since Billie left."

"You were here yourself, of course."

"Of course. My assistant–"

"Your assistant was out on a couple of lengthy ambulance calls in the middle of the day," Fearon put in. "And again between five-thirty and seven."

Murder Is Bigamy

"That should prove that I was here, then. The hospital is never left alone. And we're very short of help now."

"I see." Fearon sighed. "Well, I don't think too much of Frances for the actual killer in either case. A forty-five isn't a woman's weapon, and Billie's killing lacked the feminine touch. But you never can tell." He studied the lot of us with a sort of tired resentment. "I got a fair strike into Mr. Sullavan for Billie, but he might manage to wiggle off the hook. Just possibly. As for the rest of you, and the Everetts kill–I dunno."

"The weapons," one of the Hollywood dicks said, "are bound to turn up some place, sooner or later."

For some reason I hadn't thought about the knife that cut Billie's throat.

"Both my knives–" I began.

"We found 'em," said Fearon. "Pretty well hidden, but we found 'em."

"I was going to be away a long time," I said. "That's why I hid them. I didn't want them stolen."

"Yeah. Well, they were both too broad-bladed and short to fit the wound anyway, and they didn't show any traces of fresh blood. Of course, you could have had another and got rid of it."

"Sure," I said. "But I didn't."

There was silence again, an uncomfortable, glowering, sweaty silence.

George Starke cleared his throat, rather loudly.

"Point is, Lieutenant," he said, "if you don't turn up the weapons, and you don't get any new evidence of a really damaging nature, you're apt to get a hung jury or even a refusal to indict because of lack of evidence."

"That," said Fearon sadly, "is about the size of it, Mr. Starke. Oh, by the way, Doctor Bradbury, we'd like to search this place. Because of Frances, we have plenty basis on which to get a search warrant if you want to make us go to the trouble."

"Go ahead and search," said Bradbury stiffly. "You'll have a very hard job to pin anything on me. I never saw Everetts before I saw his picture in the paper, nor Billie before this morning, nor Starke or Sullavan before tonight."

"That's right," said Frances.

Fearon smiled soothingly.

"Just a matter of routine, Doctor." He heaved himself up. "Well, get to it, boys."

The Hollywood dicks took a couple of men and went into the inner rooms. Fearon indicated me, Starke, and Frances.

"You three come along with me," he said, "and we'll talk some more, and I'll fix you all up with comfy little cells. You, Doctor, I may want to see again, so don't leave town."

Bradbury nodded curtly. He went to Frances, taking her hands, and I watched Starke's face get dark. But he wasn't given a chance to do anything. Fearon began to herd us all out, and the stairs went under my feet like stairs in a dream, and there was a thunderstorm inside me, and people's faces were distant and masklike, unreal.

For an instant, on the landing, Frances faced me, and I saw her very clearly, and the seeing was a sharp pain. Then her features blended into Billie's, and Billie was looking at me with blind and pleading eyes, and her corn-yellow hair floated in clear water seamed with red.

Billie was dead, and I might die for it, but Billie would not be paid for.

"Is it true?" said a woman's voice out of the mist around the foot of the steps. "Is she really gone?"

Masked Evidence

Rousing, I knew suddenly I wasn't being spoken to. The animal hospital foyer swung back into focus again, normal and filled with people. A woman was looking up at me in puzzled fear, and from me to the cops. She was a stranger. She had been, and was, crying. There was a man with her, trying hard not to show that he had been crying too.

Bradbury stepped into the breach.

"Mrs. Pawley," he said, "there's been a little trouble here, nothing to worry about." He put his hand on her shoulder, nodding to the man. "I'm afraid she's gone. Her heart simply stopped. That happens, sometimes, and there's no way to prevent it."

"Judy," she whispered. "My poor little Judy. She didn't suffer, did she?"

"No. I assure you of that, Mrs. Pawley. She didn't suffer, not at all." He paused, and glanced at Fearon. "Their dog died on the operating table. I called them earlier."

Fearon nodded. The bunch of us began to jam slowly through the outer door.

"I'll get her for you," Bradbury said to the Pawleys. The woman held out a blanket.

"I brought this to wrap her in." She turned away, sobbing. Bradbury started for the back.

He vanished, and we went out and began piling into the waiting cars. A man named George and a woman named Billie and a terrier dog named Judy, and a lot of bitter hearts, and a lot of tears. But no one would be accused of murdering the dog.

Murdering the dog?

I stopped, my foot on the step, my head already inside the car. "Fearon!" I said. I turned around, and he looked in my eyes and frowned.

"Let me go back," I said. "Let me talk to Bradbury." "What is it?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing. Let's go back."

He nodded. He and I and three cops went back.

The man was receiving a small limp bundle from Bradbury. "We'll get her a nice little stone, Mae," the man said to the woman. "Don't cry now, honey. We'll–"

"Bradbury," I cut in. "You operated on that dog at six o'clock, while your assistant was out. You did it all alone. Why?"

"I told you we're very short-handed now," he answered impatiently, and quite surprised. "It's not a difficult operation."

"You should have had someone to help!" Mrs. Pawley cried out. "I know what it's like. I've had it done before, and they always–"

"It's easier, of course," Bradbury said. "But it had nothing to do with your dog dying. My assistant was gone."

"Seems like you could have waited till he got back," Fearon said easily. He still didn't know what he was fishing for, but he was a good fisherman.

"I have many dogs to take care of." Bradbury's mouth set. "I can't always wait. And now if you don't mind, I'm here alone again, since Starke knocked Charlie on the head, and I–"

"I'm thinking," I said, "of a man who has been in love with a girl for a long time. I'm thinking of a gun, which has vanished. I'm thinking of a thin, sharp-bladed knife, a scalpel maybe, which was used the way a surgeon would use it if he wanted to be sure and not look like a surgeon, and which has also vanished. I'm thinking of a dog that died with only one attendant, when within an hour she could have had two. I'm thinking of a killer who will be safe if the weapons are not found."

Fearon caught on. A great unholy light blazed up in his eyes.

"I'm thinking," he took up the chant, "maybe we better have an autopsy on that dog!"

Bradbury's pink face had taken on a stiff, whitened look, almost gray in the shadowed places, as though the hand of death was already upon him and the light. For a split fraction of a second he held my eye. Just once, in the face of a dying Japanese, I saw eyes like that.

Then, quicker than anyone thought he could, Bradbury whirled and ducked out through the door into the wards.

Maybe I was that far ahead of the cops anyway, or maybe I was thinking of Billie. I don't know. But I was first through he door. I caught a glimpse of a passageway with several doors opening off it, and an open space with wire runs at the end of it. Then the lights went out. I stood in the hot close dark, breathing disinfectant and the odor of excited animals, I istening, and all I could hear was dogs going crazy in the wards.

There was a lot of confused racket in back of me, too. Cops with flashlights came. I caught glimpses through the side doors of neat tiers of cages with eyes in them burning red-orange or diamond-white in the torch beams. I got my bearings again and ran on.

Bradbury would not go out the side way because the men in front would see him. Fearon would have sent men to cover the alley, too, but Bradbury would have the start of them. The ambulance, and possibly his own car, would be kept out back.

In the open court, the night was black and windy and cold. There was a garage at the end of the court. I found its door. Inside, someone was grinding the starter of a car.

I pulled the car door open and got hold of the man behind the wheel. It was completely dark. The only way I knew he had a knife was because it touched my cheek, the cool swift caress of a blade so sharp you don't feel the cut until later.

I caught his wrist, and I already had an arm around his neck. He fell out on top of me and we rolled and kicked around on the hard floor. I suppose there were men outside, who would have come if I'd yelled. But I never thought of yelling. This was between the three of us–him and Billie and me.

He got my bum knee between his own and ground it, and I tightened my elbow on his neck, and we both shoved the knife back and forth, not very far, and finally with his free hand he found my ear and tried to pull it off. Then I remembered a trick they taught me in combat training. I knew where his face was–right below mine, because now for a minute I was on top. I heaved my shoulders up and bent my neck and gave him the bull-butt. His skull cracked on the concrete, and he was all through.

We were back in the hospital again, this time in the waiting room. Bradbury was talking, with leaden dullness, staring at the handcuffs on his big wrists.

"You don't have to see a man to hate him," he said. "I hated both Starke and Everetts because of Frances. The girl was living like a hunted animal because of them! And I knew I could never have her myself as long as they were alive. So I went down and got Everetts. I thought Starke would be suspected of the killing, and chances were he wouldn't have a good alibi for that time in the morning. If he did have, I would figure out a way to get him later on.

"Then everything got messed up, with Frances coming here and telling me about Sullavan and Starke and Billie coming after Frances. Frances, of course, wasn't sure it was Sullavan, and Billie didn't know he was out of the service. Well, Billie went away and did her business with Starke, but she was thinking all the time, and she came back here to question Frances some more. Nobody but me saw her come in.

"She had heard a late news broadcast about the murder. I hadn't because it had been a very busy morning and I hadn't had time. I nearly gave myself away when Billie said they had the murder weapon, with fingerprints on it. I was sure it was safe under the seat of my car until I could get rid of it, but I began to be afraid I'd dropped it, or something. Then Billie spilled about the rifle, and I knew that was all right. The police were just being cute. But I knew Billie would remember how I'd looked, when the truth came out. She wasn't safe any more.

"I told her not to bother Frances. I had given Frances a sedative. I went out back and sent my assistant out on some calls that would keep him away for a couple of hours. I disconnected the bell and locked the door into the wards, so if anybody came they couldn't raise anybody, and would probably go away again. It was a risk, but I couldn't help it, and sometimes for hours nobody will come at all. I told Billie I thought we better see about this Sullavan.

"She was glad enough to go, and I could see already she was figuring why I looked the way I had when she'd told me About the gun. I didn't have any definite plan about killing her, except that Sullavan was the best peg I could think of to hang suspicion on. There was no opportunity to kill her on the way down. Too many people around. Noon is a bad time for killing."

He slopped and wiped his lips.

"Everything worked out perfectly," he went on. "This Sullavan fellow had just left his place. If he hadn't, I would have figured something else. I wasn't even sure he mightn't have seen something. I knocked Billie on the head, put her in the bathtub and used the scalpel I brought along, and left the water running so somebody would be sure and discover the body. Also, so Sullavan couldn't cover up very easily if he tried to. Then I went home, and everything was okay."

He raised his eyes malevolently to me.

"And everything would have been okay," he growled, "and the weapons buried with that dog in the L.A. pet cemetery, if Mr. Sullavan hadn't been so very, very smart!"

"Well, I guess that finishes it," Fearon got up. "Looks like I won't need you boys and girls until the trial, now." He turned to Starke. "If I was you, I'd leave Frances alone. You never can tell how sore somebody may get with you. I'll give you a lift, Sullavan."

While he was collecting Bradbury and his cops, I turned to Frances. I didn't like the way she looked. She went out suddenly, outside, and began to walk down the street. I went after her, and Starke was right behind me. I caught her, finally, about a block away.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I don't know," she answered stonily. "To kill myself, maybe. I don't want to live any more. Not with things the way they are, and knowing that everybody is—" She sobbed, a dry, harsh, ugly sound. "I thought Brad was the finest man I ever knew."

"Everybody isn't like that."

"How do you know? And, besides"—she looked over my shoulder at Starke—"besides, what difference does it make, with him hounding me? I wish I'd had the courage to do this a long time ago. All these murders mightn't have happened."

George Starke came up close, studying her.

"You mean that?" he asked. "You really mean that?" He sounded surprised. "You really mean you'll never take me back?"

She didn't answer. She looked at him steadily. Finally, he turned and looked back at the police cars. His face twitched, and he glanced at me, and suddenly he shivered.

"All right," he said. He took a deep breath and cracked her across the face. "The devil with you!"

He started away, swaggering. I started after him, but Frances caught me.

"No. No more trouble. I think he means it. I think he's scared, and maybe a little bored with me now that Everetts is dead. I think maybe he hated Everetts more than he wanted me."

There were tears trying hard to break through.

"Everybody isn't rotten, Frances." I took her hands. "I've been around enough to know that. Can I try to convince you?" We stood under the street light a long time. Then she began to cry and I put my arms around her.

Fearon drove up. "You coming or not?" he demanded, impatiently.

"I don't think so," I told him. "No."

He scowled at us.

"More trouble on the way!" he exclaimed. "Why do gents and dames—"

"Shut up," I said. "Come on, Frances."

The street was empty then, except for the wind. More trouble, eh? Well, maybe. But that was life. How did you ever know? And she didn't feel like trouble, there in the circle of my arm. I was willing to risk it!

Red-Headed Poison

(1943)

Red-Headed Poison

I KNEW I HAD HER THAT NIGHT. I climbed the dirty stairs, watching my breath steam in the cold, smelling the stale cabbage, and thinking, "Tomorrow she'll be out of this. Tomorrow she'll be Mrs. Marty James."

Six flights, almost running, thinking of Sheila Burke.

Her mother let me in. A white-haired woman in a faded dress, who wanted to slam the door on me but knew it wasn't any use.

I grinned at her and went in. "Hello, Ma."

She said softly, "Don't 'Ma' me, you cheap little hoodlum."

I turned around, slow, so she could see my clothes. "I've grown up," I said solemnly. "I'm a big hoodlum now."

She looked at me. Hot blue-green eyes like Sheila's. "No, M Inside you're little, and you'll never be anything else."

She went out and shut the kitchen door on me. I didn't caree. I'd waited a long time for Sheila. Any other dame—but she wasn't a dame. That's why I played her slow, and let her light because I didn't want to break her. Gentle her, sure. But easy, so she'd still be Sheila when she gave in.

I knew she was where she'd have to give in, now. Tony'd been watching her for me. He knew how her credit stood with the butcher and the guy at the grocery store. A girl's got to eat, and so does her ma.

I sat down, in that cheesy little dump that was twin to the one I grew up in. My heart was choking me, and the palms of my hands were wet. I waited. And I thought, "We'll go places, Sheila and me. Up, together. We'll own New York."

Then I heard her on the stairs outside, and the door opened, and Sheila was standing there looking at me.

Even the hard electric light couldn't spoil her. Her red hair, with its own fire inside it. Her white skin, really white, like milk in a bottle. And her eyes bluegreen and full of sparks. She was wearing some crummy rags out of a basement, and she looked better than any dame walking Fifth Avenue inside a thousand bucks.

Funny how things happen. I just passed her on the street one day, and after that there wasn't any other woman in the world. Funny. Yeah.

I got up. I said, "Hello, Sheila." I couldn't breathe.

She said, "You had it figured pretty close, didn't you? Just how long Ma and me could go without eating." Her eyes met mine, tired, a little scared, maybe, but hot. Her voice had an edge on it.

"You fight clean, Marty! Hounding me out of every job I can get, sending those cheap gunsels of yours to hang around me until the boss kicks me out before I can steal the building. Oh yes, you fight clean, all right! Just like a dirty rat in a drain."

I said, "It's the only way I know to fight, honey." I went to her. "Aw, look, Sheila. I don't want to fight you. I never did. I just . . . I love you, Sheila." I put my hands out.

She slapped me, hard, across the cheek.

I stood staring at her. Then I closed my eyes and just stood, sweating. Her voice came from a long way off, low and furious.

"Can't I get it through your head? I hate you, Marty. I hate everything you stand for. All I want out of life is decency and peace and maybe a little happiness. You can't give me any of them."

It was hard to talk. I still couldn't look at her. I said again, "I love you, Sheila."

"You act like it. Oh, God, Marty, why can't you let me alone!"

"I love you, Sheila."

"I'll never marry you." I could see her face now. It was cold and shut away. It was something I couldn't touch. "You've got blood on you, Marty. You are not in my world." I started toward her again. I don't know what I was going to do. Only I had to make her understand, somehow, that all t hat didn't matter. That where she was concerned I wasn't Marty James the racketeer, but just a guy in love.

In love so I wanted to cry with it, like I used to cry for the stars when I was a kid, before Pa killed my mother.

Somebody said from the doorway, "I don't think she wants I hat, mister."

He must have been outside in the hall all that time, beside he door where I couldn't see him. He had three big paper bags of groceries in his arms. He was about four inches taller I dlan me, big and bony and loose and young, with farmer feet and knobby hands and clothes that looked like they came off

a scarecrow.

I stared at him for a long time. He had mild gray eyes under a fuzz of light hair, and a queer, hard, icy look that didn't match the rest of him. I shivered and dragged my breath in and went toward him.

Sheila got between us.

"It isn't any of his fault, Marty! I picked him up in the park. You had it figured right, Marty. I had to get food from somewhere. Tod pawned his watch. He's just a clean kid off a farm."

I said, "That's tough."

She took hold of my coat lapels. "It isn't his fault! Let him alone, Marty. He's not in your class."

I rubbed my knuckles. I looked at the groceries the kid had bought for Sheila. I thought about him standing out there listening to me spill my insides out. Watching me get my face slapped, and then telling me to lay off.

I said, "Shut up," and pushed her away.

Ma Burke must have come in some time because I heard her voice behind me. But just then the kid spoke up, sort of choked and raspy. He was white around the lips all of a sudden, not looking at anybody.

He said, "I ain't lookin' to have no trouble."

I watched him a minute. Then I laughed. He shut his eyes and stiffened up, and that was all. I turned back to Sheila.

She had that still, white look again. "You won't listen to me, Marty. You won't let me alone."

I said, "I've taken a lot from you, Sheila. More than I ever took from anybody. I've played easy. I've given you time. Okay. Now let's quit this. It isn't doing either of us any good. We'll get married tomorrow, and after that. . . ."

"No," she said, very softly. "No."

"Don't make me get tough, honey. I don't want it like that. But I–"

I had her in my arms, then. She was cold and still, but her hair had a warm smell like flowers in it. I kissed her. I never kissed any woman that way before.

Her lips had no life in them. I let her go, and from a long way off I heard feet running hard up the stairs. I turned around, slow.

It was Tony, my sidekick. A dark little guy in a tight striped suit, a prime gunboy with eyes you couldn't see into. He was out of breath, but he said, "Boss," and jerked his slick black head.

I said hoarsely, "Get out."

Tony flicked his black eyes around. "I been on the phone to Capper, Boss. Business. And right now." His eyes stopped on Sheila and stayed there. He said softly, "Cripes!"

Things began to come back in focus, then. My breath stopped choking me, and I could see again. I picked up my hat. Sheila hadn't moved. Ma Burke was beside her now, looking cold hate at me.

I said, "Okay, Sheila. We'll talk some more later."

She shut her eyes. She was locked away again, something I couldn't touch even when I kissed her. She whispered, "I'll say the same thing. Always."

I didn't answer her. I started out. The kid was still standing by the door, holding the groceries. I hit him across the mouth with the back of my hand. He didn't move. The blood ran out over his lip, and he didn't even look at me.

I said "If I see you here again, I'll beat your face off."

I went down the dirty stairs. Six flights, not seeing them, not even hearing Tony's feet hit the treads behind me. I got into my car and got the flask out of the glove compartmet. Tony slid under the wheel and started driving. After a while I I put the flask away and said, "Buckwald?"

limy nodded. "I got the tip from Capper ten minutes ago when I called to check with him. That guy's a smart stoolie! So damn smart I'd plug him, if I was you. Anyway, he says Buckwald has your horse rooms all cased and he's gonna wove in soon as a couple guys get in from St. Paul. He don't know you smell a thing."

"Where's Buck wald now?"

"Home, with that blonde wife of his, feeling like a hog on ice."

I leaned back, rubbing my knuckles. They get stiff like an old man's, I guess from the scar tissue in the joints. "Okay," I said. "You know where to go."

Tony looked at my hands. "You're gonna need something meaner than that, boss. Buckwald is a hard boy."

"All by himself with a dame? Don't kid me. Besides, that's what I keep you around for, Tony. To pack the gun."

"Sure," he said. "Sure." He looked at my hands again and laughed. "Cripes! This is gonna be good."

Buckwald lived in a block of flats that was pretty snooty about not being slum even if it was right next door. He was one of those ambitious guys, and there's never room for two in one territory. I'd known for a long time I was going to have to slap him down, or else.

We went up the back way. Nobody saw us. I wasn't thinking of Buckwald. I was thinking of Sheila's white face, locked away and untouchable, and wondering why I felt sick. I knocked on Buckwald's door, with Tony standing by my left shoulder.

A woman's voice said, "Who is it?"

"Western Union," I told her, keeping my voice high.

She opened the door. A flashy blonde in a thin red negligee. I pushed in fast. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. A big, good-looking guy in shirtsleeves got up off a sofa, knocking his drink off onto the floor. Buckwald, and his Del. Tony was just behind me.

Yeah. Tony, my pal, my sidekick, my prime gunny with eyes you couldn't see into. He hit me then, back of the ear, with the rod I paid him to carry.

When I could see again I was sprawled out in an overstuffed chair. My wrists and ankles were tied with handkerchiefs. Buckwald sat in front of me, still in his shirtsleeves. He was holding a .25 Colt auto. Tony leaned against the wall near him, working on a highball and watching me with his black eyes. Capper had come in from somewhere, the bedroom I guess, and was standing beside me, close, bouncing a sap up and down on the palm of his hand. He was a stocky, redheaded guy with a dumb-looking pan that wasn't dumb at all.

Del sat on the arm of the sofa, swinging her long legs and smoking. She was some looker, all right. But Sheila had it over her like a tent.

Buckwald grinned at me. "I don't want to plug you right here, pal. Del don't like blood on her carpets. But I can take you through the eye with this toy, and don't think I won't if I have to."

A .25 doesn't make much noise, and it's as good as a cannon if a guy knows where to put his shots. Buckwald did. I said, "Okay, Buckwald. I'm the original Johnny Sap. Now what?"

"Now we wait awhile for traffic to slack off, and then we take a little ride in your car, just as far as the railroad bridge. After that. .. . " He shrugged his beefy shoulders. "Why worry yourself?"

Tony snickered. "Pity to waste a whole quart of good Scotch

on him."

"Yeah," said Buckwald. "But we got to make it look good."

I began to get it. You knock a guy dizzy, pour a bottle of d ooze over him, leave his car in gear and jump, fast. The cops don't find anything but little pieces of a guy with too much in him to drive. Accidental death, and good riddance. No kickbacks on a murder rap.

"It's a good trick," I told him. "Seems like I saw it in a movie one time, but it's still a good trick."

"Sure," said Buckwald. "It's tough on you, Marty, but that's the way it goes. I been on the bottom long enough. I figure it's time for a change. After all, that's the way you climbed up, on Hank Bligh's neck."

"Yeah." I looked at Tony. "Only I played it a little different. We stood up facing each other, and Hank went out blazing. I'm still carrying his lead."

Buckwald shrugged. "No percentage in that, Marty." "No. I guess not." I was still looking at Tony.

He looked right back. Black, hard eyes and a rat's grin. "It's your own fault, Marty," he said. "You don't tend to business no more. When a guy goes simple on a dame, like you have, it's time for a change."

Capper laughed, bouncing the sap up and down on his palm. "It's all over town," he said. "Marty James, the big gee, the hard boy with the fists, jumping through hoops for a babe that wouldn't step on him if he was a rug. They're gettin' a kick outa you, Marty."

I said, "Yeah?" I started to get up. Capper hit me across the throat with the sap. Not too hard. They didn't want too many marks on me.

sat down again and spit up some blood, and Del said, "Can't you for cripe's sake wait'll you get off my furniture?"

Buckwald grinned. A big, easy, good-looking guy, enjoying himself. "Sorry, Del. Just relax, Marty. You heard what the lady said."

I bent forward over my knees, coughing blood onto the handkerchief tied around my wrists. I just stayed there, covering my face. Tony went for another drink. Capper moved mom id to look down at me.

"Hell," he said. "And I always thought you was tough."

I had the knot chewed loose, then. Not much, but enough to pull one hand out. I rammed my elbow into Capper's groin and dived forward.

Right then I knew I was going to have to eat Buckwald's lead. He got up shooting, and he'd have had me only I rolled over my shoulders so that I got the first slug in the thigh instead of the head. It hurt but a guy can take a .25 steel jacket if he has to. The second one burned my ribs, and then my heels had whipped over and hit Buckwald low in the guts.

He folded up, and I caught his gun hand on the way down. He tried to slug me, but he was too sick for a minute. I pinned a Mary Ann on his jaw. I was mad. I think his neck was broken before I shot him.

Del started screaming, a shrill flat sound with no sense in it. I kicked and squirmed to get Buckwald off my legs. My feet were still tied. I could see Capper coming with the sap, and a Colt .45 in his left hand. He was still doubled over, looking green, scared, and ugly.

Tony was close to Del. He had his own rod out, and he hit her under the jaw with the barrel of it. She lay down on her face, quiet.

"Shut up, damn you! You want the johns?"

She didn't hear him, not then. He jumped over her, coming for me. He was in the same spot Capper was. He packed a Police Positive. The apartment was sound-proofed, but not good enough to soak up the noise of a couple of heavy guns blasting. They were going to try and beat me down before I could untangle myself from Buckwald.

They knew one thing. They didn't want me walking out of there alive.

I hooked the cushion out of the chair Buckwald had been sitting in and threw it into Capper's ankles. I was scared of that sap. The force of the throw helped twist me over, so I was on my hands and knees. I pulled my feet out from under Buckwald. Capper stumbled over the cushion. The sap whistled down past my ear and whacked the floor, and while he was still bending over I straightened up and hit him across the temple with the flat of the .25. He fell down, and then Tony was on top of me.

I took the first blow on my shoulder. It damn near broke it. Tony was good at pistol-whipping. I couldn't stand up with my feet tied, and he was too smart to get close enough to be dragged down. He stayed behind me, moving faster than I could, so I couldn't see to shoot, making me roll and dodge. And about that time Capper came to enough to take a shot at me. He was past worrying about the noise.

The slug went past my nose and caught Del just under the eye. That was tough on Del. But she never knew it, and a gunman's woman knows what she's sticking her neck out for. I put one of my baby bullets through Capper's cheekbone before he could fire again, and rolled away over him, fast. Tony's .38 whammed. He missed me by a quarter inch, and by that time I was on my knees again. It was tough having my feet tied. There was a lot of noise in the room.

It scared Tony. He beat it for the door, crouching and taking two snap shots at me over his shoulder. He missed. Not much, but he missed. I guess I missed him the first time, too. The second one took him through the neck.

He turned around, slow, leaning his shoulders against the door. The gun dropped out of his hand. He opened his mouth. Blood came out, and he put both hands up to his neck and slid down the door, like a man who is very tired. He watched me with his black eyes, and I still couldn't see into them. He coughed once and then fell over on his side. A hell of a mess, but Del wouldn't be worrying about carpets any more.

I worked fast. I cut the handkerchief off my ankles and put it and the other one in my pocket. I wiped Buckwald's gun and closed his fingers on it. My rib wound was just a graze and there were two holes in my thigh, so I knew I wasn't carrying Buckwald's card away with me. Then I jammed my hat down over my eyes and turned up my collar. I picked up Tony's gun and kicked his body away from the door, and went out.

There were heads sticking out of doors along the hall. I fired a couple of times into the ceiling. The heads went away, fast. I ran for the back stairs. My leg hurt, and I was trailing blood. I felt tired and heavy and sick, and the sweat was turning cold on me.

I beat the sirens down the stairs and out to the side street where my car was parked. I got away clean, but so close I could feel the cops breathing on me. I wiped off Tony's gun and threw it away. I drank what was left in the flask and then drove, not hurrying at all, to a room I paid rent on. A room that wasn't anywhere near my apartment.

I've seen too many guys go up because they needed clothes and bandages in a hurry and couldn't go home to get them. I wasn't going to get caught that way. Nobody saw me. About hirty minutes later, changed and cleaned up, I was climbing the cold, empty fire escape to Sheila Burke's window.

Six flights, with thin snow beginning to fall, thinking of Sheila's voice saying, "There's blood on you, Marty. You're not in my world."

I thought, "All right. That's the way it is, Sheila. That's the way we'll play it." I was colder than the snow, inside, and numb.

I rushed the window up and climbed through. I had a gun in my hand. A .25 that I took away from a dame once, before she could kill me.

I said, "Just sit tight. Everybody. And don't yell."

I don't think they moved at all while I went around locking doors and pulling window shades. They were still at the table, Sheila and her mother and the gray-eyed kid. They were eating lemon pie with meringue on top, and the place smelt good of food. Sheila didn't even put her fork down. I can still see her white face, watching me.

The kid put his hands flat on the table, and the glazed queer look came over him again. Ma Burke looked like she wanted to pray.

I said, "I've just killed three men. Nobody saw me to identify, nobody can prove I was there. But the cops are going to look for me because two of the men belonged to my mob. I've got to have an alibi, and I haven't time to go all over town trying to buy one. So I'm telling you. I had a dinner here in this room with you. I haven't been away from here."

Ma Burke started to get up. I think she was going to throw the coffeepot at me. "Take it easy," I snarled at her. "Get another plate and dirty it, quick."

Ma Burke went out in the kitchen, and I moved around where I could watch her through the open door. The kid was watching me, not moving or speaking. I couldn't read his eyes. They made me think of Tony's. Funny, because they were gray, but I couldn't see into them. I shivered, all of a sudden. I was tired as hell, and I hurt.

Ma Burke came back with a plate with some stuff on it, and a cup. I said, "Don't forget the silver. Okay. Now sit down and keep still. You, Sheila–go get your coat on."

She got up, slow, staring at me with big, still eyes. "Coat?"

"Yeah. We're going to get married."

The kid made a noise in his throat. Ma Burke sucked her breath in hard. I said, "Shut up! I been carrying the license for a long time, Sheila. I know where we can get a sky pilot to do the job. Hurry up, will you?"

She whispered, "My God, Marty, haven't you any heart?" "I don't know, kid. I thought I did. Maybe you killed it for me. I don't know. But you three people stand between me and the Chair, and a wife can't be made to testify against her

husband."

I looked at her. She was beautiful. She was like something the wind might cut out of a snowbank with the red fire of her hair on top. Her eyes met mine, and there was an awful coldness in them, like I'd killed the spark inside her.

It was hard to talk. "I didn't want it like this," I said dully. "But that's the way it is. I guess maybe your ma and the kid catch onto something else, too. As long as I have you, Sheila, nobody better talk. Because I can always get you before anybody can get me."

Sheila's throat worked. I could hardly hear her voice. "You haven't any heart, Marty. You haven't a soul. You aren't human."

"Yeah. I'm human, Sheila. Human enough to go crazy over a girl. Human enough to be scared of dying, strapped down in a chair with no chance to fight, and all because a couple of dirty rats got back what they were handing out." I rubbed my hand across my eyes. "Get your coat. I want to go before the cops think of coming here."

The kid got up on his feet, then. He didn't say anything. He just came for me, swinging, and he looked half nuts.

I dropped the gun in my pocket. I let him hit me three or four times in the face, rolling my head enough to kill the force, and then I laid him out. He was clumsy and wide open, and his size didn't do him much good. The women screamed a little, when he fell.

I said, "He's okay," and got down beside him, pulling the gun out again, and unwinding the muffler I had around my throat. "A hell of a Galahad. Is he nuts, charging a gun like that?"

Sheila whispered, "You wouldn't understand. You couldn't ever understand."

I put the .25 in the kid's hand. "Don't tell me he's in love with you."

"No. It's a long story. You wouldn't understand. Why did you let him hit you, Marty? What are you going to do now?" I wrapped the muffler around the gun and the kid's limp hand to deaden the noise, and then got my finger behind his on the trigger. I fired three shots into the wall and then put the gun back in my pocket and the muffler around my neck.

"I got two holes in me," I said. "Now I got an explanation for them. A paraffin test will show powder specks on the kid's hand. The third shot will take care of what I couldn't get off my own hand. I'll say it went off when I took it away from him." I laughed, not because anything was very funny. "You get it, Sheila? We were fighting over you. The nice kid trying to hold off the gunman. I guess that'll make sense, even to the cops."

I yelled at her, then. "Get your coat on, damn it!"

"All right," she said, with no feeling in her voice at all. "All right, Marty. I'll get it."

She turned away, and then Ma Burke started for the door. Moving slow, not looking at me, talking quietly over her shoulder, "I'm going to call the police, Marty. You can kill me, sure. But it'll be tough to explain away the body."

Sheila cried out, "Ma!" in a little, strangled voice.

Ma Burke said, "Be quiet, baby. I didn't bring you up to be a gangster's wife, not while I'm alive."

I said tiredly, "Oh, hell, Ma–don't make me hit you." She didn't stop, and I started for her, and Sheila came across the room toward both of us.

Then the kid got up on his hands and knees and said hoarsely, "You hit me."

At that I looked over my shoulder at him. He was getting up, hanging onto the table. His face wasn't human. It wasn't sane. He said again, "You hit me."

I said, "Sure. Behave, or you'll get some more." Ma Burke was reaching for the key. I went over fast and shoved her away, and the kid yelled. He was white as new snow, and his eyes were blazing. He let go of the table and came toward me on his big farmer feet, and his voice was soft and quiet and deadly.

"Don't touch her again," he said. "Don't touch her." Sheila cried, "Tod! Tod, don't!"

He didn't hear her. He came on, his big fists swinging loose. Sheila ran to me and tried to hold my arm. I put the heel of my left hand under her chin, and shoved, and she staggered back.

I left the gun in my pocket. I didn't want to kill the kid, and I knew he was too punchy to see it anyhow.

The kid said softly, "He used to do that to my mother. My stepfather. He beat her. He used to make her crawl in the mud, out on that stinkin' farm. She used to cry all the time, because he beat me, too."

He swung at me. I dodged and knocked him down, but he got up again. He must have had a cast-iron jaw. He said, almost whispering, "You hit me. Ain't nobody gonna do that, any more."

knocked him down again. He didn't feel it. He was crazy. I He caught me around the knees and pulled me down, and he was heavy and strong as a dray horse. He landed a couple of haymakers on me before I clapped him over the ears and stunned him so he let go. And by that time Ma Burke had the door open, and Sheila was standing in it so if I was going to shoot I'd have to hit her first.

I got up on my feet. I got the gun out of my pocket and stood staring at her, hearing Ma Burke's heavy feet going down the steps outside. "I ought to kill the three of you," I said thickly.

She wasn't scared. She looked like somebody that's been fighting a long time and now it's all over, and she didn't care what happened to her. "You can't get away, Marty, no matter what you do now."

She was beautiful, standing there. She was something I could never touch, any more than the stars I used to cry for. The kid moved. He was getting up again. Sheila said, "And you thought he was a coward. He didn't want to fight, Marty. He isn't safe when he fights. His stepfather beat him from the time he was a little kid and that's why he left the farm when his mother died–because he knew the next time he'd kill his stepfather."

She looked at me. White, still, and locked away. "You can kill him, Marty," she said. "He's still dazed. Why don't you kill him, for spoiling your plans?"

I watched him get up on his feet again. He couldn't see much, but he was coming in again. Maybe he thought I was his stepfather. Or maybe he didn't care, because I was somebody that hit him, and pushed women around.

I ducked under his hands and pushed him, hard. He fell over. I could have killed him, sure. But it wouldn't have done me any good. And he was a game punk. He was still trying to get up.

I couldn't hear Ma Burke on the stairs any more. And I was tired.

I looked at Sheila. I couldn't think. I couldn't even feel. I just looked at her a minute and then turned away across the room and climbed out on the fire escape. I didn't say anything. There didn't seem to be anything to say. The last I saw of her, she was crying, leaning against the door frame, not making any fuss about it, like a tired kid.

Down six flights of cold iron in the thin snow and not seeing or feeling anything, thinking of Sheila Burke.

Her mother must have met the prowl car just as it pulled up in front, hunting for me. They met me down in the alley. They took my baby bullets, and handed me their .38s.

Maybe six or eight hours, now. Maybe less. Anyway, there won't be any Chair. I'll go out clean, which is more than I deserve for being such a chump. But that's the way it goes in this business. A guy makes a dumb play–he pays for it.

If I'd never seen Sheila Burke, if I'd stuck to dames like Del who know what's what and won't throw you in a pinch. . . . Yeah. But I didn't. I had to reach for the moon. Simple, Tony said. He was right. I brought it on myself. Simple, a dumb sap crying for the stars.

But I wish I could have kissed her, just once, when she wanted to be kissed. I guess I'll think of her lips from here on, wherever that is, wondering what they're like when they're warm to you. They'd be. . . .

Yeah. But she was out of my world.

Murder in the Family (1943)

Murder In the Family

DANNY THAYER WALKED THROUGH the La Brea Tar Pits that night because he was looking for a place to sleep, free. He wasn't thinking about anything in particular. His brain had grown rather numb these last few days.

He was hungry. So hungry it felt like rats chewing inside of him. Maybe he could forget that, if he went to sleep. Have to watch out for a cop, though. The signs at the park

entrance said, CLOSED TO PUBLIC AFTER SUNDOWN.

The Pits stretched out before him, a great barren sweep of weeds and scrub and baked earth dotted with clumps of dark I trees and the pits themselves where scientists had dug up fossils, and white scattered glints where stone sculptures of I prehistoric beasts loomed in the cloudy moonlight.

Danny Thayer shivered. He was nineteen, homeless, jobless, and hungry, but he could feel the loneliness of the place. It was more than just empty. It was—ancient.

Wilshire Boulevard was just beyond the wall of eucalyptus trees and ornamental shrubs. The lights of Hollywood painted the clouds off to his left. But they seemed a million miles away.

He walked on. Just walking, a tall lanky kid trying to forget how hungry he was. Past asphalt funnels bubbling stickily behind low protective walls. Past the statue of a short-faced bear, and two ground-sloths, and across a choked and stagnant creek.

The path led between pits choked with reeds higher than his head, over a low stone bridge. There was a thick clump of trees up ahead. The place had a sullen, biting smell. It seemed to be waiting, somehow. Waiting, and hungry.

Then, sharp and sudden in the dead silence, a woman's voice cried out.

"What are you doing? No! Oh God, don't. . . ! "

And she screamed. It was a short scream, choked off abruptly in a sort of gurgle, like thick muddy water between stones.

Danny stopped. Something like a strong cold hand held him, still and not breathing. Then he started to run, toward the clump of trees ahead, his feet ringing hollow on the stone bridge.

He stumbled out of the path between the trees. The moon was playing hide-and-seek in drifting clouds. And someone was running, fast, toward the Wilshire entrance.

Someone in a dark suit, with a dark head bent. Running doubled over, so that in that light you couldn't see size and shape.

Danny Thayer yelled, almost as though his throat had done it alone.

The someone stopped, jerked around like a puppet on wires, already shadowed by the barrier trees. The moon broke out, clear and bright. For an instant they stood, the figure in the shadows, the boy clear in the cold brilliance. Then the dirt path was empty.

Danny stood stiff, his body needled with sweat, choking on his own heartbeats. The sullen pungence of the pits seemed suddenly triumphant, as though what they'd waited for had come.

He turned toward where the scream had come from.

There was a stone group under the trees, showing a bison mired in a pit and two sabre-tooth cats fighting over the carcass. One of them reared up over four feet, his head thrown back, fangs bared impotently while the other tore his throat.

Only now his fangs weren't bared. They were buried deep in a woman's throat.

A woman's throat, wedged with savage strength into the gaping mouth. The cat's fangs were metal, because they were too long for crumbly stone.

Metal. Not very sharp. But sharp enough.

Clouds nagged at the moon. Danny's heart beat full and slow and very loud. He shivered, and the veins in his neck hurt.

She was small and slender, bent backward and hanging from the cat's mouth. She wore an evening gown of some pale, shining stuff, tight across her small curved breasts. The blood had made a dark, glinting pool between them.

She must have been pretty, without her face so twisted and her eyes empty and staring. Her hair was dull gold against the stone.

It was very still and lonely there, and the pits smelt of death.

Danny put out his hands and tried to get her loose. But the curving fangs were hooked hard against her jaw. She was dead, anyway. Apart from the bleeding, the jerk of her body downward had snapped her neck.

He drew back. He wanted to be sick, but the retching was agony to the emptiness in him. And then he saw her purse, a little scrap of satin and seed-pearls, dropped in the dust beside one small foot.

He stood quite still, looking at it. His bony hands opened and closed. He could still feel her flesh against his palms.

Warm, but already cooling. Warm, but dead.

Just a dime, for a hamburger. It was stealing. But she wouldn't need it any more. Maybe it wasn't wrong to rob a person when he didn't need money any more.

Danny's jaw was long and jutting, covered with a dark soft stubble of beard. It set suddenly, hard, and his blue eyes narrowed.

"The hell with right or wrong! She's dead. And I'm hungry."

He stooped and caught up the purse and opened it. A roll of bills fell out into his hands. A thick, fat, solid roll of bills.

Not the sort a girl carries in case of taxi fare.

Danny stood there, staring at it. And suddenly there was light in his face that wasn't moonlight, and a man's voice yelling.

Danny Thayer reacted from sheer brute instinct. He dropped the purse and lurched back into the shadow of the trees, and ran.

A whistle shrilled. Heavy boots pounded on the baked earth.

A voice yelled, "Stop or I'll fire!" A prowl car must have slopped out on Curson Street, too far away for him to hear.

Me regular patrolman, clearing bums and lovers out of the park.

Danny ran. Fear lent him strength. Stumbling, staggering, doubled over with his back-muscles tight for the rip of a bullet, lie raced around the pit where the bridge was, sheltered by the reeds.

He ducked in among the low walls. Something cracked like a dry branch behind him and there was a nasty whining sound over his head.

There were two sets of boots pounding, now. But the second ccop, summoned by the whistle, was way behind.

The gun cracked again. Dust and splinters exploded from the wall beside him. It was hard to breathe, and his feet weren't sure.

He broke suddenly around a big pit with a sort of pump-house built over it, doubling back under the shelter of the tall cattails that choked the creek. The creek ran back almost to the Sixth Street side of the Pits. If he could make it. . . .

The first policeman went into the tangle of low walls, carefully, lest Danny have a gun. Danny tried to go quietly, but he couldn't control his feet. His breath was hot and it had a saw-edge to it.

The second policeman, way behind the first, saw him.

He let out a whoop and pelted across the shortened distance. He must have thought the boy was wounded, the way he was running, for he held his fire. Danny moaned and struck out for the shrubbery bordering Sixth Street.

The first man vaulted a wall and came running. Danny could hear their boots hitting the ground. They were going to run him down, because they were strong and not hungry. They were going to take him. They were going to arrest him for murder, because he'd been standing by a body with a purse in his hands.

Murder for robbery. Twelve men, and the gas chamber. And he didn't have even a description of the killer.

He was suddenly furious, the fury of an animal cornered and in pain. He grabbed up a big clod of earth and whirled around and threw it. His thin young lips were snarling, and his eyes were queer.

The leading policeman reached the creek. There was a gap in the reeds there, and he jumped. The clod took him, then, in the face. He lost his footing and crashed down, his head going under in strangling, acrid stuff, half water, half pure asphalt.

Danny ran on.

The other man yelled at him, and fired. Bullets kicked the dust, but he was weaving from sheer weakness, and the light was bad. They missed. He staggered into the shelter of the trees and looked back.

The cop had had to stop and pull his mate out of the creek. And now there were people coming into the pits from the Wilshire entrances, drawn by the whistles and the shots. He'd have to stay there, to guard the body and whatever clues there might be.

Danny Thayer stumbled on. No one was walking on Sixth Street at that hour, and the few cars went by fast. Nobody saw him, in the shadows. He went across into the grounds of a swank nursery, and then down on his knees in a dark corner, his breath knifing his lungs, his heart slamming his ribs like a hammer.

Far away a siren began to wail.

He had to get on. There'd be a cordon. He'd been a fool to run away. But his body did it without asking his mind, and I hen he'd been afraid to stop. Now nobody'd believe him.

But would they have believed him anyhow? A kid, broke and starving, standing beside a dead girl with his fists full of money?

Money. Bills, a thick roll of them, clenched in his sweating hand. He'd taken it, then. Now they'd never believe him. Never.

Money. Something he'd prayed for, with his belly crying for food. Blood money, to buy him the gas chamber. He got up, whimpering, and raised his hand, as if to throw it away.

he couldn't throw it away. It meant bus fare, to get away from here, quick. It might save his life. And it meant food. Just one full meal, before they caught him.

He began to rip feverishly at the bills. Got to hurry. Sirens. God, let them be small. Fives, tens, twenties. A lot of money. Why was she carrying it? A fiver. He pulled it out, and a scrap of paper fell at his feet.

He scooped it up and began to run again.

Out onto Wilshire Boulevard. Slowly, so as not to attract attention. Sirens, coming fast, Fairfax Avenue. There was a bus coming, heading toward Hollywood. People were beginning to stop and look for the sirens.

He sprinted across the intersection against the lights and caught the bus. The driver grumbled about changing the five, digging for dollar bills. The sirens screamed closer. Danny forced his hands to be steady, taking the change and dropping a dime in the box.

They started, jamming through on the caution light, the driver still sore about the change. They were in the last batch of cars through before the cordon closed around Wilshire and Fairfax.

The bus was half empty. Danny sat by himself, trying not to sob when he breathed, trying to look peaceful. The roll fitted into his hand in his pocket, hard and accusing.

When they got as far north as Santa Monica Boulevard he began to relax a little. He got off there and went into a Log Cabin and ate. Then he took a red car and caught another bus on La Brea and went on to Hollywood. He went to three more drive-ins before he'd had enough to eat. He didn't dare have it all in one place, for fear of drawing notice.

Then he went out onto Sunset Boulevard, not knowing where to go next, or what to do. And for the first time he was really afraid.

He'd been afraid back at the Pits, with the hot animal fear of death. But this was different, this was being lost in a dark, cold place, where there was nothing but silence and waiting.

The night fog was coming in, chilly and smelling of the sea. It made little halos around the glare of Earl Carroll's. He could see people inside and hear music. The two big radio buildings across the street and the Palladium Ballroom radiated life and energy.

People, eating and drinking and having fun. Working. Fighting, maybe. not afraid. Not behind a wall, like he was.

He sat down on a bench, shivering. The roll of bills made a lump against his thigh.

The policeman had seen him pretty clearly by his flashlight. There'd be a description in the morning papers.

They'd get him. They always got you.

The cop he'd hit wasn't dead, anyway. He'd moved and tried to get up when the other guy helped him.

If he could have caught the killer, or even seen his face. That girl, so little and golden-haired, with her throat ripped and jammed against those snarling fangs–and they thought Danny Thayer had done it!

How the killer must have hated her, to take her living throat in his hands and force it down. . . . What could a girl like that do to make anyone hate her so?

Surely, if he gave himself up, they'd know he couldn't have (lone a thing like that. But somebody might say, "You hated her because she had money and you were hungry, so you killed her."

Now he had money. Sure. Money. Money to buy the gas chamber.

It wasn't till then that he remembered the bit of paper.

It was still in his pocket. He spread it out under the lights from Earl Carroll's. Pencilled in a hasty, angry scrawl were he words, "This is all I can give you, ever, no matter what you do. Damn you, damn you, damn you!"

Danny turned the paper over. It was a strip torn from a department store sales slip. There was a name and address on it. Miss Cicely Rieff, who lived on Fountain Avenue.

The dead girl. She'd been taking that money to someone. Blackmail, sure as shooting. She must have been pretty desperate when she rolled the money up, to grab the nearest paper and scribble a note like that and wrap it in the heart of the wad.

Was the murderer the blackmailer? Maybe. The girl must have known him, to go into the Pits alone with him after dark. But why did he go off without his money, then? Had Danny scared him?

Danny Thayer, who was a fugitive from justice, with a roll of bills he couldn't spend. Danny, who was going to die in the gas chamber, unless. . . .

Unless he could catch the murderer before the police caught him.

IT WAS ALMOST AS THOUGH his brain took hold and began to click without him, like a machine. He had clues–the note, the money, and the girl's name and address. He knew he wasn't the killer. That was more than the police had.

There hadn't been anything else in the girl's purse. Maybe it would take the police a little while to identify her. Until the morning papers came out, maybe, and somebody saw her picture.

It had been nearly ten when he found the body. It was nearly midnight now. Four or five hours he might hope for. Four or five hours to break into something from the outside and catch a killer.

It was hopeless, and he knew it. But it was better than just waiting, crouching in the dark with fear lying cold in his belly. He'd still be in trouble, of course, even if a miracle happened and he did find the murderer. He'd do time for stealing and hitting a cop. But he could face that all right. It was the terrible fear of dying, for something he didn't do, that froze him.

He got up, thinking of the description the cop would give. There was a service station across the street. Nobody saw him go into the men's room and lock the door. He still had his cheap razor. Nothing for that in a hock shop.

He managed to scrape his face pretty clean, using just soap and water. Then he used the blade to chop his hair shorter. It looked ragged, but at least it was short. Then he did what he could to make his clothes look decent.

When he came out he looked different enough so that cops hunting for a shag-haired, unshaven kid wouldn't grab him straight off. He forced himself to walk with jaunty casualness, trying to keep in shadow without being too obvious about it.

It was well after midnight when he found the Fountain Avenue house.

It was one of those big old frame places–two stories and a half–left over from better days. A porch overgrown with bougainvillea ran around two sides. It was on a corner and there was a sign in the front bay window–ROOMS FOR RENT.

There were only one or two lights upstairs. That meant the police hadn't identified the body yet. If they had, the place would be blazing and full of people. He went around to the driveway. It led between high lattice fences, grown heavy with morning glory vines, back to an old stable that was a garage now, with an apartment over it.

There were no lights in the back. Danny went softly down the drive. His heart was jumping like something trying to break loose.

The fog was heavier, but there was still moonlight. Everything was overgrown with vines and shrubs. It smelt musty and secret, and the lattice-covered back porch was a black hole with the garbage cans like ogre's eyes looking dully from under it.

He stood still by the corner of the house, then. He was here, but what next? He couldn't break into the house, yelling, "Who killed her?" The sharp chill of the air got inside him, and he felt the terrible, helpless weakness of an animal in a trap.

He went on, aimlessly, around the house. Noises came suddenly down to him from the garage apartment, so that he jumped and crouched trembling under a bush. A man's low thick laughter and a scuffling sound, and one sharp high titter in a woman's voice, and silence.

Danny crept on, still sweating with shock. He went along a dirt path between straggling flower beds, looking up at the dark house, wishing he were like Superman and could look right through walls.

Probably the killer wasn't here at all. If he was, there was no way to get at him. He might as well go and give himself up, now.

He didn't see the summer house until he almost ran into it. It was lattice like the fence, at the end of a pergola leading to a side porch. It was all choked with vines, smelling dusty and rotten in the damp night air.

And there were people inside.

A man's voice spoke, right at Danny's shoulder, just beyond the vines. A low voice, smooth and drawling and soft, and somehow worse than if it hadn't been.

"I just want to know where she is, Frieda."

"I tell you I don't know!" It was a woman this time, breathless, frightened, almost crying. "I haven't any control over Cicely."

"Very well, F ieda," said the man pleasantly. "I'm in no hurry."

"I don't understand." The tone of the woman's whisper did something to Danny's insides. "Teddy, if you've harmed her. . . . "

"Why should I harm Cicely? Just because Mother doesn't love her darling niece?" There was a rustle of swift movement and a sharply indrawn breath.

"Don't, Teddy! It hurts!"

The man said silkily, "Does it? I'm glad. Just remember it, in case. . . . What's that? There's someone outside!"

Danny got up and ran. A big moth had blundered suddenly into his face, so that he jerked his head and struck the vines and rustled them. He dodged into the shadows of a big tree and around it to the garage, where steps came down from the apartment.

Feet were running close behind him.

He knew he'd have nightmares about running feet all the rest of his life. He'd slip behind the garage to the street, and then. . . .

There was no way behind the garage, and the fence was too high to get over in time. He was caught.

He turned, then, his bony young face snarling, his fists balled. Scared, and angry because he was scared, and furious suddenly with fate for picking on him. A tall slender man in slacks and a sport coat was almost on him, running gracefully, like a dancer.

Danny lashed out at a smooth blond head, missed because the head moved aside a fraction, and felt something crash below his left ear.

He went sprawling, the breath knocked out of him against hard ground. A hand gripped his collar, dragged him upward, strangling, and then knuckles slashed him twice across the mouth.

The darkness turned suddenly red. Danny made an animal noise and doubled his feet up and kicked. The blond man grunted and lurched back, his handsome face twisted like a fiend's in the moonlight.

The girl cried out sharply, then. She'd been a long way behind the man. Now she got between him and Danny, and said rapidly, "Wait, Teddy! Don't! It's my friend Dick Taylor, from back home."

Teddy scowled down at her, his fists clenched and showing blood on the knuckles. "You're lying," he said.

"I'm not, I swear it! Dick, you tell him I'm not. Dicky!"

Danny's brain was numbed with anger and pain and wondering if the girl was crazy. Almost without thinking, he mumbled, "Sure I'm her friend. Who'd you think I was–Hitler? Hi, Frieda."

Lucky he'd heard her name. Teddy stood irresolute, swinging his fists in little tight arcs, like a cat swings its paws. And then the door opened, up above at the head of the stairs.

A man came out. He was wearing a big coat and carrying his hat, and his feet stumbled on the wooden platform. He said thickly, "G'nigh', Princess. Thursday, huh?" He chuckled and turned, and then he saw the group at the foot of the stairs.

Danny saw his face for one stricken moment. Then the man slammed his hat on and pulled it hard over his face and ran down the stairs, hanging onto the rail and stumbling until

Danny thought he'd fall. He shoved past with his head down and went lurching down the drive.

Danny knew who the man was. He made a lot of money, kissing pretty women for the movies.

A woman came out of the door upstairs. She wore a thin silk robe, and she was a looker. She leaned over the rail, with her dark hair hanging over her shoulders, and blew a long plume of smoke. Her voice was tired and bored.

"What goes on?"

"Nothing," said Frieda. "Just a friend of mine from back home. He hitch-hiked all the way out here, and then Teddy. . . ."

Teddy's voice was sullen, but still smooth. "What's he doing prowling in the yard at this time of night?"

Danny's brain had been churning furiously. The girl must have her reason for this. And it gave him his chance to get inside. The least he could do was play up to her.

He got up, wiping the blood off his chin, and said, "Trying to get hold of Frieda. I'm broke, and I didn't think the landlady would let me in, the way I look. Sure quick with your fists, aren't you?"

"Quick," said Teddy softly, "and accurate."

The woman in the silk robe came down the stairs, her slipper heels clicking. Her legs showed white against the darkness.

"Spoils," she said bitterly, and let something glitter in her hand. "Now I'll go find the old highbinder."

"The intricate pattern of crime," said Teddy, almost absently. "So much more fascinating than a jigsaw puzzle. Isn't it, Frieda?"

Frieda didn't say anything. Danny had his first real look at her. She wore something plain and dark, and she wasn't very tall. Her hair was the color of wheat, falling loose on her shoulders.

He thought her eyes were blue, but in that light all he knew was that they had hate in them. Hate, and fear, looking at Teddy.

"Come on, Dick," she said. "I'll get you a room."

He followed her. Out in the street a motor roared and coughed, as though someone were in an awful hurry to get away. And a light went on in the second story, as though the motor was a signal.

Teddy laughed behind them, a soft nasty little sound. The woman in the silk robe plodded up into the black hole of the porch. And Frieda shrank suddenly against Danny and cried, "What's that?"

There was something sprawled in the shadows of a clump of hydrangeas. Danny hadn't seen it before. But the moonlight had shifted a bit, and one white hand showed up against the grass.

A man's hand, lying across the dull metal of a gun.

They went to it, not speaking at first. Teddy knelt down and rolled the body partly over by the shoulder. The woman in the silk robe made a little choked scream and came back, her heels scuffing.

"It's Halstead," said Teddy. "Somebody's knocked him on the head."

Frieda said, in a queer flat whisper, "My God. Who would want to kill poor Mr. Halstead?"

Teddy's eyes were slanted like a cat's, glinting in the moonlight. He pointed to the gun. "Who did poor Mr. Halstead want to kill? Can't guess, can you, Frieda?"

Frieda pressed tight against Danny, so tight he could feel the roll of bills in his pocket digging into her. She shivered and said wearily, "Haven't you any heart at all?"

The woman gripped her thin robe together at the throat. "I'm getting out of here. The other I'm used to, but murder. . . !"

Teddy got up, dusting his knees. "No use, Princess. The police don't like the contestants running out on their quiz shows."

Policemen. Policemen coming from one murder to another and finding Danny Thayer. There wouldn't be any time, now. They'd recognize him. Frieda would admit her lie. And if he ran away. . . .

He was scared. Cold inside, and scared, and kind of dazed, like an animal when it finds the steel jaws in its leg are there to stay.

The porch door opened. A woman's harsh whisper said, "Get in here, you fools! Want everybody. . . . My God, what's that!"

"A corpse, Mother," said Teddy. "Your late boarder, Mr. Halstead." There was a malicious, concealed amusement in his easy voice.

The porch door shut. A woman scuffed heavily out from under the shrouding vines and down the steps as fast as her heavy bulk could make it. Her frizzed white hair stuck out, quilled here and there with curlers. When she came across the wet grass she pulled up the straggling skirts of her nightgown and flannel wrapper, and Danny saw her ankles, thick and white and bunchy with veins.

"He must have had a heart attack," she said. "A heart attack. His heart was weak, you know." Then she saw the gun and slopped, her breath wheezing in her thick throat. "Suicide?"

"He hasn't been shot. And I don't think he cracked his own skull." Danny saw the cat-glitter of his eyes, studying the woman, laughing.

"We'll have to call the police," said Frieda. Teddy shot her a bright, hard look, and smiled. He was handsome, like a blond Satan.

The fat woman said rapidly, "No, wait. Maybe he cut himself falling. Let's get him inside–" Then she saw Danny. Her voice went suddenly ugly. "Who's this?"

"I'm a pal of Frieda's, from back home." Her eyes were like small hard pebbles, staring right through Danny. They made him tighten inside. But she was scared, too. She didn't want the police. If he could bluff this through, hang onto his chance. . . .

Her face was like a coarse, evil mask of stone in the moonlight. Danny could sense her thoughts running like rats behind it. Then she said, "All right. Grab hold of his feet and help Mr. Rieff."

Teddy Rieff. The dead girl had been his cousin, then. Danny got the corpse around the knees. Everything was quiet. The people in the front hadn't heard. The dead man was heavy, and his clothes were damp. Teddy pocketed the gun.

They went in through the dark porch, to a stale-smelling kitchen. A night light burned in the hall beyond. They went toward it, as quietly as they could, across a bare, creaky wooden floor.

They were almost there. And then a door opened suddenly, right at Danny's shoulder, so that he almost dropped the body. Dim light from the hallway outlined a woman's head against the darkness.

Hair flattened in wet curls under a net, with a face the shape of a pear sagging out from under it, a wide weak mouth and eyes that popped a little. Eyes that were wide open and staring, fixed on the dead man's bloody face, lolling back against Teddy's stomach.

SHE DIDN'T SPEAK. Danny didn't know how long they stood there. Then Mrs. Rieff said sharply, "Go to your room. Princess. I'll see you later."

Princess went out, holding her silk robe away as she passed the corpse. And Mrs. Rieff moved, very quickly for a heavy woman.

Her right hand clamped just above the staring woman's elbow. Her left smothered the whimpering cry of pain. She whispered savagely, "You know about this, Millie, don't you?" Her fingers tightened. The woman strained away, her pale eyes stretched with fear.

"Tell me," said Mrs. Rieff softly, "or you'll get no nights off for six months."

The woman made a strangled whining sound and tried to nod. Mrs. Rieff took her hand away. Millie started to speak, her mouth open as though once started the stream of words wouldn't stop.

"Not here!" snapped Mrs. Rieff, and shook her viciously. "Upstairs, and be quiet!"

Down a dingy hall and up back stairs that must have been worked on lately, because they didn't creak, Mrs. Rieff opened a door and motioned them in, listened a minute, and then came after them.

Lamps made a subdued purplish light. Danny guessed it was Mrs. Rieff's room. There were photographs and expensive knicknacks all over the mantel and the tables. It was all crowded and choked and overdone.

He helped Teddy Rieff put the body down on a couch. Mr. Halstead had been a kindly-looking man, grey-haired and tired. There was a bruise and a big cut on his face.

Danny straightened up, waiting. He put his hands in his pockets to steady them, and the roll felt big and hard, like a judge's hammer when he passes sentence.

He saw Frieda looking at him. A queer, desperate look. And then Mrs. Rieff's pebble eyes were fixed on him.

Her face was coarse and puffed, with red broken veins under the skin. Danny was afraid of her, suddenly. She said sharply, "So you're a friend of Frieda's, eh?"

"Sure. My name's Dick Taylor. I hitch-hiked out here, and landed broke. I wanted to get hold of Frieda first. I didn't think you'd let me in, the way I look. I. . . . "

"Well, you're in now." There was something terrible in the slow, reflective way she said it. "Frieda, where's Cicely?"

"I don't know." She was pretty, now that you could see her face. She looked tired and sort of stony. Danny felt suddenly protective.

Mrs. Rieff smiled. It was like Teddy's smile, catlike, malicious and secret. She turned suddenly on the staring, pale-eyed woman.

"All right, you, Millie. What about this?"

Millie licked her lips. She seemed drugged and dazed with fear. She stood utterly still, her big rough hands hanging, staring at the sprawling corpse. She wore bright green silk pajamas and a pink wrapper and pink slippers of quilted satin.

Her mouth worked for a long time before the words came, ragged and tumbling.

"'I was coming back from the trashpile. I saw him, hiding in the bushes. He was waiting. . . . "

"What were you doing at the trashpile at that hour?"

"I–please, Mrs. Rieff, I only took two slices. Don't!"

Mrs. Rieff did, with relish. "Stealing bacon again, and trying to hide the grease. Well, stop rubbing your stupid face. Go on."

Millie's pale, protruding eyes swung again to the body.

"He had a gun," she whispered. "He looked sick. He told me to go away, but I knew what he was doing. He was waiting to kill Miss Cicely. I heard him tell her he would, if she didn't let him alone."

Her big rough hands knotted together suddenly. "He wouldn't stop. So I hit him with the skillet, on the head. He–he made a funny choking noise and fell down. I was scared. I ran inside. . . ."

Millie crumpled slowly down to her knees, staring straight ahead of her, her hands loose in her lap.

"I didn't mean to kill him," she said dully. "I only didn't want him to hurt Miss Cicely. She's kind to me. She's the only person that ever was kind to me. She gives me pretty things, and money enough to go to two movies on my night off."

She looked up then, with something bright and burning in her eyes.

"You all hate her," she said. "You all wish she was dead. But she's kind to me. And no one's going to hurt her, if I can help it!"

She relaxed, as though there was nothing left in her, and just sat there, tears running silently down her flabby cheeks. Teddy had been bending over the body. He spoke now, rapidly.

"I don't think this whack was hard enough to kill him, Mother. Stunned him, probably, and he raked his face on the bushes, falling. The old boy had a weak heart. Probably the strain of planning the murder, and getting caught, and the Mow, ow, brought on a fatal attack."

Mrs. Rieff looked down at the body with hard, narrow eyes.

"So Cicely was blackmailing him, eh? Clever girl. Let that be a lesson to you, my son. Only a genius would have looked for profit in that dried-up old priss!"

She laughed suddenly, a startling wheeze of private mirth, and settled heavily into an overstuffed chair.

"Get up, Millie. Go to bed. And if you open your mouth about this, I'll swear you killed him. Just forget Mr. Halstead, Millie. And you can forget your night off this week, too, so you'll remember the bacon."

Millie said, "Then I didn't really kill him?"

"No. But I can swear you did. Now go and dream of Clark Gable."

Millie got up. She looked at Mrs. Rieff with dumb, weary hate, like a beaten animal, and went. Mrs. Rieff said briskly, "That's that. We'll forget about the gun. Halstead had a heart attack and hurt his head falling. We brought him in, but it was too late. Teddy, you and the kid carry him to his room and then call a doctor. Make all the noise you want to. We want witnesses."

She got up and took the gun out of Teddy's pocket and wiped it carefully. Then she pressed Halstead's stiffening fingers on it, in several places, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and gave it back.

"Stick it in one of his drawers. If he had a license they'll look for it. If he hasn't, well, we don't know anything about it."

She looked at Danny, with her hard, flat pebble eyes, and said, "Then you can have Number Eight, here in the rear. Any friend of my niece's—we don't want you to get away too soon."

Teddy smiled. "Welcome to our happy home. Grab his feet again."

Danny did. Frieda started out with them, but Mrs. Rieff said, "Stay here, dear. Two of them is enough."

Frieda shot him a veiled, urgent look and stopped, reluctantly. They went on with the body, through a door that closed he back part of the hall off from the front. They made a lot of noise. Presently there were people swarming around, talking, questioning, staring.

They got Halstead into his room. Teddy palmed the gun somehow and got somebody busy calling a doctor and went out again with Danny. Danny was only vaguely conscious of what went on. His brain was spinning like a squirrel in a cage, and making about as much progress.

The things he had found out, instead of simplifying the problem, had only made it harder. Cicely Rieff had been a blackmailer. The servant said everybody hated her. Halstead had been driven to murder.

Who else in this house was Cicely blackmailing? And who I tad been blackmailing her? And what about?

Frieda, who must be Cicely's sister, was afraid of Teddy Rieff. Why? And was there really some pleased and secret knowledge in Mrs. Rieff's eyes, or had he just imagined it? The girl Frieda was the pivot. If he could be alone with

her....

Teddy Rieff closed the hall door behind them. "The Great Divide," he chuckled. "The back is strictly family territory. The boarders even have to garage their cars elsewhere, and here are no keys to the back door given out."

His slanting cat-eyes were fixed sharply on Danny. "Therefore you are the first outsider to see what you have seen."

He meant about the apartment over the garage. Danny grinned. "I know how to keep quiet. Say, I'd like to see Frieda before I turn in. Been a long time, and we were pretty chummy."

"Sure," said Teddy. "Four years is a long time. How are things back in Kansas?"

"About the same," said Danny warily. Teddy stopped before a door and opened it, snapping the light on inside. "This is your room, kid. Suit you?"

"Sure, anything." He wanted to see Frieda, alone–and quick. A siren wailed suddenly over on Sunset, and his guts knotted tight inside him. But it went by. He started off down the hall.

He didn't even have time to turn. The swift movement behind him melted right into the chopping blow on the side of his neck. His heart seemed to close up on him, and his body just folded, heavily.

He didn't quite go out. He felt Teddy's arms like lean steel cables around him, and knew dimly that he was dragged and lifted and stretched on something. He began to struggle then, glaring up at Teddy in a sort of dazed fury.

But it was too late. He was spread-eagled on the bed, tied wrist and ankle to the brass posts. Teddy smiled down at him. "Frieda's only been out here two years," he said gently, "and she came from Michigan. Better start talking, kid."

The blood thundered in Danny's head. It hurt, and he couldn't think. He whispered, "You go to hell."

"Inevitably. But not just yet." Teddy's long fingers twisted cruelly in Danny's hair, lifting his head. "What's between you and Frieda? Something about Cicely?"

Danny wasn't afraid now. Just mad. He thrashed his head about and tried to bite Teddy's wrist. Teddy laughed and slapped him, just hard enough to make his ears ring.

"Okay. We'll do it the hard way." He whipped his handkerchief tight around Danny's jaws to keep him from yelling, and went through his pockets.

Then he stood silent for a long minute, looking at the roll of bills and the crumpled paper with the note and the address on it.

He pocketed them at last, slowly, and bent over Danny again. His handsome face had deep, cruel lines in it. "She's dead, then."

Danny nodded. No use trying to hide that any longer. Teddy ripped off the gag.

"What do you know about this?"

Danny burst out, "Nothing! I was just walking through the Tar Pits, looking for a place to sleep. I heard a woman scream, and saw someone running away. Then I found the body, and the money–and then the cops found me. They think I did it."

"They do!" said Teddy softly. His hand closed on Danny's shirt collar, pulled him up ruthlessly to the reach of his bound arms. Teddy's cat-eyes were pale and cold and yet somehow blazing. He said, "Did you see the killer?"

"Only someone running."

"Man or woman?"

"Someone in pants. Dark hair."

"Dark hair. You're sure of that?"

Danny looked at the light shining on Teddy's smooth blond head. "You could have worn a cap," he said grimly. Shot in the dark. He shivered, looking at Teddy's face. Teddy laughed. A soft, secret little laugh. "Yes. I could, couldn't I?" He let Danny down again and replaced the gag. "Just lie still, little one. Daddy has business to attend to. Oh, yes. Big, important business. And I need you!"

The lights went out. Teddy opened the door and closed it softly behind him, and Danny Thayer was alone.

He lay there with the blood pounding in his bruised neck, his legs and arms beginning to ache where they were tied, and thought, "He did it. He did it, and he's going to pin it on me."

His brain began to click over again, like a well-oiled engine. What motive could Teddy Rieff have for killing his cousin Cicely? Well, Cicely was blackmailing at least one other person so that he was willing to murder her. Why not Teddy, too? Or Teddy's mother?

Teddy's mother. That apartment over the garage, Princess, and the prominent actor. Mrs. Rieff was prosperous. Boardinghouse keepers don't get that way solely from the boarders, and women who run small apartments over garages don't get that way splitting diamond bracelets with the girls. There's another, quicker way. . . .

Blackmail. You always came to blackmail in this house. Ten to one Mrs. Rieff blackmailed the men who came to the rear apartment. She'd want to keep her skirts clean, though, in case of trouble. She took plenty of precautions. It wouldn't be easy to get anything on her.

But suppose somebody did. Wouldn't she rather split her profits than be exposed or give the whole thing up? All right. Say Cicely Rieff, her niece and therefore admitted into the family circle, had proof of Mrs. Rieff's business and blackmailed her with it. Remembering Mrs. Rieff's heavy face and hard pebble eyes, Danny didn't think she'd take it too long. She'd get busy figuring out a way to rid herself of the blackmailer.

She wouldn't do it herself. She'd delegate someone else. And who better than her son, Teddy? Just like, a few minutes ago, she had said, "We don't want you to get away too soon," and Teddy had smiled. . . .

Perhaps Frieda Rieff knew too much. Perhaps that was why Teddy had threatened her in the summer house.

Danny groaned. Just guessing wouldn't do him any good. He had to have proof. Time, the little time he had, was rushing by. And here he was, trussed up and waiting.

Waiting. Remembering Teddy's long sinewy hands, Danny shuddered. And then, very softly, somebody opened the door.

DANNY LAY QUITE STILL, hardly breathing. His nails dug into his palms, but he didn't feel them. He watched the dark huddled bulk come in, saw the door swing shut again, and listened to feet scuffing stealthily across the carpet.

A match flared and sputtered startlingly, close to his face. And Millie's voice, hushed to a hoarse whisper, asked, "Are you all right?"

All the strength poured out of Danny's rigid body. He said shakily, "Sure. Untie me, quick. What are you doing here?" The match went out. He could feel her rough fingers fumbling at his wrists. Her voice came raggedly, as though some great pent-up emotion in her forced it out against a barrier of fear.

"Miss Frieda sent me. She upset a vase on her dress, so she could get away from the old woman for a minute to change it, and she sent me up here. She thought they were going to do something to you. She needs your help. That's why she lied about knowing you."

Millie's voice broke in a dry sob. "I heard through the wall, waiting in the next room for Teddy to go away. Poor Miss Cicely! She knew they wanted to kill her. She was afraid. I know she wasn't bad! She was kind to me, and I loved her.She had one wrist free and started on the other. Teddy had tied hard knots in the handkerchiefs he used. Her voice stumbled on.

"I heard Mr. Halstead threaten her yesterday, and the old woman was in a black fury all day. I know Cicely was asking for more money, and I know she was in trouble. She hasn't been herself ever since Frieda had to go back to Michigan on business, four months ago. "I wanted to help her." But she'd never tell me what was wrong. Anyway, there was nothing I could do. There–never has been."

Wrists free, and both of them working on ankles lashed tight with leather belts, Millie's shaken voice went on again. "She was frightened, I tell you. She gave me three dollars this morning, and then she said, 'This may be the last money

I'll ever give you, Millie. If anything happens to me, Frieda will–' And then Mrs. Rieff came into the kitchen and she stopped.

"I think she was going to say that Miss Frieda would give me things. I don't think so. She's a nice girl, but she lives inside herself so much. But I don't care about that. I loved Miss Cicely. She's the only person I ever had to love."

Danny was glad it was dark. He hated to see women cry. He said, "Why haven't you left this place, or called the police?"

"I didn't have anything the all the police about. The old woman's careful about that. I'd only have gotten Princess and Miss Cicely in trouble. Besides–" She helped him off the bed, and he could hear her throat working, trying to keep the terror and the tears in check.

"Besides, I didn't have anyplace else to go. I'm not young. It isn't easy to find a place these days. Mrs. Rieff knows that, and she knows I'm too dumb and too scared to fight her."

Her voice dropped suddenly to a strange tight whisper. "Only this time I'm not. They've killed Cicely, she and her wicked son. They've killed her. And I'm not going to let them get away with it!"

Danny said awkwardly, "Come on, then. We'll get Frieda." His hand was on the knob when Millie's fingers closed

sharply on his wrist. He heard them, then. Slow, heavy foot-steps, coming closer.

The old woman," whispered Millie. "Maybe she's coming to make sure. "They waited. No time, no place to hide or get away. There was sweat on Danny's temples. The footsteps stopped outside the door. He could hear her heavy breathing beyond the thin panel.

The knob turned in his fingers.

The barrier door down the hall opened, and a voice said, rather timidly, "The doctor's here, Mrs. Rieff."

She said, "All right," and let go of the knob and went on.

Danny's knees sagged. He waited until the outside door closed, and went out.

There was nothing in the hall but silence and the dim glow of the night light, until they reached the door of Mrs. Rieff's room. There were voices behind that, low but not very guarded, as though they were sure of not being overheard. Frieda's voice, tight and shaken, saying, "What a filthy trick! You were blackmailing your own mother."

"Naturally. Lucrative work, if you can get it. Of course, I knew it wouldn't last forever. That's why I kept asking for more, and Cissy had to shake more out of the victims in order to meet all her–er–obligations. Naturally, the victims began to kick. The last raise was just the final spur."

He laughed. "This will be a shock to Mother. She trusts my filial devotion so completely!"

"And that boy?"

"That boy," said Teddy softly, "is going to be a scapegoat. I'm going to tie all his little curiosities to his horns and run him straight back to the police–dead."

There was a queer sharp edge to Frieda's voice, a stillness. "And what about me?"

"Now that this game is played out, I'm thinking of taking over Mother's business and enlarging it. I want. . . . " He seemed to move closer to the girl, and his voice dropped so that Danny couldn't hear.

Frieda's voice came suddenly, sharp and harsh. "No! You devil, I won't do it! Teddy, you . . . oh!"

Danny said quietly, "Millie, go phone the police. I'm going in there."

He still had no direct, incriminating evidence. Teddy's implied confession wouldn't be enough to condemn him. But Danny figured he'd have at least a chance this way. And he couldn't let Teddy just go on. Cicely had already died. Frieda might be next.

Millie gripped his arm tight. "Be careful–and I hope this'll mean the rope for both of 'em!"

She went off down the hall, almost running, her bright green pajamas flapping around her thin legs. Danny, very quietly, opened the door.

They didn't see him come in, for a moment. Teddy had his back to Danny, his hands on Frieda's arms below the shoulders. She had changed into a dark blue wrapper with a long gold arrow on the collar. She was straining away from him, her eyes blazing out of a face white and hard as scraped bone.

Teddy murmured, "You'd be a pretty woman, Frieda, if you weren't such a blasted martinet!"

She said something, so low and hissing that Danny couldn't get it. Then she saw him, coming up behind Teddy. Her blue eyes widened.

Teddy turned swiftly, his handsome face startled and wicked as a blond Satan. Frieda cried out, "Help me! Please help me!"

Danny said evenly, "I'm just waiting for the chance."

It was the first time in his short life he'd ever felt real hate. He went in on Teddy Rieff, watching the poise of his blond head, the swing of his fists and shoulders. His first blow just grazed Teddy's jaw. He twisted to take the counterblow on his shoulder, crouched, and slashed upward.

His fist smashed into a belly tight and hard as board. It jolted both of them. Then a roundhouse swing connected, with Danny's ear. He went down, grabbing at Teddy's knees, pulling him off balance and into a table loaded with china and glass.

It went over with a crash. Frieda had closed the hall door and was standing flat against it, watching with wide, bright eyes. Teddy cut his hand on a broken vase, and there began to be red splashes over the rug and Danny Thayer.

There wasn't much science to it. Danny just hung on, punching, kicking, grappling. Teddy was heavier and experienced. Danny's long rangy frame hadn't reached its real strength yet. But Danny had made up his mind to one thing. This time he wasn't going to be licked.

Teddy's knee ground agonizingly into his belly. Hard knuckles slashed and pounded at his face. His mouth was full of blood and his ears roared. He set his teeth and twisted like an eel, grabbing out blindly.

He got Teddy by the shirt collar. The cloth was stout. Danny's arm was long, and his position gave him leverage. He dragged Teddy over, heaving his body underneath to break his balance. His eyes were swelling and full of blood, but he could feel.

He twisted the collar tight, working his fingers like a bulldog's jaws, in and in, his head sunk and his back humped to take Teddy's blows.

Teddy swore, viciously, between his teeth. He was dragging at Danny's wrist now, but Danny's long bony fingers were tangled in the cloth, twisting, twisting. Teddy lurched back and up, shaking himself.

Danny kicked at his ankles and brought him down again, hard. He got his other hand on the collar and his knee on Teddy's right arm. Teddy's left hand raged at his face, clawing. Danny put his head deep between his shoulders to save his eyes, and then Teddy found his ear.

Danny screamed, and Teddy laughed, a sort of strangled gurgle. Danny flung himself downward suddenly. Teddy's nails slipped out of his ear. His right arm came free as Danny's knee moved with his body.

Danny lay flat on top of Teddy, grinding his fingers in, twisting the cloth tighter and tighter. He could feel the hard, straining cords of Teddy's throat, the softer spot beneath the Adam's apple. He began to get scared. He didn't want to kill.

Teddy's nails were ripping his shirt and the flesh under it, He tore away suddenly and loosed one hand from Teddy's throat and brought it crashing down against his temple.

Teddy's hands faltered. Danny flailed his fist down twice more. Teddy Rieff lay still, breathing hoarsely through his mouth.

Danny got up. Very slowly, waiting for the pain to break through the numbness. Through a wavering red curtain he saw Frieda.

"Tie him up," he said thickly. "Keep him. Police. . . . " The golden arrow on her collar flashed at him. "Police?"

"Coming. Millie sent for them. Teddy killed your sister–"

"Yes," she said. "Yes. I know that. Are you all right?"

"I guess so." He wiped the blood out of his eyes and swallowed what was in his mouth. Teddy was groaning on the floor. Danny said, "We'll have to take care of his mother somehow. Lock the door, maybe. Keep her out till the police come."

Frieda nodded and turned the key. Teddy looked awful, bloody and choking on his breath. It scared Danny. What if Teddy died?

He was Danny's only proof of innocence. There was no direct evidence against him. But the police would at least investigate, might find some, might even force him to confess. But with Teddy dead, at Danny's hands. . . .

He wasn't dead. He was tough. A little blood didn't mean much. Danny pulled himself together and helped Frieda tie him with curtain cords.

Then he just sat, looking across at Frieda. Her hair looked even paler against the dark blue robe, gold and shining like the arrow on her collar. Her eyes were very blue. She smiled tremulously, and said, "This is what I prayed you'd do. I've been so frightened. My sister wasn't good to me, and Teddy . . . I didn't know anyone to ask help from, and when you came, I–you might have been killed. Can you ever forgive me?"

He waved a bruised hand awkwardly. "You gave me my chance. The cops think I killed your sister."

"Teddy told me about that."

"How did the old woman let herself get blackmailed?" Frieda shrugged wearily. "Cicely's been working on it ever since we came out here to live with Aunt Grace. Our parents died, you see. Cicely never told me much, but I think she got a candid camera shot of Aunt Grace–Mrs. Rieff–taking a necklace from Princess. It didn't mean much by itself. But Cicely had a case all built up in her mind, enough so that my aunt didn't want to risk an investigation."

She caught her breath suddenly, looking toward the door. "She's coming back."

Danny got up and went to the door. Fear began to knot his insides again, he didn't know why. She was a woman, and locked out. But there was something about her, about her eyes. . . .

Her heavy footsteps came up, and stopped outside, and for the second time that night the knob turned under Danny's fingers. He said, "The door's locked, Mrs. Rieff. It's going to stay locked until the police get here."

There was a startled intake of breath, and a silence. Then her voice came, ominously quiet.

"Have you hurt Teddy?"

"He'll be all right. Only he's staying here, for the police." And then, sharp and taut behind him, Frieda screamed. Danny whirled around. Frieda was half crouched over

Teddy, her hands pressed over her heart. She looked up at him, slowly.

"He's dead," she whispered. "You've killed him."

Danny went forward, three wavering, leaden steps. Teddy lay utterly still, not groaning, not breathing. His lips were blue. Mrs. Rieff called from beyond the door, but Danny hardly heard her.

He stood staring down at the body. His bony hands opened and closed slowly, still feeling Teddy's living throat against them.

Teddy's throat. Cicely's throat. They'd never believe him now. "Frieda. Frieda!"

The girl looked at him, dazed.

"Frieda, you'll tell them how it happened. You'll tellMurder in the Family

them. . . ."

She crumpled down gently at his feet, lying like a tired child with her cheek on her hand, the arrow glinting on her breast. It was then that Mrs. Rieff came in. There must have been another door into the hall. She came slowly through the bedroom door to Danny's right. She carried a snub-nosed automatic, with a silencer on it.

HER EYES WERE LIKE SMALL polished bits of steel, sunk deep under heavy lids, seeing everything. Teddy's battered body. Blood splashed over the carpet. Danny standing on wide-braced feet, beaten and torn and half stripped, wild with numb terror. And Frieda, lying quiet, her wheat-gold hair burning against the rug.

Without speaking or letting the automatic waver a fraction of an inch, Mrs. Rieff bent down and put her free hand on Teddy's throat, feeling for the pulse under the jaw. Then she pilled back an eyelid and gave one swift, keen look.

She got up. Her heavy face was almost expressionless, but Danny's heart twisted in him like a scared animal. l le whispered, "I didn't mean to kill him."

"That's too bad." Her voice, held tight to a level, throaty whisper, betrayed what she was feeling. "That's too bad!" 'lime, the room, the universe, shrank in on Danny Thayer so lie could hardly breathe. The focal point of the whole cosmos was Mrs. Rieff's finger, tightening on the trigger.

He said, stupidly, "Teddy killed the girl. He was going to kill me. I had to. . . . "

"I know, I sent him to do both."

Danny backed off a step. She followed, Death in a nightgown and a flannel wrapper, with curlers in its hair. She said softly, "I want to kill you. I want to kill you myself, for killing my son. And even if I didn't, do you think I could let you leave this house alive after all you've learned this night?"

"They'll get you for killing me. They'll be here soon."

She laughed, softly. "Look at this room, and you, and Teddy. Who'll blame me for shooting a crazy killer, already wanted?" "Frieda. Millie. They'll tell. . . . "

"I'll take care of Frieda and Millie."

The automatic came up, steadied, rock-like in her thick hand. Danny said, "Wait. Did you know Teddy was blackmailing Cicely and keeping the money? Your money?"

Her hard pebble eyes blinked. "You're lying."

"Why do you think she was demanding more and more money? Just yesterday, so that you and Halstead both wanted to kill her on the same night. Look in Teddy's pockets. You'll find the bills I stole from the body, and a note."

"You're a fool. Teddy wouldn't have left money on her body, even if he had been lying to me."

"I frightened him away, running across that stone bridge."

Her eyes were ugly with pain and hate. She was only listening with the top of her mind, watching him, thinking how he was going to die.

"What stone bridge?"

"In the La Brea Pits, where he killed her."

"You're crazy," said Mrs. Rieff dreamily. "He drove her car off the road into Coldwater Canyon."

The round black eye of the automatic was staring at Danny's heart.

He dropped, twisting sideways back of a chair. The bullet sang just over his head and thunked into the plaster.

He cried out, "I tell you he killed her in the Pits! He jammed her throat down into the mouth of that sabre-tooth cat. For God's sake, look!"

Perhaps missing her shot had shaken her a little, or perhaps the truth was naked in Danny's voice. She bent, slowly, never taking her eyes from the chair where the boy crouched, and felt Teddy's pockets.

Danny could see part of her, under the chair. He saw her hand draw the bills out and hold them for a minute, and he listened for a siren, praying. But there was only silence.

Mrs. Rieff whispered, "You did. You lied to me, Teddy. You said you couldn't get anything on her to make her stop. That's why we had to kill her."

Then her hand dropped the bills and lay for a moment tenderly on Teddy's face. "It doesn't matter now." She got up. "It doesn't matter now, does it, you there behind the chair? They're both dead now, and it doesn't matter!" Danny, under the chair, watched her thick white ankles come slowly toward him. Beyond them was Frieda, lying still, the golden arrow glittering softly as she breathed. Frieda knew what Teddy had on Cicely. She could tell the whole story of Teddy's double-cross. But she was out. And it didn't matter, anyway. They were both dead, and he was going to be.

The ankles stopped beyond the chair. He could see the veins up on them, blue and bunchy. His long jaw stiffened. If he got up suddenly, and pushed the chair over into her. . . . Frieda stirred, just the faintest contraction of the muscles,

the golden arrow shot a wicked barb of light into his eyes.

Danny's muscles tightened. There were fragments of glass and china on the floor from the table he and Teddy had knocked over. He got a handful, caught a deep breath, and surged up.

The chair crashed over, almost into Mrs. Rieff's knees, so that she had to move back. And the handful of fragments shot out like shrapnel from Danny's hand.

They struck Frieda Rieff full in the face and neck. She cried out and sprang up, startled and furious, her face twisted into a devil's mask frighteningly like Teddy's.

Danny shouted, "Don't shoot. I didn't kill your son. She did!"

For a long moment there was silence. Then Frieda began to cry softly, the look on her face gone so swiftly that it might have been imagination. Mrs. Rieff said, almost soundlessly, "What are you trying to do?"

"Save my neck," said Danny. She had her balance again. She could shoot, any time. Frieda was standing with her face in her hands, her wheat-gold hair falling over them, shaking a little.

Danny said, "Frieda was faking. She was waiting for you to kill me. That way I'd take the blame for both murders."

"That's not true." Frieda's voice was a broken, childish sob. "I did faint. When I came to I was scared. I just lay there. How can you say I killed my own cousin?"

For an instant Danny was shaken. She was so soft, so lovely, so miserable. Mrs. Rieff saw his hesitation. She said, "You're stalling."

Faintly, then, there was a siren wailing. Far away, but coming. Sweat needled Danny's face.

Frieda burst out, "How could I have killed Teddy? You were right with me all the time. And there's no mark on him you didn't put there!"

"Frieda," he said quietly, "where does that golden arrow belong?"

Her hand flew to her collar, slid down slowly to her breast. "No place in particular. Anywhere. Anywhere I want to put it.

Mrs. Rieff said slowly, "It's always on the collar. It was on the collar half an hour ago. Why did you move it?"

"I don't know. What difference does it make. Why do you want to treat me this way?"

She crumpled into a chair, crying. Mrs. Rieff was staring at her with hard pebble eyes. Danny took a chance. He walked over to her and pulled her head back by the wheat-gold hair and said, "When I was standing at the door with my back turned you took the gold arrow off your robe. What did you do with it, Frieda?"

"I—nothing. I didn't know I did it. Aunt Grace!"

Mrs. Rieff stood still, watching. Danny reached down suddenly and unfastened the pin and held it up.

There was blood, just a tiny smear of it, in the joint of the pin. A brass pin, five inches long, and sharp at the tip.

She sat there, quite still, her face hardening like soft clay glazing in the kiln. Danny said slowly, "You couldn't stab him to the heart with that. You didn't open a vein. But. . . . "He knelt suddenly by the body, looking down into the haltered, bloodstained face. He found what he was looking for, and felt sick.

"Through the eye," he said. "Into the brain. She thought a little prick like that would never be noticed, in the corner of the eye."

Mrs. Rieff looked down, and then up again, at Frieda. She shrank back, her eyes wide.

"I tell you I didn't! He's lying. Why should I kill Teddy?" "Because," said Danny, "you killed Cicely, too, and he knew it."

He felt suddenly weary. He didn't even get up from the corpse. He just squatted there, and heard his voice run on. "You've had bad luck tonight, haven't you, Frieda? You lost your temper and killed Cicely. I saw her body, and I know you lost your temper. Then I scared you away from the money, and you weren't sure I hadn't seen you.

"You saw me. I forgot that. When I turned up here you were scared. Maybe I'd recognize you. I had the money, too, and you wanted that. You felt it in my pocket when you leaned against me out there in the yard, when we found Halstead.

"Only there was Teddy. You wanted to use me against Teddy, and you succeeded. But Teddy got the money first. He knew then that Cicely was dead, that he hadn't killed her, and that left only you.

"Because he knew all about you, Frieda. He tried to force you to come in with him. Then I knocked him out and tried to keep him for the police, and you knew he'd have to tell the truth in order to save his own neck. So you killed him, with the only weapon you had–that pin.

"You aren't very used to murder, though. You got flustered, between doing it and putting on an act for me, and you got the pin back in the wrong place. You'd have been all right, if it hadn't been for that. But I saw it was wrong, and I wondered why, and all of a sudden a lot of things lined right up and made sense."

Mrs. Rieff said, "You don't make sense, kid." But she wasn't going to shoot. She was looking at the gold arrow.

"I didn't," said Danny wearily. "I'm a hell of a detective. I was fooled, like everybody else, into thinking Cicely was a hard-boiled blackmailer. I went on from there and built up a perfect case against Teddy, just like everybody else. I was almost right, too.

"But I was an awful dope. I swallowed that picture of Cicely you all had, and didn't pay any attention to the Cicely that Millie knew. A gentle, kindly girl who was scared out of her wits and knew something was going to happen to her.

"Would a hard-boiled criminal show all that to a servant? Wouldn't she do something about it? She'd apparently done enough before. And what could Teddy have on her, to make her pay blackmail?

"I didn't think much about that, either. I guess I thought he was threatening to expose her to the police. But he couldn't have done that. He was in too deep himself. So it had to be something else–someone else that Cicely was afraid of.

"I'd never have guessed who, if Frieda hadn't been forced to kill Teddy."

Mrs. Rieff still hadn't moved, but her hard little eyes were intent. Frieda hid her face in her hands. Her voice came small died soft and piteous, "You're mad! Cicely's always dominated me. I don't know what was between her and Teddy, but I didn't kill her! I wouldn't have the strength. And you said yourself the killer was a man."

"I thought so. I'm used to thinking of pants as masculine. But Cicely was awfully small, and you're no weakling, Frieda. What did you do with your dark slack suit, Frieda, and the thing that goes around your head and covers up that blonde hair?"

She didn't answer, and Mrs. Rieff said, "Yes. Where is it?"

"I gave it away. Yesterday. The War Relief people."

"The police," said Danny, "can trace it, then. Especially with all that blood on it."

"All right!" Frieda was standing suddenly, her face white and hard, her eyes startingly like Teddy's, narrow and cat-like. "I changed my clothes in my car. I wrapped the slack suit around a big rock and threw it in the sump of an abandoned oil well.

"Sure, I killed her. I didn't mean to. I've used Cicely since we were kids, making her do my dirty work and take the blame. She was useful to me. But she went soft tonight. She said she was going to the police, that she couldn't go on this way. I lost my temper. . . .

"I was mad anyway. I found out about Teddy. He made love to her while I was gone, and the fool fell for it. He found out all about me, and used Cicely's fear of me to blackmail her. Pretty little set-up, wasn't it, Aunt Grace? Me behind Cicely, Cicely blackmailing you and Halstead and a couple of others, and Teddy milking the lot of us.

"Cicely couldn't keep it up. There just wasn't enough money for both Teddy and me. She had to confess. And by that time, Teddy was dangerous to me. And the rest–well, you're pretty clever, kid."

She turned on her aunt. There wasn't any fear or softness in her. Just tough flexible realism, seeing, weighing, acting.

"What do we do now, Aunt Grace? If you go ahead and shoot the boy, we're both in the clear on those murders. If you shoot me, the police will get you. If you don't shoot either of us, I'll spill all I know about Rieff Blackmail, Incorporated, before I die."

"But if I shoot both of you," said Mrs. Rieff gently, "the boy will be saddled with three murders, and I'll be clear."

Danny hurled himself just as the silenced gun plopped softly. The bullet snarled past his ear, biting a little chunk of flesh from the cartilage. Then he had smashed into Mrs. Rieff.

She was too heavy to move fast enough. The gun spoke once more, harmlessly. Then Danny's fingers had crushed it out of her hand.

He sat down, then, holding the gun on two women who looked more like trapped wolves than women. The sirens screamed up outside the house, and stopped, and presently there were feet tramping through the house.

Big, heavy feet. And for the first time, Danny Thayer was glad to hear them.

Design for Dying

(1944)

Design for Dying

Big-Time Crime

I LET HER GET OUT of the three-year-old coupe and into the vestibule of the upstairs flat. I went in, fast, just before the door swung shut again.

She didn't say anything. She leaned her shoulders back against the wall and let the bag of groceries slide down out of her hands, and that was all. I stood looking at her. Evening light crawled in through the glass window high in the door, and the empty steps went up beside us, smelling cold and musty, and it was quiet.

After a while she said, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

She leaned against the wall, watching me with wide, still eyes. The greyish light caught in them and put a silvery wash over her hair.

They were exactly the same shade of golden-brown, her I i 1- and eyes. Her mouth was just the way I remembered it, red I and sulky above her round chin. Fourteen years had made a woman out of a girl, but she was still Jo—the Jo I married.

I got lost all of a sudden. It was like we were both standing in a shaft of still water, and I felt the way you do when you've been down on the bottom too long.

I heard her whisper, "You've changed, Chris."

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

I put my hands flat on the wall each side of her shoulders. "Chris, what are you going to do?" Very quiet, looking up. Her skin had a film of sweat.

I brought my hands together, slowly, until there was only her neck between them. I laced my fingertips over the bone in back and set my thumbs together over the place in front where I could feel the breath going in and out. Her face was blurred.

Her hands came up very gently and lay on my cheeks. "Chris–kiss me, just once, like you used to."

I tightened my fingers. I think I laughed. Her hands went away from my cheeks and caught my wrists instead. There was thunder in the place.

Her lips came clear of the haze in front of me. Still red with the paint on them, parted, and hungry for breath.

I gave them breath. I gave them something else, too.

After a while she was crying on my shoulder, and I was holding her tight. And I was cursing her with everything I had.

"Fourteen years I sit in that stinkin' cell and think how I'm going to tear off your lyin' no-good head and kick it around the block. And now. . . . "

I pushed her off. She tripped on the steps and sat down hard. I blew the rest of my vocabulary out through the roof before I realized she wasn't listening to me. She was sobbing like a kid, with her hands over her face.

"I've been so worried, Chris–ever since the break. Every paper that came on the street, I'd think, this is it–they've gothim. I couldn't eat or sleep. Oh, honey, are you safe? Does anybody know you're here?" She turned those big eyes up, all shiny with tears.

"Oh, for God's sake! Turn off the act."

She crumpled over like she was very tired. "What are you going to do? I mean, have you got plans?"

"Why would I tell you?"

"No reason, I suppose. Chris, how did you find us?" "Kind of a shock, isn't it? You and your sweet brother, Slighyou felt so safe, with me in the can for more years than Methuselah could live out."

"I didn't have anything to do with that, Chris. Nothing!" "I heard that one before. Sure, you and Sligh were pretty well off. All my dough, no charges against either of you, your names changed . . . you even came out to the Coast, after Repeal, where nobody knew you from Adam. Yeah. Well, I had a little cash and one contact even Sligh didn't know about. I've known where you were from the beginning."

I glanced up the shabby steps and laughed. "Looks like my eighty grand didn't hold out so well."

She said tiredly, "It's been hell."

"That's tough."

She didn't fight back. She seemed to have no fight left in her. She got down and began picking up oranges that had rolled out of the bag.

"Sligh's in Las Vegas," she said.

"He'll come back."

She leaned back against the wall. Her hair fell soft and heavy around her face. I could see the warm curve of her throat a hove her yellow dress.

"Oh, God, how I've missed you, Chris! There hasn't been anyone else since I left you."

I didn't say anything. She let her head droop forward.

"Look, Jo. There are two guys I got business with. They'll come here, because they know the address. So I think I'll stick around. Besides, I never did like hotels."

She started picking up oranges again.

"You're a fool, Jo. Maybe as big a fool as I am."

She didn't answer that. I got down beside her and began heaving oranges in the bag.

Next morning around ten the bell rang, and when Jo called clown it was Ray Jardine's voice asking could he come up. I checked to make sure he was alone and then said into the speaker, "Come on in, Ray. You're expected." Jo was staring at me, looking like someone had just hit her in the stomach. "Yeah," I said pleasantly, "you heard right. Ray Jardine." I I had to laugh at the expression on her face.

Jardine was just like I remembered him, only more so. He'd put on about ten pounds, his grey suit was a little sloppier, his podgy blue-eyed face a little stupider looking. He had one of those soft, baggy necks that curves straight down from the jawbone and always looks a little dirty, like the skin was too tender to shave close.

"Well, well, well," he said. "The guy himself. Good ole Chris Owens, right in the ole groove. God, that was a beautiful break! I sure never thought you'd make it, even if I did fix t hi ngs for you myself."

"Thanks," I said sourly. "You remember Jo."

"Sure, sure! How are you, Jo?"

"I don't know yet," she told him. "You mean you've been in touch with Chris all this time?"

"And with you and Sligh, too. Just like the old days, ain't it?" He sat down like he owned the place and lit a cigar. "And now let's talk a little business."

Jo started to go out. I said, "Sit down, baby. I like you where I can see you." Jo's eyes spit sparks at me, and Jardine laughed.

"Same old Chris," he said. "Always the acid tongue."

Jo tossed her head. I sat down on the couch and, after a minute, she came over beside me, not very close but close enough. I grinned at her and then nodded to Jardine. "Yeah, Ray. Go ahead."

Jardine watched his cigar smoke, with dull eyes. He looked like a fourth-rate drummer out of a job, but he wasn't. He was one of the smartest private dicks that ever went on the crook. He was our fix man, back in the old days of the combine when Sligh and I kept half the U. S. from dying of thirst. There wasn't anything that slippery little rat couldn't do if he had a thick enough wad in his kick.

He said, "You owe me a lot of money, Chris."

"I know it."

"I'm a poor man. In fact, I'm flat busted. Crime ain't what it used to be, with the goddam FBI lousing things up. And I ain't in what business I got just because I like the people I meet."

"I know that, too."

"I figure, Chris, that you're sort of an investment."

"I figured that was what you figured. Go on."

Jardine waved his cigar slowly back and forth, not thinking about it. The shaky line of the smoke tipped off the fact that his hand wasn't steady.

"The way I look at it, Chris, you're clean so far. Ain't no record on Sligh–he's got you to thank for that because you handled things so smart–nor on your wife. They got different names out here, too. No reason for the cops to connect 'em with you, and a damn long job of tracing if they ever did get ideas. Fourteen years is a long time."

I said, "Yeah."

"I got a contact for you, Chris. Georgie Molino."

He watched me to see how I would take that. I dead-panned it, and he went on.

"Molino practically owns the southern part of this state. Every tin-pot gambling hall kicks in to him, and his own place takes in enough to pay off the war debt every week."

"Then what does he need of me?"

"It's like this, Chris. He's having trouble. The new administration looks like it might get tough, on account of beefs from the families of war workers who drop a lot of dough there. The big boys are yelping, too–say Georgie causes absenteeism at the plants. On top of that, a couple of Georgie's Own boys are fixing to split their britches. Georgie ain't a well man, and he don't care too much for rough stuff. He's like you there, Chris, only he ain't got the brains you have to get around it. So I figured there was an opening there for you." He grinned. "I sure gave you a build-up, Chris. Not that you needed one. The papers were doing it for me, anyhow."

I was still giving him the Great Stone Face. He began to sweat a little on his fat neck.

"What's the deal?" I said.

"A hideout, Chris. Takes a guy as big as Georgie Molino to ool off a guy as hot as you are. You're no penny-ante hood, Chris. You're big time. You was more than half the combine, and you know it. Why, back in the good old Volstead days, you could do with your brain what the other guys had to do with lead."

"Yeah," I said. "But just brains don't stand up so good against a Thompson, and I'm no lousy hot rod. That's why I tried to pull out when the going got too tough for just brains. That's why I got a frame nailed on me."

I got up and began walking around. I was shaking worse than Jardine and I felt like I was full of boiling water instead of blood.

"Yeah, a dirty rotten frame. They couldn't trust me to run loose and maybe change my mind–get tough and start up some competition they couldn't handle. They didn't quite dare to try shooting me. I was a hard guy to hit, and my boys would have thrown some lead around in my memory, and they didn't like that. Besides, they always thought maybe some day they could use me again. Me, and my big brain! Sure. So now I got stripes on me that'll never come off. I lost fourteen years in that stinkin' prison. And maybe. . . . "

I cursed and broke off short. I stood there trying to light a cigarette, and I caught a glimpse of Jardine's face, and then Jo's. I laughed.

"Like you said, Ray–fourteen years is a long time. A guy grows up in fourteen years." I sat down again.

Jo put her hand out and took it away again, like she would with a strange dog.

"That's right," said Jardine. "Well, Georgie is willing to do everything he can, than which there ain't no more to be had. All you have to do is take care of whatever business he wants you to. Georgie told me himself he'd rather have your brains and ability even if you were too hot for comfort, than anybody else."

"All right," I said. "So I'm very smart and I used to carry New York around in my pants pocket. But I was working for myself. I've been working for myself since before I was old enough to shave."

He made himself say it, and kept his eyes on me while he did. "Looks to me, Chris, like you ain't got any choice." And he was right.

"And what you get out of it," I said, "is a nice place in the country and the gold fillings out of my back teeth."

"Now, Chris, I ain't no gouger. I've worked hard for you. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have the chance of a snowball in hell to get by. . . . "

Jo got hold of me. "Chris, honey, don't be that way. You are in a spot, and this chance–well, it's wonderful! Chris, please. . . . "

Jardine waved his cigar. He was smiling. The sweat stood out on his soft neck, but he nailed that smile on his face and kept it there.

"The little lady's right, Chris. Times change, and you got to change with 'em. You got to take the realistic view."

He tried to see just what view I was taking, gave it up, and then came out flat-footed with what he'd been holding back.

"Don't you forget this. You're worth money to me, more money than I ever saw before. I got your neck right in the palm of my hand, and I got it fixed so if you kill me the cops'll be told just where to look for you."

He wasn't feeling so scared, now he'd said it. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

"Times change, Chris. We can't always be what we were once. I'll treat you right. I won't gouge you too deep."

I didn't say anything. I sat still, and Jo's hand on my wrist was as cold as a dead man's feet.

After a while I said, "Okay, Jardine. I'll take the realistic view." I got up and walked around some more, lighting a another smoke. This time the match flame didn't jerk too much.

"There's just one thing I got to take care of first."

Jo's copper-brown eyes looked at me, shiny as new-minted pennies and just as unreadable.

Jardine said, "Sligh."

"Yeah," I said. "Sligh."

Jardine chuckled. He leaned over and gentled an inch of ash into a tray; and just about then the buzzer went for the front door. Jo got up, slowly, and crossed over to the speaker. Jardine kept on looking at his cigar, very calm, but he was corpse-colored and sweating.

Jo turned around. She whispered. "I can stall him off. Get out the back way. If you kill him now, you'll be caught. The whole thing will come out. Chris, you can't get your money back, nor the years you've lost."

"Can I get you back?"

The blood crawled up in her face. She let her lids drop heavy over her eyes, and a ray of sunlight in her hair burned hot enough to sear you, like molten copper.

"You've got me back. You've always had me. You drove me away because you thought I helped frame you, after we split up. But I didn't. You know I didn't. And I've never loved anyone but you."

I laughed. She turned white and picked up a vase with flowers in it and let me have it. It missed, and in the middle of the racket it made smashing on the wall, Jardine let out a bray like a jackass.

"That ain't Sligh down there. He's got a key!"

And it wasn't Sligh. It was a girl from Western Union with a wire saying that Edward A. Mines–the name that Sligh was going under–had been killed in Las Vegas by a hit-run driver.

Jo turned white and sat down. I went over and got a handful of Jardine's collar.

He gasped, "You be careful, Chris."

I shook him. "Coincidences, Jardine. I don't like 'em."

He grinned. He felt safe enough to grin. "You'd be surprised what you can buy for a couple of bucks, when you know where to go. No risk, no kickbacks. Listen, Chris. I knew nothing could hold you off that dog. You think I want you hanging a murdered corpse out the window for cop bait?"

I held onto him, and all of a sudden you could tell from Jardine's face that he didn't feel so safe after all.

It was about then I felt a hell of a crack on the head and passed out cold. When things finally crawled back in focus again I was on the floor with my head in Jo's lap and she was rubbing it with ice wrapped up in a dishtowel and crying like a scared kid. Jardine was gone.

"I had to," Jo sobbed. "You were killing him. Oh, Chris honey, are you all right? I didn't mean to hit you so hard."

My head felt like the Green Bay Packers had been using it for kicking practice. All of a sudden I laughed.

"Hell, this is like old times, Jo!"

"We did have terrible fights, didn't we?"

"Yeah. But it was fun. I could never love a dame I couldn't enjoy fighting with."

"Chris. . . ."

I sat up, holding the pieces of my skull together. Jo was bent forward a little over her knees, her face hidden by her shining copper mop. There was nothing seductive about her now. She looked like a little girl that's been naughty, been punished to beat hell, and is too tired out even to cry.

"Chris, I've been dead ever since I left you."

"Yeah?"

"I never stopped loving you, not for a minute. But we'd been so unhappy, you and I, and things just got worse, and I guess I thought I hated you."

"I guess maybe you had a right to. I've got a rotten temper." "You should have trusted me, Chris. You should have let me stand by you."

I looked at her. I said quietly, "Should I?"

She shivered. "I guess I can't blame you," she whispered. "But I've been in prison, too, all these years. My brother wanted me around, to keep house for him, and to use as bait for his business deals. He told me what would happen to me if I left him. Besides, I always hoped that if I stayed with him I could find some proof that he framed you, and maybe then I could get you free again."

I didn't say anything. She let her hands go loose in her lap.

"You have your faults, Chris, but you're straight. You're a man. Sligh wasn't. He was crooked and rotten and hateful, and I can't cry because he's dead." She lifted her face up, all soft and open and young with tears. "But I can cry for you, Chris. I did a wrong thing to leave you, a wrong thing to let you stop me from coming back. I've paid for both those things."

The warm sunlight fell on her through the window and made the tears shine like little stars. I took her in my arms and kissed her, gently, the way you would a child. I felt a way I hadn't felt for years. Not since I used to stand in the choir stall of the cathedral and send my voice reaching up after the Gloria.

This Georgie Molino business looked like it was going to work out. The first thing he did was ship me secretly to his place in the desert–Jo had to stay behind and clear up the details of Sligh's funeral and everything, so it wouldn't look too funny.

Then Molino turned loose a couple of regiments of experts on me.

They fed and exercised me like a prize horse. They studied my mug, my clothes, my choice of colors, the things I like to eat, the games I play.

What they did about it was nothing short of murder.Design for Dying

I gained back about seventeen pounds, acquired a heavy tan, and got in the pink again, which was good. But the rest of it. . . . They changed my hairline, and made me grow a mustache. There was quite a lot of grey in my hair–you turn grey young in prison. Instead of dyeing it dark, they bleached it the rest of the way, to snow-white. It looked swell, with the tan, but it didn't look like me.

They did fancy needlework on my face to change the shape and the expression, not much, but enough. My clothes were designed to make my build look a little different. My shoes made me change my walk.

I like green and brown. They put me in blue and grey. They changed my food habits and my taste in drinks. They took me off golf and chess and put me on tennis and poker. They did things to my teeth, to change my mouth and even the way I talk. I'm a cigarette smoker, so they gave me a pipe. When they got through with me, I could have moved into one room with J. Edgar Hoover and slept easy.

Jo came out to join me after a while, there was no risk in that. The Eastern cops never had a picture of her, and the Western boys didn't know she was alive. She was just JoAnn Mines, another housewife. Nobody cared what she did.

The experts did some light work on her, though, just in case we should meet somebody who did know her. She looked swell with black hair, cut short and curly. She thought I looked swell, too. She said I looked like a combination of Ronald Colman and Humphrey Bogart, and I said that was a hell of a mixture, and she said I should worry as long as she loved inc. We were happy out there, like we used to be when we I first got married, when Old Man Volstead was making it easy for smart youngsters to clean up, and get a thrill out of it.

It was funny, to feel like a kid again, to think it's me and Jo I having fun together and then to remember that fourteen years bad dropped away behind us, and we were somebody else now. You think I'm just putting a mask on the present. Tomorrow it'll be pulled off. You get scared sometimes, thinking of time and years and the way life flows under your feet. That's how you know you aren't a kid any more. Life has a solid feel when you're young. It's only when you've been around it a while that you realize how shaky it is, like a swaying plank across a ditch, that may break or throw you any minute.

Jo felt that, too. I remember one night we were walking around, watching the desert stars swinging down so low you could almost feel the silver heat of them, and suddenly I realized Jo was staring up into my face with a funny, searching look.

"Who are you, Chris? Who are you, really?"

"Is the new map my fault? And who are you, with that black hair?"

"Don't laugh me off, honey. It isn't the way you look that I mean. It's the way you are, inside. Sometimes I think, he's still Chris, he hasn't changed at all. And then there'll be a note in your voice, a look in your eyes–and it isn't Chris at all."

"You've changed too, baby. Anybody does, in that length of time."

"That still isn't what I mean. You were always a businessman, Chris. You wouldn't kill, or strong-arm people like the others did. But now. . . . Chris, did we have to come back to the rackets? Couldn't we have gone away somewhere. . . . "

"Where? With what? And how could I make a living?" I laughed all of a sudden, not loud. "Besides, I'm no different from the others, now. I'm an escaped con, a guy with a record, a public enemy. They got what they wanted, Sligh and his pals."

"You're not Chris now," she whispered. "Chris couldn't have laughed that way. . . . Darling, couldn't we run away, now? Nobody'd know you."

"Think of Georgie. Think of Jardine. How long would you want to bet we'd live?"

She didn't say anything for a minute. Then she sighed. "I guess once you go wrong, really wrong, you can't ever find your way back." She took my hand in hers. "Let's go back to the house. I'm cold."

We never talked about that again.

This Georgie Molino was a right guy. We got along. He was a big man, well on in middle age, getting slow and pretty soft. He had a heart that threatened to quit on him any time, and his boys knew it. Some of them were getting big ideas. Like Jardine said, that's why he wanted me. And we both knew it was not going to be any soft job.

He let me know, just once, that if I ever got any ideas myself I wouldn't be around to enjoy them. I told him that was fair enough, and we both left it, right there. He paid well. Even after Jardine's cut came out, I had plenty to fool around with. Jardine kept clear of me. I sent a check every month to a phony name and a P. 0. box, and that was that.

After about three months I made my debut.

Showdown

MOLINO'S PLACE WAS CLASS A, and running wide open in a spot that formed the hub for two big towns and a hunch of defense projects. Molino owned what local law there was.

NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE

He walked Jo and me around the place, introducing us as Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Medbury from Saint Paul. The T. Medburys could stand a check-up in Saint Paul, too, if anybody wanted to try it. Molino wasn't the kind who left any loose ends lying around.

Jo left us presently to powder her nose, and Molino steered me into one of the big gambling rooms. "These are the guys," he said quietly. "Whatever trouble you have, they'll make it. The rest just follow."

We went over to the crap table and watched a while. Pretty soon a well-built, perfectly tailored young fellow with curly auburn hair and a nice face called his luck a couple of hard names and turned away, grinning.

Another guy turned right by his shoulder, like he might be a Siamese twin. He had straw-colored hair plastered onto a skull shaped like an egg and looking just as unsubstantial. His face was too small, and from the way his pale grey eyes looked he wasn't above hitting the hypo now and then.

The good-looking kid said, "Evening, Georgie. How goes it?" He had violet eyes, the kind you read about but never see. The kind of eyes you would trust with your last dime and your young daughter, and that would go on looking clear and sweet while they aimed the bullets into your guts.

Molino said, "Tom, this is Micky Shayne and Shadow. Boys, this is Tom Medbury, my new partner."

Shayne hadn't been much impressed up to then. Maybe it was the white hair. While he was shaking hands he took another look, and his grin got a little stiff around the edges. "Swell," he said. "I hope you like it here."

Shadow watched me like a dead fish, over his shoulder. Shayne's gaze moved over toward the door. He made a low whistle through his teeth.

"Pardon me, fellas. Some new business just came up."

He went off. I watched him, and the business turned out to be Jo. I didn't blame Shayne. In that green dress, with her chassis and her black hair and copper-brown eyes, I wouldn't have blamed anybody. I followed. The Shadow watched me. Probably he would watch me from now on, until one of us was dead.

I took Jo's arm. "Sorry, Shayne. This one's earmarked." He took it slow, easy, and smiling. "Sure," he said. "Funny. I knew that the minute she came in."

After he was gone Jo said, "Gee, he's nice."

She looked up at me and laughed. "The way you look now, there's no Ronald Colman. You'd scare the whole Warner Brothers' contract list!"

After he showed me the ropes, Molino took himself and his bum ticker out on the desert for a long rest, and I bought myself a bodyguard–four hired guns with no loyalties but their paychecks. I was all ready for trouble.

I didn't have any.

There's a lot of work to running a big gambling syndicate--the kind of work I take to like a pup to a pound of hamburger. A flock of tough babies to be kept in line, cops to be squared, collections to be made and checked, debts brought in, percentages figured. The collection and debt department belonged to Micky Shayne, and he was good at it, like me.

The funny thing was that Shayne and Shadow were very friendly, very cooperative. They went out of town on business a few weeks later, and we had a couple of drinks together before they left, all sweetness and light. I looked close, but I

couldn't see anything phony about it.

The new administration got a little muscular, but they turned out to be like most administrations. We got along fine, after I talked to them a few times. And the local cops were swell, dropping in for a beer and a hand or two of poker. I quit worrying too much about maybe catching a rumble. T. Medbury seemed to be standing up okay. Jo and I got a swell little house in one of the swank suburbs and settled in.

She wasn't happy, though. She kept looking at me like she wondered if she knew me, and I'd catch her sometimes sitting all by herself, staring out the window at nothing.

I'd ask her what was wrong, and she'd give me the old headache routine. And then all of a sudden she broke down and said, "Chris, I'm scared. Something's wrong. I don't know what, or why, but I know it. I dream about it nights."

"Just what do you mean, Jo?"

"Nothing. Just . . . Chris, why do you look at me like that?"

"Why do most guys look at you?"

"You weren't looking that way. . . . You still don't trust me, do you?"

"Sure I do."

"What could I do to you, Chris? I wouldn't have any way to hurt you, even if I wanted to." She came and put her arms around me. "If I could only make you trust me! I love you so much."

I patted her. "You got the meamies, hon. Of course I trust you. Trouble is, you lived around Sligh so much you think everybody's a double-crossing heel. But Sligh's dead now."

"Yeah. I saw him in the coffin. He's dead."

"Sure. So forget him." I kissed her. I guess we both forgot about Sligh, and everyone else, for a while. But that night I didn't sleep.

And all this time, like I said, Micky Shayne and his Shadow were out of town, and the rest of the guys just took it easy, waiting.

Waiting. Yeah. Toward the end, I just about decided that Molino was really a sick man and seeing bogies where there weren't any. A lot of guys go that way, when they begin to slip. I remember I was thinking that last night, when I went home.

Jo seemed funny all through dinner. Quiet, like a kid that's scared about some secret thing. It was different from those other moods she had. This was something alive and chewing on her. Finally I cuddled her up and told her to spill it.

"I guess I'll have to, Chris." She was curled up tight against me on the couch, and her fingers went around mine like she wanted to keep me from slipping away. She was trembling. "Jardine called me up this afternoon."

"Jardine! Say, has that little–"

"I didn't want you to know about it, honey. He's been getting money out of me, too. Chris, don't look like that! You got to keep your temper. You know what'll happen to us if anything happens to Jardine."

I began to shake, too. "Okay," I said. "Go on."

"He's never called me or come here before. I always met him downtown. But he said over the phone that he was in a spot and had to have the money fast, and it was more than I could give him. He sounded awful scared, and mean. Chris, what are we. . . ."

I kissed her. "We'll take care of it, baby. Don't worry." I got lip and started for the hall closet. Jo caught me. "Chris, you got to be careful!"

"I'll be careful. A set-up like this works two ways. I'm worth dough to Jardine, and that gives me a hold, too."

"I'm going, too."

"The hell you are!"

"You think I'm going to let you go alone and lose your temper and maybe do something terrible? I'm going, Chris!" She went.

I didn't take the bodyguard. There was no need of it around Jardine. And a deal like that you don't spread around. Even a hired gun can get ideas.

Jardine lived in a fairly secluded separate house. I guess he had his reasons. The neighborhood was what you'd expect, flashy with dough but still cheap. Jardine's lights were on behind drawn shades, and a throaty-voiced dame was singing How Sweet You Are out of a good radio.

I rang the bell. I rang it twice, and then the door opened.

It opened fast. I saw the guy's arm raised up, and the sap in the hand of it, and all of them slashing down. I tried to get out of the way, but Jo was beside me in the doorway, hampering any move I made, and the damn thing came too fast.

I took it square on the crown of my hat. I fell down, and on the way I saw a man standing in the living room. It wasn't Jardine. It was the Shadow, and he was holding a revolver with a silencer on its nose, looking high as a lark and four times as happy.

I heard Jo cry out. I tried to get up again. Something whacked me behind the ear, and then all the lights went out.

When I could see again I was sitting in a big chair all by itself in the middle of the room. My gun, even my pocket knife, had been taken. The radio was still on, but softer, and it was giving a Strauss waltz. The lamplight was nice, quiet and rosy, only I couldn't see much of it. My head ached, and the ache came with flashes like sheet lightning, so I was half blind–but between flashes, I saw enough.

Jo sat crumpled in the corner of an overstuffed couch. Her hands were palm up on her thighs, limp like a dead woman's hands. She stared at me, not moving her lids, and her copper-brown eyes had a flat, burnished shine.

The Shadow leaned against the wall, facing me, still with that distant, happy look. His gun hand was cradled in the crook of his left arm, but I knew how fast it could come out, if I moved.

Shadow was one of those rare things–an honest-to-God dead shot.

Micky Shayne was the only one that looked perfectly normal. He lounged on the couch arm, smoking. His violet eyes were clear and innocently pleased, and he had one hand on Jo's shoulder, where he could feel her bare neck.

I didn't see Jardine. Nobody spoke. We all seemed to be waiting.

After a while I said, not to anybody in particular, "Only four people knew about Jardine. Jardine, Molino, me, and Jo."

Shayne smiled. "There's going to be even less than that."

I looked at Jo. Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. Her hands twitched in her lap. Her head swung a little from side Lo side.

No. That was all.

Shayne said, "You're through, Pop. You know that. I wanted to give you plenty of time to know that." He laughed pleasantly, and ran his thumb up under the lobe of Jo's ear and back again. "Molino's as stupid as he is yellow. Sending an old phutz like you up against me!"

I went on looking at Jo.

Shayne said, "You told me that night she was earmarked. She sure was. But I've kind of changed the brand." He rumpled up her short black curls. "White hair don't go with I hat, Pop." He leaned over and kissed her.

Jo gave one convulsive jerk and screamed.

You've heard cats scream like that, just before their spine snaps in the dog's jaws. She ripped it out right in Shayne's face, with their mouths touching. Shayne jumped back, and then swore and cracked her across the face.

"Damn you," he said. "You vixen!"

Jo didn't even blink. She tried to push past him, to come to me. He caught her and slapped her again, so hard it dazed her. She slid down to her knees, never taking her eyes off mine.

"Chris, I didn't tell him. I didn't tell him."

I didn't say anything.

"Chris," she whispered. "Chris." The tears ran out of her eyes and caught in the corners of her mouth and stood out on her white neck like diamonds. "I haven't seen Shayne. Not even once. Not since that first night."

I lay back and let the chair cushion hold my head up. I looked at Shayne. "You must have made a good deal with Jardine."

Jardine? Oh, the little guy. Yeah."

"So now you're king snipe."

He nodded. His violet eyes were bright like a kid's on Christmas morning. "Molino's cracked up. He's yellow. And the rest of the bunch are right here." He held out his right hand and closed it. "They want new blood at the top, but not yours, Pop. We don't need any outside help."

I nodded. I could feel the sweat coming out on my face. I held Shayne's gaze and laughed.

"Okay," I told him. "So you've got me. I guess maybe you can handle Molino, too. But what about the big guy—the boy upstairs?"

Shayne stared at me. Shadow's dopey eyes got some life into them, and Jo's lids widened.

Shayne said, "What the hell are you talking about?" Shadow chuckled softly. "Canary," he said. "Trying to scare us off with fairy tales."

I said, "You tell 'em, Jo."

"Chris, I don't understand. . . . What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking it's easy to have a funeral."

"Yeah," said Shayne. "No trouble at all. Listen, Pop, Molino's all there is and you know it. He don't work for anybody. After tonight, I won't work for anybody. And you won't work, period." He bent over and got Jo under the arms and started to lift her back on the couch, so he could hold her in case she tried to get in front of Shadow's gun. She was as limp as a wet rag, and about the same color.

"He doesn't believe you, baby," Shayne said. "You see what a louse he is. Okay, Shadow, he's all yours."

Shadow lifted the gun out of the crook of his arm. Slow, like a kid with one piece of candy, wanting to get every bit of the good out of it.

I pushed my feet hard against the thick pile of the carpet, threw my arms backward over my head and arched my body. I gave it everything I had. The armchair went clean over, away from Shadow. His bullet made a nasty little snarl over my head, but it was a clean miss. I rolled over my own shoulders, sheltered momentarily by the chair, and grabbed the cushion out of the seat.

Shadow didn't fire right away again. He was in no hurry, and he was enjoying himself.

Jo doubled up suddenly. She got her feet back between Shayne's, threw her weight forward, and tripped him flat before he even realized she was moving. He was facing toward me, and that's the way he fell. He wasn't eight feet away.

I threw the seat cushion at Shadow and made a dive after it. Shadow was a damn good shot. I'll say that for him. Shayne's fall had distracted him and the cushion made him dodge, but even so he scraped the back of my shoulder with a bullet before I could cross that eight feet of space.

I got myself on top of Jo and Shayne, and after that Shadow didn't dare shoot until something came clear of the tangle.

You're never just sure afterward what happened in a fight like that. I think I took a few stiff ones, but the way it wound up I was lying on my back with Shayne on top of me, my legs locked around his and my left arm around his neck as tight as I could hold it. Our right hands were both wrestling for the same gun, which happened to be mine.

Jo had crawled clear, shaking her head like she'd stopped a good one. Shadow was walking around on his toes, and he didn't look happy now. Shayne began to make noises like strangling.

The Shadow took his finger off the trigger and laid it along the barrel, and got hold of my head by the hair.

I yelled. Jo pitched into him. They both fell on top of us and Shayne's gun hand was pinned down. I got my own right loose and began throwing in short ones to his temple. Between that and the throttling and the weight on his stomach, he quit.

I clawed Shayne's gun out of his shoulder clip. I tried to get loose, but it was no dice. Jo was lying beside us, as limp as wet macaroni, and I didn't know if she was dead or not.

Shadow wasn't dead. He was up.

I fired first and jarred his aim a little. We both missed. We tried again, and just by the split fraction of a second I beat him. His slug went past my cheek close enough to burn it, and then he sat down, very slow and sedate, in a chair that happened to be behind him. Blood came out on his light blue coat. His right hand lay along the chair arm, still holding the gun, but his eyes weren't focused on me. They were way off somewhere, looking at a new world and pretty surprised about it. He was still breathing, but it didn't matter.

Jo was beginning to come around. She had just got clipped. Shayne started to moan and jerk. I got my hand in his hair and pulled his head back so his jaw stood out clear.

"Old phutz," I said. I slammed the gun barrel down. "Old phutz, huh?"

He didn't answer. I didn't think he would. I rolled him off me and got up. The room started to go round and my insides heaved up under my chin. I shut my eyes and took some deep breaths, and the feeling passed off enough so I knew I was all right. I heard Jo, then, saying my name.

Her dress was torn off of her shoulder, and her skin showed white as new milk against the green. Her hair was tumbled, her eyes wide and tear-stained, and she looked younger and softer, like when I first knew her, and so beautiful it hurt. The life was beating in her so strong that it glowed like fire in a dark place. Her mouth was open, trembling, eager.

"Now do you believe me, Chris?"

I pulled her to me. Her arms went around me, and mine around her, my fingers in the warm silk of her hair at the back of her neck. I put my mouth over hers.

"Now do you believe?" she whispered.

It took me a long time to answer. Then, "Yeah," I said. "I believe you."

I wasn't looking at Jo. I was looking over her head, at Ray Jardine.

He stood in the door to the back hall. There was blood on the front of his rumpled grey suit, so you could hardly see it was grey any more. He was cursing. Blood trickled out of his mouth while he did it. Sometimes he choked on it. He'd been shot through the lungs and he was dying on his feet, but he didn't seem to care. He didn't seem to see me, or Jo. He started to walk toward Shadow.

"You want to kill my bank account," he said. "Chris. My bank account. You want to kill him."

Shadow sat up in his chair, with the gun leveled square on Jardine's belly. A faint light of recognition crawled into his eyes, dragging them back from wherever they'd been.

Jardine went on walking. He went on cursing. He didn't mind the gun. "You and Shayne, you dirty scuts. Don't touch him!"

Shadow's face sort of crumpled apart, and all that was left was a bleak and stricken horror.

"I killed you," he told Jardine. "Through the heart, an hour ago."

Jardine went on, one foot before the other.

"My God," whispered Shadow. "I made a bad shot. I missed."

That was the thought he took to hell with him. He was dead before Jardine touched him. Jardine sort of pawed at him, maybe with the idea of strangling him, and then slipped down so that he was kneeling at Shadow's feet, whimpering and choking.

I went over to him. "Ray," I said. "Ray, it's me, Chris. I'm all right."

He was going now, with a rush. He didn't see me, didn't know who I was.

"Chris," he said, the words coming slow and without form. "Good guy. Smart. But I hung the frame on him." He was pleased about that. "I put him on ice for Sligh." He shook my hand off him and tried to crawl away, retching the blood out of his throat. "Sligh!" he yelled. "Sligh, I got him here for you. I broke him out and I got him for you. You got to boost my cut, Sligh. After Molino goes. . . ."

He wavered on his hands and knees. "Sligh," he said pitifully. His voice went up to a childlike wail, and choked off. He pitched down on his face and stayed there. He didn't even twitch.

I began to laugh. I felt easy and relaxed. I felt good, and the laughter sounded that way. Jo looked stunned. She stared at me, and then at Jardine, and back again. She began to shiver.

"Chris. He couldn't have meant that. He was delirious. Sligh's dead. I saw him!"

I said, "Sure you did, honey."

"Oh, God–and now they'll know about you–the police, Chris. Jardine's dead, and they'll know." She came up and took my wrists, and her fingers were ice cold. "Chris, look at rue! Chris!"

I did. She let go of me and took two or three steps backward. She didn't say anything more. I turned around to the phone, and on the way I caught a glimpse of my face in a wall mirror. I looked young and happy, like I did when I was a kid with nothing more to worry about than which girl I should take out on Saturday night.

I called Georgie Molino.

"Medbury speaking. Yeah. You can relax now, Georgiethe Shayne-Shadow business is all cleaned up. They decided to go away for a little vacation. Yeah. Oh–and Georgie. At Shadow's special request. Before he left he told me to remember him to our mutual friend." I let that sink in, and then I said, "I'm starting for your place now."

He said slowly, "All right. We'll plan to have breakfast together, the four of us. You're bringing Jo, of course." "Of course. So long, Georgie."

I hung up and went back to Shayne. He was still out, cold. I dragged him out into the back hall and tied him up, with his ankles drawn up to his wrists behind his back. I wasn't very careful about making him comfortable. I wanted him to be there, when I wanted him. He was breathing all right. I shoved a gag in his mouth, locked all the doors into the hall and then the one into the living room. I thought Shayne would be safe.

All the time Jo watched me without saying a word. After I was all through she said, "You told Molino that Shayne was dead."

I nodded, punching the crown of my hat back in shape. "Why, Chris? What's going on? All this about Sligh. . . . Chris, you've got to come back and tell me!"

"What do you mean, come back?"

"You've gone away. You're not Chris any more, at all. You're somebody I don't know, and I'm afraid of you."

I turned off the radio, and the lamps. "Come on, kitten. We go now."

"Chris, You've got to tell me!" Her voice had a horrible sound in the dark. "Sligh's dead! I saw him buried! What's the matter with you. Chris? What are you thinking? Why are you treating me like this?"

Her face strained up at me. It was only a pale blur in the darkness, without shape or features, but I could see it. I could see it more clearly than I ever had in my life before.

I struck her, with the palm of my hand and then the back of it. The blows sounded almost as loud as shots against her cheeks. She let her breath out, hard. I caught her before she fell, and carried her out to the car. Nobody saw us. Everything was peaceful under the stars and the palm trees when I drove away.

I was not feeling good, then.

III

The Corpse Steps Out

THE DAWN BLAZED UP RED over the desert. Jo sat back in her corner of the seat, her face swollen and sulky, her eyes half shut. I didn't know how long she'd been conscious. She didn't speak, and neither did I.

The sun was well up when I turned off onto Georgie Molino's private road.

They were waiting for us on the terrace. The house was like most of those desert palaces–low and sprawling and cool, with red roofs and thick white walls and a lot of wood and iron showing for trim. The terrace was a broad, tiled, semi-patio thing, with a hell of a view–miles of desert, and a line of misty blue hills beyond. The table was set for breakfast, everything very rustic in the expensive department-store manner, and they were sitting there waiting, smoking their early morning cigarettes.

I stopped the car and went around and opened Jo's door and helped her out. She didn't look at me. We climbed the shallow steps together. In the background were the long windows, or doors, that opened into the living room. I saw one of the curtains move, and I knew I was covered. I didn't make any sudden moves, taking my hat off and tossing it on a table.

Sligh got to his feet and said, "Well, Chris." He was smiling, but only with his mouth. He looked a lot like Jo–same copper hair and eyes, almost the same face, only masculine and hard. A big, well-kept, handsome guy with a swell personality. I used to love him like a brother.

I said, "Hello, Sligh." I nodded to Georgie and sat down. Jo was still standing by the wall at the top of the steps. She was studying Sligh, her eyes sunk deep under reddened, puffy lids. Her face was so white you could see the blue marks where I had hit her as though they'd been painted on with a brush.

"So it was all a frame-up," she whispered. "A lie from beginning to end. The telegram, the funeral, the whole thing. You were alive, lying in that coffin. You never told me about Molino. You never told me about Jardine. You just used me for bait, to draw Chris back."

Sligh sat down again, smiling. "Don't take it so hard, kid. A guy has to use what he's got. Anyway, you should beef. You've got Chris back." He looked at the blue marks, and laughed. "Or have you?"

Jo walked over to the breakfast table. She had the pot of scalding coffee in her hands before Sligh got hold of her. She fought him for a minute like a wildcat, and then she seemed to have reached the end of her rope. She crumpled up, and Sligh dumped her in a chair, and she stayed there.

Sligh sat down again.

"Well," he said. "So Jardine spilled over."

I said, "Yeah."

"You don't seem very surprised."

"I had fourteen years with nothing much to do but think about life and people, Sligh. I knew Jardine pretty well, and I knew you pretty well. Jo–well, who could ever figure a dame? Jardine could have been telling the truth, so could Jo. But the whole set-up was so pat and pretty that I kept an open mind on the question. No, I wasn't too much surprised."

Sligh nodded. "Well, it doesn't matter. Only three or four people know I'm really the guy behind Georgie. I've kept it quiet for two reasons, besides you, Chris. There's a couple of boys from the old mob who'd be glad to catch up with me, for one thing, and then there's the cops. I've never been booked, but they might remember me if it got around, and maybe they're not as dumb as the movies make 'em out. I'd just as soon they didn't have to worry about me."

He paused, and then said, "We've done pretty well by you, haven't we, Chris–Georgie and me?"

"Yeah. Pretty well."

That was the whole idea behind the setup; to put me in debt to Sligh, and incidentally Molino, for the crash-out, the hideaway, the protection, the disguise. And more than that. I was to start living again, to feel the reins in my hands and get the taste of power and good green dollar bills back in my mouth, so that when I finally found out about Sligh I would be willing to let bygones be bygones for the sake of them.

Sligh grinned. "I had an idea I better keep out of your way for a while, until you kind of cooled off. I wanted you to enjoy yourself. That's why I framed my own kill. Even Jo didn't know about that." He chuckled. lo didn't know about anything. I had better places to spend my money than on her, and besides, she was a hell of a good front for me."

I didn't say anything. Sligh studied me for a while. Molino just sat quiet and smoked. This wasn't his party. Sligh said finally, "How are you taking it, Chris?"

I shrugged. "Jardine told me once, times change and you got to change with them. I'm taking the realistic view."

He didn't answer for a long time. He was testing me, running my voice, my expression, the way I was sitting, through a mental filter and studying what came out. Finally he said quietly, "You understand why I had to frame you that time. You were too big and too dangerous to run loose."

"I understand. Jardine said he did that for you."

"A lot of it. I'm sorry to lose the little rascal–he was a handy guy for anything dirty."

"Yeah, very. I suppose that yarn about information going to the cops in case Jardine got bumped was just a little club to keep me in line."

"Naturally. A guy in Jardine's business can get killed too many ways to take a chance on anything like that. We just wanted to slow you down in case you felt like wringing his neck."

We smoked a while longer, without speaking, and then Sligh went on, "You won't forget that framing, or those years in a cell. I know that. But we don't have to like each other. We don't even have to see each other very often. This is business, big business, and I'm willing to run any risk involved."

"It must be big business."

"Biggest you ever saw. The gambling syndicate alone is big enough. But we're forming a black market combine in meat, gas, and liquor–like the old set-up, with the gambling syndicate for a front. That's why I needed your brains again. And there's more to it than that. The Prohibitionists are setting up a big holler again. Several states are dry already. We're pushing that campaign. If we can get dry laws in again, by God, we'll own the country within ten years! Even the G-boys can't stop us!"

He was excited, flushed, and talking too loud. Sweat trickled down under my armpits, but my hands were cold. "Hell!" I said. "As big as that!"

"Yeah. You can see why I had to have you, Chris. Georgie here, he's a good man, but he's sick. He's got to quit." Molino nodded heavily. "That's right. And, anyway, I never was as good a man as you, Chris."

"Then why did you make me go up against those two hotrod pals of yours? Hell, I might have been killed!"

Sligh said, "We had to find out something, Chris. Prison does one of two things to a guy, when he's in for as long as you were. It breaks him down, or it hardens him so he can handle anything. We had to know which way you went."

"Now you know," I told him.

Sligh chuckled. "You sure lost your aversion to rough stuff! Good, too. That was your only weak point. It's what ruined you the first time. . . . By the way, how the hell did Shayne get onto Jardine?"

"He didn't have time to tell me, but I can make a guess. He and Shadow didn't go out of town at all. They were looking for a safe way to get me. So they checked up on Jo and found out Jardine was blackmailing her, and maybe me, too. But Shayne didn't bother to find out what about. Most blackmailer's dope isn't of any interest to anyone but the victim, and all Shayne wanted was a way to get me off guard at Jardine's house. He didn't have any reason to think Tom Medbury might be somebody else, or guess that there was anybody standing behind Jardine and Molino."

"Uh-huh. No traces of you or Jo around the place?"

"No. And no connection between us and Jardine, as far as anyone knows. Georgie may have some talking to do–they were his boys."

"Obviously it was a private quarrel," Georgie said. "I never heard of Jardine. He may have been squeezing them some way. Too bad. I'll give 'em a swell funeral . . . after the cops find 'em."

There was another silence. Jo sat huddled up in her chair, watching me the way a snake does, slit-eyed and unwinking. Presently Sligh got up and crushed out his butt.

"Okay, Chris? You going to string along?"

"What else have I got to do?"

"I'm glad you see it that way. I guess you don't want to shake hands on it, though."

"No."

"Fair enough. Let's keep it that way–strictly business." He let out a deep sigh. "Well, folks, how about some food? I'm starving!"

We had breakfast. It was a good breakfast, plenty of eggs and bacon and thick cream and butter. Jo had black coffee and then went away, up to our old room, I guess, without saying one word. Finally Sligh pushed his chair back.

"I guess it's time to talk business, Chris. I got the whole layout in the library, just roughed out. I want you to look it over."

We all got up, and Georgie said, "Well, I guess I'll go have a smoke in the garden."

He turned away and walked down the steps. He looked old and kind of shrunken, and he walked the way a man does when he isn't going anywhere and has all the rest of his life to get there in.

I went inside with Sligh, into the library, and closed the door. There was nobody in the house but the three of us and Jo, and probably a couple of Sligh's boys. At least one, I knew that. The place was familiar, from many nights I spent there with Jo curled up beside me in front of an open fire. There was an alcove with a mess of bronze statuary in it at the far end. The red velvet portieres were shoved back, like always. Clear sunlight poured in through the windows.

Sligh went over to the desk, taking a key out of his pocket. I went along. I was a little behind him, working on my pipe to get it drawing right. He bent and put the key in the drawer lock.

I let the pipe and the match go and grabbed Sligh around the neck with my left arm, so that he made a shield for my body. Just before I pulled him into me, I cleared my gun and fired twice into the red velvet hangings of the alcove.

Nothing happened for a minute except that Sligh started to fight and then changed his mind when I jammed my hot barrel into his back. I moved us a little so I could see the door. And then a little dark guy fell slowly out from behind one of the portieres, curled himself up on the floor, and stayed there. His heavy Colt auto slid out of his hand.

"Yeah," I said. "That's what I thought. You were smart not to trust me, chum."

The walls of the house, like I said, were heavy and thick. The noise of my shots wouldn't have carried far. But someone must have been hanging around close outside, because a man's voice called through the door, "You okay, Sligh?"

I said, "He's just fine, sonny. Come on in." Sligh yelled a warning, and I laughed. I kept my gun where it was, jammed into Sligh's middle. The man did not come in. We stood waiting, the two of us, and I said softly to Sligh, "You were right, I won't forget the framing and those fourteen years in a cell. Why do you think I played along? Why do you think I belly-crawled to Jardine, and Molino, and you? Because I had a little debt to pay, and I wanted to be sure nobody got left out.

"Did you think I was so dumb I couldn't guess at what was coming? Sooner or later, if you were alive, you had to show. I wasn't in any hurry, Sligh. Time sort of loses its meaning, after fourteen years where all the days look alike. Shayne got to Jardine first, damn him. But I'm here now, Sligh, with you and your stinkin' little black market combine. Running booze is one thing. We figured the people had a right to it. But this...You don't deserve shooting, Sligh. You ought to be stepped on, like a snake."

The door began to open, very slow, very quiet, about an inch. Just enough to get a gun barrel through and sight it. The panel was heavy, a double slab of oak strapped with iron. I turned a little more, holding Sligh in front of me, my gun digging his ribs. I could feel him shake. I watched the crack in the door.

But the shot came from the other end of the room.

My legs went out from under me. It was funny, the way it didn't hurt. One second I was standing up, and the next I was down flat. I remember Sligh kicked the gun out of my hand. From where I was lying I could see past the corner of the desk, and there was the little dark punk I shot out of the alcove, crouched over his knees, steadying his rod with both hands.

He looked at me. You ever seen the way a born killer looks at somebody he hates? He tried to fire again, but he couldn't hold onto the gun any longer. It hit the floor, and he hemorrhaged and fell ever. This time he would stay down.

Sligh booted me one in the guts about that time, and I'm not too sure what happened afterward. The guy must have come in out of the hall and the two of them boosted me up on the big davenport in front of the fireplace, because that's where I was when I finally shook the thunderstorm out of my head. I was not feeling very good. Somebody poured a slug of brandy down me, and then I got the idea there was something wrong with my legs. I leaned forward to look.

There was. The punk's .45 slug had smashed through my left knee and stuck somewhere a little higher up in my right thigh. I must have been standing full profile, all lined up to his sights.

Sligh leaned against the mantel, facing me. He was over his scare now, and his mad. He looked cold, businesslike, and nasty.

"You okay now?" he asked me. "You know what I'm saying to you and you know what you're saying back?"

"Yeah."

"All right. Get this, Chris. I need your brains, I need your ability. There isn't another man I know of that's big enough to make a go of this business–crooks are a dumb lot, by and large. So I don't blame you for bearing a grudge. I don't blame you for trying to get me. But now you've had your fun, and you know where you are. Will you throw in with me, on a pretty damn generous deal, considering everything?"

"No."

"Think it over, Chris. You can be–"

Jo's voice floated in from somewhere. The words didn't register right away. I turned my head and she was standing there in the doorway looking at me and Sligh and the third guy, holding a hell of a great big gun gripped in her hands.

She had them covered, and she had them off guard. I think Sligh had forgotten she was alive. His gun lay with mine on the desk. He hadn't thought about needing it again–why should he? The other boy made kind of an instinctive movement toward his coat. Jo snarled at him and he quit, looking at Sligh to see what he should do.

Sligh just stared at her and said, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"What I've been wanting to do for fourteen years." Her lopsided face was pasty white except for the bruises. Her eyes were all red and puffy, not as though she had cried, but as though she wanted to and couldn't. Her mouth was set. It was Sligh's mouth now.

"You've messed up my life so it'll never be worth anything," she said, talking to Sligh. Her tone was slow and expressionless. "You've used me and kicked me around and treated me like dirt and I've taken it, because I had a reason. I don't have a reason any more." She looked at me. "You were just using me, like Sligh. All right, Chris, you got what you wanted. You're in with him, in his dirty rotten racket. You're no better than he is, and I. . . . "

Sligh threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Chris! You hear that, Chris? Stand up and show the lady!" He laughed louder. "Go ahead and shoot him, Jo. He'd thank you for it."

Jo scowled at him suspiciously. Then she looked at me again. I tried to turn around, to see what was going on in back of me. There was sunlight on me from the high windows. I guess Jo got a better look this time. She said, "Chris!" uncertainly, and moved forward.

I saw the third guy going for his gun.

I yelled to Jo. She saw him too, and fired, a snap shot that hit dead center the way those things sometimes do. The guy never cleared his rod at all. He spun around and flopped, and Jo started running across the room to me.

There was a long table behind the davenport. There was a bowl of flowers on it, and some little decorative gadgets, and book ends. I twisted over and grabbed the bowl of flowers and threw it. I didn't wait to see if it hit. I pulled myself up on the arm of the davenport and pitched forward. Jo was close enough to me so I could catch her legs when I fell. She came down. I heard Sligh's shot and the thin whang! of the bullet overhead. Then I had the gun out of Jo's hand.

I fired at Sligh, and missed. I couldn't see very well. I heard Jo scream my name. She lurched against me, and there was another shot, and then Sligh came clear of the mists for a minute and I shot him straight between the eyes. I watched him fall.

He looked as big as a giant redwood, crashing down.

For a while there was dead silence, I don't know how long. Then Jo began to curse softly under her breath. Her face was all screwed up. I got terribly afraid all of a sudden.

"Did he get you, Jo?"

"Yeah."

"What happened? I thought I had you covered. . . . " I was trying to sit up, to see her. She began to laugh.

"You did, Chris. But he had you, he was going to shoot, and I managed to take it. I had to take it, Chris. I couldn't stand losing you again."

"But where did he get you? Is it bad?"

She laughed louder. "I can't tell you where he got me, only I'll be standing to meals for a while. Ain't that romantic?" She must have heard the edge her voice was getting on it, because she shut up and lay in my arms shivering for a while. Then she whispered, "Are you hurt very bad, darling?"

"Not so it'll kill me. Where's Georgie?"

"Down by the pool, I think."

I dragged myself over to the low table where the phone was, not very far away. Jo said, "You going to call the law, Chris?"

"Yeah. I'm going to give 'em the whole set-up, and then take whatever they want to give me. With luck, with what Molino and that Shayne louse can tell, with Sligh's plans for the combine to show them, I should get a decent break.

"I don't know what they'll do about it, Jo, but we've got to get on the other side of things if we can. There'll never be any happiness for either of us if we don't make a clean break and stop playing it crooked. I'll throw the dice that way, and take my chances on the outcome."

She came over to me. I took her in my arms and kissed her. "If you want to clear out, now's your time," I told her.

Her copper-brown eyes blazed. They were normal again, Jo's eyes, full of life and spirit. She said, "If you weren't a cripple I'd pay you back those wallops you gave me last night."

"I'm sorry about that, Jo."

"Well, I guess I can see how you felt. But you're never going to get rid of me again, Chris. Never–no matter what happens."

She put her arms around me, tight. I reached the phone down off the table.

"Chris. . . . "

"Yeah."

"You do love me? You'll always love me?"

I let go of the phone. Pretty soon she sighed and nestled her head against me. I laid my gun where I could get it quick if Georgie came in, and picked up the phone again.

I Feel Bad Killing You

(1944)

I Feel Bad Killing You

Dead End Town

LOS ANGELES, APR. 21.-The death of Henry Charming, 24, policeman attached to the Surfside Division and brother of the once-prominent detective Paul Channing, central figure in the Padway gang-torture case, has been termed a suicide following investigation by local authorities. Young Channing's battered body was found in the surf under Sunset Pier in the beach community three days ago. It was first thought that Channing might have fallen or been thrown from the end of the pier, where his cap was found, but there is no evidence of violence and a high guard rail precludes the accident theory. Sunset Pier was part of his regular beat.

Police Captain Max Gandara made the following statement: "We have reliable testimony that Charming had been nervous and despondent following a beating by pachucos two months ago." He then cited the case of the brother, Paul Charming, who quit the force and vanished into obscurity following his mistreatment at the hands of the once-powerful Padway gang in 1934. "They were both good cops," Gandara said, "but they lost their nerve."

Paul Charming stood for a moment at the corner. The crossing-light, half a block along the highway, showed him only as a gaunt shadow among shadows. He looked down the short street in somber hesitation. Small tired houses crouched patiently under the wind. Somewhere a rusted screen door slammed with the protesting futility of a dying bird beating its wing. At the end of the deserted pavement was the grey pallor of sand and, beyond it, the sea.

He stood listening to the boom and hiss of the waves, thinking of them rushing black and foam-streaked through the pilings of Sunset Pier, the long weeds streaming out and the barnacles pink and fluted and razor sharp behind it. He hoped that Hank had struck his head at once against a timber.

He lifted his head, his body shaken briefly by a tremor. This is it, he thought. This is the deadline.

He began to walk, neither slowly nor fast, scraping sand under his feet. The rhythm of the scraping was uneven, a slight dragging, off-beat. He went to the last house on the right, mounted three sagging steps to a wooden porch, and rapped with his knuckles on a door blistered and greasy with the salt sweat of the sea. There was a light behind drawn blinds, and a sound of voices. The voices stopped, sliced cleanly by the knocking.

Someone walked heavily through the silence. The door opened, spilling yellow light around the shadow of a thick-set, powerful man in shirtsleeves. He let his breath out in what was not quite a laugh and relaxed against the jamb.

"So you did turn up," he said. He was well into middle age, hard-eyed, obstinate. His name was Max Gandara, Police Captain, Surfside Division, L.A.P.D. He studied the man on the porch with slow, deliberate insolence.

The man on the porch seemed not to mind. He seemed not to be in any hurry. His dark eyes looked, unmoved, at the big man, at him and through him. His face was a mask of thin sinewy flesh, laid close over ruthless bone, expressionless. And yet, in spite of his face and his lean erect body, there was a shadow on him. He was like a man who has drawn away, beyond the edge of life.

"Did you think I wouldn't come?" he asked.

Gandara shrugged. "They're all here. Come on in and get it over with."

Channing nodded and stepped inside. He removed his hat. His dark hair was shot with grey. He turned to lay the hat on a table and the movement brought into focus a scar that ran up from his shirt collar on the right side of his neck, back of the ear. Then he followed Gandara into the living room.

There were three people there, and the silence. Three people watching the door. A red-haired, green-eyed girl with a smouldering, angry glow deep inside her. A red-haired, green-eyed boy with a sullen, guarded face. And a man, a neat, lean, swarthy man with aggressive features that seemed always to be on the edge of laughter and eyes that kept all their emotion on the surface.

"Folks," said Gandara, "this is Paul Channing." He indicated them, in order. "Marge Krist, Rudy Krist, Jack Flavin."

Hate crawled into the green eyes of Rudy Krist, brilliant and poisonous, fixed on Channing.

Out in the kitchen a woman screamed. The swing door burst open. A chubby pink man came through in a tottering rush, followed by a large, bleached blonde with an ice pick. Her dress was torn slightly at the shoulder and her mouth was smeared. Her incongruously black eyes were owlish and mad.

Gandara yelled. The sound of his voice got through to the blonde. She slowed down and said sulkily, to no one in particular, "He better keep his fat paws off or I'll fix him." She went back to the kitchen.

The chubby pink man staggered to a halt, swayed, caught hold of Channing's arm and looked up at him, smiling foolishly. The smile faded, leaving his mouth open like a baby's. His eyes, magnified behind rimless lenses, widened and fixed.

"Chan," he said. "My God. Chan."

He sat down on the floor and began to cry, the tears running quietly down his cheeks.

"Hello, Budge." Channing stooped and touched his shoulder.

"Take it easy." Gandara pulled Channing's arms. "Let the little lush alone. Him and-that." He made a jerky gesture at the girl, flung him- . self heavily into a chair and glowered at Channing. "All right, we're all curious-tell us why we're here."

Channing sat down. He seemed in no hurry to begin. A thin film of sweat made the tight pattern of muscles very plain under his skin.

"We're here to talk about a lot of things," he said. "Who murdered Henry?" No one seemed particularly moved except Budge Hanna, who stopped crying and stared at Channing. Rudy Krist made a small derisive noise in his throat. Gandara laughed.

"That ain't such a bombshell, Chan. I guess we all had an idea of what you was driving at, from the letters you wrote us. What we want to know is what makes you think you got a right to holler murder."

Channing drew a thick envelope from his inside pocket, laying it on his knee to conceal the fact that his hands trembled. He said, not looking at anybody, "I haven't seen my brother for several years, but we've been in fairly close touch through letters. I've kept most of his. Hank was good at writing letters, good at saying things. He's had a lot to say since he was transferred to Surfside-and not one word of it points to suicide."

Max Gandara's face had grown rocky. "Oh, he had a lot to say, did he?"

Channing nodded. Marge Krist was leaning forward, watching him intently. Jack Flavin's terrier face was interested, but unreadable. He had been smoking nervously when Channing entered. The nervousness seemed to be habitual, part of his wiry personality. Now he lighted another cigarette, his hands moving with a swiftness that seemed jerky but was not. The match flared and spat. Paul Channing started involuntarily. The flame seemed to have a terrible fascination for him. He dropped his gaze. Beads of sweat came out along his hairline. Once again, harshly, Gandara laughed.

"Go on," he said. "Go on."

"Hank told me about that brush with the pachucos. They didn't hurt him much. They sure as hell didn't break him."

"Flavin, here, says different. Rudy says different. Marge says different."

"That's why I wanted to talk to them-and you, Max. Hank mentioned you all in his letters." He was talking to the whole room now. "Max I knew from the old days. You, Miss Krist, I know because Hank went with you-not seriously, I guess, but you liked each other. He liked your brother, too."

The kid stared at him, his eyes blank and bright. Channing said, "Hank talked a lot about you, Rudy. He said you were a smart kid, a good kid but headed for trouble. He said some ways you were so smart you were downright stupid,"

Rudy and Marge both started to speak, but Channing was going on. "I guess he was right, Rudy. You've got it on you already-a sort of greyness that comes from prison walls, or the shadow of them. You've got that look on your face, like a closed door."

Rudy got halfway to his feet, looking nasty. Flavin said quietly, "Shut up." Rudy sat down again. Flavin seemed relaxed. His brown eyes held only a hard glitter from the light. "Hank seems to have been a great talker. What did he say about me?"

"He said you smell of stripes."

Flavin laid his cigarette carefully in a tray. He got up, very light and easy. He went over to Channing and took a handful of his shirt, drawing him up slightly, and said with gentle kindness, "I don't think I like that remark."

Marge Krist cried, "Stop it! Jack, don't you dare start trouble."

"Maybe you didn't understand what he meant, Marge." Flavin still did not sound angry. "He's accusing me of having a record, a prison record. He didn't pick a very nice way of saying it."

"Take it easy, Jack," Gandara said. "Don't you get what he's doing?

He's trying to wangle himself a little publicity and stir up a little trouble, so that maybe the public will think maybe Hank didn't do the Dutch after all." He pointed at Budge Hanna. "Even the press is here." He rose and took hold of Flavin's shoulder. "He's just making a noise with his mouth, because a long time ago people used to listen when he did it and he hasn't forgotten how good that felt."

Flavin shrugged and returned to his chair. Gandara lighted a cigarette, holding the match deliberately close to Channing's sweaty face. "Listen, Chan. Jack Flavin is a good citizen of Surfside. He owns a store, legitimate, and Rudy works for him, legitimate. I don't like people coming into my town and making cracks about the citizens. If they step out of line, I'll take care of them. If they don't, I'll see they're let alone."

He sat down again, comfortably. "All right, Chan. Let's get this all out of your system. What did little brother have to say about me?"

Channing's dark eyes flickered with what might have been malice. "What everybody's always said about you, Max. That you were too goddam dumb even to be crooked."

Gandara turned purple. He moved and Jack Flavin laughed. "No fair, Max. You wouldn't let me."

Budge Hanna giggled with startling shrillness. The blonde had come in and sat down beside him. Her eyes were half closed but she seemed somehow less drunk than she had been. Gandara settled back. He said ominously, "Go on."

"All right. Hank said that Surfside was a dirty town, dirty from the gutters up. He said any man with the brains of a sick flea would know that most of the liquor places were run illegally, and most of the hotels, too, and that two-thirds of the police force was paid to have bad eyesight. He said it wasn't any use trying to do a good job as a decent cop. He said every report he turned in was thrown away for lack of evidence, and he was sick of it."

Marge Krist said, "Then maybe that's what he was worried about."

"He wasn't afraid," said Channing. "All his letters were angry, and an angry man doesn't commit suicide."

Budge Hanna said shrilly, "Look out."

Max Gandara was on his feet. He was standing over Channing. His lips had a white line around them.

"Listen," he said. "I been pretty patient with you. Now I'll tell you something. Your brother committed suicide. All these three people testified at the inquest. You can read the transcript. They all said Hank was worried; he wasn't happy about things. There was no sign of violence on Hank, or the pier."

"How could there be?" said Channing. "Hard asphalt paving doesn't show much. And Hank's body wouldn't show much, either."

"Shut up. I'm telling you. There's no evidence of murder, no reason to think it's murder. Hank was like you, Channing. He couldn't take punishment. He got chicken walking a dark beat down here, and he jumped, and that's all."

Channing said slowly, "Only two kinds of people come to Surfside- the ones that are starting at the bottom, going up, and the ones that are finished, coming down. It's either a beginning or an end, and I guess we all know where we stand on that scale."

He got up, tossing the packet of letters into Budge Hanna's lap. "Those are photostats. The originals are already with police headquarters in L.A. I don't think you have to worry much, Max. There's nothing definite in them. Just a green young harness cop griping at the system, making a few personal remarks. He hasn't even accused you of being dishonest, Max. Only dumb-and the powers-that-be already know that. That's why you're here in Surfside, waiting for the age of retirement."

Gandara struck him in the mouth. Channing took three steps backward, caught himself, swayed, and was steady again. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin. Marge Krist was on her feet, her eyes blazing, but something about Channing kept her from speaking. He seemed not to care about the blood, about Gandara, or about anything but what he was saying.

"You used to be a good reporter, Budge, before you drank yourself onto the scrapheap. I thought maybe you'd like to be in at the beginning on this story. Because there's going to be a story, if it's only the story of my death.

"I knew Hank. There was no yellow in him. Whether there's yellow in me or not, doesn't matter. Hank didn't jump off that pier. Somebody threw him off, and I'm going to find out who, and why. I used to be a pretty good dick once. I've got a reason now for remembering all I learned."

Max Gandara said, "Oh, God," in a disgusted voice. "Take that somewhere else, Chan. It smells." He pushed him roughly toward the door, and Rudy Krist laughed.

"Yellow," he said. "Yellower than four Japs. Both of 'em, all talk and no guts. Get him out, Max. He stinks up the room."

Flavin said, "Shut up, Rudy." He grinned at Marge. "You're getting your sister sore."

"You bet I'm sore!" she flared. "I think Mr. Channing is right. I knew Hank pretty well, and I think you ought to be ashamed to push him around like this."

Flavin said, "Who? Hank or Mr. Channing?"

Marge snapped, "Oh, go to hell." She turned and went out. Gandara shoved Channing into the hall after her. "You know where the door is, Chan. Stay away from me, and if I was you I'd stay away from Surfside." He turned around, reached down and got a handful of Budge Hanna's coat collar and slung him out bodily. "You, too, rumdum. And you." He made a grab for the blonde, but she was already out. He followed the four of them down the hall and closed the door hard behind them.

Paul Charming said, "Miss Krist-and you too, Budge." The wind felt ice cold on his skin. His shirt stuck to his back. It turned clammy and he began to shiver. "I want to talk to you."

The blonde said, "Is this private?"

"I don't think so. Maybe you can help." Channing walked slowly toward the beach front and the boardwalk. "Miss Krist, if you didn't think Hank committed suicide, why did you testify as you did at the inquest?"

"Because I didn't know." She sounded rather angry, with him and possibly herself. "They asked me how he acted, and I had to say he'd been worried and depressed, because he had been. I told them I didn't think he was the type for suicide, but they didn't care."

"Did Hank ever hint that he knew something-anything that might have been dangerous to him?" Channing's eyes were alert, watchful in the darkness.

"No. Hank pounded a beat. He wasn't a detective."

"He was pretty friendly with your brother, wasn't he?"

"I thought for a while it might bring Rudy back to his senses. He took a liking to Hank, they weren't so far apart in years, and Hank was doing him good. Now, of course-"

"What's wrong with Rudy? What's he doing?"

"That's just it, I don't know. He's 4-F in the draft, and that hurts him, and he's always been restless, never could hold a job. Then he met Jack Flavin, and since then he's been working steady, but he-he's changed. I can't put my finger on it, I don't know of anything wrong he's done, but he's hardened and drawn into himself, as though he had secrets and didn't trust anybody. You saw how he acted. He's turned mean. I've done my best to bring him up right."

Channing said, "Kids go that way sometimes. Know anything about him, Budge?"

The reporter said, "Nuh-uh. He's never been picked up for anything, and as far as anybody knows even Flavin is straight. He owns a haberdashery and pays his taxes."

"Well," said Channing, "I guess that's all for now."

"No." Marge Krist stopped and faced him. He could see her eyes in the pale reflection of the water, dark and intense. The wind blew her hair, pressed her light coat against the long lifting planes of her body. "I want to warn you. Maybe you're a brilliant, nervy man and you know what you're doing, and if you do it's all right. But if you really are what you acted like in there, you'd better go home and forget about it. Surfside is a bad town. You can't insult people and get away with it." She paused. "For Hank's sake, I hope you know what you're doing. I'm in the phone book if you want me. Good night."

"Good night." Channing watched her go. She had a lovely way of moving. Absently, he began to wipe the blood off his face. His lip had begun to swell.

Budge Hanna said, "Chan."

"Yeah."

"I want to say thanks, and I'm with you. I'll give you the biggest break I can in the paper."

"We used to work pretty well together, before I got mine and you found yours, in a bottle."

"Yeah. And now I'm in Surfside with the rest of the scrap. If this turns out a big enough story, I might-oh, well." He paused, rubbing a pudgy cheek with his forefinger.

Channing said, "Go ahead, Budge. Say it."

"All right. Every crook in the Western states knows that the Padway mob took you to the wall. They know what was done to you, with fire. They know you broke. The minute they find out you're back, even unofficially, you know what'll happen. You sent up a lot of guys in your time. You sent a lot of 'em down, too-down to the morgue. You were a tough dick, Chan, and a square one, and you know how they love you."

"I guess I know all that, Budge."

"Chan-" he looked up, squinting earnestly through the gloom, his spectacles shining-"how is it? I mean, can you-"

Channing put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him around slightly. "You watch your step, kid, and try to stay sober. I don't know what I may be getting into. If you want out-"

"Hell, no. Just-well, good luck, Chan."

"Thanks."

The blonde said, "Ain't you going to ask me something?"

"Sure," said Channing. "What do you know?"

"I know who killed your brother."

Badge of Carnage

The blood swelled and thickened in Channing's veins. It made a hard pain over his eyes and pressed against the stiff scar tissue on his neck. No one spoke. No one moved.

The wind blew sand in riffles across the empty beach. The waves rushed and broke their backs in thunder and slipped out again, sighing. Up ahead Sunset Pier thrust its black bulk against the night. Beyond it was the huge amusement pier. Here and there a single light was burning, swaying with the wind, and the reaching skeletons of the roller coaster and the giant slide were desolate in the pre-season quiet. Vacant lots and a single unlighted house were as deserted as the moon.

Paul Channing looked at the woman with eyes as dark and lonely as the night. "We're not playing a game," he said. "This is murder."

The blonde's teeth glittered white between moist lips.

Budge Hanna whispered, "She's crazy. She couldn't know."

"Oh, couldn't I!" The blonde's whisper was throatily venomous. "Young Channing was thrown off the pier about midnight, wasn't he? Okay. Well, you stood me up on a date that evening, remember, Budgie dear? And my room is on the same floor as yours, remember? And I can hear every pair of hoofs clumping up and down those damn stairs right outside, remember?"

"Listen," Budge said, "I told you I got stewed and-"

"And got in a fight. I know. Sure, you told me. But how can you prove it? I heard your fairy footsteps. They didn't sound very stewed to me. So I looked out, and you were hitting it for your room like your pants were on fire. Your shirt was torn, and so was your coat, and you didn't look so good other ways. I could hear you heaving clear out in the hall. And it was just nineteen minutes after twelve."

Budge Hanna's voice had risen to a squeak. "Damn you, Millie, I- Chan, she's crazy! She's just trying-"

"Sure," said Millie. She thrust her face close to his. "I been shoved around enough. I been called enough funny names. I been stood up enough times. I loaned you enough money I'll never get back. And I ain't so dumb I don't know you got dirt on your hands from somewhere. Me, I'm quitting you right now and-"

"Shut up. Shut up!"

"And I got a few things to say that'll interest some people!" Millie was screeching now. "You killed that Channing kid, or you know who did!"

Budge Hanna slapped her hard across the mouth.

Millie reeled back. Then she screamed like a cat. Her hands flashed up, curved and wicked, long red nails gleaming. She went for Budge Hanna.

Channing stepped between them. He was instantly involved in a whirlwind of angry flailing hands. While he was trying to quiet them the men came up behind him.

There were four of them. They had come quietly from the shadows beside the vacant house. They worked quickly, with deadly efficiency. Channing got his hand inside his coat, and after that he didn't know anything for a long time.

Things came back to Channing in disconnected pieces. His head hurt. He was in something that moved. He was -hot. He was covered with something, lying flat on his back, and he could hardly breathe. There was another person jammed against him. There were somebody's feet on his chest, and somebody else's feet on his thighs. Presently he found that his mouth was covered with adhesive, that his eyes were taped shut, and that his hands and feet were bound, probably also with tape. The moving thing was an automobile, taking its time.

The stale, stifling air under the blanket covering him was heavy with the scent of powder and cheap perfume. He guessed that the woman was Millie. From time to time she stirred and whimpered.

A man's voice said, "Here is okay."

The car stopped. Doors were opened. The blanket was pulled away. Cold salt air rushed over Charming, mixed with the heavy sulphurous reek of sewage. He knew they were somewhere on the road above Hyperion, where there was nothing but miles of empty dunes.

Hands grabbed him, hauled him bodily out of the car. Somebody said, "Got the Thompson ready?"

"Yeah." The speaker laughed gleefully, like a child with a bass voice. "Just like old times, ain't it? Good ole Dolly. She ain't had a chansta sing in a long time. Come on, honey. Loosen up the pipes."

A rattling staccato burst out, and was silent.

"For cripesake, Joe! That stuff ain't so plentiful. Doncha know there's a war on? We gotta conserve. C'mon, help me with this guy." He kicked Channing. "On your feet, you."

He was hauled erect and leaned against a post. Joe said, "What about the dame?"

The other man laughed. "Her turn comes later. Much later."

A fourth voice, one that had not spoken before, said, "Okay, boys. Get away from him now." It was a slow, inflectionless and yet strangely forceful voice, with a hint of a lisp. The lisp was not in the least effeminate or funny. It had the effect of a knife blade whetted on oilstone. The man who owned it put his hands on Channing's shoulders.

"You know me," he said.

Channing nodded. The uncovered parts of his face were greasy with sweat. It had soaked loose the corners of the adhesive. The man said, "You knew I'd catch up with you some day."

The man struck him, deliberately and with force, twice across the face with his open palms.

"I'm sorry you lost your guts, Channing. This makes me feel like I'm shooting a kitten. Why didn't you do the Dutch years ago, like your brother?"

Channing brought his bound fists up, slammed them into the man's face, striking at the sound of his voice. The man grunted and fell, making a heavy soft thump in the sand. Somebody yelled, "Hey!" and the man with the quiet lisping voice said, "Shut up. Let him alone."

Channing heard him scramble up and the voice came near again. "Do that again."

Channing did.

The man avoided his blow this time. He laughed softly. "So you still have insides, Chan. That makes it better. Much better."

Joe said, "Look, somebody may come along-"

"Shut up." The man brought something from his pocket, held his hand close to Channing's ear, and shook it. "You know what that is?"

Channing stiffened. He nodded.

There was a light thin rattling sound, and then a scratching of emery and the quick spitting of a match-head rubbed to flame.

The man said softly, "How are your guts now?"

The little sharp tongue of heat touched Channing's chin. He drew his head back. His mouth worked under the adhesive. Cords stood out in his throat. The flame followed. Channing began to shake.. His knees gave. He braced them, braced his body against the post. Sweat ran down his face and the scar on his neck turned dark and livid.

The man laughed. He threw the match down and stepped away. He said, "Okay, Joe."

Somebody said, sharply, "There's a car coming. Two cars."

The man swore. "Bunch of sailors up from Long Beach. Okay, we'll get out of here. Back in the car, Joe. Can't use the chopper, they'd hear it." Joe cursed unhappily. Feet scruffed hurriedly in the sand. Leather squeaked, the small familiar sound of metal clearing a shoulder clip. The safety snicked open.

The man said, "So long, Channing."

Channing was already falling sideways when the shot came. There was a second one close behind it. Channing dropped into the ditch and lay perfectly still, hidden from the road. The car roared off. Presently the two other cars shot by, loaded with sailors. They were singing and shouting and not worrying about what somebody might have left at the side of the road.

Sometime later Channing began to move, at first in uncoordinated jerks and then with reasonable steadiness. He was conscious that he had been hit in two places. The right side of his head was stiff and numb clear down to his neck. Somebody had shoved a red-hot spike through the flesh over his heart-ribs and forgotten to take it out. He could feel blood oozing, sticky with sand.

He rolled over slowly and started to peel the adhesive from his face, fumbling awkwardly with his bound hands. When that was done he used his teeth on his wrist bonds. It took a long time. After that the ankles were easy.

It was no use trying to see how much damage had been done. He decided it couldn't be as bad as it felt. He smiled, a crooked and humorless grimace, and swore and laughed shortly. He wadded the clean handkerchief from his hip pocket into the gash under his arm and tightened the holster strap to hold it there. The display handkerchief in his breast pocket went around his head. He found that after he got started he could walk quite well. His gun had not been removed. Channing laughed again, quietly. He did not touch nor in any way notice the burn on his chin.

It took him nearly three hours to get back to Surfside, crouching in the ditch twice to let cars go by.

He passed Gandara's street, and the one beyond where Marge and Rudy Krist lived. He came to the ocean front and the dark loom of the pier and the vacant house from behind which the men had come. He found Budge Hanna doubled up under a clump of Monterey cypress, The cold spring wind blew sand into Hanna's wide-open eyes, but he didn't seem to mind it. He had bled from the nose and ears-not much.

Channing went through Hanna's pockets, examining things swiftly by the light of a tiny pocket flash shielded in his hand. There was just the usual clutter of articles. Channing took the key ring. Then, tucked into the watch pocket, he found a receipt from Flavin's Men's Shop for three pairs of socks. The date was April 22. Channing frowned. April 21 was the day on which Hank Channing's death had been declared a suicide. April 21 was a Saturday.

Channing rose slowly and walked on down the front to Surfside Avenue. It was hours past midnight. The bars were closed. The only lights on the street were those of the police station and the lobby of the Surfside Hotel, which was locked and deserted. Channing let himself in with Budge Hanna's key and walked up dirty marble steps to the second floor and found Budge Hanna's number. He leaned against the jamb, his knees sagging, managed to force the key around and get inside. He switched on the lights, locked the door again, and braced his back against it. The first thing he saw was a bottle on the bedside table.

He drank straight from the neck. It was scotch, good scotch. In a few minutes he felt much better. He stared at the label, turning the bottle around in his hands, frowning at it. Then, very quietly, he began to search the room.

He found nothing until, in the bottom drawer of the dresser, he discovered a brand new shirt wrapped in cheap green paper. The receipt was from Flavin's Men's Shop. Channing looked at the date. It was for the day which had just begun, Monday.

Channing studied the shirt, poking his fingers into the folds. Between the tail and the cardboard he found an envelope. It was unaddressed, unsealed, and contained six one hundred dollar bills.

Channing's mouth twisted. He replaced the money and the shirt and sat down on the bed. He scowled at the wall, not seeing it, and drank some more of Budge Hanna's scotch. He thought Budge wouldn't mind. It would take more even than good scotch to warm him now.

A picture on the wall impressed itself gradually upon Channing's mind.

He looked at it more closely. It was a professional photograph of a beautiful woman in a white evening gown. She had a magnificent figure and a strong, provocative, heart-shaped face. Her gown and hairdress were of the late twenties. The picture was autographed in faded ink, "Lots of Luck, Skinny, from your pal Dorothy Balf."

"Skinny" had been crossed out and "Budge" written above.

Channing took the frame down and slid the picture out. It had been wiped off, but both frame and picture showed the ravages of time, dust and stains and faded places, as though they had hung a long time with only each other for company. On the back of the picture was stamped:

SKINNY CRAIL'S

Surfside at Culver

"Between the Devil and the Deep"

Memories came back to Charming. Skinny Crail, that bad-luck boy of Hollywood, plunging his last dime on a night club that flurried into success and then faded gradually to a pathetically mediocre doom, a white elephant rotting hugely in the empty flats between Culver City and the beach. Dorothy Balf had been the leading feminine star of that day, and Budge Hanna's idol. Channing glanced again at the scrawled "Budge." He sighed and replaced the picture carefully. Then he turned out the lights and sat a long while in the dark, thinking.

Presently he sighed again and ran his hand over his face, wincing. He rose and went out, locking the door carefully behind him. He moved slowly, his limp accentuated by weakness and a slight unsteadiness from the scotch. His expression was that of a man who hopes for nothing and is therefore immune to blows.

There was a phone booth in the lobby. Channing called Max Gandara. He talked for a long time. When he came out his face was chalk-colored and damp, utterly without expression. He left the hotel and walked slowly down the beach.

The shapeless, colorless little house was dark and silent, with two empty lots to seaward and a cheap brick apartment house on its right. No lights showed anywhere. Channing set his finger on the rusted bell.

He could hear it buzzing somewhere inside. After a long time lights went on behind heavy crash draperies, drawn close. Channing turned suddenly sick. Sweat came out on his wrists and his ears rang. Through the ringing he heard Marge Krist's clear voice asking who was there.

He told her. "I'm hurt," he said. "Let me in."

The door opened. Channing walked through it. He seemed to be walking through dark water that swirled around him, very cold, very heavy. He decided not to fight it.

When he opened his eyes again he was stretched out on a studio couch. Apparently he had been out only a moment or two. Marge and Rudy Krist were arguing fiercely.

"I tell you he's got to have a doctor!"

"All right, tell him to go get one. You don't want to get in trouble."

"Trouble? Why would I get in trouble?"

"They guy's been shot. That means cops. They'll be trampling all over, asking you why he should have come here. How do you "know what the little rat's been doing? If he's square, why didn't he go to the cops himself? Maybe it's a frame, or maybe he shot himself."

"Maybe," said Marge slowly, "you're afraid to be questioned."

Rudy swore. He looked almost as white and hollow as Channing felt. C'hanning laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

He said, "Sure he's scared. Start an investigation now and that messes up everything for tonight."

Marge and Rudy both started at the sound of his voice. Rudy's face went hard and blank as a pine slab. He walked over toward the couch.

"What does that crack mean?"

"It means you better call Flavin quick and tell him to get his new shirt out of Budge Hanna's room. Budge Hanna won't be needing it now, and the cops are going to be very interested in the accessories."

Rudy's lips had a curious stiffness. "What's wrong with Hanna?"

"Nothing much. Only one of Dave's boys hit him a little too hard. He's dead."

"Dead?" Rudy shaped the word carefully and studied it as though he had never heard it before. Then he said, "Who's Dave? What are you talking about?"

Channing studied him. "Flavin's still keeping you in the nursery, is he?"

"That kind of talk don't go with me, Channing."

"That's tough, because it'll go with the cops. You'll sound kind of silly, won't you, bleating how you didn't know what was going on because papa never told you."

Rudy moved toward Channing. Marge yelled and caught him. Channing grinned and drew his gun. His head was propped fairly high on pillows, so he could see what he was doing without making any disastrous attempt to sit up.

"Fine hood you are, Rudy. Didn't even frisk me. Listen, punk. Budge Hanna's dead, murdered. His Millie is dead, too, by now. I'm supposed to be dead, in a ditch above Hyperion, but Dave Padway always was a lousy shot. Where do you think you come in on this?"

Rudy's skin had a sickly greenish tinge, but his jaw was hard. "You're a liar, Channing. I never heard of Dave Padway. I don't know anything about Budge Hanna or that dame. I don't know anything about you. Now get the hell out."

"You make a good Charlie McCarthy, Rudy. Maybe Flavin will hold you on his knee in the death-chair at San Quentin."

Marge stopped Rudy again. She said quietly, "What happened, Mr. Channing?"

Channing told her, keeping his eyes on Rudy. "Flavin's heading a racket," he said finally. "His store is just a front, useful for background and a way to make pay-offs and pass on information. He doesn't keep the store open on Sunday, does he, Rudy?"

Rudy didn't answer. Marge said, "No."

"Okay. Budge Hanna worked for Flavin. I'll make a guess. I'll say Flavin is engineering liquor robberies, hijacking, and so forth. Budge Hanna was a well-known lush. He could go into any bar and make a deal for bootleg whiskey, and nobody would suspect him. Trouble with Budge was, he couldn't handle his women. Millie got sore, and suspicious and began to yell out loud. I guess Dave Padway's boys overheard her. Dave never did trust women and drunks."

Charming stared narrow-eyed at Rudy. His blood-caked face was twisted into a cruel grin. "Dave never liked punks, either. There's going to be trouble between Dave and your pal Flavin, and I don't see where you're going to come in, except maybe on a morgue slab, like the others. Like Hank."

"Oh, Cripes," said Ruby, "we're back to Hank again."

"Yeah. Always back to Hank. You know what happened, Rudy. You kind of liked Hank. You're a smart kid, Rudy. You've probably got a better brain than Flavin, and if you're going to be a successful crook these days you need brains. So Flavin pushed Hank off the pier and called it suicide, so you'd think he was yellow."

Rudy laughed. "That's good. That's very good. Marge was out with Jack Flavin that night." His green eyes were dangerous.

Marge nodded, dropping her gaze. "I was."

Channing shrugged. "So what? He hired it done. Just like he hired this tonight. Only Dave Padway isn't a boy you can hire for long. He used to be big time, and ten years in clink won't slow him up too much. You better call Flavin, Rudy. They're liable to find Budge Hanna any time and start searching his room." He laughed. "Flavin wasn't so smart to pay off on Saturday, too late for the banks."

Marge said, "Why haven't you called the police?"

"With what I have to tell them I'd only scare off the birds. Let 'em find out for themselves."

She looked at him with level, calculating eyes. "Then you're planning to do it all by yourself?"

"I've got the whip hand right now. Only you two know I'm alive. But I know about Budge Hanna's shirt, and the cops will too, pretty soon. Somebody's got to get busy, and the minute he does I'll know for sure who's who in this little tinpot crime combine."

Marge rose. "That's ridiculous. You're in no condition to handle anyone. And even if you were-" She left that hanging and crossed to the telephone.

Channing said, "Even if I were, I'm still yellow, is that it? Sure. Stand still, Rudy. I'm not too yellow or too weak to shoot your ankle off." His face was grey, gaunt, infinitely tired. He touched the burn on his chin. His cheek muscles tightened.

He lay still and listened to Marge Krist talking to Max Gandara.

When she was through she went out into the kitchen. Rudy sat down, glowering sullenly at Channing. He began to tremble, a shallow nervous vibration. Channing laughed.

"How do you like crime now, kiddie? Fun, isn't it?"

Rudy gave him a lurid and prophetic direction.

Marge came back with hot water and a clean cloth. She wiped Chan-ning's face, not touching the handkerchief. The wound had stopped bleeding, but the gash in his side was still oozing. The pad had slipped. Marge took his coat off, waiting while he changed hands with the gun, and then his shoulder clip and shirt. When she saw his body she let the shirt drop and put her hand to her mouth. Channing, sitting up now on the couch, glanced from her to Rudy's slack pale face, and said quietly,

"You see why I don't like fire."

Marge was working gently on his side when the bell rang. "That's the police," she said, and went to the front door. Channing held Rudy with the gun. He heard nothing behind him, but quite suddenly there was a cold object pressing the back of his neck and a voice said quietly,

"Drop it, bud."

It was Joe's voice. He had come in through the kitchen. Channing dropped his gun. The men coming in the front door were not policemen. They were Dave Padway and Jack Flavin.

Flavin closed the door and locked it. Channing nodded, smiling faintly. Dave Padway nodded back. He was a tall, shambling man with white eyes and a long face, like a pinto horse.

"I see I'm still a bum shot," he said.

"Ten years in the can doesn't help your eye, Dave." Channing seemed relaxed and unemotional. "Well, now we're all here we can talk. We can talk about murder."

Marge and Ruby were both staring at Padway. Flavin grinned. "My new business partner, Dave Padway. Dave, meet Marge Krist and Rudy."

Padway glanced at them briefly. His pale eyes were empty of expression. He said, in his soft way, "It's Channing that interests me right now. How much has he told, and who has he told it to?"

Channing laughed, with insolent mockery.

"Fine time to worry about that," Flavin grunted. "Who was it messed up the kill in the first place?"

Padway's eyelids drooped. "Everyone makes mistakes, Jack," he said mildly. Flavin struck a match. The flame trembled slightly.

Rudy said, "Jack. Listen, Jack, this guy says Budge Hanna and his girl were killed. Did you-"

"No. That was Dave's idea."

Padway said, "Any objections to it?"

"Hanna was a good man. He was my contact with all the bars."

"He was a bum. Him and that floozie between them were laying the whole thing in Channing's lap. I heard 'em."

"Okay, okay! I'm just sorry, that's all."

Rudy said, "Jack, honest to God, I don't want to be messed up in killing. I don't mind slugging a watchman, that's okay, and if you had to shoot it out with the cops, well, that's okay too, I guess. But murder, Jack!" He glanced at Channing's scarred body. "Murder, and things like that-" He shook.

Padway muttered, "My God, he's still in diapers."

"Take it easy, kid," Flavin said. "You're in big time now. It's worth getting sick at your stomach a couple times." He looked at Channing, grinning his hard white grin. "You were right when you said Surfside was either an end or a beginning. Dave and I both needed a place to begin again. Start small and grow, like any other business."

Channing nodded. He looked at Rudy. "Hank told you it would be like this, didn't he? You believe him now?"

Rudy repeated his suggestion. His skin was greenish. He sat down and lighted a cigarette. Marge leaned against the wall, watching with bright, narrow-lidded eyes. She was pale. She had said nothing.

Channing said, "Flavin, you were out with Marge the night Hank was killed."

"So what?"

"Did you leave her at all?"

"A couple of times. Not long enough to get out on the pier to kill your brother."

Marge said quietly, "He's right, Mr. Channing."

Channing said, "Where did you go?"

"Ship Cafe, a bunch of bars, dancing. So what?" Flavin gestured impatiently.

Channing said, "How about you, Dave? Did you kill Hank to pay for your brother, and then wait for me to come?"

"If I had," Padway said, "I'd have told you. I'd have made sure you'd come." He stepped closer, looking down. "You don't seem very surprised to see us."

"I'm not surprised at anything anymore."

"Yeah." Padway's gun came smoothly into his hand. "At this range I ought to be able to hit you, Chan." Marge Krist caught her breath sharply. Padway said, "No, not here, unless he makes me. Go ahead, Joe."

Joe got busy with the adhesive tape again. This time he did a better job. They wrapped his trussed body in a blanket. Joe picked up the feet. Flavin motioned Rudy to take hold. Rudy hesitated. Padway flicked the muzzle of his gun. Rudy picked up Channing's shoulders. They turned out the lights and carried Channing out to a waiting car. Marge and Rudy Krist walked ahead of Padway, who had forgotten to put away his gun.

"I Feel Bad Killin' You..."

The room was enormous in the flashlight beams. There were still recognizable signs of its former occupation-dust-blackened, tawdry bunting dangling ragged from the ceiling, a floor worn by the scraping of many feet, a few forgotten tables and chairs, the curling fly-specked photographs of bygone celebrities autographed to "Dear Skinny," an empty, dusty band platform.

One of Padway's men lighted a coal-oil lamp. The boarded windows were carefully reinforced with tarpaper. In one end of the ballroom were stacks of liquor cases built into a huge square mountain. Doors opened into other rooms, black and disused. The place was utterly silent, odorous with the dust and rot of years.

Padway said, "Put him over there." He indicated a camp cot beside a table and a group of chairs. The men carrying Channing dropped him there. The rest straggled in and sat down, lighting cigarettes. Padway said, "Joe, take the Thompson and go upstairs. Yell if anybody looks this way."

Jack Flavin swore briefly. "I told you we weren't tailed, Dave. Cripes, we've driven all over this goddam town to make sure. Can't you relax?"

"Sure, when I'm ready to. You may have hair on your chest, Jack, but it's no bulletproof vest." He went over to the cot and pulled the blanket off Channing. Channing looked up at him, his eyes sunk deep under hooded lids. He was naked to the waist. Padway inspected the two gashes.

"I didn't miss you by much, Chan," he said slowly.

"Enough."

"Yeah." Padway pulled a cigarette slowly out of the pack. "Who did you talk to, Chan, besides Marge Krist? What did you say?"

Channing bared his teeth. It might have been meant for a smile. It was undoubtedly malicious.

Padway put the cigarette in his mouth and got a match out. It was a large kitchen match with a blue head. "You got me puzzled, Chan. You sure have. And it worries me. I can smell copper, but I can't see any. I don't like that, Channing."

"That's tough," Channing said.

"Yeah. It may be." Padway struck the match.

Rudy Krist rose abruptly and went off into the shadows. No one else moved. Marge Krist was hunched up on a blanket near Flavin. Her eyes were brilliant green under her tumbled red hair.

Dave Padway held the match low over Channing's eyes. There was no draft, no tremor in his hand. The flame was a perfect triangle, gold and blue. Padway said somberly, "I don't trust you, Chan. You were a good cop. You were good enough to take me once, and you were good enough to take my brother, and he was a better man than me. I don't trust this setup, Chan. I don't trust you."

Flavin said impatiently, "Why didn't you for godsake kill him the first time? You're to blame for this mess, Dave. If you hadn't loused it up- okay, okay! The guy's crazy afraid of fire. Look at him now. Put it to him, Dave. He'll talk."

"Will he?" said Padway. "Will he?" He lowered the match. Channing screamed. Padway lighted his cigarette and blew out the match. "Will you talk, Chan?"

Charming said hoarsely, "Offer me the right coin, Dave. Give me the man who killed my brother, and I'll tell you where you stand."

Padway stared at him with blank light eyes, and then he began to laugh, quietly, with a terrible humor.

"Tie him down, Mack," he said, "and bring the matches over here."

The room was quiet, except for Channing's breathing. Rudy Krist sat apart from the others, smoking steadily, his hands never still. The three gunsels bent with scowling concentration over a game of blackjack. Marge Krist had not moved since she sat down. Perhaps twenty minutes had passed. Channing's corded body was spotted with small vicious marks.

Dave Padway dropped the empty matchbox. He sighed and leaned over, slapping Charming lightly on the cheek. Channing opened his eyes.

"You going to talk, Chan?"

Channing's head moved, not much, from right to left.

Jack Flavin swore. "Dave, the guy's crazy afraid of fire. If he'd had anything to tell he'd have told it." His shirt was open, the space around his feet littered with cigarette ends. His harsh terrier face had no laughter in it now. He watched Padway obliquely, his lids hooded.

"Maybe," said Padway. "Maybe not. We got a big deal on tonight, Jack. It's our first step toward the top. Channing read your receipt, remember. He knows about that. He knows a lot of people out here. Maybe he has a deal on, and maybe it isn't with the cops. Maybe it isn't supposed to break until tonight. Maybe it'll break us when it does."

Channing laughed, a dry husky mockery.

Flavin got up, scraping his chair angrily. "Listen, Dave, you getting chicken or something? Looks to me like you've got a fixation on this bird."

"Look to me, Jack, like nobody ever taught you manners."

The room became perfectly still. The men at the table put their cards down slowly, like men playing cards in a dream. Marge Krist rose silently and moved towards the cot.

Channing whispered, "Take it easy, boys. There's no percentage in a shroud." He watched them, his eyes holding a deep, cruel glint. It was something new, something born within the last quarter of an hour. It changed, subtly, his whole face, the lines of it, the shape of it. "You've got a business here, a going concern. Or maybe you haven't. Maybe you're bait for the meat wagon. I talked, boys, oh yes, I talked. Give me Hank's killer, and I'll tell you who."

Flavin said, "Can't you forget that? The guy jumped."

Channing shook his head.

Padway said softly, "Suppose you're right, Chan. Suppose you get the killer. What good does that do you?"

"I'm not a cop anymore. I don't care how much booze you run. All I want is the guy that killed Hank."

Jack Flavin laughed. It was not a nice sound.

"Dave knows I keep a promise. Besides, you can always shoot me in the back."

Flavin said, "This is crazy. You haven't really hurt the guy, Dave. Put it to him. He'll talk."

"His heart would quit first." Padway smiled almost fondly at Chan-ning. "He's got his guts back in. That's good to know, huh, Chan?"

"Yeah."

"But bad, too. For both of us."

"Go ahead and kill me, Dave, if you think it would help any."

Flavin said, with elaborate patience, "Dave, the man is crazy. Maybe he wants publicity. Maybe he's trying to chisel himself back on the force. Maybe he's a masochist. But he's nuts. I don't believe he talked to anybody. Either make him talk, or shoot him. Or I will."

"Will you, now?" Padway asked.

Channing said, "What are you so scared of, Flavin?"

Flavin snarled and swung his hand. Padway caught it, pulling Flavin around. He said, "Seems to me whoever killed Hank has made us all a lot of trouble. He's maybe busted us wide open. I'd kind of like to know who did it, and why. We were working together then, Jack, remember? And nobody told me about any cop named Channing."

Flavin shook him off. "The kid committed suicide. And don't try manhandling me, Dave. It was my racket, remember. I let you in."

"Why," said Padway mildly, "that's so, ain't it?" He hit Flavin in the mouth so quickly that his fist made a blur in the air. Flavin fell, clawing automatically at his armpit. Padway's men rose from the table and covered him. Flavin dropped his hand. He lay still, his eyes slitted and deadly.

Marge Krist slid down silently beside Channing's cot. She might have been fainting, leaning forward against it, her hands out of sight. She was not fainting. Channing felt her working at his wrists.

Flavin said, "Rudy. Come here."

Rudy Krist came into the circle of lamplight. He looked like a small boy dreaming a nightmare and knowing he can't wake up.

Flavin said, "All right, Dave. You're boss. Go ahead and give Channing his killer." He looked at Rudy, and everybody else looked, too, except the men covering Flavin.

Rudy Krist's eyes widened, until white showed all around the green. He stopped, stating at the hard, impassive faces turned toward him.

Flavin said contemptuously, "He turned you soft, Rudy. You spilled over and then you didn't have the nerve to go through with it. You knew what would happen to you. So you shoved Hank off the pier to save your own hide."

Rudy made a stifled, catlike noise. He leaped suddenly down onto Flavin. Padway motioned to his boys to hold it. Channing cried out desperately, "Don't do anything. Wait! Dave, drag him off."

Rudy had Flavin by the throat. He was frothing slightly. Flavin writhed, jerking his heels against the floor. Suddenly there was a sharp slamming noise from underneath Rudy's body. Rudy bent his back, as though he were trying to double over backwards. He let go of Flavin. He relaxed, his head falling sleepily against Flavin's shoulder.

Channing rolled off the cot, scrambling toward Flavin.

Flavin fired again, twice, so rapidly the shots sounded like one. One of Padway's boys knelt down and bowed forward over his knees like a praying Jap. Another of Padway's men fell. The second shot clipped Padway, tearing the shoulder pad of his suit.

Channing grabbed Flavin's wrist from behind.

"Okay," said Padway grimly. "Hold it, everybody."

Before he got the words out a small sharp crack came from behind the cot. Flavin relaxed. He lay looking up into Channing's face with an expression of great surprise, as though the third eye just opened in his forehead gave him a completely new perspective.

Marge Krist stood green-eyed and deadly with a little pearl-handled revolver smoking in her hand.

Padway turned toward her slowly. Channing's mouth twitched dourly. He hardly glanced at the girl, but rolled the boy's body over carefully.

Channing said, "Did you kill Hank?"

Rudy whispered, "Honest to God, no."

"Did Flavin kill him?"

"I don't know ..." Tears came in Rudy's eyes. "Hank," he whispered, "I wish...." The tears kept running out of his eyes for several seconds after he was dead.

By that time the police had come into the room, from the dark disused doorways, from behind the stacked liquor. Max Gandara said,

"Everybody hold still."

Dave Padway put his hands up slowly, his eyes at first wide with surprise and then narrow and ice-hard. His gunboy did the same, first dropping his rod with a heavy clatter on the bare floor.

Padway said, "They've been here all the time."

Channing sat up stiffly. "I hope they were. I didn't know whether Max would play with me or not."

"You dirty double-crossing louse."

"I feel bad, crossing up an ape like you, Dave. You treated me so square, up there by Hyperion." Channing raised his voice. "Max, look out for the boy with the chopper."

Gandara said, "I had three men up there. They took him when he went up, real quiet."

Marge Krist had come like a sleepwalker around the cot. She was close to Padway. Quite suddenly she fainted. Padway caught her, so that she shielded his body, and his gun snapped into his hand.

Max Gandara said, "Don't shoot. Don't anybody shoot."

"That's sensible," said Padway softly.

Channing's hand, on the floor, slid over the gun Flavin wasn't using anymore. Then, very quickly, he threw himself forward into the table with the lamp on it.

A bullet slammed into the wood, through it, and past his ear, and then Channing fired twice, deliberately, through the flames.

Charming rose and walked past the fire. He moved stiffly, limping, but there was a difference in him. Padway was down on one knee, eyes shut and teeth clenched against the pain of a shattered wrist. Marge Krist was still standing. She was staring with stricken eyes at the hole in her white forearm and the pattern of brilliant red threads spreading from it.

Max Gandara caught Channing. "You crazy-"

Channing hit him, hard and square. His face didn't change expression. "I owe you that one, Max. And before you start preaching the sanctity of womanhood, you better pry out a couple of those slugs that just missed me. You'll find they came from Miss Krist's pretty little popgun-the same one that killed her boy friend, Jack Flavin." He went over and tilted Marge Krist's face to his, quite gently. "You came out of your faint in a hurry, didn't you, sweetheart?"

She brought up her good hand and tried to claw his eye out.

Channing laughed. He pushed her into the arms of a policeman. "It'll all come out in the wash. Meantime, there are the bullets from Marge's gun. The fact that she had a gun at all proves she was in on the gang. They'd have searched her, if all that pious stuff about poor Rudy's evil ways had been on the level. She was a little surprised about Padway and sore because Flavin had kept it from her. But she knew which was the better man, all right. She was going along with Padway, and she shot Flavin to keep his mouth shut about Hank, and to make sure he didn't get Pad-way by accident. Flavin was a gutty little guy, and he came close to doing just that. Marge untied me because she hoped I'd get shot in the confusion, or start trouble on my own account. If you hadn't come in, Max, she'd probably have shot me herself. She didn't want any more fussing about Hank Channing, and with me and Flavin dead she was in the clear."

Gandara said with ugly stubbornness, "Sounded to me like Flavin made a pretty good case against Rudy."

"Sure, sure. He was down on the ground with half his teeth out and three guys holding guns on him."

Marge Krist was sitting now on the cot, while somebody worked over her with a first aid kit. Channing stood in front of her.

"You've done a good night's work, Marge. You killed Rudy just as much as you did Flavin, or Hank. Rudy had decent stuff in him. You forced him into the game, but Hank was turning him soft. You killed Hank."

Channing moved closer to her. She looked up at him, her green eyes meeting his dark ones, both of them passionate and cruel.

"You're a smart girl, Marge. You and your mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. I know now what you meant when you accused Rudy of being afraid to be questioned. Flavin couldn't kill Hank by himself. He wasn't big enough, and Hank wasn't that dumb. He didn't trust Flavin. But you, Marge, sure, he trusted you. He'd stand on a dark pier at midnight and talk to you, and never notice who was sneaking up behind with a blackjack." He bent over her. "A smart girl, Marge, and a pretty one. I don't think I'll want to stand outside the window while you die."

"I wish I'd killed you, too," she whispered. "By God, I wish I'd killed you too!"

Channing nodded. He went over and sat down wearily. He looked exhausted and weak, but his eyes were alive.

"Somebody give me a cigarette," he said. He struck the match himself. The smoke tasted good.

It was his first smoke in ten years.

No Star Is Lost

(1944)

THE KID SAT IN A HARD, straight chair. The room was full of men, some in blue uniforms with bright metal on them, some in plain clothes, all watching the kid. It was hot. Smoke hung thick under the ceiling.

The kid sat forward a little, with his hands on his long, narrow thighs. He stared unseeingly at the men with their alert, hard faces. He had a strange look. A detached and shining look, the kind that is sometimes, but not often, seen in churches.

A heavy-set, gray-haired man in a neat dark suit leaned over him.

"Well?" he said.

The kid's gaze came back slowly.

"Sure," he said. "Sure, I'll tell you. I want to tell you. You oughta know how he found it."

"He? Found what?" The big man frowned.

The kid didn't answer.

"Come on, kid. Talk," the big man said roughly.

And again the kid said, "Sure. . . . "

I started going to Ackles' Gym about two months ago. Sure, my Pop had told me Ackles died a while back, but I figured somebody would keep the gym going like it was.

There was a bunch of these little zoot-suit guys fooling around out in front of the place. A couple of 'em were jigging to the juke-box just inside the beer joint on the right side of the entrance. Some older guys in the doorway to the bowling alley on the other side started laughing and throwing pennies.

I went on up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the sign said the gym was.

I went in through wide swing doors. The draft from them started another door to swinging way down at the other end of the big barny place. It seemed to go out on a back landing. There was that cold gymnasium smell–leather and canvas and old sweat.

There were four people in there, but none of them heard me come in. The Killer–that's the blond kid, Fikes is his name–and another guy were up in the ring. The Killer had his other kid down and was beating the stuffing out of him. I le wasn't fighting back at all, just covering up and yelling, I nit the Killer went on hitting him, and grinning.

Shriber was leaning on the apron watching them. Shriber was the big red-faced guy in the gray sweatshirt. I didn't know any of their names, then. Shriber was grinning, too.

The kid yelled every time a glove hit him. I never heard anybody yell that way before.

All Ibis time Muff was shoving his broom around the edge of the floor. He didn't pay any attention to anybody.

AII of a sudden Shriber slapped his hands on the apron and said, "Okay, Killer. Let'm up. You ain't gettin' paid for this." I laughed. "Sharp, kid. Plenty sharp. You oughta take the bonbon like Warren took the election."

The Killer slugged the kid two more good ones like he hated to quit and got up. The kid curled up and stayed on the canvas. He quit yelling. The Killer wiped the grease off his face with a forearm and laughed.

"Quicker," he said. "I won't have no opposition."

"Hey, you! Muff! What you think of my boy? Pretty hot in that workout!"

Muff, the guy with the broom, stopped pushing it and turned around, taking his time. He looked at Shriber. He looked at the Killer and the kid all piled up on the canvas, and back to Shriber. Muff had iron-gray hair and brown eyes kind of sunk in. There was a twitch in his cheek that kept pulling his mouth up on the left side.

"You know what I think of your boy," he said, and started pushing his broom again.

The Killer slipped down, out of the ring, walking catfooted with hips held forward.

"I'd like to know, too," he said politely, and showed his teeth.

Muff went on with the broom.

"You're giving away too much weight."

"I can handle it."

Muff pushed his broom.

The Killer stepped in front of him and said something I couldn't hear.

Muff stopped. All of a sudden he reached out and put his hand on the Killer's face and shoved. It didn't look like he put much into it, but the blond boy walked backward two fast steps and sat down, hard.

Muff started pushing the broom again.

Shriber laughed. I knew then he'd been needling the both of them. He went over quick and put his hand on the Killer's shoulder and slapped it, mauling him good-naturedly away from Muff.

"Lay off him, kid, he's a good janitor. Ain't easy to get a good broom jockey these days. Besides, think of the trouble gettin' rid of the corpse."

The Killer gave him a funny kind of a look. I saw him glance back at the door standing open on the back landing. Then he snarled something under his breath and went out. He passed close to me. There was no color in his face.

"You got a customer," Muff said, like he'd known it all along. "For Pete's sake!" said Shriber. "Why didn't'ja make a noise or something, kid? What can I do for you?"

I told him.

"Sure, sure. C'mon into my office. From outa town, ain't you?"

"Yeah."

"Been here long? Know anybody?"

"Nuh uh."

"You'll like it here, then. Nice bunch of boys. Siddown."

The office was little and dark. It smelt of dead cigars. The walls were papered solid with pictures of fighters, all the box kings from Choynski to Joe Louis and a lot more I didn't know.

Over the roll-top desk was a motto, one of those corny things they used to hang around. "No Star Is Ever Lost We Once Have Seen; We Always May Be What We Might Have Been."

"Funny thing for a place like this, huh?" Shriber laughed.

"Sort of."

"Barney Ackles, he used to run this gym, he put it there. Sentimental Sammy, he was. Always urgin' kids on to Bigger and Better Things. I left it there. Maybe I'm sentimental, too, huh?"

I wondered if the kid out there was up on his feet yet, and I almost walked out. Then I thought, maybe I been seeing too many Humphrey Bogart pictures. So the Killer's tough, so what? There's lots of room.

Besides, Shriber cut the price way down.

I went out of the office thinking he was a swell egg. The kid was gone out of the ring. I looked around at the equipment, sniffed at the sweat-and-leather smell and began to think fight-game again. Mom wouldn't mind it if I started sending big money home and got my picture in the papers like Joe Louis. Shriber was going to personally give me boxing lessons.

This Muff was standing way down at the other end of the place, by the door to the back landing. He wasn't pushing his broom. He was staring out through the door. He must have heard me, because he turned around. He made me think of this guy Bogart when he's been real tough and nasty. I thought I'd like to see him really tangle with the Killer.

When I was out on the sidewalk again I looked up at the top floor of the building, where there were iron steps leading up from the back landing. It was all boarded up and said "Loft for Rent."

I went to the gym about five or six weeks. Sometimes I would work out by myself, but mostly there would be other guys around, guys my own age. A lot of them I didn't like much. They were these jitterbug apes with long hair who just fooled around at gym work. But there were some pretty nice guys and we got so we would work out together when we could make it from our jobs.

The Killer wasn't bad when you got to know him. Cocky-like but a real bearcat in the ring. Only sometimes he would start beating up on a partner in real earnest. Everybody was scared to spar with him.

Shriber was swell. He made it like there was something special between us, like he took a fancy to me and we had a nice little secret. He gave me boxing lessons.

He would tell me to come around late when there was nobody there, and he'd work out with me some more and not let me pay him. He didn't say it exactly, but I could tell he thought I had something, something he could build up for real business in the ring.

Muff just went around sweeping and washing windows and cleaning up the locker room. He never spoke to anybody. Sometimes some of the guys would kid him. He would give them that sour deadpan, twitching his mouth up on one side, and they would think all of a sudden they weren't very funny, and quit.

That's why it got me when Muff spoke to me one morning, early, when we were all alone in the locker room.

"Come here a minute."

He was standing over in a clear space at the end of the lockers. I did like he said.

"Throw a couple at me, kid. Come on!"

I threw a couple at him.

Gee, that guy was fast! I never even saw his hands. I sat there on the floor looking up at him, and him looking down. "Wide open," he said, like he was talking to somebody else. "No footwork. No steam. A miserable arm puncher."

"Shriber says. . . . "

"Devil with Shriber. Get up."

I got up. In about fifteen minutes I was shot dead. Muff grunted. "I get here around six," he said, and went on out. After that I got there at six, too. It was just between me and Muff. Nobody else knew about it. Other times he didn't know I was alive. Funny guy. I used to wonder where he got that name. But could he box!

I liked the gym. The only thing was that sometimes I would get the idea there was something going on I didn't know about. The way the guys looked at each other, like they do in gangster movies to show they know a lot they aren't telling. And every once in a while they'd turn up kind of dragged out and talking too loud, and they'd have new clothes and maybe a flashy watch.

There was something about the way they acted with Shriber and the Killer, too. Nothing you could put in words. You just felt it. Like the movies, when the mobsters are around the Big Shot, only it was all hidden somewhere way in behind their faces.

Eddie–that was Eddie Nazarian–well, he and I got to be sort of pals, like. He'd been going there longer than I had. "You ever get the feeling there's something, well, funny going on?" I said to him one day.

He wouldn't look at me.

"Funny like what?"

"I don't know. Crooked, maybe."

"You oughta quit seein' them movies."

"Well, what are you so jittery about?"

"Jittery? You're nuts, I'm not jittery. Oh, the heck with it! Here comes Shriber."

I knew he was lying, and I knew he was scared. But he was excited, too. He was all of a sudden different from me. I caught on for a certain then.

I stayed away from there a week. But I went back.

When I came past the alley I noticed a big crowd and an ambulance down back of the gym. The ambulance started to pull out just as I came up. I couldn't see who was in it. Shriber and the Killer were talking to a couple of cops, who were ma king notes. There were a couple more cops up on the fire escape.

Shriber saw me, but he was busy with the cops.

I went around and in the front way. Muff was leaning on the window-sill in the locker room, looking down into the alley. There was nobody else there.

"What happened, Muff?"

He turned his head around. He looked like a cougar I saw once, snarling at the hounds.

"Blast your soul," he said, so soft I could hardly hear him. I felt like somebody slugged me when I wasn't looking. "Hey, Muff. . . . "

"I thought maybe you had sense. I thought maybe you wouldn't come back. I–Oh, the devil with you."

He meant it. Gee, the look he had in his eyes!

He picked up his broom and started pushing it. Over his shoulder, like he was telling a stranger where Hill Street was, he said, "Eddie Nazarian got killed. He went off the fire-escape and broke his neck."

I sat down on a bench. I could hear Muff's broom knocking up under the iron lockers. It sounded like somebody laughing in a tunnel.

I got up quick and went in the washroom.

When I came out Shriber was there. He nodded his head at me and smiled a little. I went out with him into his office, and Muff didn't look up from his broom.

Shriber shut the door onto the gym. There was a bunch of the kids out there in sweat-shirts and shorts, huddled around talking. Shriber got a bottle out of the desk and two glasses, and poured about a tablespoonful into one of them. He gave it to me.

"Get your blood moving again."

He poured himself a bigger shot and put the bottle away. "You and Eddie were sort of pals, weren't you?"

"Yeah. What happened?"

"Nobody saw it. He went out on the fire escape, alone, and I guess his foot slipped or something."

A lot of the kids go out there, for air or a smoke. "He never knew what hit him."

We sat there for a minute. Then Shriber spoke, real easy-like. "Been sick or something, kid?"

I knew he meant about the week I stayed away. I nodded. He laughed a little.

"Feeling okay now?"

"I don't know."

He leaned back in the swivel-chair and looked at me. He had pale eyes, sort of a steel blue.

"Let's talk sense, kid. You ain't no palooka. I know why you stayed away. Okay. You came back. Now we can get somewhere."

He lighted up a cigar. He took his time about it. I began to sweat.

"Way I look at it, kid, is this. A man's got a right to get by. The system won't let him, well then, he can make his own. Now don't get me wrong. I don't go for no strong-arm stuff, understand. But I figure this way. A guy eats maybe one meal a day. He's maybe got somebody else dependin' on him, so he can't save even a dime. He can't have a girl, or a new pair of pants, or even a candy bar. And why? It ain't because he don't work. It's the filthy system."

I didn't know from any of that system stuff, but the rest I knew all right.

"So there's another guy up the street. He's got plenty. A house, a car, a bunch of extra suits. Okay. So who's gonna cry if he loses a couple tires off his car? Nobody gets hurt. It's just a few bucks out of a kick that's got plenty in it. And the first guy I was talkin' about, he's got dough now to buy breakfast two three times a week. You think that's wrong?"

I couldn't think of anything to say.

"We got a little club here, kid. We work together, and everybody gets taken care of. Sure, there's a little danger maybe, but we got no lilies around here. I handle all the business end, and there's plenty dough for everybody."

He leaned forward.

"I ain't said this to anyone before. I like you, kid. You got something. I can make a big ring name out of you if you play it right. Most of those guys out there, they're palookas. But you're different, kid. You can go places."

I knew he meant I could be a big shot like the Killer. "Yeah," he said, settling back. "You can go places. And why wait? Ask yourself that, kid?"

Shriber knocked the ash off his cigar and didn't look at me.

"There's just one thing. I know you ain't the squealin' kind, so don't get sore. But well, you ain't got a thing but your own word, and it won't weigh much against mine. You get me."

I got him. I didn't stay that morning for a workout.

Two days later I came back.

I guess it was the third day after that that Muff turned up at my rooming-house. He caught me just as I was coming in from work, turned me around and walked me back down the street. He didn't say much for a couple of blocks. I didn't want to go with him. But he wasn't kidding, and I knew what he could do with his fists.

"You're in, aren't you?" he said all of a sudden.

"What's it to you?"

"I been asking myself. I still don't have an answer."

We walked some more. It got cold, but I was sweating like July. I could see the side of his face. I never knew a guy's face could get that hard. It was like iron.

We got over toward the railroad yards. The sunlight got pale. Once in a while a locomotive would whistle in the yards like somebody dying alone of a bad cold and calling out for company.

All of a sudden Muff stopped, raised his head and just stood there, scowling. I looked up where he was looking, and there was a star in the sky. A little star, dirty with dust and smoke, but riding high on the last light of the sun.

Then Muff turned, and stared me straight in the eye. "Shriber told you you're good."

"Yeah."

"You are. You're a natural, about the best I've seen. If you stick with the ring and take it clean, you can be somebody."

"Well?"

"Grown up, haven't you? Ah, you sap kid! Sure you're good. That's why he wants you. He'll manage you like he does the Killer, straight or crooked by the deal, and he won't take more than half your purse. But there's another reason he wants you.

"Brains don't come a dime a dozen, and you got 'em. The Killer's getting too big for his britches, and Shriber needs somebody to take his place. He wants you more for that than lie does for the ring, because his smelly little gang is his real business. The gym and the rest of it are just a front."

I didn't say anything.

"Maybe you like that, though. Maybe you'd get a kick out of being a big shot."

I didn't say anything. Muff pulled his lip back.

"What are you going to change your name to? Humphrey or Edward G.? Listen, you sap! You're not tough. If you were, it wouldn't matter. Think you can go up against the Killer? I le doesn't just have his dukes, you know. He packs a gun."

"I can take care of myself."

"Sure, sure. Eddie thought so, too."

"What do you mean, Eddie.... "

"Eddie got cold feet. They were scared he'd talk. So somebody shoved him off the fire escape."

I stared at him. He laughed.

"Gets you, doesn't it? No, I can't prove it. Only it happened once before, before you came. That locked-up loft that nobody rents is a big convenience. A guy can use the back steps and nobody ever sees him. You could hide a body up there for quite a while."

He leaned forward.

"You know what's up in that loft."

I started to walk away. He caught me and banged me up against a building wall. When, I tried to get loose he gave me a couple across the face, and he didn't pull 'em much.

"Get this straight, kid. You're sticking your fool neck clear out, and don't think you won't get it there! You're already in too deep to change your mind. But there's one thing you can do. You can go to the cops and spill."

"What do you think I am?"

"A chump. A nice, clean, decent, fuzz-tailed chump! What's your mother going to think of you?"

I tried to get away again. He gave me one in the wind this time. It was funny how gentle his voice got all of a sudden. "Go ahead and cry, sonny. Aaah! I guess I'm playing this whole thing wrong. I know why you're doing this. I been there myself."

He took my arm. We went over and sat down on some steps and he shoved his handkerchief at me, without looking. "Don't worry. I know it's not because I hurt you." He spread his big scarred hands on his knees and looked at them. "Yeah. I know. Maybe you wonder why all of a sudden I got to mount the pulpit."

"Yeah, kind of."

"Would you believe me, kid, if I say I don't know? I got what I need–a soft job, a clean flop, and cash enough to keep me not-too sober. What do I care what a bunch of punks do with themselves? I start fooling around, I'll wind up in a gutter with my head cracked open. Yeah. But I've got so I can't lay in bed with myself nights."

He scowled at his hands like he hated 'em.

"It ain't my business what anybody else does. Only I used to know Barney Ackles. He gave me my job there, a little while before he kicked off. He always used to say that with kids it was everybody's business. That's part of it, I guess."

He gave me a funny sideways look. I thought he was going to slug me again.

"Mostly it's you. You're so much like I was, it makes me sick to my stomach. Why the devil did you have to come there?"

"You know so much, why don't you go to the cops?" I said. "I'd look cute, wouldn't I? All I have to give 'em is a couple of words I overheard, maybe a noise I heard upstairs. With what they can dig up against me, and weighing my word against Shriber's, I'd be better off to go down and jump off the pier. I got to have something like you, something definite, something the cops can get a search warrant on."

"Are you through?"

"In a minute. I suppose Shriber sold you with that 'system' gag. It's malarkey–you know that. Most of the jitterbugs never d id a day's work in their life. The ones that did didn't like it. They've been lucky so far, because Shriber's no fool, and in her's the Killer. But they'll wind up in the can some day. You want to go there with 'em?"

"I'll take my chances."

"Sure, you're tough. Most of the reason you're doing this is so you'll have big dough to send home to Mama. You think she wants it like that?"

I got up. I was going to slug him first this time, but he didn't move a hand. He got up, too.

"Well, I got what I asked for."

"Don't worry. I won't tell Shriber."

"Thanks, pal."

He gave me that hard deadpan twitching a little. He turned around and then said over his shoulder, "Next time you're in the office look at that motto over the desk. It ain't so, kid. And if you don't believe it, hunt up that picture of Dude Moffatt on the wall. Maybe you never heard of him, but ask anybody. So long, kid."

I didn't have to ask anybody about Dude Moffatt, the best light-heavy in the ring, Pop used to say. He had a mother and a couple of kid sisters to take care of, he was broke all the time, and he fell for a girl. Then he got in with a bunch of gamblers, hoping for quick dough. All he got was the bounce from the State Boxing Commission and his career blown up in his face, and a jail sentence.

Moffatt. That wasn't so far to Muff.

I started to walk home. It was dark now. The sky was fogged up and you couldn't see any stars at all.

Next time I saw Shriber he was pretty sore. We were supposed to pull a job that night, my first one.

"The cops been nosin' around here," Shriber said. "I showed 'em all over–that last batch of hot stuff was moved out of the loft two-three nights ago. But somebody tipped 'em and that means we got to lay off a while."

All of a sudden he threw it into me.

"You seen Muff?"

"Muff? No, I haven't seen him."

"He's skipped."

"You mean he. . . . "

"Yeah. Tipped the bulls and beat it."

The Killer smiled.

"We'll get him, though. There's a bunch of gangs in this town and we all hate each other's gall. But with a guy like Muff. . . . Somebody'll get him." He looked straight at me. "Remember that, kid."

"I'll remember. Him, and Eddie, too."

"Yeah," said the Killer softly. "And Eddie, too."

Shriber laughed and slapped my shoulder.

"This is a man's game, kid. You'll grow into it."

He bought me a swell dinner. For two weeks we didn't do anything. Nobody got Muff. Two weeks. Gee, it was like two years! And then this morning Shriber tipped me.

"Tonight, kid. Your first caper."

We were sitting around up in the boarded-up loft, waiting for the guys to trickle in. There was three cars of us going. The others–Shriber, the Killer, and three or four of the young guys–were smoking and kidding each other. Shriber would toss a word and a grin my way. I didn't eat any dinner. I wanted them to get started so I'd have something to do besides think.

A kid in a green zoot suit came in the back way, the way we were using, and said there was no sign of a stake-out.

And then all of a sudden there was this racket from up in the front of the loft, like somebody was breaking that door down.

We all jumped up. The only light we had was one bulb hanging down over the packing box they used for a table, and it was awful dark up in the front. We heard the door go in. Somebody yelled, and all of a sudden the Killer pulled non.

"Hold it!" Shriber said.

The Killer was smiling, some of the guys flashed brass knucks, and one guy grabbed a tire chain from somewhere and was swinging it, and all of them fading back from the light. I heard the back door open.

Muff walked in from the shadows, just far enough so you could see who it was.

He stopped. Everybody stopped. Nobody even breathed, listening to hear if there were more people coming in after Muff. Cops. There wasn't a sound anywhere. It was like being deaf.

Muff was all alone, and he didn't have anything in his hands. The Killer said something real soft I couldn't hear and moved his gun hand. It was a big shiny revolver. Shiny. The light flashed off it. It looked as big as a cannon.

I reached out and whacked the Killer's wrist. The gun went off and somebody hit me. I heard Shriber say something about a hot rod. Then Muff came in closer and laughed. I was still groggy, but even so I thought he was pretty drunk.

"You missed me," Muff said. "Been looking for me, haven't you? All right, here I am. What are you going to do about it?"

Shriber laughed.

"Shut that door, Mike." Mike shut it. "What do you think we're gonna do about it?"

The other guys snickered and they began to close in. They were walking on their toes, kind of, and their eyes were all shiny. The one guy was swinging the tire chain so it made just a round blur in the air. The Killer had the gun back in his pocket. His fists were doubled up. He was smiling, and he licked his teeth the way you see a dog do when it's going to fight.

I don't know, I guess I got up and started to yell or something, because Shriber grabbed me and said, "Shut up, kid. This is business." I shut up, but I tried to get away and he looked at me and all of a sudden he clipped me. Only I learned a lot from him and a sight more from Muff, and I got my chin out of the way in time. It hurt, but I could still see, and I gave him a couple back.

And then things began to go fast. I got loose from Shriber and over to Muff, and I saw he wasn't drunk at all. He and the Killer were tangling, the others standing off till they could see where to hit.

Was that a fight! It only lasted two-three minutes but it was beautiful. Gee, the way Muff moved around, the way his face looked. . . .

The Killer went down, and he wasn't smiling any more. Muff shot me a look–his eyes weren't mean any more, they were big and bright.

"Beat it, kid," he said. "Down the front way, and call the cops!"

He gave me a hard shove and started to run behind me. Shriber and the other guys closed in. We had to turn around and fight them, trying all the time to get back to the door. We took a lot from those brassies, but Muff–I didn't know anybody could fight that way. Finally the guy with the tire chain hit him. He fell down with his scalp hanging over one eye and I thought he was dead.

I ran for the door. I guess Muff planned it that way, because I was close to it and the rest of them were too far away to grab me.

I heard the Killer's voice telling them to get out of the way. I ran, but I looked over my shoulder. The Killer was up on one knee and he had his shiny big gun out, and there wasn't anything between us.

And then Muff got up.

His face was mostly bloody, but he was smiling. "Go on," he said.

I don't know; the way he said it, I had to. It all happened too fast. He got up and said that, and the gun went off right on top of it. I heard the slug hit him and knock him forward, and he slumped down. I was through the door and falling down the steps, and when I came out on the street yelling, there was a cop down on the corner, and. . . .

That's all. That's all I can tell you. Only I killed him. I killed Muff. I ought to choke for it, like the Killer's going to. That's all.

• • •

The hot, smoky room was quiet. The kid sat doubled over with his face in his hands.

"That's putting it too strong, kid," the gray-haired man said awkwardly. "You said he found something. Will you explain that?"

The kid didn't answer. His shoulders heaved, but there was no sound.

A uniformed cop cleared his throat.

"I rode the ambulance down here with the dead man. He lived long enough to make a–statement. I think. . . . " "Go ahead and read it."

The cop took out his notebook and found the page. He cleared his throat again. Everybody listened. "Moffatt said: 'I didn't do it for the kid. Tell him that. I did it for myself. I didn't have anything to live for. I did it for myself, and for Barney Ackles because his gym was always run clean and he wanted kids the same way. Tell the kid it wasn't his fault. You got to tell him this, make him understand. Tell him thanks because he gave me something to die for. I'd of done the Dutch years ago, only I didn't have any reason one way or the other. He gave me one. It's the way I want it. I guess this makes me the Champ. Yeah, the Champ. Tell that to the kid. He'll get it. The Champ. Tell him thanks–he showed me how to find. . . . ' "

The kid raised his head. He said clearly, drowning out the cop, " . . . how to find–my star."

The cop stared at him.

"Yeah. How did you know?" He shook his head. "I don't get it. What's he mean, find a star?"

The kid didn't answer. Once again he stared ahead of him, at something not in the room, and his face had a detached and shining look–the kind that is sometimes, but not often, seen in churches.

So Pale, So Cold, So Fair (1957)

So Pale, So Cold, So Fair

She was the last person in the world I expected to see. But she was there, in the moonlight, lying across the porch of my rented cabin.

She wore a black evening dress, and little sandals with very high heels. At her throat was a gleam of dim fire that even by moonlight you knew had to be made by nothing less than diamonds. She was very beautiful. Her name was Marjorie, and once upon a time, a thousand years ago, she had been engaged to me.

That was a thousand years ago. If you checked the calendar it would only say eight and a half, but it seemed like a thousand to me. She hadn't married me. She married Brian Ingraham, and she was still married to him, and I had to admit she had probably been right, because he could buy her the diamonds and I was still just a reporter for the Fordstown Herald.

I didn't know what Marjorie Ingraham was doing on my porch at two thirty-five of a Sunday morning. I stood still on the graveled path and tried to figure it out.

The poker game was going strong in Dave Schuman's cabin next door. I had just left it. The cards had not been running my way, and the whiskey had, and about five minutes ago I had decided to call it a night. I had walked along the lake shore, looking with a sort of vague pleasure at the water and the sky, thinking that I still had eight whole days of vacation before I had to get back to my typewriter again.

And now here was Marjorie, lying across my porch. I couldn't figure it out.

She had not moved. There was a heavy dew, and the drops glistened on her cheeks like tears. Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be sleeping.

"Marjorie?" I said. "Marjorie—"

There wasn't any answer.

I went up to the low step and reached across it and touched her bare shoulder. It was not really cold. It only felt that way because of the dew that was on it.

I laid my fingers on her throat, above the diamonds. I waited and waited, but there was no pulse. Her throat was faintly warm, too. It felt like marble that has been for a time in the sun. I could see the two dark, curved lines of her brows and the shadows of her lashes. I could see her mouth, slightly parted. I held my hand over it and there was nothing, no slightest breath. All of her was still, as still and remote as the face of the moon.

She was not sleeping. She was dead.

I stood there, hanging onto the porch rail, feeling sick as the whiskey turned in me and the glow went out. A lot of thoughts went through my mind about Marjorie, and now suddenly she was gone, and I would not have believed it could hit me so hard. The night and the world rocked around me, and then, when they steadied down again, I began to feel another emotion.

Alarm.

Marjorie was dead. She was on my porch, laid out with her skirt neat and her eyes closed, and her hands folded across her waist. I didn't think it was likely she had come there by herself and then suddenly died in just that position. Someone had brought her and put her there, on purpose.

But who? And why?

I ran back to Dave Schuman's.

I must have looked like calamity, because the minute I came in the door they forgot the cards and stared at me, and Dave got up and said, "Greg, what is it?"

"I think you better come with me," I said, meaning all of them. "I want witnesses."

I told them why. Dave's face tightened, and he said, "Marge Ingraham? My God." Dave, who is in the circulation department of the Herald, went to school with me and Marjorie and knows the whole story.

He grabbed a flashlight and went out the door, and the local physician, our old poker pal Doc Evers, asked me, "Are you sure she's dead?"

"I think so. But I want you to check it."

He was already on his way. There were three other guys besides Dave Schuman and Doc Evers and me: another member of the Herald gang; Hughie Brown, who ran Brown's Boat Livery on the lake; and a young fellow who was a visiting relation or something of Hughie's. We hurried back along the lake shore and up the gravel path.

Marjorie had not gone away.

Somebody turned on the porch light. The hard, harsh glare beat down, more cruel but more honest than the moonlight.

Hughie Brown's young relative said, in a startled kind of way, "But she can't be dead, look at the color in her skin."

Doc Evers grunted and bent over her. "She's dead, all right. At a rough guess, three or four hours."

"How?" I asked.

"As the boy says, look at the color of her skin. That usually indicates carbon-monoxide poisoning."

Dave said, in a curiously hesitant voice, "Suicide?" Doc Evers shrugged. "It usually is."

"It could have been accidental," I said.

"Possibly."

"Either way," I said, "She couldn't have died here."

"No," said Doc, "hardly. Monoxide poisoning presupposes a closed space."

"All right," I said. "Why was she brought here and left on my doorstep?"

Doc Evers said, "Well, in any case, you're in the clear. You've been with us since before six last evening."

Hughie Brown's young relative was staring at me. I realized what I was doing and shoved my hands in my pockets. I had been running my fingers over the scars that still show on my face, a nervous trick I haven't quite been able to shake.

"Sure," said Dave. "That's right. You're in the clear, Greg. No matter what."

"That comforts me," I said. "But not greatly."

I went back to fingering the scars.

I had enemies in Fordstown. I went out of my way to make them, with a batch of articles I was brainless enough to write about how things were being run in the city. The people involved had used a simple and direct method of convincing me that I had made a serious error in judgment. I turned again to look at poor Marjorie, and I wondered.

A man named Joe Justinian was my chief and unassailable enemy. Chief because he was the control center of Fordstown's considerable vice rackets, and unassailable because he owned the city administration, hoof, horns and hide.

A uniformed cop and a city detective of the Fordstown force had stood by and watched while Justinian's boys had their fun, bouncing me up and down on the old brick paving of the alley where they cornered me. The detective had had to move his feet to keep from getting my blood on his shoes. Afterward neither he nor the cop could remember a single identifying feature about the men.

Justinian had two right-hand bowers. One was Eddie Sego, an alert and sprightly young hood who saw to it that everything ran smoothly. The other was Marjorie's husband–now widower–Brian Ingraham. Brian was the respectable one, the lawyer who maintained in the world the polite fiction that Mr. Joseph Justinian was an honest businessman who operated a night club known as the Roman Garden, and who had various "investments."

Brian himself was one of Justinian's best investments. From a small lawyer with several clients he had become a big lawyer with one client.

And now his wife was dead on my doorstep.

Any way I looked at it, I couldn't see that this night was going to bring me anything but trouble.

Hughie Brown came back with a folded sheet fresh from the laundry. Doc Evers unfolded it, crisp and white, and that was the last I ever saw of Marjorie.

Doc said, "Where's the nearest phone?"

On Monday afternoon I was in Fordstown, in the office of Wade Hickey, our current chief of police.

Brian Ingraham was there, too. He was sitting in the opposite corner, his head bowed, not looking at me or or Hickey. He seemed all shrunken together and gray-faced, and his fingers twitched so that it was an effort to hold the cigarettes he was chain-smoking. I kept glancing at him, fascinated.

This was a new role for Brian. I had never seen him before when he didn't radiate perfect confidence in his ability to outsmart the whole world and everybody in it.

Hickey was speaking. He was a big, thick-necked man with curly gray hair and one of those coarse, ruddy, jovial faces that can fool some of the people all of the time, but others for only the first five minutes.

"The reports are all complete now," he said, placing one large hand on a file folder in front of him on the desk. "Poor Marjorie took her own life. What her reasons may have been are known only to herself and God–"

Suddenly, viciously, Ingraham said, "You're not making a speech now, Wade. You don't have to ham it up."

His face was drawn like something on a rack. Hickey gave him a pitying glance.

"I'm sorry, Brian," he said, "but these facts have to be made perfectly clear. Mr. Carver is in a peculiar position here, and he has a right to know." He turned to me and went on.

"Marjorie's car was found in a patch of woods off Beaver Run Road, maybe ten miles out of town. There's an old logging cut there, and she had driven in on it about a quarter of a mile, where she wasn't likely to be disturbed. As it happened, of course, somebody did find her, too late to be of any help–"

"Somebody," I said, "with a fine sense of humor."

"Or someone wanting to make trouble for you," said Hickey. "Let's not forget that possibility. You do have enemies, you know."

"Yes," I said. "What a pity they were all complete strangers."

Hickey's eyes got cold. "Look, Carver," he said, "I'm trying to be decent about this. Don't make it hard for me."

"It seems to me," I said, "that I've been shamefully co-operative."

"Cooperation," said Hickey, "is how we all get along in this world. You oughtn't to be ashamed of it. Now then." He turned a page over in the folder. "Whoever found her and removed her body left the front door open, but all the windows were tight shut except the wind-wing on the right side. the That was open sufficiently to admit a hose running from the exhaust pipe. The autopsy findings agree with the preliminary reports made by the doctor up at Lakelands–"

"Doctor Evers."

"That's right, Doctor Evers–and the police doctor who accompanied the ambulance. Carbon-monoxide poisoning." He closed the folder. "There's only one possible conclusion."

"Suicide," I said.

Hickey spread his hands and nodded solemnly.

I looked at Brian Ingraham. "You knew her better than anybody. What do you think?"

"What is there to think?" he said, in an old, dry, helpless voice that hardly carried across the room. "She did it. That's all." He ran the back of his hand across his eyes. He was crying.

"Now," said Hickey, "as to why her body was removed from the car, transported approximately twenty miles and left on your porch, Carver, I don't to suppose we'll ever know.

A ghoulish joke, an act of malice–a body can be an embarrasing thing to explain away--or simply the act of a nut, with no real motive behind it at all. Whatever the explanation, it isn't important. And we certainly can't connect you in any way with Marjorie's death. So if I were you, I'd go home andforget about it."

"Yes," I said. "I guess that's the thing to do. Brian–"

"Yes."

"Do you know of any reason? Was she sick, or unhappy?"

He looked at me, through me, beyond me, into some dark well of misery. "No, I don't know of any reason. According to the autopsy she was in perfect health. As far as I knew"–he faltered, and then went on, in that curiously dead voice–"as far as I knew, she was happy."

"It's always a cruel thing to accept," said Hickey, "when someone we love takes that way out. But we have to realize–"

"We," said Ingraham, getting up. "What the hell have you got to do with it, you greedy, grubbing, boot-licking slob? And how would you know, anyway? You've never loved anything but yourself and money since the day you were born."

He went past me and out the door.

Hickey shook his fine, big, leonine head. "Poor Brian. He's taking this mighty hard."

"Yes," I said.

"Well," said Hickey, "it's no wonder. Marjorie was a mighty fine girl."

"Yes," I said. I got up. "I take it that's all?"

Hickey nodded. He picked up the file and shoved it in a drawer. He shut the drawer. Symbol of completion.

I went to the Herald and did a nice, neat, factual follow-up on the story I had already filed. Then I stopped at the State Store and picked up a bottle, and returned to the bachelor apartment I inhabit for fifty weeks of the year.

So I was home, as Hickey had recommended, but I did not forget it. I forgot to go out for food, and I forgot later to turn the lights on, but I couldn't forget Marjorie. I kept seeing her face turned toward me in the moonlight, with the dew on her cheeks and her lips parted. After a while it seemed to me that she had been trying to speak, to tell me something. And I got angry.

"That's just like you," I said. "Make a mess of things, and then come running to me for help. Well, this time I can't help you."

I thought of her sitting all alone in her car in the old logging cut, listening to the motor throb, feeling death with every breath she breathed, and I wondered if she had thought that at the end. I wondered if she had thought of me at all. "Such a waste, Marjorie. You could have left Brian. You could have done a million other things. Why did you have to go and kill yourself?"

It was hot and dark in the room. The Marjorie-image receded slowly into a thickening haze.

"That's it," I said. "Go away."

The haze got thicker. It enveloped me, too. It was restful. Marjorie was gone. Everything was gone. It was very nice. Then the noise began.

It was a sharp, insistent noise. A ringing. It had a definite significance, one I tried hard to ignore. But I couldn't, quite. It was the doorbell, and in the end I didn't have any choice. I fought my way partly out of the fog and answered it.

She was standing in the hall, looking in at me.

"Oh, God," I said. "No. I told you. You can't come back to me now. You're dead."

Her voice reached me out of an enormous and terrible void. "Please," it said. "Mr. Carver, please! My name is Sheila Harding. I want to talk to you."

She was shorter than Marjorie, and not so handsome. This girl's hair was brown and her eyes were blue.

I hung onto the door jamb. "I don't know you," I said, too far gone to be polite.

"I was a friend of Marjorie's." She stepped forward. "Please, I must talk to you."

She pushed by me, and I let her. I switched the light on and closed the door. There was a chair beside the door. I sat in it.

She didn't look like her at all, really. She didn't move the same way, and the whole shape and outline of her was different. She kept glancing at me, and it dawned on me that she hadn't counted on finding me drunk.

"I can still hear you," I said. "What's on your mind?"

She hesitated. "Maybe I'd better–"

"I plan to be drunk all the rest of this week. So unless it's something that can wait–"

"All right," she said rather sharply. "It's about Marjorie."

I waited.

"She was a very unhappy person," Sheila Harding said.

"That's not what Brian said. He said she was happy."

"He knows better than that," she said bitterly. "He must know. He just doesn't want to admit it. Of course, I knew Marjorie quite a long while before I realized it, but that's different. We both belonged to the League."

"Oh," I said. "You're one of those society dolls. Now wait."

The name Harding clicked over in my dim brain with a sound of falling coins. "Gilbert Harding, Harding Steel, umpteen millions. I don't remember a daughter."

"There wasn't one. I'm his niece."

"Marjorie enjoyed belonging to the League," I said. "She was born and raised on the South Side, right where I was. Her biggest ambition was to grow up to be a snob."

I was annoying Miss Harding, who said, "That isn't important, Mr. Carver. The important thing is that she needed a friend very badly, and for some reason she picked me."

"You look the friendly type."

Her mouth tightened another notch. But she went on. "Marjorie was worried about Brian. About what he was doing, the people he was mixed up with."

I laughed. I got up and went over to the window, in search of air. "Brian was working for Justinian when she married him. She knew it. She thought it was just splendid of him to be so ambitious."

"Nine years ago," said Sheila quietly, "Justinian was a lot more careful what he did."

She sounded so sensible and so grim that I turned around and looked at her with considerably more interest.

"That's true," I said. "But I still think it was late in the day for Marjorie to get upset. I told her at the beginning just what the score was. She didn't give a damn, as long as it paid."

"She did later. I told you she was an unhappy person. She had made some bad mistakes, and she knew it."

"They weren't that bad," I said. "They weren't so bad she had to kill herself."

Her eyes met mine, blue, compelling, strangely hard. "Marjorie didn't kill herself," she said.

III

I LET THAT HANG THERE in the hot, still air while I looked at it.

Marjorie didn't kill herself.

There were two sides to it. One: Of course she killed herself; the evidence is as clear as day. Two: I'm not surprised; I never thought she did.

I said carefully, "I was in the office of the Chief of Police this afternoon. I heard all the evidence, the autopsy report, the works. Furthermore, I saw the body, and a doctor friend of mine nine saw it. Monoxide poisoning, self-administered, in her own car. Period."

"I read the papers," said Sheila. "I know all about that. I know all about you, too."

"Do you?"

"Marjorie told me."

"Girlish confidences, eh?"

"Something a little more than that, Mr. Carver. It was when you were beaten so badly, a year or so back, that Marjorie began to feel–well, to put it honestly–guilty."

"I'm sorry. I'm not at my best tonight. Go on."

"Then," said Sheila, "my brother was killed, just after New Year's."

"Your brother?" I sat down again, this time on the edge of the bed, facing her.

"He was in the personnel department of Harding Steel, a very junior executive. He told me the numbers racket–the bug, he called it–was taking thousands of dollars out of the men's pay checks every month. I guess that goes on in all the mills, more or less."

"Around here it does. And more, not less."

"Well, Bill thought he'd found a way to catch the people who were doing it, and clean up Harding Steel. He was ambitious. He wanted to do something big and startling. He was all excited about it. And then a load of steel rods dropped on him, and that was that. Just a plant accident. Everybody was sorry."

I remembered, now that she told me. I hadn't covered the story myself, and there was no reason in particular why it should stick in my mind. But there hadn't been any suspicion of foul play at the time. I said so.

"Of course not. They were very careful about it. But Bill had told me the night before that his life had been threatened. He almost bragged about it. He said they couldn't stop him now; he had the men he wanted–Justinian's men, naturally–right here." She held out her hand and closed the fingers. "He was murdered."

"And you told this to Marjorie."

"Yes. We were very good friends, Mr. Carver. Very close. She didn't think I was hysterical. She knew Bill, and liked him. She became terribly angry and upset. She said she would find out everything she could, and if it was really murder she was going to make Brian quit Justinian."

"Go on."

"It took her a long time. But last Saturday afternoon, late, she stopped by. She said she was pretty sure she had the full story, and it was murder, and she was going to face Brian with it that night. I asked her for details. She wouldn't tell me anything because she didn't think Brian was personally involved, and she was in duty bound to give him his chance to get clear of Justinian before she told.

"Then she was going to give the whole story to my Uncle Gilbert. She said he was big enough to fight Justinian."

And he was, plenty big enough. If he had even reasonable proof that his nephew had been murdered, he could go right over the heads of the local law, to where the Emperor Justinian of Fordstown had no influence at all. He could smash him into little pieces.

Reason enough for Justinian to silence Marjorie. Reason enough.

But. . . .

Sheila was still talking. "Marjorie did tell me one thing, Mr. Carver."

"What?"

"If Brian still insisted on sticking with Justinian, she was going to leave him. She said, "I'll go back to Greg, if he still wants me."

That turned me cold all over. "And she did. No, what am I saying? She didn't come, somebody brought her. Somebody. Who? Why?"

"Surely you must have guessed that by now, Mr. Carver."

"You tell me."

"Who it was exactly, of course, I don't know. But it was somebody who knows Marjorie's suicide was a lie. It was somebody who liked her and wanted the truth known. Somebody who thought that if he brought her to you, you would understand and do something about it."

Yes. I could see that.

"But why me? Why not lay her on Brian's doorstep? He was her husband."

"They probably felt that he would be too shocked and grieved to understand. Or perhaps they didn't trust him to fight Justinian. You wouldn't be involved either way. And you already have a grudge against Justinian."

Oh yes, I had a grudge, all right. But who was this thoughtful someone? One of the killers? An accidental witness? And why did he have to pass the thing along to anyone? Why didn't he just come out and tell the truth himself?

That last one was easy. He was afraid.

Well, so was I.

Sheila was waiting. She was looking at me, expectant, confident. She was a pretty girl. She seemed like a nice girl, a loyal friend, a loving sister. She had had her troubles. I hated to let her down.

I said, "No sale. Marjorie killed herself. Let's just accept that and forget it.She stared at me with a slowly dawning astonishment. "After what I've just told you–you can still say that?"

"Yes," I said. "I can. In the first place, how would Marjorie find it out even if your brother was really murdered? Eddie Sego plans those things, and Eddie is not the babbling type. Not to anybody, including the boss's lawyer's wife."

"Eddie Sego had nothing to do with it. He was in the hospital then with a burst appendix. That's one thing that made it harder for Marjorie, because she didn't know where to start." She added, with angry certainty, "She did find out, somehow."

"Okay then. She found out. Maybe she found out even more. Maybe she discovered that Brian was so deeply involved that she couldn't tell. Maybe she was in such a mess that there wasn't any other way out of it but suicide. You don't know what happened after she left you." I got up and opened the door. "Go home, Miss Harding. Forget about it. Lead a long and happy life."

She didn't go. She continued to look at me. "I understand," she said. "You're scared."

"Miss Harding," I said, "have you ever been set upon by large men with brass knuckles? Have you ever spent weeks in a hospital getting your face put back together again?"

"No. But I imagine it wasn't pleasant. I imagine they warned you that the next time it would be worse."

"A society doll with brains," I said. "You have the whole picture. Good night."

"I don't think you have the whole picture yet, Mr. Carver. If you could find the man who brought Marjorie's body to you, you would have a witness who could break Justinian."

"All right," I said, "we'll get right down to bedrock. I don't like Justinian any better than you do, but it's going to take somebody or something bigger than me to break him. I tried to once, and he did the breaking. As far as I'm concerned, that's it."

"I don't suppose," she said slowly, "that I have any right to call you a coward."

"No. You haven't." "Very well. I won't."

And this time she went.

I closed the door and turned off the lights. Then I went to the window and looked down at the street, three floors below. I saw her come out of the building and get into a black and white convertible parked at the curb. She drove away. Before she was out of sight a man got out of a car across the street and then the car went off after her. The man who had been left behind loitered along the street, where he could watch the front of the building and my window.

Somebody was keeping tabs on what I did and who came to see me.

Wade Hickey? Justinian? And why?

I began to think about Brian Ingraham, and wonder how deeply he might be involved. I began to think about Joe Justinian, and what might be done about him. The Marjorie-image came back into my mind, and it was smiling.

Then I thought of the brass knuckles and the taste of blood and oil on the old brick paving. I looked down at the loitering man. "The hell with it," I said, and I went and lay down on my bed.

But I couldn't sleep.

About midnight I quit trying. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, sitting by the window. I did not turn the lights on. I don't remember that I came to any conscious and reasoned decision, either. After a certain length of time I just got up and went.

I didn't go near my car. I knew they would be watching that, expecting me to use it. I slipped out the back entrance into the alley and across it to an areaway that ran alongside another apartment house to the next street. I was careful. I didn't see anybody I didn't want anybody to see me. I still thought I could quit on this thing any time it got too risky. At my age, and with my experience, I should have known better.

THERE WERE STILL HONEST Cops on the force, plenty of them. they were hamstrung. As things

stood, they had two choices. They could resign and go to farming or selling shoes, or they could sweat it out, hoping for better days. One who was sweating it out was an old friend of mine, a detective named Carmen Prioletti.

His house was pith-dark when I got to it, after a twenty-minute hike. I rang the bell, and pretty soon a light came on, and then Carmen, frowsy with sleep, stuck his head out the door and demanded to know what the hell.

"Oh," he said. "It's you."

He let me in and we stood talking in low voices in the hall, so as not to wake the family.

"I want to borrow your car," I said. "No questions asked, and back in an hour. Okay?"

He looked at me narrowly. Then he said, "Okay." He got the keys and gave them to me.

"I'll need a flashlight, too," I said.

"There's one in the car." He added, "I'll wait up."

I drove through quiet streets to the northern edge of town, and beyond it, into the country, where the air was cool and the dark roads were overhung with trees, and the summer mist lay white and heavy in the bottoms. I drove fast until I

came to Beaver Run Road, and then I went slower, looking for the logging cut. Beaver Run was a secondary road, unpaved, washboarded and full of potholes. Dust had coated the trees and brush on either side, so they showed up bleached and grayish.

I found the cut and turned into it, and stopped the motor. It became suddenly very still. I picked up the flashlight and got out. I walked down the rutted track.

They had taken Marjorie's car away, of course, and the comings and goings of men and tow trucks had pretty well flattened everything in sight. But I found where the car had been. I looked all around at the crushed brambles, the rank weeds and the Queen Anne's lace. Then I walked a little farther down the track where no one had been. I walked slowly, watching my feet. I circled around to the side of the track, as one would in walking around a car. My trouser legs were wet to the knees with dew. The briars caught in them and scratched my shins. I went back to Prioletti's car and sat sideways, with the door open, picking a batch of prickly green beggar's lice out of my socks. The socks, and my shoes, were wet.

I backed out of the cut and drove into town again, to Prioletti's.

He was waiting up for me, as he had promised. We sat in the kitchen, smoking, and all the time he watched me with his bright dark eyes.

"Carmen," I said, "suppose you're a girl. You're wearing an evening dress, sheer stockings, high-heeled shoes. You decide to kill yourself. You drive to a nice quiet spot, an old logging cut off a back road. You have brought a hose with you–"

Carmen's eyes were fairly glittering now, but wary. "Continue."

"You wish to attach that hose to the exhaust pipe, and then run it in through the front window. Now, to do this you have to get out of the car. You have to walk around it to the back, and then around it again to the front. Right?"

"Indubitably."

"All right. There are briar thickets, weeds, beggar's lice, unavoidable, and all soaked with dew. What happens to your nylons and your fancy shoes?"

"They're pretty much of a wreck."

"Hers were not."

"I see," said Carmen slowly. "You're sure of that? Absolutely sure."

"When I found her on my porch she was neat and pretty as a pin. Carmen, she never got out of that car until she was carried out, dead."

I filled him in on Sheila Harding, and what she had told me. Then we were both through talking for awhile. The electric clock on the wall touched two and went past it.

Carmen smoked and brooded.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked finally.

"That depends," I said. "How much are you willing to risk? The minute certain people around Headquarters realize you're suspicious, you'll be in trouble."

"Leave that to me. I used to be proud of my job, Greg. Now I tell my kids I'm not really a cop, I play piano in a disorderly house." He clenched his hands together on the table top, and shivered all over. "This might be it. This might just by the grace of God be it."

"You'll have to play it mighty close to the vest. Now, what I would like to know is whether the autopsy report mentioned any external marks, no matter how slight, around the wrists and ankles, and maybe the mouth. Or a bruise on the head, under the hair."

"I'll see what I can find out. We'd better not be seen meeting. How about north of the lake in Mill Creek Park, around three?"

I nodded and got up.

I walked home. I didn't meet anyone along the way. When I got within a block or so of my apartment house I took extra pains to stay in the shadows. I figured to come in the way I had gone out, across the alley and through the back door. I figured the boys out front would never know I had been away.

I was happy in that thought right up to the minute I actually opened the door. Inside, in the narrow well of the service stairs, a dim light was burning, and I saw a man there. A large man, with a crushed hat pulled down over his eyes. I saw him in the act of leaping toward me, and I let go of the door and turned to run, and there was another man in back of me. He hit me as I turned, and then the man in the stairwell came out and banged me across the nape of the neck. I went down on my hands and knees in the alley, onto the uneven bricks, and there we were again. A visit with old friends.

Justinian's boys. One of them pulled me up and wrenched my head back, and the other one gave me a fast chop over the Adam's apple. That was to stop me yelling.

Then he said, "Where were you?"

I coughed and choked. Nameless, who was holding my arm doubled up behind me, gave it an upward twist. I winced, and Faceless, who was in front of me, with his hat still pulled down so that nothing much showed in the dark of night, asked again, "Where were you?"

I whispered, "Out for a walk."

"Yeah," said Faceless, "I know that. You didn't take your car. So where'd you walk to?"

"Around. No place."

He hit me twice, once on the left cheekbone, once on the right.

"I'm asking you," he said. "Me. The dame came to see you, and right away you went sneaking out. I want to know why."

"No connection," I said. "She just dropped by. And it wasn't right away. I was restless and couldn't sleep. I went for a walk. So sue me."

Nameless said conversationally, "I could break your arm."

He showed me how easy it would be. I went down on my knees again. There was a taste of blood in my mouth. I thought my face was bleeding. I thought I could feel it running down my cheeks, hot and wet, to spatter on the bricks.

"If it hadn't been," said Faceless, "that we could hear your phone ringing and ringing through the open window, and you didn't answer it, we wouldn't never have known you'd gone. Now, that kind of thing can lead to trouble." He kicked me. "Get up, buddy. I don't like to have to bend over when I'm talking."

I got up. I couldn't stand the feeling of blood on my face. I got up fast. I threw myself backward, butting Nameless as hard as I could with my head. It must have been hard enough, because he grunted and let go. He fell, and I fell on top of him, whipped around with my feet under me, and went for Faceless. He looked very queer. He was cloud-shaped, huge and looming, and the alley and the building walls were all twisted and quivering as though I was seeing them through dark water. I hit him full on and he went over backward, floating, slow-motion, like something in a dream. The blood ran down my face, filling my eyes, my nose, my mouth. I thought, This is what it feels like to be crazy. I knocked his hat off and got hold of his head and beat it up and down, up and down, hard, hard on the alley bricks.

So Pale, So Cold, So Fair

It was nice, but it didn't last long. It hardly lasted at all. Nameless got up. He was mad. He hit me with something much harder than a fist, and pretty soon Faceless got up, and he was mad, too. They let me know it. I heard one of them wanting to kill me right now, but the other one said, "Not yet, not till we get the order." He shook me. "You get that, buddy? The order. It can come any minute. And when it does, you got nothing left to hope for."

He threw me down and they went away, down a long black tunnel that lengthened until I got dizzy watching and shut my eyes. When I opened them again I was lying in the alley, alone. It was still dark. I wanted to go to my apartment. I know I started and I know I must have made it up two flights of the service stairs, because I was lying on the landing when Sheila found me. . . .

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she said and helped me up, and we walked together up the rest of the steps and down the hall to the apartment. I told her to pull the blind shut.

"They're watching the place," I said.

"I know it," she said. "Somebody followed me home."

She took me into the bathroom and went to work.

"It's not bad at all," she said. "Just ordinary cuts and bruises. But why did they do this to you? What were you doing?"

"I went out on an errand," I said. "They'd never have known I was gone, but some clown had to call me on the telephone. They could hear it ringing and they knew I wasn't here. What's the matter?"

She was already pretty white and tense. Now she put her hand over her mouth and her eyes got big and full of tears. "Oh Lord," she said. "Oh, Lord, that was me."

"You?"

"I got to thinking after I got home. I didn't have any right to expect you to do anything. I didn't have any right to reproach you. I wanted to tell you that. And I thought I ought to warn you that you were being watched. So I called. When you didn't answer I thought at first you'd–"

She hesitated, and I said, "Passed out," and she nodded.

"Then I began to get really worried. I called again, and again, and then finally I had to come back to see if you were all right." She began to cry. "And it was my fault."

"You didn't mean it," I said. "You were trying to help." My first impulse was to kill her, but she looked so miserable. "Please, stop crying."

"I can't," she whispered, and looked at the bloody washrag she had in her other hand. "I think I'm going to faint."

She looked as though she might. I put my arm around her and took her into the other room, and we sat together on the edge of the bed, with her face buried on my shoulder. I wound up kissing her.

I think both of us were surprised to find we liked it.

"You're a nice kid," said. "If you weren't so rich–"

She said quickly, "Didn't you know? My side of the family doesn't have a million to its name. We're the poor Hardings. That's one reason my brother was so anxious to show off."

"You may be in danger yourself," I said, suddenly alarmed for her. "They're already curious about you."

"Since you're not going to do anything about Marjorie, I can't see that it matters," she said.

"Well–" I said.

"You have done something! What? Please tell me."

"No. You're in trouble enough already. Anyway, it isn't much." It wasn't, either, unless Prioletti could turn up something on that autopsy report. And even that would only be a first step, an opening wedge. "One thing I'd give a lot to know," I told her, "is where Brian Ingraham was the night his wife was killed."

"You don't think," she said, her face reflecting horror, "that Brian had anything to do with it."

"He's Justinian's man. Body and bank account."

"But his own wife!"

"This is a hard world we live in."

She shivered. "And Marjorie said she'd given the maid the night off, so they'd be alone, and she was going to make herself beautiful so Brian would have to choose her instead of Justinian. She was vain, poor Marjorie. I just can't believe–Well, it doesn't matter what I believe, does it? Anyway, I know where Brian was that night, or at least where Marjorie thought he was. She was going to have to wait until he got home to talk to him."

"Go ahead," I said. "Where was he?"

"At the Roman Garden, with Justinian."

SIN IN A MIDDLE-WESTERN STEEL town is organized, functional, and realistic. It is not like in the movies. The necessary furniture is there, and nothing more. No velvet drapes, no gilt mirrors, no ultramodernistic salons, no unbelievably beautiful females. The houses are just houses, and the whores are just whores. Numbers slips can be bought in almost any dingy little sandwich shop, pool hall, or corner grocery, and anyone can play, even the kids with as little as a penny. The night clubs and gambling palaces, like the Roman Garden, are businesslike structures wasting no time on the fancy junk. There's a bar, and there are the gambling layouts, and that's that. Food, entertainment, and decor are haphazard. The bosses don't figure that's what you came for.

At nine o'clock on a hot morning the Roman Garden looked downright dreary. It was primarily a big, barny, old two-anda-half-story frame house, with a new front tacked on it, yellow glazed brick with glass-brick insets and a neon sign. There was a parking lot around back. A couple of cars were already in it. The sports car I knew was Eddie Sego's.

I went in through the back door. No one followed me. No one had followed me since the two musclemen left me in the alley. I had escorted Sheila to her apartment, making her promise that she would go to her uncle's first thing in the morning, and there had not been a sign of a tail, nor was there now. I wished I knew why.

I walked down the hall and pushed open the door that said

OFFICE.

A thoroughly respectable-looking, middle-aged female was sitting at a desk, writing busily. I went past her to the door marked PRIVATE and went through it before she could do more than squawk.

Eddie Sego was in the inner office. He was busy, too. There's a lot of paper work in any business, and he had a stack of it. He was wearing a magnificent silk sports shirt, and a pair of hornrimmed glasses. With his hairy forearms and thick, low-growing black hair, the glasses made him look like a studious gorilla.

He leaped up, startled. Then he saw who it was and sat down again, and swore. He took his glasses off.

"You ought to know better than that, Carver," he said. "Bursting in without warning. I might have thought it was a heist and shot you." He looked at me with his head on one side. "What are you doing here, anyway? And what hit you?"

"You know damn well what hit me," I said. "Eddie, it isn't fair. I've played ball. The Emperor wanted me to shut up, and I did. What more does he want?"

"Look," said Eddie, "I'm no mind reader. What's this all about?"

"Of course," I said, "you're not going to admit you know. Okay, I'll spell it out. Last night a girl came to visit me. A mutual friend just died, and she was looking for sympathetic conversation. Everything was going fine with us until she went home. Then I found out my place was being watched. A big goon followed her and scared the wits out of her, and then when I left my room for a breath of air two guys jumped me. They wanted to know where I was going and why, and then they threatened to kill me, when they got the order. And I haven't done a damned thing. Everybody's got a limit, even me. And I'm pretty close to it."

"Are you?" said Eddie. He got up and came around the desk to me. He looked at me for close to a moment. Then he hit me, fast as a coiled snake, in the pit of the belly. He watched me double up and move back, and his lip curled. He stood there with his hands at his sides, almost as though he was giving me an invitation.

I didn't take it, and Eddie said, "Limit! You've got no limit. You haven't got anything." He turned his back on me. "You don't even have a reason to come whining to me. I didn't send anybody around. I don't care what dames you see, and I can't imagine Justinian does, either."

He sounded as though he really had not sent anybody. In the small corner of my mind that was not concerned with the pain in my gut, I wondered if Justinian was playing this one over Eddie's head. It was possible. I managed to say, "They were his boys, just the same. The same two that beat me before."

Eddie didn't even bother to answer that. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. I started to go, and he gave me a black look and said, "Stick around."

"Why? What are you doing?"

"I'm calling the cops."

I stared at him, feeling my face go wide open and foolish. "You're what?"

"Calling the cops. They're looking for you–didn't you know that? I got the word just a few minutes ago."

I stopped holding my belly. I turned and went out of there, paying no attention to Eddie's shouts. I burned rubber going away.

So the cops were after me. This was a switch. This I had not looked for. I thought now that that was why the musclemen had been withdrawn. Justinian liked to keep his right hand and his left from getting tangled up. But I couldn't figure what possible charge they could have against me.

Of course, under the present setup, they didn't really need one. . . .

I thought it was about time somebody did something about cleaning up this town.

I decided to go across the line into Pennsylvania for the rest of the day, until it was time to meet Prioletti. From Fordstown, Pennsylvania is less than thirty miles. I had a lot of time to kill, and nothing to do but hug my bruises and think. I thought of Marjorie, and of young Harding. I thought of the way

Justinian's corporation was set up. Two main branches-gambling and prostitution, under separate heads, with separate organizations. Gambling subdivided into three–regular lay-outs like the Roman Garden, horse rooms, and the bug. The bug, day in and day out, probably brought in more money than all the rest put together. I thought of Eddie Sego, who was almost boss of all the gambling rackets, next under Justinian himself.

When it was time, I went back over the state line, using the farm roads, dusty and quiet in the heat of the afternoon. At three o'clock I was in Mill Creek Park, in a grove of trees north of the little lake with the swans on it. Prioletti was already there.

"I didn't know if you'd make it," he said. He looked haggard and excited. "You know I'm supposed to be looking for you?"

"Yeah," I said. "But what for?"

"Investigation. That's a big word. It can cover a lot of things. It can keep you out of circulation for a while, and it can demand answers to questions."

He peered around nervously. "I got a look at that report."

"Any luck?"

"Minor contused area on the scalp, minor abrasions at the mouth corners and cuts on the inside of the lips. There were also bruises and other minor abrasions on both wrists. No explanation."

"What would you say, Carmen?"

"Coupled with your other evidence, I would say it indicates that the girl was hit on the head, gagged and bound to prevent any outcry, and then driven to the logging cut, where her car was rigged for the fake suicide."

I felt a qualm of sickness. I had known that was how it must have been, but put into words that way it sounded so much more brutal.

"Poor kid," I said. "I hope she never came to."

"Yeah," said Carmen. "But we've almost got it, Greg. Brian Ingraham is the key. If he knew that Justinian–"

He broke off, looking over my shoulder. "I was afraid of that," he said. He reached out and grabbed me fiercely. "Hit me. Hit me hard and then run. Hickey's cops."

He said that as though it was a dirty word, and it was. I hit him, and he let go, and I ran. Hickey's cops ran after me, but they were still a long way back, and I knew the park intimately from boyhood days. They shouted and one of them fired a shot, but it was in the air. I guess the order hadn't come yet. Anyway, I shook them and got back to my car. For the second time that day I burned rubber, going away.

I headed for the Country Club section, and Brian Ingraham's home.

What Carmen had started to say was that if Brian, believing his wife a suicide, were to find out that Justinian had had her killed, he could be expected to turn on Justinian.

What Carmen had not said was that if Brian already knew it, and was co-operating with Justinian, his reaction would be quite different.

I went in the long drive to the house, set far back among trees. I rang the bell, and Brian opened the door, and I walked in after him down the hall.

Brian looked like a ghost. He seemed neither pleased nor displeased to see me. He didn't even ask me why I had come. He led me into the living room and then just stood there, as though he had already forgotten me.

"Brian, I've come about Marjorie."

He looked at me, in the same queer, twisted, other-dimensional way he had in Hickey's office that day. "You didn't have to," he said. "I know."

And I thought, Well, here it is, and I'm finished, and so is the case. But something about his face made me ask him, "What do you know?"

"Why she killed herself. It was me." He said it simply, honestly, almost as though I was his conscience and he was trying to get straight with me. "I said she was happy, but she wasn't. For a long time she wanted me to quit and go back into regular practice, but I wouldn't. I laughed at her. Kindly, Greg. Kindly, as you would laugh at a child. But she wasn't a child. She could see me quite clearly. As I have been seeing myself since Sunday morning."

Iee paused. Then, still in that heartbreakingly simple way, he said, "I loved her. And I killed her."

He couldn't be lying. Not with that face and manner. It wasn't possible. I felt weak in the knees with relief. "You had nothing to do with it," I said. "Justinian killed her, to save his neck."

He stood still, and his eyes became very wide and strange. "Justinian? Killed her?"

"Sit down," I said, "and I'll tell you how it was done."

We sat in the quiet house, with the hot afternoon outside the French windows, and I talked. And Brian listened.

When I was all through he said, "I see." Then he was silent a long time. His face had altered, becoming stony and hard, and there was a dim, cold spark at the back of his eyes.

"I remember Sheila Harding. I didn't know about her brother. That side of Justinian's business is in Eddie Sego's hands, and Eddie is not talkative."

"No," I said. "But Eddie was in the hospital then. Justinian had to attend to that emergency himself. And somehow Marjorie found out."

"Marjorie was my wife," said Brian softly. "He had no right to touch her." He stood up, and his voice became suddenly very loud. "He had no right. Marjorie. My wife."

I thought I heard a car, coming up the long drive and coming fast, but Brian was shouting so I couldn't be sure. I tried to shut him up, but he was coming apart at the seams in a way that couldn't be stopped. I couldn't blame him, but I wished he would make sense. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him.

"For God's sake, Brian! We don't have all year–"

We didn't even have the rest of the afternoon. Two big men came in through the French windows, with guns in their hands. My old friends of the alley. Between them came a third man, with no gun. He never carried a gun. He didn't need one. He was Justinian, the Emperor of Fordstown.

Brian saw him. Instantly he became silent, poised, his eyes shining like the eyes of an animal I once saw, mangled by dogs and dying. He sprang at Justinian.

It was Eddie Sego, entering through the door behind us, who slugged Brian on the back of the head and put him down.

THE LONG, FULL DRAPERIES were drawn across the French windows. The doors were locked. The cars, mine and Justinian's, had been taken around to the back, out of sight of any chance caller. The house itself stood in the middle of two wooded acres, and so did the houses on either side. In this section you paid for seclusion, and you got it.

Justinian was talking. He was a tall man, gray at the temples, distinguished-looking, dressed by the best tailors. He had immense charm. Women fell over fainting when he smiled at them, and then were always astonished to discover that the underlying ruthlessness in his steel-trap mouth and bird-of-prey eyes was the real Justinian.

He was not bothering now to be charming. He was entirely the business man, cerebral, efficient.

"It's a pity I didn't get here a little sooner," he said. "I might have stopped Carver. As it is–" He shrugged.

Brian looked up at him from the chair where he was sitting, with Eddie Sego behind him. "Then you admit you killed Marjorie."

Justinian shook his head. "I haven't admitted anything, and I don't intend to. The thing is, you believe I killed her, or that I might have killed her. The doubt has been planted. I could go to a lot of trouble to convince you you're wrong, but I couldn't make you stop wondering. I could never trust you again, Brian, any more than you would trust me. So your usefulness to me is ended."

He turned to glare at me. "That's all you've accomplished, Carver."

"Oh, I understand," said Brian. "I've understood all along. Why else was all the business done in your office, and all records kept in your safe? You wanted to be able to eliminate me at any time, with no danger of incriminating papers lying around where you couldn't get at them. So that angle is covered. But I'm a pretty important man, Joe. Won't there be some curiosity?"

"If the bereaved husband takes his own life? I don't think so."

"I see," said Brian. "Just like Marjorie."

"And what about me?" I asked.

Justinian shrugged. "We planned that on the way. It will appear that Brian shot you first, before killing himself. You see? The old lover, accusing the husband of having driven his wife to. . . . "

Brian whimpered and rose up, and Eddie Sego knocked him down again.

"All right," Justinian said. "He keeps his gun in the desk in the next room. Go get it."

Eddie nodded. "Cover him," he said to Faceless. He went out.

I said, "There's a couple of things wrong with your plan, Joe."

"I'm listening."

"Other people know the whole story. You can't kill off everybody in town."

"If you mean Miss Harding, she doesn't know anything, not at firsthand. Suspicions are a dime a dozen. If you mean Prioletti, he'll forget. He has a family to consider."

"You're overlooking the most important person of all," I said.

"Who's that?"

"The guy who brought me Marjorie's body. He knows." Justinian's face tightened ominously. "A crank, that's all. Doesn't mean a thing."

Eddie Sego had come back from the next room. He was holding Brian's gun. Brian was hunched over in his chair, but he was staring at me intently. The two large men stood still and listened.

"You don't believe that, Joe," I said. "You're saying it because you haven't been able to find out who the man is, and you don't want your underlings to get panicky about it."

"If he had anything to tell he'd have told it by now," said Justinian. "Anyway, I'll find him. One thing at a time."

"You'd better find him fast, Joe," I said, "because he belongs to you. You've got a traitor in your own camp."

Justinian said, "Hold it a minute, Eddie." He moved a step or two closer to me. "That's an interesting thought. Go on with it."

"Well," I said, "a casual crank would have had to just accidentally stumble on the car with Marjorie's body in it. He would also have to have known who she was, and that she had once been engaged to me. He would have had to know I was on vacation, and where. Now, does that all seem likely?"

He shook his head impatiently. "Go on."

"I'm just laying it out for you. Okay, we forget the crank. We say instead it was somebody who was fond of Marjorie and wanted her avenged, but was afraid to come out and tell the truth. So he figured that handing me the body would sic me onto what really happened to her."

"This sounds better."

"But still not good enough. If he was just a friend of Marjorie's, how did he know about the murder? Guess at it, stumble on it, happen to follow the cars into the logging cut and then wait around unseen while the thing was being done, when he could have been calling for help? Not likely. If it was one of the killers suddenly getting conscience-stricken, that fills all the requirements except one. Would he deliberately sic someone onto himself, to get himself hanged?"

Very briefly, Justinian's eyes flicked from Nameless to Faceless and back again to me. "No. This I can tell you."

"So what does that leave? It leaves a man who knew about Marjorie's murder, but was personally clear of it. A man who was clear on the Harding murder, too–so clear he could afford to talk about it. A man who wanted the murderer brought to justice, but who didn't want to appear in the business himself. Too dangerous, if something went wrong. So he handed the job to me. Not to Brian, because he was too close to it, but to me. See? If I got killed, he hadn't lost anything but this chance, and there'd be another some day. But if I succeeded in pulling you down, he–"

Nameless fired, past Justinian.

The noise was earsplitting. Justinian, with the instinct of an old campaigner, dropped flat on the floor. Eddie Sego, behind him and across the room, was already down and rolling for the shelter of a sofa. He wasn't hit. He did not intend to be hit, either.

"He was gonna shoot you in the back, Boss," said Nameless, on a note of stunned surprise. "He was gonna–"

I tipped my chair over onto him, and we went staggering down together, with my hands on his wrist. I wanted his gun. I wanted it bad.

He wasn't going to give it up without a struggle. We got tangled in the furniture and when I got a look around again I saw Justinian, kneeling behind a big armchair. He was paying no attention to us. He had bigger things on his mind, like the gun he was too proud to carry. Faceless was crouched over in an attitude of indecision, his gun wavering between me and Eddie Sego. He couldn't see Eddie, and he couldn't shoot me without very likely killing his friend. Eddie solved his problem for him. He fired from the opposite end of the sofa and Faceless fell over with a sort of heavy finality.

Brian Ingraham sat where he was, in the middle of it, watching with the blank gaze of a stupid child.

I saw a heavy glass ashtray on the floor where we had knocked it off an end table. I let go with one hand and grabbed it and hit Nameless with it. He relaxed, and then the gun was quite easy to take out of his fingers. I took it and whirled around.

Justinian was moving his armchair shield, inch by inch, toward the gun that Faceless had dropped.

I said, "Hold it, Joe."

He gave me a hot, blind look of feral rage, but he held it, and I picked up the gun. Justinian looked from me to where Eddie Sego was, and he cursed him in a short, violent burst, and then grew calm again.

"That was a crummy way to do it, Eddie. You didn't have guts enough to face up to me yourself."

Eddie stood up now. He shrugged. "Why should I commit suicide? I figured Carver ought to be mad enough to do something." He glanced at me. "I just about gave you up this morning. I was really going to turn you in."

"How did you find out?" asked Justinian. "I didn't tell you anything. The Harding job, yes. But about Marjorie. I didn't tell anybody."

"A guy like me," said Eddie, "can find out an awful lot if he sets his mind to it. Besides, I'd been feeding Marjorie what she wanted to know about Harding."

"Sure," I said. "How else could she have found out? You've been taken, Joe. You're through."

I motioned him to get up. And then Brian remembered who Justinian was, and what he had just admitted he had done, and he got up and rushed in between us and flung him-self on Justinian, and I was helpless.

They rolled together, making ugly sounds. They rolled out from the shelter of the chair into the open center of the room. And I saw Eddie Sego raise his gun.

"Eddie," I said. "Let them alone."

"What the hell," he said, "now he knows what I did I have to get him, or he'll drag me right along with him. I'm clean on those killings, but there's plenty else."

"Eddie," I said. "No."

He said, "I can do without you, too," and I saw the black, cold glitter come in his eyes.

I shot him in the right elbow.

He spun around and dropped the gun. He doubled up for a minute, and then he began to whimper and claw with his left hand for his own gun, in a holster under his left shou lder. I went closer to him and shot him again, carefully, through the left arm.

He crumbled down onto the floor and sat there, looking at me with big tears in his eyes. "What did you have to do that for?" he said. "You wanted him dead, too."

"Not that way. And not Brian, too."

"What do you care about Brian?" He rocked back and forth on the floor, hugging his arms against his sides and crying.

"You make me sick," I said.

I went to where Justinian and Brian were in the center of the room, locked together, quiet now with deadly effort. I didn't look to see who was killing who. "You make me sick," I said. "All of you make me sick." I kicked them until they broke apart.

I felt sorry for Brian, but he still made me sick. "Get up. Brian, you get on the phone and call the police. Prioletti and the decent cops, not Hickey's. They've been waiting a long time for this. Go on!"

He went, and I told Justinian to sit down, and he sat. He looked at Eddie Sego and laughed.

"Empires aren't so easy to inherit after all, are they, Eddie?" he said.

Eddie was still looking at me. "I just don't see why you did it.

"I'll tell you," I said. "Because I want to see you hang right along with the others. Did you think I was going to do your dirty work for you, for free?"

I turned to Justinian. "How did you find out Marjorie was so close to you on the Harding thing?"

"Why," he said, "I guess it was a remark Eddie made that got me worried."

"A remark that got Marjorie killed. But you didn't care, did you, Eddie? What's another life, more or less, to you?" His face had turned white, with fear instead of pain. Justinian was looking at me with a sort of astonishment. And then Brian came and took my arm, and I stepped back and shook my head, and we sat down and waited until Prioletti came. When they were all gone and the house was empty and quiet again, I stood for a minute looking around at all the things that had been Marjorie's, and there was a peacefulness about them now. I went out softly and closed the door, and drove away down the long drive.

The Misfortune Teller (1943)

The Misfortune Teller

Murder Before Dawn

THE CARD CAME IN THE AFTERNOON mail On Friday. It was an ace of spades from a cheap ten-cent store deck. On its face it said, in red-penciled block letters, I have not forgotten.

February Smith scowled at it. He was superstitious, which is unusual for a private dick. He put it out of sight in a desk drawer and only thought about it that night because the ace of spades, along with its three brothers, kept turning up in everybody's hand but his.

At five minutes to five on Saturday morning he was standing in the shoddy single room of Stella Janis' court bungalow. The rickety wall bed was down. Stella lay on it, looking up at the glaring ceiling light. Her eyes were a flat, hard blue, like imitation stones.

Her henna-red hair spread over the soiled pillow and came down thick around her neck and shoulders. It looked for a minute as though she had yards of hair and it was spread all over, until you saw that most of it was darker red and beginning to crust.

Somebody had done a good job with a knife, on Stella's full white throat.

"Dead about an hour," said Dr. Wolf. "Even Horse should know how it was done. You guys through taking her picture?" "Yeah," said the photographer. "She's sure no glamour girl now."

The doctor laughed. "She's got a bigger audience now than she ever drew with her head on straight."

February Smith said quietly, "Stella never had a chance." Wolf and the photographer looked at Smith's thin, hungry face.

The photographer shrugged and said, "Okay, don't get sore about it."

He turned away, and Wolf went out to call the boys with the basket.

Smith stood looking at the bed. The triangular sharpness of the bones made his face look foxy and cruel, with the green eyes in it hard and bright and a stubble of red beard on the jaw.

Detective Lieutenant Harold Palfrey of Homicide said, in his quiet, even voice, "Smith, does this mean anything to you?" Smith turned slowly away from Stella. It was hot in the room, and crowded, and it smelled. Gin, tobacco, flashlight powder, sweat–and the dank sweetness of blood. He felt a little ill.

Palfrey was pointing at the table, at something lying beside an empty gin bottle and a full ash tray.

It was an ace of spades from a cheap ten-cent store deck. On its face it said, in red-penciled block letters, June 20, before dawn.

It wasn't daylight yet, and Stella had been dead an hour. February Smith shook his red head. "No, it doesn't mean a thing. He went suddenly to the door and out.

Palfrey shrugged. He was a neat, lean man about a head shorter than Smith, with a dark, lean poker face. He stooped and picked something up from under the table, and went outside after Smith.

"This is what it came in."

Smith looked at it, over the flame of the cigarette he was lighting. Palfrey straightened it out in his hands. It was white and blurred in the gray morning, a cheap envelope torn open at one end. Palfrey's lean fingers fitted the ripped edges together.

"No stamp, no postmark. Address in the same red lettering. Games, yet. They sure like to make us work for our money," he said.

He called a man and gave orders, without much hope. Somebody else came up to say they hadn't found the knife yet. There were a lot of people in the court, shivering in the thin morning fog, trampling the tired geraniums and talking in ghoulish undertones.

Palfrey handed the envelope to a fingerprint man. He had not at any time touched anything but the extreme outer edges, with his nails.

"Let's go out to your car," he said.

Smith nodded and followed. They got into Smith's green coupe, shutting out the curious crowd and the fog. Smith ran his hand over his face and yawned. His skin felt like a frog's belly.

Palfrey said, "Up late last night?"

"Yeah. Poker."

"How'd you come out?"

"Clean. Flannery had his tame leprechaun along. Besides, I ought to know better than to play on a Friday. I never beat that jinx. I suppose you got my name from Stella's phone list."

The Misfortune Teller

"Yeah. You know her pretty well?"

Smith shrugged. "So so."

"How long?"

"Three, four years."

"When did you see her last?"

"I don't know. A month, maybe."

Palfrey's eyes were half closed. "Who'd want to kill her, Smith?"

"You got me. I can think of people Stella might want to kill, but not the other way around."

Palfrey slid farther down in the seat, so that his hat tilted forward over his eyes. "Three, four years, huh? Then you must have known her before the Brandenburger bust-up."

"Yeah. Brandy was a client of mine then. I got to know Stella pretty well." Smith made a bitter face. "Not too well, though. Not around Brandy."

"Smart boy. Pity Stella wasn't so smart about that Thorsson kid. Seems like possibilities there. I'm an awfully lazy guy, Smith, and I hate to read files. Enlighten me, son."

Smith yawned again. He wished he had a flask in the car. His stomach still felt jittery.

He said impatiently, "Hell, you know as much as I do. C. J. Brandenburger was born with twenty million bucks and a Caesar complex. He's halved the twenty and doubled the complex, and most of that 'millionaire daredevil' stuff is true. When he ran out of jungles and things he decided to conquer Hollywood, so he started an independent producing company. You remember Red Nocturne, Horse. Cleaned up a couple million profit."

"Yeah." Palfrey's poker face twitched. He did not like to be called Horse. "Continue with the dirt on Stella."

"Brandy took a couple of unknown kids in Red Nocturne and made stars of 'em. He liked doing unorthodox things like that. So three years ago he tried the same formula again. He found Stella Janis entertaining in a honky-tonk and Lars Thorsson in some phoney acting school. Thorsson was the pretty-boy type the girls go for, and Stella–"

He stopped. Palfrey nodded. "I could see that, even now."

"She could act pretty well. The whole thing looked like a natural. Fine. But Brandy's a big, masculine guy and he likes to get fun out of his work.

"That was fine, too, for a while. They were crazy about each other. Everybody in Hollywood wasn't too dumb to read between the gossip columns. So the picture was half shot, and then the lid blew off.

"Brandy's no cinch to get along with. He's got to own people. He's used to being king snipe, and he's tough. Tough as hell under all that flamboyant publicity. So Stella was kind of tough herself, and Lars Thorsson made just as good romantic love off screen as on–and pretty soon Hollywood was laughing in C. J. Brandenburger's virile puss. And so. . . . "

"And so," finished Palfrey softly, "the picture was junked, there was one hell of a stinking scandal, Stella Janis was finished before she started, and Lars Thorsson–"

He paused, as though trying to remember what had happened to Lars Thorsson. Smith said nothing. He was lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last one. His face was relaxed and innocent.

"Oh, yes," said Palfrey. "Sure. Thorsson was found under the Venice pier, comparatively alive, only he didn't have any face to speak of."

Smith blew smoke. "Uh-huh. Some guy with big fists and a couple of heavy rings. Also there were barnacles on the pier pilings. Thorsson bounced off them a few times, accidentally on purpose. Brandy was on the train going East at the time."

"Oh, sure. Just a personal quarrel, no doubt."

"Well," said Smith, "you guys never even got a trace of the muscle man, so how do you know it wasn't?"

Palfrey opened one dark, glittering eye. "There are times when I dislike you intensely, Mr. Smith." The eye closed. "So you think Stella got a bum break."

Smith shrugged. "She let herself in for it."

"But you've lent her money."

"Your flat feet are showing, Horse. Yeah, I lent her a little. The kid was hungry."

"She have any close friends?"

"There was a guy named Sawyer. I don't know anything about him except that he uses perfumed oil in his hair."

"Is Stella careful about keeping her doors and windows locked?"

"Hell, no. She was careless. You could walk in any time. And the last few months she's been hitting the bottle pretty hard. You saw how it was."

Palfrey nodded. "Too bad. Whatever became of Thorsson?"

Smith shrugged. "Search me." He hitched under the wheel, as though he wanted to be going somewhere else. Palfrey straightened up.

"That's all? No ideas?"

"Yes, no, and I hope this Misfortune Teller with the pretty card will give you a workout. Time you had one, Horse. You're getting fat between the ears."

Palfrey sighed.

"Some day," he said, "there will be a law forcing all private detectives to wear a crimson brand between the eyes and be lashed on the bare back every other Wednesday." He half opened the door. "Wish I'd been in on the game last night. What time did you get home?"

"Too early to have an alibi, sweetheart."

"Um. Four A.M. is an awkward hour for a bachelor."

Palfrey got out, but he didn't close the door. "You working now?"

Smith's mouth tightened. "Look, Horse, if you've got anything on your mind, come out on your flat feet and say it." Palfrey looked at him with somber, dark eyes. "You play a good game of poker, Smith, but your mug isn't as blank as mine. Sometimes I can spot your aces before you call 'em." He took his foot off the running board, swinging the door in.

"I like playing poker with you, Smith. Let's not try any other games. I'd hate to have to win the pot."

He closed the door. Smith kicked the starter. As he drove off, he looked like a rangy red fox hunched over the wheel, mean, hungry, and with something important biting on his mind.

A second car tagged unobtrusively on the heels of his coupe. Smith went back to his apartment, leaving his car out in front. He had a stiff drink, shaved, showered, dressed, and then drove over to Beverly Hills. He parked on Beverly Drive and went into the Owl, buying a paper at the door.

The inconspicuous car swung into the curb just below his. The driver of it came into the Owl, too. He bought cigarettes, staying just long enough to hear Smith order ham and eggs at the counter. Then he went outside, looked at the sign that said Parking 45 min., and got back into his car. He could watch Smith through the window.

While Smith was eating his breakfast he turned to the theatrical page and read the columns quickly. His green gaze lingered on one item. It said:

C. J. Brandenburger's new super-epic, Strange Victory, is scheduled to start shooting next week. We're keeping our fingers crossed, particularly since Brandy's new find, one Rachel Hardy, is rated as a star-to-be. Also, the ladies are invited to keep their peepers peeled for Tim Garrison,something special in leading men. Good luck, Brandy—we need many more pictures like Red Nocturne.

Smith finished his coffee as though it tasted bad. The man was still watching from his car. Smith put money on the counter, and went away quickly before the waitress could tell him about the cashier.

"Somewhere I can wash?" he asked the druggist.

The druggist jerked his thumb. The man was getting out of his car in a hurry. Smith went back through the indicated door, then opened the washroom door and went inside. The guy from the car was panting on his heels. Smith heard him stop outside.

He jerked the door open and went out, fast. The guy in the hall made one startled gasp before Smith's fist hit him. He went back and rapped his head hard on the wall and fell down. Smith rolled him inside the door, closed it, and went unhurriedly down the hall, out the back door and up the alley. He walked up to the Pacific Electric Station and caught a red car back into Hollywood.

About a half hour later he was punching a button in the foyer of a small, dingy apartment house off Hollywood Boulevard. The card over the button said E. N. Kreisher. The door burped at him. He went upstairs and along a hall and rapped at a panel that was faintly greasy from people's cooking.

He said, "Me, Smith."

The door opened. It was dark in the apartment, but the man who stood aside to let Smith in was visible enough.

He was tall. He'd have had a fine physique if he hadn't been so thin, and he was graceful, but it was a willowy grace with no iron in it. His hair was thick and wavy, black and carefully brushed. He wore brown slacks and a blue sport shirt to match his eyes, but there were no mirrors in the place, and the shades were down.

"Well?" said Kreisher. He shut the door. "Have you got something?"

Smith's teeth were white and uneven. He showed them in a grin. "O'Shea phoned me yesterday. Bray's back in town." Kreisher drew his breath in sharply. "Then you think, maybe. . . . "

Smith nodded. "Maybe." He was very friendly, smiling, his hands in his pockets. "I've worked hard for you, Kreisher. I've pulled every damned string in this town, to get a line on Bray. I've skinned my knuckles a few times, and taken a couple of kicks in the teeth myself, just to let some light and air into a dark place that smells pretty bad. And now–"

Kreisher was trembling. His eyes had a hot light in them. "And now it's almost the end. The end. The end." He laughed. "Yeah," said Smith. "The end." He took his hands out of his pockets. The right one reached out and gathered in a bunch of Kreisher's sport shirt at the neck. The left one swung loose, but the fingers were half curled.

Kreisher whimpered and his eyes got big. "What is it?" Smith said genially, "I'd hate to have to muss you up any more, but I want to know something. I want to know it quick. So speak up loud and clear, sonny, before I beat the lining out of you."

Kreisher's thin hands pawed at Smith's arm. "I don't understand. I don't understand at all."

Smith didn't say anything. He backed up, still holding Kreisher by the shirt. When he got to the window he reached out his free hand and pulled up the shade.

Daylight flooded in, beating into Kreisher's face. You could see that it had been a face once. A pretty, straight-boned, clean-lined face, like the body that went with it. But somebody had done a good job on it. A guy with big fists and a couple of heavy rings, and the aid of the barnacles on the pilings of the Venice pier.

"All right, Lars Thorsson," said Smith gently. "I'm handing you an Ace of Spades."

He watched Kreisher's face. He watched the blank widening of the blue eyes. There was nothing in them but bewilderment and the fear of Smith's fist.

"I don't understand."

"Stella's dead," said Smith brutally. "Somebody cut her throat this morning."

"My God," said Kreisher. He licked his shapeless lips. "My God."

"Yeah. Somebody sent her an ace of spades. Somebody sent me one, too. You wouldn't be playing games with me, sonny? You wouldn't be planning a nice three-cornered revenge, with me as the fall guy?"

Kreisher shook his head from side to side. The cords stood out in his throat. "You know what I want. You know how I feel."

"But you hated Stella."

"Yes! Sure I did! She got me into it."

"Oh, Adam!"

"She didn't love me. She just wanted to show Brandy he didn't own her. She didn't even come to see me in the hospital. But I didn't kill her!"

Kreisher's hands fastened on Smith's wrist. They were cold, and they hurt. His eyes yearned at Smith.

"I'm no murderer. Honest, Smith. Look at me. You can see I'm no murderer. And I wouldn't try to frame you. You're the only one that's tried to help me. You're the only hope I have of clearing myself. "

"All right, all right!" Smith shook him off. "Have a drink or something, and quit babbling."

Kreisher stood still a minute, shivering. He sobbed once or twice, a hoarse racking noise with no tears in it. Then he went and got a drink from a side table.

Smith watched him. His sharp-boned face was hard and hungry, his green eyes slitted. He said, "You haven't spilled over to anyone, have you? Your stage name, your past, what I'm doing?"

"No. Oh, no." Kreisher's teeth rattled on the edge of the glass.

"Anybody been asking questions?"

"No. I--never see anybody."

"Are you glad Stella's dead?"

Kreisher didn't say anything. He looked down at his glass and rolled it between his fingers once or twice. Then he looked up at Smith with hard, bitter eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm glad. I'd be gladder if Brandy was dead, too. But it's a start."

Smith nodded. "You sure pack a man-sized grudge. Okay, sonny. Just have a seat and relax."

He searched the apartment. He was an expert at searching, but he worked up a lot of sweat for nothing. The only thing he took was the torn envelope from a laundry bill, which he put in an inside pocket.

Kreisher watched him sullenly, not saying anything. "Well?" said Kreisher, when Smith was finished.

Smith stood silent, looking at the man with the beaten face. His red head was bent forward, his narrowed eyes a cold and ugly green.

Presently Kreisher twitched his shapeless lips and said shrilly, "For God's sake, what are you looking at?"

The Misfortune Teller

"I'm not sure," said Smith slowly. "Maybe just a guy with a large hate. Or maybe–"

He shrugged and turned to the door.

"I wish you had made a picture, Lars Kreisher Thorsson. Then I'd know just how good an actor you really are."

He went out. Kreisher didn't move from where he was sitting.

The Cards Talk Again

Smith went back to Beverly Hills and his car. His tail was still there. He had been joined by a second man. They were standing on the sidewalk talking, and they did not look happy. A third man came out of the Owl Drug Company as Smith walked by. He looked even less happy.

Smith went up to them. He said genially, "Hi, fellas. I'm back. Sorry to leave you alone like this–" He paused, smiling at them.

They didn't smile at him.

He made tutting noises with his tongue.

"Horse gets pretty mean, doesn't he, fellas? Sorry–I let you in for a lacing. But then, you're big boys now. You're tough. You can take it." He started away. "I'm going to the office, now. You sure of the address?"

They said they were. They gave Smith a sailor's blessing and got into their various cars. Smith pocketed the overtime parking tag that decorated his wheel and drove off. His mouth was smiling, but the glint in his green eyes was not mirth. The morning mail had come when he reached his office in Hollywood. There was an envelope addressed in red-penciled block letters. Smith ripped off the end. A card fell out into his hand.

An ace of spades from a cheap ten-cent store deck. On its face it said, in red block letters, I have not forgotten.

The phone rang. It was Palfrey. He sounded hurt. "That was not nice of you, Mr. Smith."

"Fine bunch of lugs you hand me." Smith was indignant. "If that's your opinion of my intelligence. . . . "

"On the contrary," said Palfrey quietly. "I think you're pretty smart. Too smart, perhaps." He sighed. "I suppose you've forgotten where you went."

"I didn't go anywhere. Just backdoored your bogey and

did some shopping. I simply had to have a new hat." "Uh-huh. I had a talk with your pal Brandenburger." Smith's eyes narrowed. "Yeah?"

"He must carry a furnace in his guts," said Palfrey plaintively. "He scorched the pants off me. He told me he had a picture to start, that visitors weren't allowed in the studio, that he hadn't seen Stella for three years, and what the hell business was it of mine where he was at four o'clock this morning? I gather he isn't going to lose any sleep over Stella."

"Brandy's got a sweet disposition," said Smith sourly.

Palfrey chuckled. "I nosed around among the working classes at the studio. Seems Brandy and this Rachel Hardy had a small disagreement recently."

"That doesn't prove anything."

"Mama always told me I went with the wrong people." Palfrey yawned. "We turned up Stella's bank book. Such generosity, Mr. Smith!"

"How come?"

"She banked two grand about a month ago."

"Well, I'll be–" Smith laughed shortly. "She never got it from me."

The Misfortune Teller

"Urn. Well, that's all. Nobody saw anything or anybody, any time. And a goldfish bowl like that court, too! Still no ideas with you?"

Smith turned the playing card around between his fingers and the desk top. "Nope. No ideas. Any prints on the card or envelope?"

"Only the victim's."

Smith's green eyes flickered.

Palfrey said, "I suppose you won't play nice with my boys?"

"Why, sure I will, Horse. Jacks, hopscotch, anything they like. Only tell 'em they mustn't get mad if I have to go away."

"Which you can do any time."

"Ain't only my puss that's foxy, Horse. And I didn't ask for 'em."

"Uh-huh," said Palfrey wearily. "Well, I gotta get back on the job. Let you know if anything turns up."

Smith grinned sardonically.

"What's the gripe?" asked Palfrey innocently. "Oh, by the way–Brandenburger picked up this Hardy dame in New York, didn't he?"

"What did the boys at the studio tell you?"

Palfrey was unabashed. "New York, about a year ago." "Then why ask me?"

"Well, Mr. Bones, I remembered you were back in the big city about that time. Thought maybe you'd know something about it."

"New York's a fair-sized hamlet. Besides, I was beating my brains out on a case. And I split with Brandy a long time ago."

"Okay, I just wondered. Think I'll ask the girl a few questions, when I can get hold of her. She was home with a headache, the studio said, but she seems to have taken the head out to cure it somewhere else. Want to tag along, Smith?

From the pictures I've seen of La Hardy, it ought to be a nice way to spend an hour or two."

Smith's thin mouth twitched down at the corners. "Look, Horse, I'm a hard working shamus. Right now I'm trying to find a wandering husband for a Mrs. Kickapopulous. You go play games with the pretty lady, but watch out for Brandy's left hook. He's blind on that side, but it doesn't spoil his aim. So long."

Smith cradled the phone. For a minute he sat staring at the card, scowling, his lids drawn narrow over eyes that were a hard, ugly green.

Then he put the card back in its envelope, got its mate out of the desk drawer, and put them both in the inside breast pocket of his green Harris tweed jacket.

Somebody opened the hall door of his office, came inside, and shut it again, all in one quick movement. The lock snapped shut.

Smith said, "Well, for cripe's sake. Rachel Hardy!"

She stood by the locked door, watching him, breathing too fast. She had on spike-heeled green sandals and a green dress and a short coat like an overfed brown bear. Her hair and eyes were of a brilliant, startling blackness, and her green hat was quaint without being screwy.

She looked like a million dollars. Smith felt his heart kick up into his throat. He got up and went toward her. He was sweating slightly.

He said quietly, "Sorry, Rachel, but I don't live here any more."

He reached past her to the door.

She caught his wrist. Her black eyes had sparks in them, but the rest of her face had a pale, queer stiffness. She said, so softly he could hardly hear it: "Smith. Smitty, please."

He shook his head. "I don't want any part of you, baby." Her lipstick was blood-red against the white of her face. Smith shivered suddenly. He said harshly, "What ails you?"

She swayed into him. She was heavy against him and her eyes were closed, and she was sobbing. Dry, tearless sobs like a child tired beyond its strength. Smith put his arms around her.

"Rache," he said. "Rache, honey."

There was a couch against one wall. He half carried her to it and then got her a drink.

Presently she choked and got her breath, and opened her eyes again. She didn't look at him.

She said, "We didn't know each other very long, did we?" Smith's bony face tightened. "It was long enough."

"Time doesn't always mean so much. On the calendar, I mean. It was only a few months, but. . . . Yes, it was long enough."

Smith's eyes were bitter. He said softly, "Yeah."

She still did not look at him. "Smitty, I want you to do something for me."

Smith laughed. It was not a nice laugh. "Now comes it."

"It isn't much." She had herself under control again.

It was only because he knew her so well that he could see the tightness of her jaw and the way her eyes were veiled, as though she'd drawn dull black curtains back of the shiny surface.

"It isn't much, Smitty. Only to take me to dinner this evening, and stay with me until midnight."

"Oh, sure. Not much. Look, Rache, my face isn't beautiful, but it's the only one I have. I don't want it to go around the rest of its life looking like a pound of hamburger."

Rachel made an impatient gesture. "Nobody ever proved that Brandy had anything to do with Larsson getting hurt. Besides, he won't know that I'm with you."

"I'm not impressed."

She sighed. Not loudly, but with infinite weariness. She eased the fur coat back from her shoulders, not looking at Smith, as though it might be a weight that crushed her.

"You still hate me, don't you, Smith?"

He looked at the white curve of her throat. A muscle twitched beside his mouth. He turned away and got a cigarette from the desk. He broke the first match, striking it.

"You're a smart girl, Rache," he said steadily, through the smoke. "You know what you want. Why should I hate you for that?"

"Because I walked out on you." She leaned forward. She was looking at him now, her black eyes deep and hungry. "I wish you didn't hate me, Smitty. I have so few friends."

"You have Brandy. Hell, what more do you want?"

He went to the window, staring down at the dingy alley with the clatter of Hollywood Boulevard at the end of it. For a long time there was no sound behind him. Then he heard her draw a deep, shivering breath and get up.

"I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was dull and flat. "I wouldn't have come, only. . . . Good-by, Smith."

He let her get to the door before he said, "Did you get an ace of spades, too?"

She turned around. The light from the window caught in her eyes, making them huge and queer in her white face. She whispered, "How did you. . . . "

"They called me to view the corpse this morning. Stella had one. You know about Stella, of course."

"Yes. Brandy phoned me, from the studio."

"Besides," said Smith brutally, "I didn't think you came here to renew our beautiful friendship."

"No." She dropped her head, and the light made purple glints across the sleek blackness beside the green hat.

Smith's bony face was relaxed and innocent. "Why not stay with Brandy, Rache?"

"I. . . . " She pulled her coat together jerkily. "I must go. I won't bother you again." She reached for the key.

"Hold it, baby." Smith gestured to the couch. "Sit down." A light brighter than the one coming from the window blazed up in her black eyes. "Smitty. . . . Oh, will you?" He watched her drop into the shabby brown cushions. "Brandy's sure taught you things, Rache." He grinned. "You never used to be graceful sitting down. You start shooting the masterpiece next week?"

Rachel looked at her hands. "Yes, if. . . . "

Smith let the silence lie there. Then he said coolly, "If you're still alive."

She put her hands across her face and flinched as though he'd struck her.

lust stay with me," she whispered. "Just until midnight." "Why me, Rache? Why not Brandy?"

"Smith!" She wailed it, like a trapped cat. "Don't torture me! Don't ask me things I can't answer. Just, please, stay with me!"

"Good heavens!" Smith's voice was low. He struck her hands away and tilted her head back roughly and looked down at her with hot green eyes.

"You're asking me to sit in on this card game. You're asking me to stick my neck out for C. J. Brandenburger to break. You're asking me to maybe get murdered myself. But I'm not to ask questions you can't answer!"

She shivered under his hands. Her black eyes stared at him, but she didn't speak. Smith laughed suddenly.

"I might have done it for you once, Rache. But not any more."

She said, very low, "You're cruel, Smith."

"Oh, no. Just smart, like you, honey. And the police can get very nasty about asking questions."

"You wouldn't tell the police! You couldn't be that mean!"

"Like to gamble on it, baby?"

She looked at his thin, hard, grinning face.

"No," she said. "I never could guess you very far ahead." She looked away, down at her hands. "Brandy can't stand another scandal. It's taken three years to live down the last one."

"It was kind of tough on Stella, too."

Rachel closed her eyes. "I didn't mean it that way."

"However you meant it, your own career is sort of hanging by its eyebrows, isn't it? If the cops can hang this rap on Brandy, you'll be as gone as Stella was. Which would leave you looking pretty silly, after all the trouble you've been to to put the heist on Dame Fortune."

She looked at him with black, hating eyes.

He laughed softly and said, "Well, have you decided to give out with the information?"

"There isn't anything to tell!" She opened her handbag and took something out of it and threw it down on the couch. "There. Isn't that enough?"

Smith picked up the thing and looked at it. It was an ace of spades from a cheap ten-cent store deck. On its face it said, in red-penciled block letters, June 20, before midnight.

"H'm," said Smith. "Guy seems to be a fast worker." He handed the card back, studying Rachel with mocking green eyes.

"Stella was a damn good-looking kid, Rache. It was too bad to cut her throat."

Rachel put her face in her hands. He could hear the breath shiver in between her teeth.

Presently she said, "All right, Smith. Anything you say."

"That's better." He made himself comfortable on the couch beside her. "Smoke?" She took one. It trembled in her lips so he could hardly light it. He leaned back, blowing smoke. "So you think maybe Brandy is this Misfortune Teller with the death cards."

"I don't know." She was looking past him with stricken black eyes. "He's nervous and edgy over the picture. He's been driving us like galley-slaves, and he's worn out. Perhaps that's why I feel the way I do–because I'm so tired. But Brandy–well, there are things inside him that you're never sure of."

"Yeah." Smith made a bitter face. "These heroic lugs with the masculinity sparking from them! Did he have any connection with Stella at all? Was she hounding him, bothering him for money?"

"I don't know."

"Ever hear him mention any enemies?"

"Brandy isn't the most popular man in the world. But why?"

"Have you any enemies, Rache?"

She looked at him. "You're the only enemy I have, Smith." He grinned, and she went on dully, "I don't know any more about Brandy's enemies than you do. I don't know anything about any of it."

"Okay, if that's the way you want it. Sorry I can't help you." Rachel's hands doubled into small fists and made a fierce, unfinished movement. She looked as though she could claw him. Smith grinned.

"1 understand your trouble, sweetheart. I won't spill over to Brandy, and I tell cops things only when they beat 'em out of me. But I've got to know two things before I'll play with you. What connection beyond the old one Brandy had with Stella, and why you're thinking Brandy might knock off his potential big-money star, not to mention more personal attachments, just a week before he starts shooting on a two-million-dollar investment. Across with it, darling, or go home."

Rachel flung herself back on the couch. Her eyes were angry, but her full lips twitched and finally parted in a grin. "The same old Smith," she said. "Gentle as a mule's hind hoofs, and chivalrous as hell. I might have known."

She drew thoughtfully on her cigarette, frowning.

"Stella was hounding Brandy, I think. Trying to get a part in the new picture, asking for money, threatening to renew the scandal. I'm pretty sure he'd been giving her money."

Smith's lips twitched into a sour grin. "The two-timing little cheat! Nothing, Rache. Go on."

"As to the other. . . . " Rachel was looking at the floor. Smith said lazily, "That kid that has the lead opposite you–Garrison. I gather he's quite a lad."

"He'll be a big star, if the picture turns out well. And it will, if only. . . . Oh, Smith, you've got to help me!"

"You been making Brandy jealous?"

"No! Garry's a nice boy, but that's as far as it goes."

"But Brandy quarreled with you. Diplomatic relations, shall we say, are temporarily junked."

Her eyes were wide. "How did you. . . . "

"I get around. Well?"

"No." Rachel's head dropped, as though she were very tired. "Brandy's jealous, all the time, about everything. You ought to know that, Smith."

"Rache–are you happy, going around with him?"

Her shoulders moved, a strange little twist under the green silk. "I guess so. Anyway. . . . "

"Anyway," he finished brutally, "it means your job. So he's jealous of this Garrison kid."

"There's always talk. We have to be together a lot, rehearsing. When we do a love scene badly, Brandy curses us, and when we do it well he thinks we mean it. What are you going to do?"

"I could think of things," said Smith, "but they're all illegal. Okay, Rache. I'm your boy."

Her black eyes took fire. "Oh, Smitty. . . . "

"And it will cost you, until midnight, exactly eight hundred and ninety-three dollars." He watched her face, and grinned. "What did you expect me to do it for? Old time's sake?"

Her eyes and her lips were sultry. "Same old Smith. I know. You dropped that much playing poker. All right, Dillinger!" She fumbled in her purse and got busy. Presently Smith pocketed the check, grinning.

"And after midnight, baby? Are you retaining me to find this Misfortune Teller?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought that far ahead."

"Okay, we'll talk about it later. When shall I pick you up?" She shivered. "Before dark. Around six-thirty, I think. I'll feel fairly safe until then. My maid's with me, and I'll keep the apartment locked. After that, it's up to you."

Smith nodded.

"I'm going to up my price, baby. One dinner. A large, opulent dinner, which you will pay for. I know a place in Santa Monica where no one will notice us."

She gave him a slow, reluctant grin. "You're a heel, Smitty. Some day somebody is going to kick your teeth in." He leaned Over her. "But not you, Rache."

Her eyes were huge in her white face. Her breast rose and fell sharply. "Damn you," she whispered. "Oh, Smith. . . . "

"Sometimes, maybe, you regret Brandy, just a little." He kissed her, with a rough, swift hunger. Then he drew back and laughed, and put his hand on the white, pulsing curve of her throat.

"We'll try, baby. We'll try to keep that all in one piece." He watched her smile and get up and go out. He was sweating, and his heart kicked the inside of his ribs like a logger's boot.

Framed

He took off his suit coat, got a gat Smith & Wesson .38 and a shoulder holster from a locked drawer of his desk, strapped them on, replaced his coat, and went out.

There were a lot of people in the hallway outside. There were always a lot of people. Smith had picked his office carefully. It wasn't as swank as some, but the swarm of hopefuls eddying in and out of the Professional Photos Studio, the agencies and beauty shops and theatrical shoemaker's that shared the building with him made it practically impossible for anyone to tell who visited the office of February Smith, Private Investigator.

A lot of the people that came there were glad of the anonymity. So was Smith.

He had the door of his office open. He was halfway through it. There were two men standing near him arguing over some bit of merchandise hidden by the bulk of the larger man–a very big man who had his back to Smith. There were also three gorgeous blondes ankling to be photographed.

Smith admired the blondes just for a split second, but too long. The very big man turned around with uncanny lightness. His heft covered what he was doing from the hallway. A hand slightly smaller than the maw of a steam shovel but not less strong clamped on Smith's right wrist.

"Well, if it ain't my old pal," said the big man pleasantly, and leaned in against Smith.

The weight carried him back into the office. He snarled, arched away, and kicked. The big man turned his hip. The other one, a slim, blond little guy with high-waisted pants and an amused rat's face, closed the office door and locked it quietly.

Smith was breathing hard through his teeth. His right wrist might have been stuck in concrete. He jerked in, using the big man's grip as a lever. His left fist whipped up.

Smith's knuckles spurted blood. The big man shook his head.

"You hadn't ought to use your paws like that, bud," he said pleasantly. "You'll bust 'em."

A huge scarred hand rose and chopped down into the side of Smith's neck. Not too hard, because Smith was intended to live. The other one let go of Smith's wrist.

Smith fell on his face. The little blond guy nodded and took himself away from the door. He hitched himself up on Smith's desk, got a cigarette out of the box there, lit it, and sat swinging his legs.

The big man took Smith's gun. There was a blank wall beyond the windows, so there was no need to draw the shades. He hooked his hand in Smith's collar and dragged him across the room, over against the wall. He dropped him, letting his head bang against the floor. Then he drew up a chair and sat down to wait.

The Misfortune Teller

After a while Smith got up on his hands and knees. He fell down, banging his head again. Very carefully, he rolled over and pushed up with his hands and then sat back against the wall, clawing at his collar. He tried to curse, but his neck seemed to have swelled up inside, so that just breathing was trouble enough.

Presently the lights stopped flashing around in front of his eyes. He looked at the man sitting on the chair. He must have weighed two and a quarter, and none of it was fat. He was narrower, but not much, than the City Hall. He wore a dark suit and a cream-colored silk shirt and a hat on the back of his head. His hair was dark, with a little gray in it, and his eyes were dark with a lacing of red veins. He looked as though he drank a lot and throve on it.

His hands fascinated Smith. They were too big even for the size of the guy that owned them. They had a lot of hair on them, and scars, and a couple of heavy rings.

"I'm Ted Bray," said the big man. "I heard you was lookin' for me."

Smith licked his lips. After three or four tries he got his voice past the swelling in his throat.

"People," he croaked, "sure spread rumors, don't they?" "Yeah," said Bray. "You gonna yell?"

Smith looked at Bray's fists. He swallowed experimentally. He decided he wouldn't yell.

"You don't have to get tough," he said. "I only want to do you a favor."

The blond little guy snickered.

Bray said pleasantly, "Go ahead and do me, pal."

"Sure." Smith started to get up. Bray cocked his fist. Smith sat down.

"I'm not comfortable here."

"That's too bad." Bray turned around.

"Ain't that too bad, Harry?" he asked.

Harry said it was too bad.

Smith said, "I want to talk to you, Bray. About that Thorsson business."

"What about it?"

"I'm not saying anybody ratted, but you know how it is. Those things get around, and in my business you sort of learn how to hear them. You got a lot of fun out of slapping Thorsson around, didn't you?"

"All you got is hearsay evidence."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Because my pal Harry, here, is the only guy that saw me do it, and he's been with me." Bray nodded slowly with admiration. "You're a pretty smart shamus, at that, sniffin' out a three-year-old trail. I suppose it was the time I had myself along Skid Row the night before I powdered that tipped my mitt."

"Any guy that comes into a lot of money sudden-like is going to be noticed. So you admit beating Thorsson."

"Sure." Bray grinned. "But try gettin' it in writin'."

"I got enough on you to get C. J. Brandenburger all jittered up." Smith's green eyes were sharp and crafty. "He's going to turn you up, Bray. I can make it nasty for him if I spill over to the cops, and he isn't going to take the chance. He's going to ease the rap onto you."

Bray laughed in his face. "That's good. Ain't that good, Harry?"

Harry said it was good. He said, "After this morning, too!" Bray said, "Shut your jaw before I bust it." He leaned forward slightly. "You workin' for Thorsson?"

"You're working for Brandy again."

Bray got up. He reached down and got a fistful of Smith's shirt. Smith tried to kick him in the stomach, but Bray kept his knees together, slightly bent. Smith lurched forward and grappled him around the legs. Bray rabbit-punched him across the back of the neck. Smith grunted and hung on, trying to get his feet under him. Bray sighed. He pulled Smith's head back by the hair and hit him three or four times, not quite hard enough to break anything. Smith's grip loosened. Bray drew his right leg back and rammed his knee hard into the base of Smith's throat. Smith went back and hit the wall.

Bray sat down again.

After a while, as though nothing had happened, he said, "You're workin' for Thorsson. Thorsson wants to tie me up to Brandenburger and then shake him down. Am I right?"

Smith said, "You're doing the talking." He was holding his face in his hands. His words sounded thick.

He said, "For cripe's sake, give me a towel."

Harry giggled. "Get him, worryin' about his shirt."

Bray gave him a towel from the lavatory. Smith held it over his mouth. There began to be red spots on it.

Bray said, "Where is Thorsson now?"

"Up in Frisco."

"Who was that dame that went out of here just before you tried to?"

Smith leered over the towel. "No fair."

Harry snickered.

Bray said, "You hate Brandenburger's guts, don't you?" Smith's green eyes were ugly. "If he sent you here to ask that question, tell him he knows the answer."

"Gimme the keys to your files."

Smith gave him the keys. Harry took them and crossed the room. Presently he came back.

"Ain't nothin' about anybody named Thorsson."

"Maybe that ain't his right name. What's he callin' himself,

Smith?"

"You said I was working for him. I didn't."

Harry said, "I could go out and call."

Bray gave him a murderous look.

Smith chuckled. "Go right ahead, Harry. Use my phone. We all know Brandy's paying the bills." He looked at Bray with mocking green eyes.

"Did he pay you to cut Stella's throat, Bray? Is that what Harry meant when he said 'after this morning'?"

Bray stood up. "Harry talks too much," he said quietly. "So do you, bud, for the spot you're in, but it don't make sense. I can make it make sense."

"Okay," said Smith. "Make some sense out of these."

He took the playing cards out of his pocket and tossed them at Bray's feet. Bray picked them up, and Harry whistled softly through his teeth. For a minute they didn't see anything else.

Bray swore under his breath and started forward. But Smith had moved while they were busy—had snaked a paper out of his pocket.

Smith made no protest when Bray went through his pockets. Rachel Hardy's check was now inside Smith's shirt, but Bray didn't even know he'd had it. All he knew was that Smith had moved his arm.

Bray said, "Get on the phone, Harry."

He pulled Smith's head back by the hair and hit him with great care. Smith went to sleep.

He came to with his face pressed against a very rough and dirty carpet. His knees were doubled up and he was hot. He realized presently that this was because he was on the floor of a car, covered with a woolen robe. Somebody's feet were in his stomach, and he smelled horribly of whiskey. The car was going somewhere, through traffic.

He moved experimentally. The feet stamped on him. Bray's voice came from beyond the blanket.

The Misfortune Teller

"Just take it easy, pal."

"For cripe's sake, I can't breathe."

"Then don't. And shut up, or I'll boot your guts in."

"And you, too," said Harry suddenly, from the front seat. He sounded nasty. The noise of the car drowned out any sound that might have been made by the person he was speaking to.

Smith took it easy. His neck felt as though it might be broken in two places, and his lips were like sofa cushions. He thought, I'll look swell taking Rache out tonight. It occurred to him that he might not be alive then. Then he thought, hell, they can't kill me. Not on the twentieth of June.

The car stopped. Bray gave him a warning kick, causing sweat to break out. Harry seemed to be showing something to somebody. Presently the somebody grunted, "Okay, go on," and the car started again. There was no more traffic. Presently the car made a second stop.

Harry said, "Okay, Ted. The street's clear."

The robe was pulled away. Bray's hand reached down and got hold of Smith's collar.

"Come on, bud, and make it fast."

He made it, on legs that might as well have belonged to somebody else. His eyes weren't working very well, either, but he managed to glimpse a shadowy street that was obviously part of a film studio. It was deserted, between the bleak sound stages that looked like prison blocks.

The man getting out of the front seat behind Harry was E. N. Kreisher, sometimes known as Lars Thorsson.

They went up some stairs. Harry made sure the hall was clear. They crossed it and went through a door into a large office furnished with rich masculine good taste. Kreisher had not looked at Smith, nor spoken. His face was gray.

Harry locked the door. The office windows looked out onto the blank wall of a sound stage. Smith turned his narrow-lidded green gaze on the man behind the big mahogany desk. He had his feet under him again, and he had stopped sweating.

"Hello, Brandy," he said. "You've got a hell of a way of sending invitations."

C. J. Brandenburger got up. He came around the desk and leaned against the front edge of it, and said with an iron calm: "We won't be interrupted. There's only the staff, and they're too busy to bother anybody. I can give you an hour."

He was a big man, not quite as tall as Smith, but broader and heavier in the bones. He wore brown gabardine slacks and a cream-colored sport shirt, and looked neat because his belly and hips were so flat. He was deeply tanned. There was hair showing in the open neck of his shirt, and his forearms were corded and powerful.

He was tired. He was also scared. Smith saw that in the lines of Brandenburger's long, square jawed face. It was a face with a sort of rugged dash to it–a face that had been places and seen things, getting hard around the mouth and chin, but still sardonically amused in spite of the black patch over the left eye. The right eye was dark and bright and very hard just now. The slash of the black band looked rakish above it, running up into a thick tousle of iron-gray hair.

Brandenburger looked at Kreisher. His mouth twisted. "Sit down," he said gently. Kreisher sat.

Smith perched on the arm of a leather lounge and fished for a cigarette. He said irritably, "Did you have to drown me in the stuff? I smell like all Skid Row."

Bray shrugged. "We hadda get you outa the buildin'. Nobody pays much attention to a lush with a hat over his face." He grinned. "You sure stunk up the hall, all right. Harry and me was ashamed to be carryin' you."

"That's tough," said Smith, and swore. "It was good Scotch, too.

Brandenburger snapped, "Did anybody see you come here?"

Bray shook his head. "There was cops staked out on his place, all right. They tried tailin' us, but Harry here shook 'em. Harry's good at that, ain't you, Harry?"

Harry admitted that he was good.

"Did they get a good look at you, Bray?"

"Uh-uh. We come out with the mob. You know how the Boulevard is. And I scrooched down, so I wouldn't look so big, you know." Bray grinned coyly.

Brandenburger nodded his virile gray head. "Fine." He turned his dark falcon's eye on Smith and Kreisher. "Now we can get this settled."

"Yeah," said Smith very softly. He put a match to his cigarette, shook the flame out, and flipped the burned stub onto the center of the thick carpet. His eyes had a green, ugly heat.

"If," he said, "you think you're going to pin Stella's murder on me, Brandy, why go ahead and try. But it's going to be the toughest job you ever did!"

Bray moved in, but Brandenburger waved him back. "Not yet, Ted. I don't want him so he can't talk. Give me those cards."

Bray handed him Smith's two playing cards. Kreisher hadn't made a sound. He sat on the edge of his chair, holding his hands together in his lap and watching Brandenburger, breathing through his mouth.

Smith said, "Those came in the mail, as you can see. I could have sent them to myself, of course. You could have sent yourself the one you got, too. It's an old trick to cover up. What did yours say?"

"You tell me, Smith."

"I don't know, but I can guess. It was either a date, or I have not forgotten."

"I have not forgotten." Brandenburger came across to Smith, walking lightly on the balls of his feet. His dark face had the look of a battered Satan with the black patch. Tough, and dangerous.

"You haven't forgotten Rachel, have you, Smith? You didn't like being run out on, did you?"

"No," said Smith evenly. "Any more than you liked it with Stella and Thorsson. Only if I'd been going to beat the face off you, I wouldn't have paid a gorilla to have the pleasure of it."

Brandenburger smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "We're back to that again, are we? The tough guy with the heart of gold. The sentimental shamus. But you didn't stick at murder, did you?"

Smith got up on his feet. Lazily, like a long lean cat. "Let's not kid ourselves, Brandy. I didn't kill Stella, and you know it. Did you do the job yourself this time, or was it Bray's dainty hands again?" He swung around suddenly. "How much did he pay you, Bray?"

"Nothin'," said Bray heavily. "I ain't killed nobody." He looked pleadingly at Brandenburger, and Smith grinned. "How much did he pay you to come and kick my teeth in, so I'd turn chicken and confess?"

"Whatever it was," said Brandenburger, "it was cash, and there's no proof. Not unless Bray talks, and I don't see any reason why he'd want to. And even so, I could deny it. Bray has motive enough for wanting to take a poke at you."

"Yeah. I don't like guys askin' questions about me. Especially nosy dicks."

"That's too bad," said Smith. "Because a lot of nosy dicks are going to start asking questions pretty quick now." He jerked his red head at Kreisher, noting that Kreisher, behind Brandenburger's back, still had not moved. He was still staring at Brandenburger, with a vague, strange remoteness as though his mind was a long way off.

"I've been working for Kreisher. No use denying that any more, because of course Bray got Kreisher's real name from you over the phone, and got my file of the case. So now you know. Kreisher has sweated for three years to get enough money together to hang that beating on you, Brandy, and now he's going to do it."

Smith crushed out his butt on the floor. His eyes were very bright. "Your transaction with Bray, then, was cash. You were on the train going East. You had an alibi, and Bray got himself off very neatly. But you didn't count on what Bray might do before he powdered. Bray had a girl. The girl needled him a lot because he was broke. So when he came into money he had to show off.

"He and his dame did Skid Row from one end to the other, and Bray has a big mouth. He let it flap open too wide. A friend of mine who tends bar down there got me started. Now I have three signed affidavits from people who heard Bray bragging how he'd just beat up on a guy and been paid well for it. He mentioned your name, Brandy."

Bray reached out and caught Smith's shirt and bent him backward. "That's a lie and you know it." His fist swung back. Smith grinned. He was hanging onto Bray's wrist for balance, breathing hard through his teeth. "Hit me, kid, and see if it changes things any."

Brandenburger snapped, "Bray!"

Bray let go, so that Smith sat down very hard indeed. "Boss," said Bray, "I swear I didn't."

"Shut up. Anyway, it doesn't matter much. I'm beginning to get the picture now, and I think I know what to do about it." Brandenburger ran his finger under the black band, jerking his head as though the pressure of the thing bothered him. Smith remembered the gesture. It didn't make him feel happy.

Brandenburger said softly, "Smith and Thorsson–or call him Kreisher–both have a reason to hate my guts. Kreisher his pretty face; Smith, his pretty woman. Smith also doesn't approve of the way I handle my private affairs. Maybe he was a little soft on Stella, too. And God knows she had a motive. So the three of them get together to shake me down. . . . "

Smith sat up straight. "Stella had no connection with Kreisher and me. And there was no shakedown."

"So you say. But the three of you were going to dig up or manufacture evidence that I paid Ted Bray to beat up on Kreisher, and then hold me up for plenty to keep the old scandal from being raked up. Only, Stella couldn't wait. She wanted her cut first. So you were afraid she was going to sell you out, and Kreisher had a grudge against her anyway, and . . . . Which one of you cut her throat?"

"So Stella was working for herself, huh?" Smith's eyes were hooded and snaky. Kreisher straightened up suddenly. His beaten face wasn't pretty to look at. Something made a small dull click in his lap.

Smith went on slowly, "She told you about the affidavits, then."

Brandenburger jerked his crisp gray head impatiently. "She didn't give me any details, but I knew Stella well enough to know she wasn't lying. She had something to sell."

"And you made a down payment of two grand." Brandenburger smiled wolfishly. "That's what she wanted, but she only got half."

Smith's green eyes flickered. His face was relaxed and innocent. "A mere thousand dollars isn't much of a squeeze from a guy with your dough."

"My dough, hell! I'm pretty near to being broke. You worked for me. You know what my money was in. And you know what the war has done to shipping, imports, and tea. I've kept it quiet. Not even Rachel knows. But this picture is practically the last decent investment I have."

"So it's got to be made and sold, even if you have to kill to do it." Smith nodded. "That's a good enough motive for anybody." He found another cigarette and lit it. Kreisher was beginning to shake a little, as he stared at Brandenburger's back.

"So," Smith murmured, blowing smoke, "you couldn't afford to stop Stella's mouth with money. And you couldn't trust her anyhow. So you stopped it with a knife. Permanent. And to cover up, you sent all these pretty little cards around, hoping to clear yourself and cut me in for the whole deck."

Brandenburger stared at him. His hard mouth twitched. Then he laughed, hard, as though he were really amused. "You're red-headed nerve, Smith! But it won't work. I suppose Stella's corpse isn't going to yell just as loud to the newspapers." He stopped laughing suddenly. "I suppose this murder isn't going to make as nasty a mess for me as though she had talked."

"I suppose it isn't," said Smith quietly, "if you can personally hang it around my neck. You will then become a martyred hero, a public benefactor, and you can repent of your sin against Stella–caused only by your great love–all over the front pages. Very dramatic. Very good publicity. The boobery will love it, having somewhat forgotten the nasty smell of the Kreisher business. How, by the way, are you going to get around those awkward little pieces of paper in my safety deposit box?"

Brandenburger ran his finger under the black band. He smiled. "That's very simple," he said. "I don't believe you have the affidavits, but even so–it's very simple. Harry!"

Harry grinned. He came forward daintily on his toes, producing a Colt .32 from his left armpit. He looked happy. Smith said, "A gunsel. Well, well! Guns scaled to size, too."

"It's big enough," said Harry, "if I plug you through the eye." He bobbed his blond rat's head. "I'm a good shot. Ain't I a good shot, Ted?"

Ted Bray said Harry was a good shot. Smith leaned back. "God," he said wearily. "Now they're reversing it. Well, come on. Only don't expect me to talk much."

"I don't," said Brandenburger softly, "expect you to talk at all–yet. Sit down Ted, and quit looking mournful. You can have your fun later."

Brandenburger turned around, toward Kreisher. Kreisher got up out of his chair.

The thing that had once been his face was twisted into something not even remotely human.

He was carrying a pocket knife with a four-inch blade–open. Brandenburger laughed softly. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked at Kreisher, balancing lithely on the balls of his feet.

He said, "Bray did a good job on you. I wanted to do it myself, but it wasn't practical at the time. Stella didn't like it much, did she? She liked you better with your nose straight and your mouth where it ought to be."

Kreisher didn't say anything. He made a noise in his throat like a hurt rabbit. His eyes were not sane.

Smith started to get up. Harry flipped up the automatic and grinned. Smith swore silently and sat down again.

Brandenburger said, "What are you going to do with that knife, Kreisher? What is a sissy like you going to do with anything like that?"

Kreisher sprang. The knife flashed up at the end of his long, thin arm. It swung down, headed for Brandenburger's right eye.

Brandenburger's left hand clamped on Kreisher's wrist, twisting out and back. Kreisher staggered. Brandenburger's hard brown right smashed upward. It connected, and Kreisher went down.

Brandenburger took the knife and put it in his pocket. He said over his shoulder, "I suppose neither of you could find that knife on him."

Bray and Harry looked at each other without joy. Kreisher whimpered. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. He opened his eyes and sobbed and got up. He got up pretty fast, and his hands were clawed like a cat's, hungry for Brandenburger's face.

"Blind you," he whispered. The breath caught in his throat. "Blind you! Blind you!"

Brandenburger let him come close. He moved his head aside. Kreisher's hand raked his shoulder. Brandenburger slapped him, open-handed, across the face. Kreisher screamed. Brandenburger struck his clumsy, clawing hands aside and slapped him again.

Kreisher went on screaming. It was a harsh, senseless noise, like a cat gone out of its wits. He kept coming in against Brandenburger, kicking, clawing, crazy for blood, and wide open.

Harry snickered. "Get him. He fights like a woman." Brandenburger laughed, short through his teeth. He never used his fists. He struck Kreisher's hands away, moving his head just out of reach, and slapped Kreisher's face. The slaps began to come closer together. They sounded loud in the room, like a kid hitting the water with his open palm. They got rhythmic. Kreisher went down on his knees. He was still clawing, at nothing in particular. He was still screaming, but his breath was gone.

Brandenburger hit him four times, right and left, openhanded with the full weight of his shoulder behind the swing. Kreisher rocked on his knees. He caught a tearing breath, and fell over.

Brandenburger stood back. There was sweat on his face, and his teeth were very white against his dark skin.

"And Stella turned me down for that." He laughed, an ugly hard-edged sound. "For that!"

Smith got up on his feet. His face was paper white, and his eyes were wolfish. He started forward, one step.

Bray's huge hand took his collar from behind and yanked him back. Bray's other huge hand banged him under the ear. Bray said noncommittally, "Harry."

Harry danced in on his toes and laid the .32 along Smith's temple. Not too hard. Just enough to make the lights flash against a curtain of darkness.

"Be good," said Bray, and cuffed Smith like a mother with a bothersome child. Smith lay back on the couch. Taut muscles made thin hard ridges in his cheeks, and his lips moved without sound.

Brandenburger sat down at his desk and began to type.

When he was finished Brandenburger got up and pulled Kreisher to his feet. Kreisher was like a rag doll. His feet dragged. He went obediently, without looking or speaking, where the other man's hands guided him.

Brandenburger sat him down at the desk and put a pen in his hand. "Sign that, Kreisher."

"Wait a minute!" Smith sat forward on the couch. "Kreisher, wait. That's my client, Brandy. He's not signing anything." Harry snickered, making the Colt flash in his hand. Kreisher didn't raise his head. He might have been a corpse, except for the noise his breath made, going in and out of his open mouth.

Brandenburger eased the black band across his forehead. "Maybe you want to know what it is, Kreisher. Well, it's just a sworn statement that you and Smith and Stella ganged up to blackmail me. That the fight between you and Bray was purely a personal matter, but that you used it as a weapon against me.

"Bray, you'll get paid well if this makes any trouble for you. Say Stella tried to play a double game, that Smith got nervous and killed her and tried to frame it on me. That you, Kreisher, were at all times a tool of Smith, motivated by your desire for money for plastic surgery, and that any affidavits procured by Smith are false and untrue."

Kreisher made a vague movement with his head. Brandenburger went on: "Furthermore, that you are signing this paper of your own free will, with no coercion." Harry snickered.

Smith started to speak, shrugged, and remained silent. Brandenburger said, "I'll give you money for the surgery, Kreisher. Not because I don't like your pretty face better the way it is, but because I want it made public that I have given you the money." He shrugged. "Besides, I've had what I wanted."

"Yeah," said Smith. "You showed 'em. You showed Stella she couldn't turn you down, and you showed Kreisher he couldn't cut you out and get away with it. You showed Hollywood that laughing at you wasn't a healthy sport. You're

a pretty tough guy, Brandy. You're the king snipe, the big

shot, the little tin god who ordaineth all that is done. You are also a yellow-bellied heel, and I hope some day I can stamp on your face!"

Brandenburger said evenly, "Go on, Kreisher. Sign." Kreisher signed, slowly and laboriously, like a child who is not sure of his letters.

Brandenburger took the pen away from him and locked the paper in a wall safe. Kreisher sat staring at the desk, but not as though he saw it. Brandenburger came back and turned the swivel chair part way around. He took Kreisher's face between his hands and tilted it upward.

"Kreisher," he said gently. "Do you hear me?"

Kreisher mumbled something that sounded like yes.

"Kreisher, you will swear in court exactly what I tell you. Otherwise there will be no money to make your face pretty again, and I will send you to the gas chamber with Smith. Do you understand?"

This time the "Yes" was quite distinct.

Brandenburger took his hands away. "Go lie down on the couch over there, Kreisher." He might have been talking to a dog. "You'll stay with me from now on. Get some sleep."

Bray prodded Smith. "Up, you."

Smith got up. Kreisher came obediently and lay down. Smith said, "Well, you have it all fixed up, haven't you? Just for fun, suppose I didn't kill Stella. Suppose Kreisher did

it.

Harry snickered. Bray said, "Sure. We know what to say. Don't we, Harry?"

Harry said they did.

Smith's insides began a rhythmic series of back-flips, accompanied by freezing cold.

He nodded at Kreisher. "Take him down and show him to Garrison, Brandy. It may keep him from making any mistakes."

He grinned at the black, thunderous look on Brandenburger's face. "But then, of course, Rache knows all about Stella. She wouldn't take any chances. And besides, you're broke this time. A couple of million means something to you now."

"Damn right it does," said Brandenburger.

"But," Smith said to Bray, "don't go too far away, big boy. Brandy may be calling for one of your bargain facials any day now. I know the look on his puss."

"You know too much," said Brandenburger quietly. "But you're howling up the wrong tree this time. If there's any paying out to be done, it can wait. Now shut up and get out. I've got a picture to start."

He turned back to his desk. "I'll be here probably until midnight, Bray, if you want to get in touch with me."

He was already punching buttons on his desk when the three men went out.

it."

Brandenburger shrugged. "That pattycake wouldn't have the guts to slit even a woman's throat. Anyway, this is the safest, easiest way for me, and that's the way it's going to be."

He handed Smith's cards back to him. "Rather a melodramatic little stunt, wasn't it? All right, Bray. You and Harry take this guy down to Police Headquarters. You know what to say."

"You Can't Make It Stick!"

Nobody saw them get into the car. Harry drove. Smith and Bray sat in the back seat. Bray had his arms crossed, and the muzzle of Smith's own gun bored into Smith's ribs.

Following instructions, Smith slouched down in the seat and pulled his hat over his eyes.

The gateman didn't pay much attention when they drove out. Smith's eyes, under his hat brim, were a bright, hard green. Presently they turned onto Sunset Boulevard, heading for the Hollywood Division headquarters on Wilcox. There was a vein beating in Smith's temple and his nerves ached.

At the intersection of Sunset and La Brea, Harry crashed into a car making a left turn in front of them.

There was a lot of noise. Smith lurched forward against the back of the front seat. Bray bellowed and fell heavily against him. They tangled and kicked on the floorboards, and presently Smith realized that he was doing all the kicking. Bray was out cold, having apparently hit something with his head on the way down.

Smith got his gun. There were people crowding around the car now, pawing at the doors. Smith holstered the gun, shielding it with his body. Then he pulled himself up.

Harry slouched over the wheel, holding his stomach and groaning. Somebody got a door open and pulled Smith out. There was quite a mob. Smith saw a burly guy in a dark uniform shouldering his way in.

He said hoarsely, "I'm okay. The other guy—" He made pawing motions toward Bray. "I think he broke his neck."

People surged in on the car. Everybody seemed to be yelling at the top of his lungs, and there were horns braying for a couple of blocks, asking what the hell the jam was all about. Smith grinned. He eased his lean frame outward through the crowd. With all the shoving and jostling, nobody noticed him except to curse impatiently. Presently he was all by himself, sauntering up La Brea toward Hollywood Boulevard.

He caught a cab in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt, and gave the hacker his apartment address. He grinned all the way home, whistling softly through his teeth. He gave the hacker too much money, looked with sympathy on a little guy changing a very flat tire across from his apartment building, and ran upstairs.

He let himself in, and then stopped grinning. Palfrey was sitting in his armchair, staring morosely at his small neat shoes. A plainclothesman named Chase lounged by the window, and a third man, whom Smith did not know, took himself away from the wall beside the door. He was holding a Police Positive, and he looked as though he knew how to use it.

Smith let himself be frisked, watching Palfrey with hot, narrow eyes. When the man was finished, he said quietly, "Am I under arrest?"

Palfrey sighed. His poker face looked very tired, but very tough.

"I hope not," he said. "I hope you can give the right answers to a couple of questions. I told you, Smith—I'd hate to have to win this pot."

Smith shrugged. "May I have a drink?"

"You know damn well you can have a drink. Let's not make this any tougher than it is."

Smith had his drink. There was a lot of silence in the room. It clung to him, like stale air. He took off his hat.

Palfrey said, "For tripe's sake. What happened to your face?"

"I ran into a couple of doors—both swinging." Smith took off his coat and tie and opened his shirt. He nodded his red head at the bathroom. "May I?"

Palfrey said he might, and added some verbal trimmings. Smith grinned and went in and shut the door.

They let him take his time. They must have made sure there was no way out, and no weapon concealed. Smith got a tin of Epsom salts from the cabinet, shook some into a basin and let the water run hot. Presently he came out with the steaming basin and a couple of towels.

He sat down and began bathing his face, his body tight and stiff with the pain of it, swearing softly as the salt bit in. He said, "Go ahead, Horse. Shoot."

Palfrey leaned back and closed his eyes. Chase had swung around casually so that he could shoot Smith in the back very easily if he made a break for the door. The third man sat back-to-front on a small chair by the door. He had given Smith's .38 to Palfrey and his Police Positive was out of sight, but Smith had a feeling it was handy.

Palfrey's voice was utterly expressionless. "I talked long distance with New York a while ago, Smith. Johnny Reynolds, Central Homicide. You remember him. He knew about the Carver case you were working on back there."

Smith's face was muffled in a steaming towel. "Yeah?"

"He said you met a girl named Rachel Hardy while you were working, and fell for her like Joe Louis had hit you. He said you made a neat pile off the Carvers, and blew it all on the Hardy girl."

Smith took the towel away. His eyes were not pleasant. "Yeah. And C. J. Brandenburger happened to be in New York at the same time. He's in New York a lot. And doing the night clubs we were bound to run into each other. And Rachel Hardy thought she could get a damn sight more out of C. J. Brandenburger than she could out of me. So now you know."

"Why didn't you tell me this morning, Smith?"

"Does any man like to admit he's been thrown over? Besides, it was none of your damn business."

"I know." Palfrey sounded tired. "Unfortunately, I can't afford the luxury of manners. So you have a motive to hate Brandenburger."

The Misfortune Teller

Smith put more hot water on his face. "I had one three years ago. I threw up a good case and a lot of dough because of Stella Janis and Lars Thorsson. Especially Thorsson. So what?"

"So you were working for Thorsson, alias E. N. Kreisher." Smith said slowly, "Been looting my files, Horse?" "Yeah. Want to tell me all about it?"

"No."

"Then I'll tell you. You and Thorsson and Stella Janis were working together to put Brandenburger on the spot. Maybe Brandenburger paid for Kreisher's beating, maybe not. Maybe this Bray guy was in it with you. I don't know, yet. But Stella double-crossed you."

Smith was sitting very still, holding the hot wet towel across his face. He was sweating down the back of his neck, and a centipede with cold feet was doing a rhumba inside his stomach. He said nothing.

Palfrey went on.

"I'm not guessing, Smith. We got hold of this Joe Sawyer. He has an alibi for this morning. He was losing a hangover in a Turkish bath. He saw Stella a couple of weeks ago. She was pretty tight and a little talkative. She told him she had money, and the prospects of more, and that she was going to hang Brandenburger's guts up to dry before she got through. Also, somebody else's. Smith, what did you do with the two grand you won at Frenchy's about a month ago?"

"You have been a busy little bee," said Smith. His voice was flat. "I banked it."

"You didn't. I checked that."

"Okay." Smith shrugged. He sopped the towel in the basin and grinned with his lips. His eyes were hooded. "I paid off my bookie. Illegal as hell, Horse. Don't tell the Vice Squad."

"Where did you go this morning, Smith? Where is Kreisher now? Was that Bray that took you away from your office? Who beat up on you, and why? And where did you go with Bray?"

Smith looked at Palfrey with hot green eyes. His face was suddenly ugly, white under the cuts and bruises.

"You're the cop, Palfrey. You find out. I'm not guilty of anything, and I don't have to spill my guts to anybody. You haven't a thing on me but guesswork, and you know it."

He jerked his bony chin at the man by the door. "You there. Get those envelopes out of my coat pocket and show them to the man. Maybe they'll give his great brain something solid to work on."

Palfrey nodded. His dark poker face had tightened a little, but that was all. He did not look at Smith. He inspected the cards carefully, and the envelopes. Presently he said, "Why didn't you report these, Smith?"

"Because somebody's trying to pull something, with me either as a corpse or a fall guy. Because this mess is all tied up with personal matters, and I like to attend to my own business."

Smith was breathing hard, and he looked like a bayed fox, full of fight and mean as hell.

"I'm in business for myself, Palfrey. I'm a private dick, a shamus who doesn't wear anybody's collar. I never caught the habit of yelling for a cop every time somebody says Boo! at me out of a dark alley, and I like doing things my own way, without having to bother about red tape and legal trimmings and the taxpayer's point of view. You'd like that, too, Palfrey, to hear you tell it on your nights off. You, of all cops, ought to understand that!"

Palfrey nodded. "I understand, Smith. That's why I wanted to give you a break. I'm still making the offer. Answer my questions, clear yourself, and that's the end of it."

Smith said quietly, "I can't clear myself. Not yet." Some of the heat was gone out of him. "Horse, if I give you my word I didn't kill Stella Janis, will you let me alone to do what I have to do?"

Palfrey met his eyes. His poker mask had cracked, and there was raw misery under it, but his somber eyes were steady. "You know the answer to that, Smith."

Smith looked down at the basin between his hands. "Yeah," he said. "I know the answer. Are you lodging a formal charge of murder?"

"Suspicion." Palfrey was looking somewhere beyond the walls of the apartment. His voice sounded as though he might be in pain, but was trying not to show it. "You had motive and opportunity, and you refuse to give information. I'm taking you down for questioning."

"You can't make it stick."

"I hope not, Smith. I hope not."

"Those cards. . . . "

"You could have sent to yourself, for just this reason." "Yeah," said Smith. "I could, couldn't I?" He moved forward a little, his head drooped wearily over the basin. "Okay, Horse. You win. Let's go."

Palfrey said, "Chase." He did not look at Smith.

Smith grinned crookedly. "Bracelets, huh? What a rep I must have! Can you wait till I get my coat on?"

Chase said, "Sure." Smith got up, still holding the basin. He started toward the chair where his coat was. Palfrey got up, too, standing morosely silent and weighing Smith's .38 in his hand. The man by the door had his right hand close to his armpit. Chase was behind Smith, not too close, clinking the bracelets as he moved.

The man by the door watched Smith with hard eyes. Smith did not look at him. He looked at his feet, like a beaten man. Still without looking, Smith threw the basin of hot salt water in the face of the man by the door.

Smith moved fast. He doubled up and fell backward, stretched his legs out and swung around on his shoulder blades. Chase moved, but not quite in time. He tripped over Smith's whipping shins and put out both hands to save himself. Smith doubled up one leg and banged him on the jaw with the toe of his heavy sport shoe. Chase fell down.

The man by the door was standing up, cursing and trying to see to shoot, and not having much luck. His eyes streamed water. Smith rolled over and away from Chase. Palfrey, using Smith's own gun, put a bullet in the floor just behind him, where it would have shattered Smith's thigh.

Palfrey said harshly, "For God's sake, Smith, don't make me!"

Smith got his feet under him and made a low tackle for the man with the Epsom salts in his eyes.

The guy was afraid to fire for fear of hitting Palfrey. He fell on top of Smith, flailing with his gun. Palfrey closed in, holding his fire lest he kill his own man. Smith grabbed for the Police Positive. He slammed his elbow into the man's face, wrenched around, still keeping the man's body between himself and Palfrey, and wrestled with him for the gun.

The cop had a thick, short arm, and a wrist like a section of heavy-duty propeller shaft. Smith didn't have a lot of luck with it. The cop lay on Smith's stomach and hit him in the face with his free hand. Smith hunched his shoulder and took it, concentrating on the gun.

It let off, close to his ears, and about the same time Palfrey closed in and slammed at Smith's head with the barrel of the .38.

Smith twisted hard. Palfrey hit the door panel. Smith let go of the cop's gun arm. He reached out and got Palfrey back of the knees and pulled him down. There was a lot of kicking and floundering. Somebody kneed Smith in the diaphragm. He gagged, pulled halfway clear, knocked Palfrey flat with a back-handed haymaker, and saw the way briefly clear to the cop's jaw. He hit it, with everything he had. The cop went to sleep, still tangled in Palfrey's legs. Smith took his gun and went for Palfrey.

Palfrey was slight, but he was wiry and tough as rawhide. He slid clear and pulled Smith's own trick, kicking up at his knees. The pain made Smith choke on his own breath. Palfrey fired. Smith made a moaning animal noise and turned a little, doubling over his right elbow. The Police Positive hit the floor, and Smith went down on top of it.

Palfrey got up, breathing heavily. His lean, poker face might have been hammered out of iron. Keeping his gun on Smith, he backed toward the telephone. Chase still slept on his face. There were people outside in the hall now, making a lot of noise.

Smith moved, very suddenly. He rolled like a cat and came to his knees, holding the cop's gun in his left hand, and fired. Palfrey dropped flat. His slug went as wide as Smith's, but probably without the same intention. Smith snapped, "Hold it! Listen to me!"

They both held it, hot-eyed and wary, covering each other with no advantage anywhere. Smith said evenly, "I won't kill you, Horse. But if I have to shoot the gun out of your hand I may make a mess of your wrist."

"Don't be a fool," said Palfrey hoarsely. "You're only making it worse for yourself. Drop that gun."

Smith grinned. "You can't kill me. Not on the twentieth of June."

Palfrey's thin mouth twitched. "Aren't you riding that superstition pretty hard? Besides I can shoot the legs out from under you, and you'll live to reach the gas chamber on February twenty-ninth."

"Let me go, Horse. Let me do what I have to do, and then I'll give myself up."

Palfrey fired.

Smith saw the flicker of it in his eyes a split second before he pulled the trigger. He made a flying leap aside, heard lead smack into the wall behind him, and landed rolling behind the overstuffed chair. He didn't wait for anything, then. He picked up a light end table, crying with the pain in his arm, and threw it in the general direction of Palfrey. The swinging door to the kitchenette was pretty close, and partly shielded by the chair. Smith went for it, grabbing up his coat without breaking stride.

He hit the door low, and dived through it. The last shot from the .38 bit splinters into his neck from the door jamb. Smith kept on running. He went through the back door and down the service stairs without meeting anybody. They were all in the front hall, listening to the fight. There were sirens wailing now, coming closer. Somebody must have called the cops.

Smith heard Palfrey's feet hit the first of the concrete treads overhead. He pulled on his coat and plunged through the swinging door into the front of the building. There were people crowded around the stair foot, craning up and asking unanswerable questions at the top of their lungs. Smith pelted toward them.

He yelled, "Did he come this way?"

Everybody whirled around. Half the people in the building knew he was a detective. They were prepared to see him with a gun in his hand, hard-eyed and very grim.

A woman said, in a high, thin voice. "He's been shot," and fainted. Smith glanced distantly at the blood on the back of his right hand.

"Guy jumped me in my room," he said. "Anybody see him come out?" He was almost to the door, now, wading through a gaggle of bug-eyed kids. "Little lean, dark guy in a blue suit."

Nobody had seen him come out. Smith plunged out the front door. A cracked juvenile voice screamed, "Maybe he's outside. Let's go look!" Smith had to put on speed to avoid being tramped in the rush. The word spread. People began to trample in geranium bushes and peer behind palm trees. The sirens wailed closer.

Smith slid the gun in the waistband of his pants and pulled his coat together. Hell seemed to have broken loose in the lobby behind him. He could hear Palfrey's voice yelling. It was much louder than you'd think from Palfrey's size, and there was nothing neat about the language. Smith grinned and went with long strides down the street, keeping his hand in his pocket to hide the blood.

The little guy across the street had changed his tire. Now he seemed to be having trouble with his engine. He crawled out from the curb behind Smith and came after him down the street, making noises like a dragon with acute indigestion. Smith's heart began to miss beats suddenly, and there was sweat on his face.

He tripped, hard, as though a concealed root had caught his foot, and went flat behind a palm tree. Something made a small querulous whine over him and went thunk! into the tree.

"For cripe's sake," groaned Smith. "Doesn't a guy get any rest?"

The car continued to have convulsions out in the street. Noisy ones, that completely covered the sound a .32 would make going off. The police were getting close, now. Very close. Smith got to his knees, keeping the palm bole between himself and the car.

He knew what a fox felt like, bayed between hounds and hunter. And then a thin, cruel smile twisted his mouth. He remembered about the fox that had taken refuge in the hunter's coat.

The ailing car started, reluctantly, to move. The cops were making the driver nervous. He couldn't be sure whether he'd got Smith or not, but he didn't like waiting to find out. Smith timed his move, listening so hard his ears ached.

People were still running around in feverish, aimless groups, beating the bushes and craning toward the head of the street, where the sirens were coming. They were too busy to pay attention to Smith, or anything as prosaic as an old heap with engine trouble.

The car reached the psychological point, and Smith took himself away from the palm tree.

He went fast, bending low and trying not to strangle on his own heart. He made for the back seat of the car. The driver was just far enough so that he had to crane back to see, in an awkward position for shooting, and Smith's sudden move toward him took him by surprise.

Smith dived into the back seat. He had his gun out again, and he showed it. He looked as though using it would be a pleasure.

He said quietly, "Get this can moving, bud. And fast."

The little guy craned around. He had thinning black hair and unsteady black eyes and a nose that was too big for his chin. He looked like a man who would shoot other men in the back. He kept his right hand out of sight, and he was obviously unhappy.

He gulped, "Hey!"

Smith twitched the gun suggestively. "You heard me. Step on it!"

The sirens were howling like banshees. Smith couldn't look, but from the noise behind him Palfrey and the mob in the hallway had erupted into the open. The little guy ran a nervous tongue across pale lips. His black eyes flickered. Smith thought with grim pleasure that he hadn't bargained on cops.

"I can," said Smith with deadly patience, "shoot holes in the top of your head before you can do a damned thing about it. Get moving!"

The little guy said, "Sure. Sure."

He turned around. He must have dropped the .32 in his lap, because his right hand came up on the wheel. The car forgot its troubles. It went away from there in a hurry, just before the prowl cars screamed around the corner behind it and stopped.

They turned out of the street, mingled with a thin stream of traffic heading up to the Boulevard, turned two more corners fast, hit Sunset, and were in the clear.

Smith leaned back in the seat. He felt cold and clammy as a wet toad all over, except for his joints, which were burning. He seemed to have caught the palsy, and the bullet nick on his elbow hurt like an ulcerated tooth.

"Just keep going, pal," he said. "West, out Sunset." The driver nodded. He was no fool.

Smith drew a long unsteady breath.

"The little son of a gun!" he murmured, thinking of Palfrey. "He was shooting to kill." He smiled, with a queer tenderness. "The little toughie!"

His right hand had feeling in it again. He shifted the gun to it, got his handkerchief and mopped the blood off. His tie was in his pocket, but he let it alone. His red hair was always a curly tangle anyway. All he did was straighten his collar a bit, hoping there was not blood on it.

They were out on the Sunset Strip now, between rows of swank night spots, exclusive shops, and agencies housed in pseudo-Greek temples. To the right the whole basin of the city lay sprawled below them in the sun, cupped between low hills and the distant sea.

Smith leaned forward. "This is far enough, pal. Right here." The little guy swerved in toward the curb, slowing down. Smith hit him accurately across the temple with the flat of his gun.

The car rode up over the curb, hit an electrolier, skidded, and fetched up in the front window of an establishment dedicated to the beautification of the female form. It made a lot of noise. People began to collect, like autograph hounds around a movie star.

Smith got out. He was beginning to dislike automobile accidents. He flashed his private investigator's badge, too fast for anyone to see what it really was.

"Police," he said. "This guy's wanted." He picked two of the huskiest men. "Don't touch anything, but see that he doesn't get away." That was safe enough. The little man with the gun was going to be asleep for a long time. "Where's a phone?"

"Right across there in the drugstore," somebody said. Smith went. He went through the drugstore, across the parking lot behind it, and down the hill to Santa Monica Boulevard. He caught a red car going to Beverly Hills, got out, paused long enough in a service station washroom to put on his tie and clean himself up a bit, and then found a phone booth in the doorway of the Beverly Hills Telephone Company.

He called Central Homicide in Los Angeles and told them about the little guy with the gun.

"Settle it with the sheriff's office," he said–the Sunset Strip being in county territory–"but don't let him get away. Dig that slug out of the palm tree and get Ballistics busy. And tell Palfrey to start laying in the aspirin, because I'm going to make him look pretty damn sick!"

He hung up and walked over to Wilshire Boulevard, where he caught a bus into Westwood, just in case they should have traced the phone call in time, which he thought unlikely, it being a dial phone. He found another booth in a market and looked up Brandenburger Productions, Inc.

A very bored female voice informed him that Mr. Brandenburger was in conference and speaking to no one.

"He'll speak to me," said Smith nastily. His voice was loud, belligerent, and just a trifle slurred, as though he might have had one or two too many.

"He'll speak to me, sister. I'm February Smith, and I'm still alive. Tell C. J. Brandenburger that his murder didn't come off. Tell him his gunsel is now spilling his insides to the cops. Go ahead! Tell him!"

He heard a buzz. The woman said hesitantly, "I'm sorry, Mr. Brandenburger, there's a Mister Smith. . . . "

"February Smith!" he yelled. "You can't kill me on the twentieth of June, Brandy! I got away from Bray, and I got away from your little pal that shoots people in the back, and I even got away from the cops. I can get away from anything, but you can't, Brandy. You haven't got a charmed life. And I'll just tell you this, pal. I'm gonna get that paper. You're not gonna nail any frame around my neck. And Kreisher's still my client–I'm not letting him down. Bray can be made to talk, and Harry can be made to talk, and I'm gonna get that paper. You just stick around at your flicker factory, because I'm coming to get it, see? And nothing you can do will stop me!"

He slammed up the receiver. He was sweating. He grinned and wiped his face, very tenderly because it was sore as hell even though the Epsom Salts had taken out most of the swelling.

He looked at his lifeline, which was long and unbroken. He traced it with his forefinger.

"I hope," he said to it, "that we're not just kidding ourselves. Because brother, if I own any luck, I'm going to need it all!"

He found a cab and went back to Beverly Hills and Rachel Hardy's apartment. He did it very carefully. There was nobody staked out, officially or otherwise. Smith paid off the hacker and ran upstairs.

It was a little after five-thirty when he punched her bell.

"Brandy—Here I Come!"

Rachel let him in, making him speak through the door first. She was wearing a peach-colored negligee and her black hair was loose on her shoulders. Smith's heart began to pound, hard enough to make the bruises on his neck ache from the throbbing veins.

He shut the door and took her in his arms. He wasn't too gentle about it. Her body curved against him and she gasped a little before she answered his kiss, and then for a while he didn't know about anything but the life and the warmth of her, and the faint, sweet smell of flesh and hair.

"I ought to kill you myself," he whispered hoarsely, and let her go. "I ought to kill you for taking yourself away from me."

He went away from her, across the room, and she said softly to his lean back, "You'd have married me, wouldn't you?" "I had some quaint ideas along that line." He shrugged. "Heard from Brandy today?"

Her voice had a hard edge when she answered. "He called me from the studio. He was very nice. He wanted to know how I felt, and what I was going to do tonight. I told him nothing. I still had a headache. He was sorry, and very sweet."

"How ducky." Smith reached for the whiskey decanter on the side table and stopped. "Well, well, and who's the little ray of sunshine?"

The woman had obviously been standing in the doorway all along, and was just as obviously displeased by what she'd seen. She wore a neat maid's uniform with stolid grimness. Her hair and eyes and skin were all an even shade of prison gray, except her nose, which was red. Smith shuddered slightly.

Rachel said stiffly, "Matilda, my maid. And you needn't be rude."

"Sorry, darling." Smith grinned and picked up the decanter. "Have one, Matilda? Good for shock, you know." "Certaidly dot!" Matilda seemed to have a bad case of hay fever. "I dever tudge it."

Smith sighed and gave himself a long one. "Lay out Miss Rachel's glad rags, Tilly, and pour her in, pronto." He turned around.

Rachel gasped, "Smitty, your face!"

"I tried to steal a kid's marbles, but he turned out to be a Junior G-man. Kids get tougher every day, it seems."

Her black eyes were wide with fear, "Was it. . . . "

He shook his red head, grinning. "Man stuff, baby. And now step on it. You have exactly five minutes to make yourself beautiful. After that I shall go alone."

She stared at him a minute. Then she made a small, helpless gesture. "Come on, Matilda. Hurry."

Matilda gave an adenoidal snort and came.

Smith finished his drink and then poured another. He went and watched out the window until Rachel came back, in precisely five minutes. Nobody showed.

Rachel was wearing green again. It was Smith's favorite color. He gave a small cynical grin. She looked like a million dollars, with the paleness rouged out of her face.

Smith held out his hand. "We're taking your car tonight, Rache. Mine's laid up."

She shrugged and gave him the keys. "Stay up for me, Matilda," she said, a little unsteadily. "I'm not sure when I'll be back, but–stay up for me."

Smith waved to her. "'Bye, Sunshine. And don't drink the cellar dry. We may need it."

"I told you, I dever tudge it."

"That," said Smith pleasantly, "is a grave error. Teetotalism causes a freezing of the guts, which progresses outward– Can you still bend, Matilda?"

She didn't say, and Smith went on downstairs with Rachel. He heard the phone start ringing and then stop as Matilda answered it.

"Step on it, babe," he murmured. "We're in a hurry." "Something's wrong, Smitty. What is it?"

The Misfortune Teller

"Not yet, Rache." His green eyes were fox-sharp. "It's okay, anyhow. We've just got to see that it's wrong for the right people."

They got away without any trouble. They drove down to Santa Monica and there was no sign of pursuit, then or later. They had cocktails, and dinner, and presently, around seven o'clock, Smith drove back toward Hollywood.

"Well," he said, "so far, so good. Scared, Rache?"

She pressed up against him. "I don't know." She sounded miserable, like a tired child. "You make me feel much better. And yet. . . . "

"And yet I'm only human." Smith's voice was somber, and there was a tightness akin to nausea in his stomach. "Yeah. How long's your life line, Rache?"

She traced it, smiling crookedly. "Pretty long. But I haven't your simple faith, Smitty."

He grinned. "It's a comfortable feeling. When I'm in a tight spot I always remember that old dame telling me I could only be killed on my birthday. Not bad, when they come four years apart. She had bad teeth, and oil on her hair, and she smelled. I must have been about twelve, then."

"But I wasn't born on the twenty-ninth of February, and I never had a prophecy. June twentieth," said Rachel softly. "Before midnight." She shivered against him, and her breath made a small whimper in her throat. "If we only knew how he meant to strike!"

"Maybe he won't."

"Smitty!" She sat up and stared at him.

"Maybe that card was just a red herring. Brandy had one. I had two of them. They didn't set any date, but they implied. Maybe it was just a stunt to confuse the issue and cover up."

"Maybe." Her eyes caught the low yellow sunlight and glowed like huge black lamps. "Maybe– Oh, Smitty, if only that were so! But. . . . "

"But we don't dare bank on it. No." He stopped the car abruptly, in front of a small neighborhood movie house, with its modernistic facade drowned in neon lights. There was nobody following them. He'd made doubly sure of that. He said, "Listen to me, Rache."

He spoke rapidly, watching her with steady, bright green eyes.

"If this Misfortune Teller strikes at all, he'll do it at your apartment, or near it. That's the only place he can be sure of finding you. I have a reason for thinking the whole thing's a gag, but we'll play it his way to be sure.

"I have to leave you now for a while–" He stopped her breathless protest with a hand on her wrist. "It's for your own good, Rache. I think I can crack this case within the next hour. So I want you to go into this theater, and wait for me. If I don't come back–well, there's a swing shift show. You can stay until five in the morning, and then call for a police escort if you're still scared. But I don't think you'll have to. Anyway, you'll be safe as a church inside there."

She tightened cold unsteady fingers around his hand. "There's danger, Smitty. You're going to do something. . . . "

He grinned at her. "I am a private dick," he told her. "That means, according to all the stories I've read, that I'm tough, resilient, and bullet proof. Also infallibly brilliant. So don't worry."

She said, almost in a whisper, "Brandy?"

"I'll tell you all about it when I know. Now be a good child and go see the pretty movie."

He kissed her. She made a little choking sob under his lips and whispered, "Be careful, Smitty. Be careful!"

The Misfortune Teller

"Of me?" he asked. "Or CJ. Brandenburger?" He laughed at the sudden hot flare in her eyes, and helped her out. He waited until she had gone inside. There was still no sign of any watcher. He nodded and drove off.

Four blocks down the street a prowl car picked him up. Smith decided it was about time for his luck to run out. He'd been making free with the streets for a couple of hours without any notice from the cops, although he was pretty sure that Palfrey had been on the other end of the phone in Rachel's apartment. Matilda had doubtless given him the description and license number of Rachel's car.

He stepped on it.

The prowl car had to make a U-turn to follow him and was temporarily balked by traffic. Smith ripped through an intersection on the last of the yellow, getting curses from a couple of drivers who were quick on the getaway. He took a corner on two wheels, threaded a maze of residential back streets, and came out on Beverly Boulevard. There was traffic enough to cover him, but not too much.

The siren was still behind him, and there were others, waking with thin caterwaulings on distant streets. Smith cursed two-way radios and hunched over the wheel.

He turned up a side street to Melrose, listening with fox-keen ears to the sirens. He made a lightning calculation of the closing cordon, his face drawn thin and tight and very hard. He located the gap that was still open, and made for it.

Being June, and Pacific War Time, it was still broad daylight. Smith hurtled up another stretch of quiet, tree-lined street, to Santa Monica Boulevard. He paused at the mouth of the side street. A black-and-white car screamed by, winking a red light like a dragon's eye.

Smith swung in behind it. He went down an alley once to let a brace of motorcycle cops get by. And then he was above the cordon.

He wouldn't stay clear long. He knew that. They'd spread out and start feathering, like hounds on a checked scent. But all he needed was a few minutes. After that, one way or the other, it wouldn't matter any more.

He slowed the car at the entrance to the dead-end street that led to the gate of Brandenburger Productions, Inc.

It was a small studio, set off from Sunset Boulevard. The dead-end street was lined with huge shaggy pepper trees and the side walls of a costumer's and a scenery-painting shop, both closed at this hour. Down at the far end the gateman was yawning over an evening paper in his little office. There was nobody else in sight.

It was dark in the street, because of the pepper trees and the high walls. The street lights were not on yet. Only the gatekeeper's office burned bright at the far end. It was very quiet. There were shadow-curtained doorways in the walls, and still pools of darkness under the thick-holed trees. Smith's heart kicked in his throat, and the palms of his hands were wet.

He switched on his bright lights. In the same instant, moving very fast, he slid out the door, leaving the car in gear, and jammed his wallet under the hornrim. Then he yelled, "Brandy! Here I come!"

He fell on his face in a dusty litter of leaves and pepper berries. Rachel's car rolled drunkenly down the street, slashing the darkness with glaring headlight beams and the racket of the horn.

The gatekeeper was on his feet, staring at the weaving car. Then there was a hard, spiteful slam, and the windscreen cracked into a spider-web pattern over the wheel.

Smith marked the doorway where the gun-flash had showed. And a second later there was another, this time from behind a pepper tree on his own side of the street. A small flash. That would be Harry with his .32. Smith got very quietly to his feet and went toward him, keeping low and in the heaviest shadow.

The gatekeeper had dropped out of sight. The light in his office went out suddenly. The heavy bark of the .45 came twice more from across the street. Bray was making a mess of Rachel's windows. The car lumbered on with an eerily detached stubbornness.

The ear-shattering blare of the horn covered Smith's light steps. Harry fired once more ahead of him. By the flash he made out the blob of deeper shadow that was Harry under a pepper tree.

Smith's lips tightened against his teeth, showing an ugly line of white. Quite suddenly the horn cut out.

In the deafening silence, Harry's voice said clearly, "We got 'im. Let's scram!"

But it wasn't Smith's body falling aside that had cleared the horn. It was only his wallet, working loose with the idle swinging of the wheel. Smith said gently, "Harry."

Harry made a noise like a rabbit in a snare and spun around, snapping an instinctive shot in the direction of Smith's voice. But Smith wasn't there any more. The Police Positive bucked in his hand and Harry went slowly down on his knees. He might have been praying, with his hands folded piously across his belly.

Something made a snarling whine past Smith. Bray was shooting at the flash of his gun. Smith dropped and scuttled crabwise to another tree. He thought from the sound that Bray had changed his position too, but the echoes made it hard to tell. He began to hear sirens again.

He sent a shot searching across the street. Bray was too smart. He didn't answer, and Smith knew he wouldn't until he was sure he could make his bullets count. He lay still, waiting. The sirens were still distant, shouting into the clear green sky. He cursed the dusk. It was like near-blindness, worse than full dark because it wiped out distance.

Whatever Bray was going to do, he was going to have to do it mighty fast.

He did it. He made a flying leap for the running board of Rachel's car on the opposite side from Smith. Smith's bullet snapped at his heels, but it missed. Bray got the door open.

His big hand wrenched the wheel around. Smith's guts knotted tight with a convulsive jerk. He hugged the ground behind his tree. The headlight beam stabbed over him, swung past and back and steadied.

Something knocked the heel off his shoe.

He jerked his legs under him, pressing into his meager pillar of shadow. There was a strange coldness on him. Sweat needled his face. He fired, moving very fast, at the headlights, One of them went out with a crash of glass, but a bee stung his cheek.

A forty-five-caliber bee, thirsty for his brain.

He heard Bray's feet hit the pavement. Risk or not, he had to get that other headlight. He was pinned by walls of light like a fly in amber and he was going to be dead very shortly unless he did something about it.

He slid upward along the rough trunk, pushing with his feet. Quietly. The blood hammered in his neck and his temples ached. He tried to hear Bray's footfalls. All he could hear was his heartbeats and the sirens, coming closer.

Something seared his neck from behind. He jerked his head around and saw Harry in the edge of the beam, curled up like a shrimp on the pepper leaves. His bared teeth and his eyes glittered as bright as the nickel on his .32.

Smith dropped. The second bullet went over his head. He shot Harry in the wrist and turned again, flat to the rough trunk. There was a faint rustle behind him. He whirled, knowing that Bray had grabbed his chance, knowing that even in the shadow he made a faint silhouette from where Bray was now.

He felt the solid, tearing smash of the bullet. He went back hard against the tree. His whole left side seemed to have been blown in. With detached curiosity he wondered where his legs had gone.

He didn't seem to be using them any more.

His right hand, for no particular reason, pumped three shots point blank at the flash of Bray's gun. Even then, he shot low. Smith sat cross-legged against the base of the tree, like a kid tired of playing marbles. Everything moved very slowly. Bray, falling with his head and shoulders in the light, and getting up again, and going with a peculiar rigid stiffness toward the gate of the studio.

The sirens were howling just beyond the end of the street. Harry lay crumpled in upon himself, moaning softly with every breath that went through his clenched teeth. His eyes held a terrible unbelief.

Smith picked up his gun. It was very heavy. He braced it across his left wrist. He called, "Bray. Stop."

Bray went on. Smith fired at his legs. Bray staggered, but he didn't fall. He pushed at the little door in the big closed gate.

"Open up," he said hoarsely. "Open up, damn you!"

He hammered on the door, and the gatekeeper rose briefly from behind the low wall of his office. Briefly, but long enough.

The slam of the shot was lost in the dying moans of sirens and screeching tires.

Bray slid slowly down the door and lay on his face. Smith got up. He went down the street toward Bray.

"He's killed him," he whispered. "He's killed Bray."

He'd dropped his gun somewhere. There were voices and footsteps behind him, and a glare of light. He fell on his knees beside Bray and rolled him over and took his head in his lap.

Bray coughed blood. He looked up at Smith with dazed dark eyes and whispered, "I guess this is your night, pal."

"Yeah," said Smith. His face didn't look human. The gaunt bones stood out and his green eyes burned and his mouth was cruel with pain.

C. J. Brandenburger came through the little door behind him.

Smith looked up. He smiled. Beyond a hazy blur of light he was aware of Palfrey's lean poker face and a wall of dark uniforms stuck with glittering bits of metal, but Brandenburger's hard brown face and falcon eye filled all the foreground.

He said softly, "It was a good gamble, Brandy. You just didn't have the luck."

Bray's big head rolled toward Brandenburger. His lips drew back. He choked on his own blood and coughed it out and said with bitter, deadly quiet, "You crossed me. You said the gateman was okay. But he called the cops, and the gate was locked, and he shot me. You dirty rat."

Brandenburger made the start of a move forward. Two burly harness bulls caught him.

Palfrey said, "Somebody go over and get that other guy talking before he croaks."

Smith wiped Bray's mouth with his handkerchief. He said, "It was a nice plan. Bray and Harry to get me, the cops to get Bray and Harry. Three dangerous mouths stoppered forever. You going to talk, Bray?"

"You bet. You bet I'll talk."

The ambulance doctor shrugged and said, "You better make it fast."

Smith held his head and kept the blood from choking him. He told everything he knew, about Smith and Kreisher and the paper signed in Brandenburger's office, and the beating of Smith.

"Brandy wanted Smith's mouth shut. The paper was good, but when a guy's smart and can yell his head off, there's always a chance. We arranged it, over Brandy's private phone, while he was still in Smith's office. This gunny I know was to stake out on Smith's place and plug him. That was all he knew. Harry faked the crash. We wanted Smith to think he was loose by accident. We didn't think. . . . "

"You didn't think I'd catch on?" Smith laughed. It was an ugly laugh. "Well, I took your gunny for a ride. You hadn't figured on the cops quite so soon, had you? Palfrey almost did the job for you. But everybody missed by just a little, and then I set a trap myself."

He looked up at Brandenburger with vicious green eyes.

"You just about had to bite on that phone call of mine, didn't you? You were in a spot. You knew Bray's gunsel couldn't talk because he didn't know anything, but you knew that Bray and Harry could, and you knew I could. And you didn't know just how crazy or how lucky I might be.

"You had the paper, and you had Kreisher. Here was a perfect chance. Let Bray and Harry do the job, making sure that the cops got uhere in time to shoot it out with them. That would have cinched it for you. It would have looked like the personal quarrel that everybody knew we had, your skirts cleared, and only some corpses to object to being framed for a murder.

"It would have worked just that way, too. Only I sneaked into the trap through the side door."

Smith turned to Palfrey. "You see why I had to get away from you, Horse? I had to clear myself, and these guys were my only hope. It all depended on putting them out of action before the cops came up. Out of action, but still able to talk." Palfrey said, "What about the Janis murder?"

"That I don't know nothin' about. Brandy acted like he thought Smith really done it. He sent Harry and me to find out."

Bray's dark eyes looked up at Smith. "You oughta be dead, too."

"Not on the twentieth of June."

"You coulda had us arrested and questioned."

"Not with that paper Brandy had. Not with Brandy's dough on your side. He's still got plenty for necessities like that. Not with guys plugging me in the back from behind every palm tree. Not with the cops already sure that I slit Stella's throat."

He touched his face. "Besides," he added softly, "I owed you something, Bray. You and Harry."

Bray coughed. He was fighting for breath now, his lungs filling with blood. The gateman's bullet must have gone clean through.

He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. "Harry said you wasn't tough," he whispered. "Harry was a fool."

His head rolled, and it was a minute before Smith realized Bray was dead.

He got up. The ambulance doctor tried to help him. Smith pushed him away. He held his left arm tight to his side, trying to stop the pain. It didn't stop, but he laughed anyway. Hard-edged laughter out of bruised lips.

"This is it, Brandy. This is where you get what's coming to you. I'm paying off for Stella, and I'm paying off for Kreisher. Kreisher's my client, if he is a weakling. Did you think I'd forget that? Did you think you could get away with kicking people's teeth in forever?"

He moved a little closer. Brandenburger stood between the two cops, not moving, not speaking, with a face like that of a tortured fiend.

"I'm paying off for me, too, Brandy," said Smith softly. "For me, and Rachel."

He turned to Palfrey. He was suddenly very tired, and the lights seemed to be going out. He said, as though it was of no real interest, "This doesn't solve Stella's murder, yet. But Brandy's an A-1 suspect. I don't know what Stella had to sell. Maybe just her life story to newspapers. But she was blackmailing Brandy."

He sat down crosslegged in the street. "Those cards were an elaborate gag to cover up. We all got them. We could all have sent them." He frowned. "Wonder if Garrison got one?"

Palfrey raised his eyebrows. "I haven't had time for Garrison yet. But why should he? He didn't know Stella."

"He knew Rachel, and Rachel got one."

"Rachel!" Brandenburger's voice had the quality of a blow. Smith nodded. His head seemed to weigh a couple of hundred pounds. "Yeah. She was scared of you, Brandy. You and your sweet disposition. She came to me for help." He laughed. "Does that make you happy, tough guy? That was another reason I had to get you and your playmates tonight, quick, just in case. Rachel was slated to die before midnight. Were you on the level about that, Brandy?"

Brandenburger strained forward between his guards. His face was murderous. He said harshly, "All right, Smith. You've got me for assault, conspiracy, and attempted murder. But not for Stella Janis! I didn't kill her, and I didn't send those cards. And if somebody threatened Rachel. . . . "

His voice went up with a peculiar metallic crack like a breaking blade. "If somebody threatened Rachel she may already be dead. Damn you, Smith, she may already be dead!"

Smith looked at him with strange, dazed eyes. "You really love her, don't you? She's okay. I left her at a theater."

Palfrey got the name, and somebody went away.

The ambulance doctor was pawing at Smith. There was ammonia biting into his nose. It helped.

"I swear," said Brandenburger out of a clenched and bitter mouth, "that I didn't kill Stella Janis. Smith. . . . "

Palfrey said, "Without the conspiracy angle, he wouldn't have much motive, would he?"

Brandenburger's dark eye burned. "He'd still have revenge."

Smith snorted. "I should get the gas chamber for that! My revenge was in the Kreisher case. I was just about ready to break it. All I needed was Bray. Only you got him first."

He cursed the doctor, who was doing things with swabs. "That conspiracy rap won't stick now, Horse. Kreisher will back me up. You have my file of the case, and Bray's testimony. And my record's clean as far as anything like that goes."

Palfrey nodded. He pushed his hat back, as he looked at Brandy. He said, "I wouldn't want to lay odds on your chances right now. Take him downtown, boys."

They went off, and Palfrey squatted beside Smith. "How goes it?"

The ambulance doctor grunted. "Nothing worse than a gouge and a cracked rib. He's lucky it wasn't square in the guts, like the others."

The doctor tightened the bandage around his ribs. Somebody handed Palfrey a notebook. He skimmed through it and nodded.

"Harry's story checks with Bray's. You don't look like such a hot suspect any more, Smith. There's just one thing. . . . "

Smith looked up. He was beginning to feel remotely human again. Palfrey took an envelope from his pocket and scowled at it.

The envelope was marked in red pencil and torn at one end. Smith stiffened sharply, as though the doctor's hands had hurt him.

From down at the end of the street Brandenburger's voice was raised in a sudden wild cry. Echoes drowned the words. Palfrey got up, his dark poker face drawn hard.

Feet pounded on the pavement. A harness bull ran toward them out of the glaring light. He said hoarsely, "Lieutenant–the Hardy dame. It just come over the radio. She ain't at the theater. She's home, and she's been poisoned!"

"Wait for Me in Hell!"

It was very quiet in Rachel Hardy's living room. Smith seemed to have been sitting on Rachel's davenport for a couple of hundred years. He hurt all over, and his eyes felt as though someone had been threading fishhooks through them. He wondered if he would ever be allowed to sleep again.

Brandenburger stood staring out the window. The room was thick with tobacco clouds from his pipe. He hadn't sat down once.

Palfrey was out in the kitchen questioning Matilda. Chase, the plainclothesman, sat in a strategic position, watching. There was a huge bruise on his chin. He looked at Smith from time to time, without love. There were also a couple of harness bulls.

Rachel's bedroom door was closed. Smith could hear people talking and moving around. The doctor had come out just once, long enough to say that Rachel was going to live.

Palfrey came back just in time to let Tim Garrison in the front door. Garrison was tall and blond and professionally rugged. He reminded Smith of a young lion–the handsome type that poses for billboards. Just now he looked as though he suspected a pitfall with sharp stakes at the bottom. He said jerkily, "What is it? What do you want of me?" He looked around the room. "Something's happened to Rachel. For God's sake, what is it?"

He was suddenly gray under his heavy tan. Palfrey pulled out an ace of spades.

"Ever see one of these before?"

Garrison hardly looked at it. "No." He turned ugly blue eyes on Brandenburger. "What's happened to Rachel?"

Palfrey told him. Brandenburger had swung around. His face was dangerous.

Smith grinned and said softly, "You can speak freely, Garrison. Brandy isn't your boss any more. He won't be anybody's boss for a long, long time. He's going to prison."

Garrison stared. Then he said harshly, "You dirty, murdering rat. You finally did it, didn't you?"

He moved, fast. Brandenburger blocked his swing and hit Garrison in the mouth. He went down. He lay there a minute, breathing heavily. Then he got out a handkerchief and held it over his mouth and got up. His eyes had hate in them.

"I'm glad you're going to prison," he said thickly. "I hope they hang you. You've ridden me enough. Me and Rachel. You think you're God, or somebody, kicking people around. I hope they hang you!"

"We're trying hard," said Palfrey pleasantly. His face was not pleasant. Smith looked at it and shivered, deep inside. He was thinking about Matilda. Nobody had said anything yet, but the whiskey decanter was gone from the table.

Garrison laughed. It was a nasty, bitter laugh. "You can think about this on your way up the river, Brandy. I've been taking your place with Rachel. She got too much of you, just like I did. We got the cursing, so we thought we might as well have the fun, too."

He moved closer, but kept out of reach. "You with your jealousy and your ugly tongue! You drove us together. And we were both young, Brandy! You should have seen the kisses we had, away from the camera!"

Brandenburger stepped forward. Chase got up and Palfrey said, "Take it easy." Brandenburger turned away, his fists clenched white.

Smith whistled softly through his teeth. "Well, well! So Brandy did have a motive for Rachel, too. Just kicking her out wasn't going to be enough this time. Pride outweighing two million bucks–or were you kidding about being broke?"

Palfrey said, very slowly and with no shade of emotion in his voice, "He wasn't kidding about that. And he didn't poison Rachel Hardy, because he couldn't have. He hasn't left the studio all day."

Smith's face tightened, so that it looked like the mask of a mean and hungry fox. He said quietly, "Do you suppose you could loosen up and tell us how it happened?"

"For some reason Rachel left the theater and came home. Matilda let her in. She had a drink from the whiskey decanter and started to undress. She began to feel sick. She took a look at the decanter, saw a powdery deposit at the bottom, and screamed for a doctor. Matilda fed her soapy water, eggs, mustard, and salad oil until he got here. Probably saved Rachel's life.

"I haven't had the analysis report yet, but I'll bet it was ordinary lead arsenate, the kind you buy for thirty-five cents a pound at any garden supply store."

He stopped. It was very quiet. Quite suddenly the phone rang and everybody jumped, except Palfrey. He picked up the receiver.

"Yeah, speaking. Did, huh? Fine. Have somebody get out here with it right away. Nothing on the knife yet? Well, keep 'em looking."

He hung up, and said to nobody in particular, "The murder of Stella Janis and the attempted murder of Rachel Hardy are connected by the threatening cards. They alone received definite notice of death. It is therefore logical to assume that both crimes were committed by the same person. You agree with me, Smith?"

Smith nodded. "Go on."

"According to Matilda, Smith, you had a couple of drinks out of that whiskey decanter around five-thirty this evening. Right?"

"Yeah."

"You were then left alone in the room with it for five minutes. Is that right?"

Smith smiled, without mirth. "Plenty of time to spike the stuff with lead arsenate. Sure. Only I didn't."

Palfrey's face was uncommunicative as a mask of dark iron. "According to Matilda you were the last person to drink out of that decanter. And there has been no one in this apartment from the time you left to the time Rachel Hardy came back and was poisoned."

"Matilda could be lying. Matilda could have been bribed. Matilda could have sneaked out to see her boy friend for a few minutes."

Palfrey nodded. "It's possible. However, Brandenburger is still eliminated. You yourself drank from that decanter at five-thirty. The poison was put in then or later. Brandenburger has not left the studio all day."

Smith got up. He got up too fast, and pain hit him like a vicious giant wearing logger's boots. He managed to stay on his feet, and presently the mists cleared away enough to see through.

"Everybody's pretty damned anxious to pin this kill on me," he snarled. "How about Bray and Harry? How about Brandy having bought Matilda, too? How about Garrison, if it comes to that? I'll bet he hasn't an alibi for four this morning."

"Oh, but I have."

Brandenburger said, as though something might be choking him, "I knew nothing about this. If I was willing to kill Smith to keep suspicion away from myself so I could finish the picture, why would I murder my two stars?"

Palfrey looked at Smith. "Yes, why? And Bray and Harry would have confessed. Bray would have liked nothing better."

"There's no proof yet that Brandy's really broke," Smith said.

"You can have all the proof you want, in the morning. The picture was my last chance to recoup."

Palfrey said slowly, "We can eliminate Matilda, too. No motive. She never heard of either Stella Janis or February Smith before today."

"So we're back to the cards again."

Smith was pacing jerkily, holding his side. "The Misfortune Teller. He's sure got me sewed up tight." He stopped, glaring hot-eyed at Palfrey. "Only I didn't do it. And damn you, Horse, you're breaking your arm to pound nails in the frame!" "I don't like doing it, Smith," said Palfrey softly.

They sat down. Nobody spoke. Nobody looked at anybody. They waited. Waited for Rachel's door to open. Waited for somebody's nerves to break. Smith closed his eyes and listened to the blood beating in his bruised throat.

Somebody knocked on the front door.

It was a man from Headquarters, with a package for Palfrey. Palfrey opened it and shook out a man's waterproof trench coat, old and shabby and splattered horribly with dark brown stains.

"We found this," said Palfrey evenly, "wadded up in a vacant lot. The blood checks with Stella's. The murderer wore this to protect his clothing." He turned to Brandenburger. "Try it on."

Brandenburger looked sick, but he put it on, as far as it would go. His broad thick shoulders stopped it.

"Now you, Garrison. Just for the record."

Garrison was a little bigger than Brandenburger.

"Okay," said Smith bitterly. He knew before he put it on that it was going to fit. It was a little short in the sleeves, but that was all.

"The gloves," said Palfrey, "will probably turn up later, along with the knife. Well?"

Smith looked at him. He let the bloody coat slip to the floor. There was cold sweat on his face, and Palfrey seemed to be a long way off. It was dark, and there was a wind howling in his ears, and the floor was sickeningly unsteady.

The doctor put his head out Rachel's door.

"All right," he said. "You can question her now. Not too much, but she'll be okay. She didn't get much of the stuff, and it didn't stay in her long enough to do any real damage."

Smith went into Rachel's bedroom. He was aware of the others as shadows in a dark mist. Rachel's face swam out of it, a queer white moon framed in jet and set with huge black jewels.

He said, "Why did you leave the theater, Rache?"

Her voice came thinly from a great distance. "I was frightened. It was dark, and I thought a man was following me. I didn't know what was happening, and I wanted to be home, even if it wasn't safe. Oh, Smitty, you're hurt!"

"Yeah," he said. "I could have saved myself the trouble."

He stood silent while Palfrey got Rachel's story. It checked with Matilda's. Then for the first time Rachel seemed to see Brandenburger, standing like a brooding Satan in the doorway, and Garrison beside her bed.

She couldn't go any whiter than she was, but her eyes dilated. Smith heard the breath catch between her teeth. He laughed.

"Never mind, baby. Brandy knows all about it, and it doesn't matter. Brandy played rough once too often, and he's through, for a long time. But don't worry, Rache. You can find another producer. Your skirts are clean, as long as you and Garrison keep your mouths shut."

He was standing by a small white writing desk, his left arm tight to his side, his right hand riffling papers with idle nervousness. Something in his voice made everybody look at him suddenly.

He stepped forward a little, looking at Rachel. His hungry, sharp-boned face was white under the marks of Bray's big fists, cruel and narrow-eyed and twisted with a strange laughter.

"I killed Stella Janis, Rache. I sent the cards. And you came to me for help. You paid me for my help!"

Rachel raised herself from the pillow. Her eyes widened until the whites showed clear around the Hack irises. Her mouth opened and the cords of her throat worked, but there was no sound.

Then she whimpered once and fell back heavily, in a dead faint.

Smith sat down in a slipper chair. His heart was pounding in shattering jerks. The doctor and a couple of nurses bent over Rachel. Palfrey turned toward him with a dead and bitter face.

Brandenburger laughed once from the doorway. And Tim Garrison came away from the bed. He was crying, and his fists were clenched.

Palfrey stepped in front of him. Garrison knocked him kicking and bore down on Smith. He moved with deceptive speed. Before Chase and the uniformed cop in the doorway could do more than yell, Garrison had his left fist hooked in Smith's shirt and his right drawn back and already traveling in.

He sobbed, "You hurt her. You dirty, murdering rat!"

Smith jerked his head. Garrison's fist grazed his ear and jarred into the cushioned chair back. Smith kicked him on the knee cap. Garrison snarled and whimpered, trying to get his balance. Smith brought his right fist up off his lap, twisting his shoulder under it and grunting a little. His knuckles made a loud, sharp noise against Garrison's jaw.

Garrison fell backward. The breath went out of him with a coughing rush.

He rolled over and lay still.

Palfrey said quietly, "Chase, the cuffs."

Smith got up. He was breathing heavily and his green eyes were bright as a snake's. Rachel was gasping herself back to consciousness on the bed.

Smith said, "Give me five minutes, Horse. Just five clear minutes."

Rachel's voice came harsh and ragged. "No!" She rolled her black head and sobbed. "He tried to kill me. Take him out!"

Palfrey's dark eyes narrowed. "What's the game, Smith? You admit you're guilty."

"Yeah." Smith moved past him. Rachel shrank away, but his green eyes followed her. "Only we know I was lying, don't we, Rache?"

"How could I?" she whispered, and flinched away from him.

The harness bull and Chase both had their guns out, and Palfrey was taut as a whippet at Smith's elbow. Smith grinned and put his hand caressingly on Rachel's thick black hair.

"Because you're guilty, baby," he said softly. "Guilty as hell." She stared at him with black, wild eyes. Somebody moved behind Smith, and he saw Palfrey put up a quick, warning hand. Smith drew back from Rachel and laughed.

"The joke of it is, Rache, you didn't have to do any of it, if you'd only known." He turned to Palfrey. "There were no fingerprints on Stella's ace of spades, were there?"

"No."

"You shouldn't have lied to me at the time, Horse. You just threw me off for nothing when you said Stella's prints were on the card, and I wouldn't have been caught in a corny trap like that anyhow, if I had been the murderer. There weren't any prints on Stella's card because Stella never touched it. The murderer never intended that Stella should be warned. It just had to look that way in order to make the rest of the card game stand up.

"I thought of that when you showed me the envelope. It was torn at one end, and I happened to know that Stella always tore hers across the top. But I didn't like to say anything, because it happens that I tear mine at the end, too. So I looked around. Kreisher and Brandy both opened theirs at the top, but Rachel–take a look at her desk, Horse."

He went on casually, "Too bad about those fingerprints, Rache. You were going to make them after Stella was dead, only you forgot about the blood. There was an awful lot of blood, wasn't there?"

Rachel closed her eyes. Her head made a queer little jerk. The doctor started to speak, and Palfrey stopped him.

Smith went on, "So the murderer sent the other cards around to everybody, including herself. Implication and alibi, all in one. The murderer came to me with her threat."

"Don't call me that." Rachel's voice was hardly human.

Smith swung around, hot-eyed. "Well, aren't you? Didn't you feed me a line about Brandy, hoping I'd still be crazy enough about you to do anything you asked? You had this all planned. You had to have a fall guy. You knew that anything that happened to Stella would make it hot for Brandy, so you had to make sure that he was cleared. And because you knew I hated Brandy on a couple of counts, and you knew I knew Stella, I was the logical patsy.

"That's why you left the theater and came home and drank poison you'd fixed for yourself, knowing damn well you were going to get rid of it in time. That's why that prowl car almost caught me before I could get to the studio. You phoned an anonymous tip to the cops."

Chase said, "That's right. Somebody did."

Smith bent over Rachel. "You were scared, then. Something was going on that you didn't know about, but you thought it involved Brandy. You wanted to be sure he was clear, and you didn't dare wait until I came back to find out what it was."

The Misfortune Teller

He drew back, grinning. "Pity you didn't, Rache. Brandy was dished anyhow. You could have let him take the rap and saved yourself a headache."

Rachel's lips were stiff and white. The muscles of her face had drawn and ridged into a terrible mask. She whispered hoarsely, "You're crazy, Smith. You hate me because I walked out on you. You admitted you killed Stella." Her voice rose in a cat-scream. "Get him out of here! Don't let him talk to me!"

"Sure I admitted it," said Smith lazily. "I crossed you up, didn't I? You expected me to be dragged off screaming my innocence at the top of my lungs. Well, go ahead, baby. Pin it on me if you can."

He laughed, watching her with bright, cruel eyes. "You still don't get the joke, Rache. Brandy's broke. He needed you. You just paid Stella two grand for nothing."

"I didn't! I didn't pay her two thousand dollars! I didn't have two thousand dollars!" And then, slowly, "Brandy's–broke?"

"Flat. You were just figuring from the wrong angles, Rache. You needn't have been afraid of following in Stella's footsteps, nor having Garrison follow in Lars Thorsson's. He had to make this picture, if you cheated on him every night in the week."

Rachel got up on her knees. She crouched like an animal, her hands hooked and clawing in the bedclothes. Her black eyes burned.

"Why didn't you tell me that?" she whispered to Brandenburger. "Damn you! Why didn't you tell me?"

Brandenburger laughed. "How did I know you were going to commit a murder?"

"Motive," said Smith softly. "Rache, honey, we seem to have slipped right by the motive. Why did you have to pay Stella the two thousand dollars?"

"I didn't. I didn't have to." Her voice was harsh and ragged. "She told me she got two thousand dollars from you. She banked it."

"She lied! I only. . . . "

"Gave her one thousand. Tough break, running into her like that when you were out with Garry. She hated your guts, didn't she, Rache? You were going to get what should have been hers, and you were two-timing, too. She wasn't going to let you get away with it, but she was going to make a profit first. She got a grand out of Brandy, too. She had her hooks into you good, didn't she? And you saw your career going down the chutes, right after Stella's.

"You had a good idea, though. It came pretty close to working. It would have been practically foolproof, only you didn't know about Kreisher and the Bray angle. Brandy was through as a producer anyway."

He leaned over the bed. "Why don't you laugh, Rache? It's a good joke. Either way you looked at it, you didn't have to do what you did. And now you've got a lot of blood on you, and it'll never come off. Even that raincoat you wore–you bought me one like it in New York, remember?–even that won't keep the feel of it off your skin. Did she cry out, Rache, when you put the knife in?"

Rachel's eyes were looking somewhere far off. "No," she whispered. "She was quite still. And the blood came up like a fountain."

She shivered. Her lips curled back and her black eyes came back to Smith.

"I should have known. I learned all the angles from you–fingerprints and blood stains and alibis and all the rest. I thought I had you figured for a chump, but I should have known."

Her head dropped. "And I didn't have to do it." She laughed. "I didn't have to kill her at all." She laughed again, and kept on laughing, her head thrown back and her black hair tumbled on her neck.

Smith slapped her, not very hard, across the face. She stopped laughing. Her face crumpled suddenly, softening like the face of a tired child, and her black eyes were full of tears. She put her hands on Smith's shoulders.

"You're a devil," she whispered. "You're hard and cruel. I should have stuck with you, Smitty. I know that now. I'm sorry."

"Yeah." Smith put his hands in her black hair and tilted her head back. He couldn't see her clearly, but he could feel the beat of the pulses in her white throat.

He kissed her.

"Wait for me in hell, Rache," he whispered. "Maybe that's where we both belong."

He released her suddenly, and got up and went toward the door. He didn't see it. He didn't hear anything, not even Palfrey's voice telling the cop to let him go.

"Epiphany"

I think that maybe all writers, when and if they look back over their lives and work, come across the "epiphany" — that moment of clear, cold understanding when they know for better or worse that this must be what they do with their lives. For me, Leigh Brackett is inextricably linked to my moment, my

epiphany.

It happened to me, for better or worse, when I was in my second year of college. The son of a builder who was the son of a builder, I was following a curriculum that would lead me to a degree in — what else? — building construction. I wasn't sure that this was what my destiny was to be, but everybody needs a direction at that age — or so they told you at the registrar's office.

I was taking classes like Building Construction Science 101 (yes, it is a science in Florida) and Introduction to Concrete. (No lie — featuring the seven different kinds of concrete.) And so it was no wonder that I carried a failing average and sought almost nightly respite from this in the bars, bookstores, and movie theaters of Gainesville, Florida.

This is where Leigh Brackett comes in. One night the dollar movie at the Student Union was the Robert Altman film "The Long Goodbye", based on the Raymond Chandler novel and written for the screen by Leigh Brackett. Elliot Gould played the lead, the private eye named Philip Marlowe.

I went by myself. The films at the union were usually introduced by somebody — either teacher or student — from the school's fledgling film school which was housed within the English Department. That evening's introduction came just before the lights went down. I don't remember whether it was a teacher or student but I remember that the man who introduced the film, which was a year or so old at the time, said the film had raised the ire and protest of the Chandler/Marlowe purists because the Marlowe character in the film did not follow or have the same moral fiber of the Marlowe in the books, because Brackett/Altman/Gould had messed with the man. They even gave him a pet cat, and the real Marlowe (fictionally speaking) wasn't a cat man.

Well, while I had grown up reading crime novels and crime news rather voraciously, the work of Raymond Chandler had somehow escaped me until that point. I had never heard of Philip Marlowe, let alone his moral fiber or his lack of a cat. So I watched the film and I fell in love with it for what it was; a movie, an entertainment. Gould's laconic though cynical Marlowe was fine by me and the story by Chandler/Brackett kept me in the seat the whole time. Shot in contemporary L.A., the city was portrayed as this strange, attractive mix of corruption and naiveté under a blanket of smog.

The next night I shirked my concrete homework and came back and watched it again. The next day I went to the bookstore and got the book — it was the movie tie-in with Elliot Gould.

I read "The Long Goodbye" and that's when the epiphany hit me. I knew. I wanted to write.

I wanted to write stories and characters like this. Within a week I had read every novel Chandler had published. Then I read "The Long Goodbye" once more. Sure the book was different from the movie, but they were just two different ways of telling the same story of friendship and trust betrayed, of hope shrouded in cynicism.

My building construction days were over after that — thanks to an epiphany I can trace to Leigh Brackett's screenplay. I dropped concrete and switched to a major comprised of journalism and creative writing. And I kept rereading the Chandler books all the time.

Many years later I moved to Los Angeles to practice journalism and to hopefully start writing fiction. It had been almost fifteen years since I had seen the film "The Long Goodbye" and it wasn't available yet on videocassette. One day I was looking through the listing of revival films in the paper and there it was — double-billed with "Chinatown" at a downtown theater. I went by myself and watched them both. Brackett's film still had its hold on me. I remember that night very clearly — watching two inspiring films in the dark, both about the city in which I now lived. It wasn't long after that that I started writing a novel that would be my first published work.

Now the film is available on videocassette and I own it. I take it out from time to time and watch all or just part of it. I think I love Brackett's Marlowe as much as I do Chandler's. They are different characters, different men, but beneath the layers of cynicism and wisecracks they both have a heart made of hope. They both have inspired me in different ways. Without one I would not have had the other. I would have had no epiphany.

Michael Connelly

Los Angeles, October 15, 1998

A Leigh Brackett

Bibliography

Compiled by Robin Smiley

from Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine

1. No Good From a Corpse (New York: Coward-McCann, 1944).

2. Stranger at Home (as George Sanders) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946).

3. a. Shadow over Mars (Manchester: World Distributors, 1951). b. US edition The Nemesis from Terra (New York: Ace Books, 1961).

4. a. The Starmen (New York: Gnome Press, 1952).

b. First British edition (London: Museum Press, 1954).

5. a. The Sword of Rhiannon (New York: Ace Books, 1953). b. First British edition (London: Boardman, 1955).

6. The BigJump (New York: Ace Books, 1955).

7. The Long Tomorrow (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955).

8. a. An Eye for an Eye (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957). b. First British edition (London: Boardman, 1958).

9. a. The Tiger Among Us (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957). b. First British edition (London: Boardman, 1958).

10. Rio Bravo (New York: Bantam Books, 1959).

11. Alpha Centauri-Or Die! (New York: Ace Books, 1963).

12. Follow the Free Wind (Garden City: Doubleday, 1963). An adaption by Laurence Swinburne for young readers was published in wrappers in 1970 by McGraw-Hill (Reading Shelf II series).

13. People of the Talisman; The Secret of Sinharat (New York: Ace Books, 1964).

14. The Coming of the Terrans (New York: Ace Books, 1967).

15. Silent Partner (New York: Putnam, 1969).

16. The Hailing and Other Stories (New York: Ace Books, 1973).

17. The Ginger Star: Reintroducing Eric John Stark, 1 (New York: Ballantine, 1974).

18. The Hounds of Skaith: Further Adventures of EricJohn Stark, 2 (New York: Ballantine, 1974).

19. The Reivers of Skaith: The Further Adventures of Eric John Stark, 3 (New York: Ballantine, 1976)

20. The Book of Skaith (Garden City: Nelson Doubleday, 1976).

21. The Best of Leigh Brackett (Garden City: Nelson Doubleday, 1977).

As Editor

1. The Best of Planet Stories #1 (New York: Ballantine, 1975). Contains introduction by Brackett and "Lorelei of the Red Mist" by Brackett and Ray Bradbury.

2. The Best of Edmond Hamilton (Garden City: Nelson Doubleday, 1977). Introduction by Brackett.

Screen Credits (Film)

1. The Vampire's Ghost (Republic, 1944) (with John K. Butler).

2. The Big Sleep (Warner Brothers, 1946) (with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman).

3. Crime Doctor's Man Hunt (Columbia 1946).

4. Rio Bravo (Warner Brothers, 1959) (with Jules Furthman).

5. Gold of the Seven Saints (Warner Brothers, 1961) (with Leonard Freeman).

6. Hatari! (Paramount, 1962).

7. El Dorado (Paramount, 1967).

8. Rio Lobo (National General, 1970) (with Burton Wohl).

9. The Long Goodbye (United Artists, 1973).

10. The Empire Strikes Back (20th Century Fox, 1980) (with Lawrence Kasdan).

(Television [partial])

11. "Death of a Cop" (Alfred Hitchcock Hour, May 24, 1963). Teleplay by Brackett, story by Douglas Warner.

12. "Terror at Northfield" (Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Nov. 11, 1963). Teleplay by Brackett, story by Ellery Queen.

Ancillary Interest

13. Man's Favorite Sport (Universal-International, 1964) (uncredited script polish).

14. 13 West Street (Ladd Productions/Columbia, 1959). Almost no material of Brackett's was used from The Tiger Among Us, although the movie was supposedly based on her novel.

15. Red River (1948). (Uncredited script polish with Jules Furthman)