The Misfortune Teller

1

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.

2

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.

3

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."

IV

"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.

V

"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!"

VI

"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.