HOLOCAUST HOUSE

and other stories

Norbert Davis

2020

Contents

1: Holocaust House

2: Red Goose

3: Something for the Sweeper

4: The Rag-Tag Girl

5: Dead Man’s Chest

6: You'll Die Laughing

7: The Price of a Dime

____________

1

Holocaust House

(A Doan and Carstairs Adventure)

Argosy Nov 16, 23, 1940

1: Where Was I?

WHEN DOAN WOKE up he was lying flat on his back on top of a bed with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He lay quite still for some time, listening cautiously, and then he tipped the hat up and looked around. He found to his relief that he was in his own apartment and that it was his bed he was lying on.

He sat up. He was fully dressed except for the fact that he only wore one shoe. The other one was placed carefully and precisely in the center of his bureau top.

"It would seem," said Doan to himself, "that I was inebriated last evening when I came home."

He felt no ill effects at all. He never did. It was an amazing thing and contrary to the laws of science and nature, but he had never had a hangover in his life.

He was a short, round man with a round pinkly innocent face and impossibly bland blue eyes. He had corn-yellow hair and dimples in his cheeks. At first glance— and at the second and third for that matter— he looked like the epitome of all the suckers that had ever come down the pike. He looked so harmless it was pitiful. It wasn't until you considered him for some time that you began to see that there was something wrong with the picture. He looked just a little too innocent.

"Carstairs!" he called now. "Oh, Carstairs!"

Carstairs came in through the bedroom door and stared at him with a sort of wearily resigned disgust. Carstairs was a dog— a fawn-colored Great Dane as big as a yearling calf.

"Carstairs," said Doan. "I apologize for my regrettable condition last evening."

Carstairs' expression didn't change in the slightest. Carstairs was a champion, and he had a long and imposing list of very high-class ancestors. He was fond of Doan in a well-bred way, but he had never been able to reconcile himself to having such a low person for a master. Whenever they went out for a stroll together, Carstairs always walked either far behind or ahead, so no one would suspect his relationship with Doan.

He grunted now and turned and lumbered out of the bedroom in silent dignity. His disapproval didn't bother Doan any. He was used to it. He got up off the bed and began to go through the pockets of his suit.

He found, as he knew he would, that he had no change at all and that his wallet was empty. He found also in his coat pocket one thing that he had never seen before to his knowledge. It was a metal case— about the length and width of a large cigarette case, but much thicker. It looked like a cigar case, but Doan didn't smoke. It was apparently made out of stainless steel.

Doan turned it over thoughtfully in his hands, squinting at it in puzzled wonder. He had no slightest idea where it could have come from. It had a little button catch at one side, and he put his thumb over that, meaning to open the case, but he didn't.

He stood there looking down at the case while a cold little chill traveled up his spine and raised pin-point prickles at the back of his neck. The metal case seemed to grow colder and heavier in his hand. It caught the light and reflected it in bright and dangerous glitters.

"Well," said Doan in a whisper.

Doan trusted his instinct just as thoroughly and completely as most people trust their eyesight. His instinct was telling him that the metal case was about the most deadly thing he had ever had in his hands.

He put the case carefully and gently down in the middle of his bed and stepped back to look at it again. It was more than instinct that was warning him now. It was jumbled, hazy memory somewhere. He knew the case was dangerous without knowing how he knew.

The telephone rang in the front room, and Doan went in to answer it. Carstairs was sitting in front of the outside door waiting patiently.

"In a minute," Doan told him, picking up the telephone. He got no chance to say anything more. As soon as he unhooked the receiver a voice started bellowing at him.

"Doan! Listen to me now, you drunken bum! Don't hang up until I get through talking, do you hear? This is J. S. Toggery, and in case you're too dizzy to remember, I'm your employer! Doan, you tramp! Are you listening to me?"

Doan instantly assumed a high, squeaky Oriental voice. "Mr.

Doan not here, please. Mr. Doan go far, far away— maybe Timbuktu, maybe Siam."

"Doan, you rat! I know it's you talking! You haven't got any servants! Now you listen to me! I've got to see you right away. Doan!"

"Mr. Doan not here," said Doan. "So sorry, please."

He hung up the receiver and put the telephone back on its stand. It began to ring again instantly, but he paid no further attention to it. Whistling cheerfully, he went back into the bedroom.

He washed up, found a clean shirt and another tie and put them on. The telephone kept on ringing with a sort of apoplectic indignation. Doan tried unsuccessfully to shake the wrinkles out of his coat, gave up and put it on the way it was. He rummaged around under the socks in the top drawer of his bureau until he located his .38 Police Positive revolver. He shoved it into his waistband and buttoned his coat and vest to hide it.

Going over to the bed, he picked up the metal case and put it gently in his coat pocket and then went into the front room again.

"Okay," he said to Carstairs. "I'm ready to go now."

It was a sodden, uncomfortable morning with the clouds massed in darkly somber and menacing rolls in a sky that was a threatening gray from horizon to horizon. The wind came in strong and steady, carrying the fresh tang of winter from the mountains to the west, where the snow caps were beginning to push inquiring white fingers down toward the valleys.

Doan stood on the wide steps of? his apartment house breathing deeply, staring down the long sweep of the hill ahead of him. Carstairs rooted through the bushes at the side of the building.

A taxi made a sudden spot of color coming over the crest of the hill and skimming fleetly down the slope past Doan. He put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled. The taxi's brakes groaned, and then it made a half-circle in the middle of the block and came chugging laboriously back up toward him and stopped at the curb.

Doan grabbed Carstairs by his studded collar and hauled him out of the bushes.

"Hey!" the driver said, startled. "What's that?"

"A dog," said Doan.

"You ain't thinkin' of riding that in this cab, are you?"

"Certainly I am." Doan opened the rear door and shoved Carstairs expertly into the back compartment and climbed in after him. Carstairs sat down on the floor, and his pricked ears just brushed the cab's roof.

The driver turned around to stare with a sort of helpless indignation. "Now listen here. I ain't got no license to haul livestock through the streets. What you want is a freight car. Get that thing out of my cab."

"You do it," Doan advised.

Carstairs leered complacently at the driver, revealing glistening fangs about two inches long.

The driver shuddered. "All right. All right. I sure have plenty of luck— all bad. Where do you want to go?"

"Out to the end of Third Avenue."

The driver turned around again. "Listen, there ain't anything at the end of Third Avenue but three abandoned warehouses and a lot of gullies and weeds."

"Third Avenue," said Doan. "The very end."

2: Exploding Cigar

THE THREE WAREHOUSES— like three blocked points of a triangle— looked as desolate as the buildings in a war-deserted city. They stared with blank, empty eyes that were broken windows out over the green, waist-high weeds that surrounded them. The city had been designed to grow in this direction, but it hadn't. It had withdrawn instead, leaving only these three battered and deserted reminders of things that might have been.

"Well," said the taxi driver, "are you satisfied now?"

Doan got out and slammed the door before Carstairs could follow him. "Just wait here," he instructed.

"Hey!" the driver said, alarmed. "You mean you're gonna leave this— this giraffe..."

"I'll only be gone a minute."

"Oh no, you don't! You come back and take this— "

Doan walked away. He went around in back of the nearest warehouse and slid down a steep gravel-scarred bank into a gully that snaked its way down toward the flat from the higher ground to the north. He followed along the bottom of the gully, around one sharply angling turn and then another.

The gully ended here in a deep gash against the side of a weed-matted hill. Doan stopped, looking around and listening. There was no one in sight, and he could hear nothing.

He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted: "Hey! Hey! Is there anyone around here?"

His voice made a flat flutter of echoes, and there was no answer. After waiting a moment he nodded to himself in a satisfied way and took the metal case out of his pocket. Going to the very end of the gully, he placed the case carefully in the center of a deep gash.

Turning around then, he stepped off about fifty paces back down the gully. He drew the Police Positive from his waistband, cocked it and dropped down on one knee. He aimed carefully, using his left forearm for a rest.

The metal case made a bright, glistening spot over the sights, and Doan's forefinger took up the slack in the trigger carefully and expertly. The gun jumped a little against the palm of his hand, but he never heard the report.

It was lost completely in the round, hollow whoom of sound that seemed to travel like a solid ball down the gully and hit his eardrums with a ringing impact. Bits of dirt spattered around his feet, and where the case had been there was a deep round hole gouged in the hillside, with the earth showing yellow and raw around it.

"Well," said Doan. His voice sounded whispery thin in his own ears. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the perspiration that was coldly moist on his forehead. He still stared, fascinated, at the raw hole in the hillside where the case had rested.

After a moment he drew a deep, relieved breath. He put the Police Positive back in his waistband, turned around and walked back along the gully to the back of the warehouse. He climbed up the steep bank and plowed through the waist-high weeds to the street and the waiting taxi.

The driver stared with round, scared eyes. "Say, did— did you hear a— a noise a minute ago?"

"Noise?" said Doan, getting in the back of the cab and shoving Carstairs over to give himself room to sit down. "Noise? Oh, yes. A small one. It might have been an exploding cigar."

"Cigar," the driver echoed incredulously. "Cigar. Well, maybe I'm crazy. Where do you want to go now?"

"To a dining car on Turk Street called the Glasgow Limited. Know where it is?"

"I can find it," the driver said gloomily. "That'll be as far as you're ridin' with me, ain't it— I hope?"

The Glasgow Limited was battered and dilapidated, and it sagged forlornly in the middle. Even the tin stack-vent from its cooking range was tilted drunkenly forward. It was fitted in tightly slantwise on the very corner of a lot, and as if to emphasize its down-at-the-heels appearance an enormous, shining office building towered austere and dignified beside it, putting the Glasgow Limited always in the shadow of its imposing presence.

The taxi stopped at the curb in front of it. This was the city's financial district, and on Sunday it was deserted. A lone street car, clanging its way emptily along looked like a visitor from some other age. The meter on the taxi showed a dollar and fifty cents, and Doan asked the driver:

"Can you trip that meter up to show two dollars?"

"No," said the driver. "You think the company's crazy?"

"You've got some change-over slips, haven't you?"

"Say!" said the driver indignantly. "Are you accusing me of gypping— "

"No," said Doan. "But you aren't going to get a tip, so you might as well pull it off a charge slip. Have you got one that shows two dollars?"

The driver scowled at him for a moment. He tripped the meter and pocketed the slip. Then he took a pad of the same kind of slips from his vest pocket and thumbed through them. He handed Doan one that showed a charge of a dollar and ninety cents.

"Now blow your horn," Doan instructed. "Lots of times."

The driver tooted his horn repeatedly. After he had done it about ten times, the door of the Glasgow Limited opened and a man came out and glared at them.

"Come, come, MacTavish," said Doan. "Bail me out."

MacTavish came down the steps and across the sidewalk. He was a tall gaunt man with bony stooped shoulders. He was bald, and he had a long draggling red mustache and eyes that were a tired, blood-shot blue. He wore a white jacket that had sleeves too short for him and a stained white apron.

Doan handed him the meter charge slip. "There's my ransom, MacTavish. Pay the man and put it on my account."

MacTavish looked sourly at the slip. "I have no doubt that there's collusion and fraud hidden somewhere hereabouts. No doubt at all."

"Why, no," said Doan. "You can see the charge printed right on the slip. This driver is an honest and upright citizen, and he's been very considerate. I think you ought to give him a big tip."

"That I will not!" said MacTavish emphatically. "He'll get his fee and no more— not a penny!" He put a ragged dollar bill in the driver's hand and carefully counted out nine dimes on top of it. "There! And it's bare-faced robbery!"

He glared at the driver, but the driver looked blandly innocent. Doan got out and dragged Carstairs after him.

"And that ugly beastie!" said MacTavish. "I'll feed him no more, you hear? Account or no account, I'll not have him gobbling my good meat down his ugly gullet!"

Doan dragged Carstairs across the sidewalk and pushed him up the stairs and into the dining car. MacTavish came in after them, went behind the counter and slammed the flap down emphatically.

Doan sat down on a stool and said cheerfully: "Good morning, MacTavish, my friend. It's a fine bonny morning full of the smell of heather and mountain dew, isn't it? Fix up a pound of round for Carstairs, and be sure it's none of that watery gruel you feed your unsuspecting customers. Carstairs is particular, and he has a delicate stomach. I'll take ham and eggs and toast and coffee— a double order."

MacTavish leaned on the counter. "And what'll you pay for it with, may I ask?"

"Well, it's true that I find myself temporarily short on ready cash, but I have a fine Swiss watch— "

"No, you haven't," said MacTavish, "because I've got it in the cash register right now."

"Good," said Doan. "That watch is worth at least fifty— "

"You lie in your teeth," said MacTavish. "You paid five dollars for it in a pawn shop. I'll have no more to do with such a loafer and a no-good. I've no doubt that if you had your just deserts you'd be in prison this moment. I'll feed you this morning, but this is the last time. The very last time, you hear?"

"I'm desolated," said Doan. "Hurry up with the ham and eggs, will you, MacTavish? And don't forget Carstairs' ground round."

MacTavish went to the gas range, grumbling under his breath balefully, and meat made a pleasantly sizzling spatter. Carstairs put his head over the counter and drooled in eager anticipation.

"MacTavish," said Doan, raising his voice to speak over the sizzle of the meat, "am I correct in assuming I visited your establishment last night?"

"You are."

"Was I— ah— slightly intoxicated?"

"You were blind, stinking, pig-drunk."

"You have such a pleasant way of putting things," Doan observed. "I was alone, no doubt, bearing up bravely in solitary sadness?"

"You were not. You had one of your drunken, bawdy, criminal companions with you."

MacTavish set a platter of meat on the counter, and Doan put it on top of one of the stools so that Carstairs could get at it more handily. Carstairs gobbled politely, making little grunting sounds of appreciation.

Doan said casually: "This— ah— friend I had with me. Did you know him?"

"I never saw him before, and if my luck lasts I'll never see him again. I liked his looks even less than I do yours."

"You're in rare form this morning, MacTavish. Did you hear me mention my friend's name?"

"It was Smith," said MacTavish, coming up with a platter of ham and eggs and a cup of coffee.

"Smith," said Doan, chewing reflectively. "Well, it's a nice name. Don't happen to know where I picked him up, do you?"

"I know where you said you picked him up. You said he was a stray soul lost in the wilderness of this great metropolis and that you had rescued him. You said you'd found him in front of your apartment building wasting away in the last stages of starvation, so I knew you were blind drunk, because the man had a belly like a balloon."

"In front of my apartment," Doan repeated thoughtfully. "This is all news to me. Could you give me a short and colorful description of this gentleman by the name of Smith?"

"He was tall and pot-bellied, and he had black eyebrows that looked like caterpillars and a mustache the rats had been nesting in, and he wore dark glasses and kept his hat on and his overcoat collar turned up. I mind particularly the mustache, because you kept asking him if you could tweak it."

"Ah," said Doan quietly. He knew now where he had gotten the instinctive warning about the metal case. Drunk as Doan had been, he had retained enough powers of observation to realize that the mysterious Smith's mustache had been false— that the man was disguised.

Doan nodded to himself. That disposed of some of the mystery of the metal case, but there still remained the puzzle of Smith's identity and what his grudge against Doan was.

3. The Tempestuous Toggery

AT THAT MOMENT the front door slammed violently open, and J. S. Toggery came in with his head down and his arms swinging belligerently. He was short and stocky and bandy-legged. He had an apoplectically red face and fiercely glistening false teeth.

"A fine thing," he said savagely. "A fine thing, I say! Doan, you bum! Where have you been for the last three days?"

Doan pushed his empty coffee cup toward MacTavish. "Another cup, my friend. I wish you'd tell the more ill-bred of your customers to keep their voices down. It disturbs my digestion. How are you, Mr. Toggery? I have a serious question to ask you."

"What?" Toggery asked suspiciously.

"Do you know a man whose name isn't Smith and who doesn't wear dark glasses and doesn't have black eyebrows or a black mustache or a pot-belly and who isn't a friend of mine?"

Toggery sat down weakly on one of the stools. "Doan, now be reasonable. Haven't you any regard for my health and well-being? Do you want to turn me into a nervous wreck? I have a very important job for you, and I've been hunting you high and low for three days, and when I find you I'm greeted with insolence, evasion and double-talk. Do you know how to ski?"

"Pardon me," said Doan. "I thought you asked me if I knew how to ski."

"I did. Can you use skis or snow-shoes or ice skates?"

"No," said Doan.

"Then you have a half-hour to learn. Here's your railroad ticket. Your train leaves from the Union Station at two-thirty. Get your heavy underwear and your woolen socks and be on it."

"Why?" Doan asked.

"Because I told you to, you fool!" Toggery roared. "And I'm the man who's crazy enough to be paying you a salary! Now, will you listen to me without interposing those crack-pot comments of yours?"

"I'll try," Doan promised.

Toggery drew a deep breath. "All right. A girl by the name of Sheila Alden is spending the first of the mountain winter season at a place in the Desolation Lake country. You're going up there to see that nothing happens to her for the next three or four weeks."

"Why?" Doan said.

"Because she hired the agency to do it! Or rather, the bank that is her guardian did. Now listen carefully. Sheila Alden's mother died when she was born. Her father died five years ago, and he left a trust fund for her that amounts to almost fifty million dollars. She turns twenty-one in two days, and she gets the whole works when she does.

"There's been a lot of comment in the papers about a young girl getting handed all that money, and she's gotten a lot of threats from crack-pots of all varieties. That Desolation Lake country is as deserted as a tomb this time of year. The season don't start up there for another month. The bank wants her to have some protection until the publicity incident to her receiving that enormous amount of money dies down."

Doan nodded. "Fair enough. Where did her old man get all this dough to leave her?"

"He invented things."

"What kind of things?"

"Powder and explosives."

"Oh," said Doan, thinking of the deep yellow gouge the metal case had left in the hillside. "What kind of explosives?"

"All kinds. He specialized in the highly concentrated variety like they use in hand grenades and bombs. That's why the trust he left increased so rapidly. It's all in munitions stock of one kind and another."

"Ummm," said Doan. "Did you tell anyone you were planning on sending me up to look after her?"

"Of course. Everybody I could find who would listen to me. Have you forgotten that I've been looking high and low for you for three days, you numb-wit?"

"I see," said Doan vaguely. "What's the girl doing up there in the mountains?"

"She's a shy kid, and she's been bedeviled persistently by cranks and fortune hunters and every other kind of chiseler." J. S. Toggery sighed and looked dreamily sentimental. "It's a shame when you think of it. That poor lonely kid— she hasn't a relative in the world— all alone up there in that damned barren mountain country. Hurt and bewildered because of the unthinking attitude of the public. No one to love her and protect her and sympathize with her. If I weren't so busy I'd go up there with you. She needs someone older— some steadying influence."

"And fifty million dollars ain't hay," said Doan.

J. S. Toggery nodded, still dreamy. "No, and if I could just get hold of— " He snapped out of it. "Damn you, Doan, must you reduce every higher human emotion to a basis of crass commercialism?"

"Yes, as long as I work for you."

"Huh! Well, anyway she's hiding up there to get away from it all. Her companion-secretary is with her. They're staying at a lodge her old man owned. Brill, the attorney who handles the income from the trust, is staying with them until you get there. There's a caretaker at the lodge too."

"I see," said Doan, nodding. "It sounds interesting. It's too bad I can't go."

Toggery said numbly: "Too bad you... What! What! Are you crazy? Why can't you go?"

Doan pointed to the floor. "Carstairs. He disapproves of mountains."

Toggery choked. "You mean that damned dog— "

Doan snapped his fingers. "I've got it. I'll leave him in your care."

"That splay-footed monstrosity! I— I'll— "

Doan reached down and tapped Carstairs on the top of his head. "Carstairs, my friend. Pay attention. You are going to visit Mr. Toggery for a few days. Treat him with consideration because he means well."

Carstairs blinked balefully at Toggery, and Toggery shivered.

"And now," said Doan cheerfully. "The money."

"Money!" Toggery shouted. "What did you do with the hundred I advanced you on your next month's salary?"

"I don't remember exactly, but another hundred will do nicely."

Toggery moaned. He counted out bills on the counter with trembling hands. Doan wadded them up and thrust them carelessly into his coat pocket.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Mr. Doan?" MacTavish asked.

"Oh, yes," said Doan. "Toggery, pay MacTavish what I owe him on account. Cheerio, all. Goodbye, Carstairs. I'll give you a ring soon." He went out the door whistling.

Toggery collapsed limply against the counter, shaking his head. "I think I'm going mad now," he said. "My brain is simmering like a teakettle."

"He gets me that way too," said MacTavish. "Why do you put up with him?"

"Hah!" said Toggery. "Listen! If he wasn't the best— the very best— private detective west of the Mississippi, and if this branch of the agency didn't depend entirely on him for its good record, I would personally murder him!"

"I doubt if you could," said MacTavish.

"I know it," Toggery admitted glumly. "He could take on you and me together with Carstairs thrown in and massacre all three of us without mussing his hair. He's the most dangerous little devil I've ever seen, and he's all the worse because of that half-witted manner of his. You never suspect what he's up to until it's too late."

4: Welcome To Desolation

DOAN ROLLED HIS head back and forth on the hard plush cushion, opened his eyes and blinked politely. "You were saying something?"

The conductor's face was red with exertion. "Yes, I was sayin' something! I been sayin' something for the last ten minutes steady! I thought you was in a trance! This here is where you get off!"

Doan yawned and straightened up. He had a crick in his neck, and he winced, poking his finger at the spot.

The roadbed was rough here, and the old-fashioned tubular brass lamps that hung from the arched car top jittered in short nervous arcs. The whaff-whaff-whaff of the engine exhaust sounded laboriously from ahead. The car was thick and murky with the smell of cinders. Aside from the conductor, Doan was the only occupant.

Doan asked: "Do you stop while I get off, or am I supposed to hop off like a hobo?"

"We'll stop," said the conductor.

He might have been in telepathic communication with the engineer, because that's just what they did right then. The engine brakes screeched, and the car hopped up against the bumpers and dropped back again with a breath-taking jar, groaning in every joint.

"Is he mad at somebody?" Doan asked, referring to the engineer.

"Listen, you," said the conductor indignantly. "This here grade is so steep that a fly couldn't walk up it without his feet were dipped in molasses first."

Doan took a look at the empty seats. "You didn't make this trip especially on my account, did you?"

"No!" The conductor was even more indignant at the injustice of it. "We got to run a train from Palos Junction through here and back every twenty-four hours in the off season to keep our franchise. Otherwise you'd have walked up. Come on! We ain't got all night to sit around here."

Doan hauled his grip from the rack, pausing to peer out the steamed window. "Is it still raining?"

The conductor snorted. "Raining! It's rainin' down on the coast maybe, but not here. You're eight thousand feet up in the Rocky Mountains, son, and it's snowin' like somebody dumped it out of a chute."

Doan was no outdoorsman, and he hadn't taken what J. S. Toggery had said about skis and snow-shoes at all seriously.

"Snowing?" he said incredulously. "Why, it's still summer!"

"Not up here," said the conductor. "She'll make three feet on the level, and it's driftin'. Get goin'."

Still incredulous, Doan hauled his bag down the aisle and through the end door of the car. This was the last car, the only passenger coach, and when he stepped out on the darkness of the platform the snow and the wind slapped across his face like a giant icy hand. Doan sputtered indignantly and went staggering off balance down the iron steps and plumped into powdery wet coldness that congealed above the level of his thighs.

The engine whistle gave a triumphant, echoing scream.

The conductor was a dim, huddled form with one gaunt arm stretched out like a semaphore. His voice drifted thinly with the wind.

"That way! Through snow-sheds... along spur..."

The engine screamed again, impatiently, and bucked the train ahead.

Doan had dropped his bag, and he scrambled around in the snow trying to find it. "Wait! Wait! I've changed my mind."

The red and green lights on the back of the car blinked mockingly at him, and the conductor's howl came blurred and faint through the white swirling darkness.

"Station... quarter-mile... snow-sheds..."

The engine wailed like a banshee, and the snow and the darkness swallowed the sound of it up in one gulp.

"Well, hell," said Doan.

He spat snow out of his mouth and wiped the cold wetness of it off his face. He located his bag and hauled it out into the middle of the tracks. He had a topcoat strapped on the side of the grip, and he unfastened it now and struggled into it. He was thinking darkly bitter thoughts about J. S. Toggery.

With the collar pulled up tight around his throat and his hat pulled down as far it would go over his ears, he stood huddled in the middle of the tracks and looked slowly and unbelievingly around him. He had a range of vision of about ten feet in any given direction; beyond that there was nothing but snow and blackness. There was no sign of any other human, and, aside from the railroad tracks, no sign that there ever had been one here.

"Hey!" Doan shouted.

His voice traveled away and came back after a while in a low, thoughtful echo.

"This is very nice, Doan," said Doan. "You're a detective. Make a brilliant deduction."

He couldn't think of an appropriate one, so he shrugged his shoulders casually, picked up his bag and started walking along the track in the direction the conductor had pointed. The wind slapped and tugged at him angrily, hauling him first one way and then the other, and the frozen gravel of the roadbed ground under his shoes.

He kept his head down and continued walking until he tripped over a switch rail. He looked up and stared into what seemed to be the mouth of an immense square cave. He headed for it, kicking through the drifts in front, and then suddenly he was inside and out of the reach of the wind and the persistent, swirling snow.

It began to make sense now. This high square cave was a wooden snow-shed built to keep the drifts off the spur track on which he was standing. If the rest of the conductor's shouted information could be relied on, the station was a quarter mile further along the spur track.

Doan nodded once to himself, satisfied, took a new grip on the handles of his bag and started trudging along the track. It had been dark outside, but the darkness inside the shed was black swimming ink with no slightest glimmer to relieve it. It was a darkness that enclosed Doan like an envelope and seemed to travel along ahead of him, piling up thicker and thicker with each step he took.

He lost his sense of direction, tripped over the rails and banged against the side of the shed, starting up echoes that clattered deafeningly.

Swearing to himself in a whisper, Doan put his bag down on the ground and fumbled around in his pockets until he found a match. He snapped it alight on his thumbnail and held it up in front of him, cupping his hands protectively around the wavering yellow of the flame.

There was a man standing not a yard away from him— standing stiff and rigid against the rough boards of the shed wall, one arm out-thrust awkwardly as though he were mutely offering to shake hands. His eyes reflected the match flame glassily.

"Uh!" said Doan, startled.

The man didn't say anything, didn't move. He was a short, thick man, and his face looked roughened and bluish in the dim light.

"Well... hello," Doan said uncertainly. He felt a queer chill horror.

The man stayed there, unmoving, his right hand outthrust. Very slowly Doan reached out and touched the hand. It was ice-cold, and the fingers were as rigid as steel hooks.

Doan went backward one stumbling step and then another while the shadows jiggled weirdly around him. Then the match burned his fingers and he dropped it, and the darkness slapped down like a giant soft hand. It was then that he heard a noise behind him— a stealthy skitter in the gravel, faint through the swish of the snow against the shed walls.

Doan turned his head a little at a time until he could see over his shoulder. He stood there rigid while the darkness seemed to pulsate with the beat of his heart.

There were eyes watching him. Luminous and yellow and close to the ground, slanted obliquely at their corners. There were three pairs of them.

Doan stood there until the breath ached in his throat. The paired eyes didn't move. Doan exhaled very slowly and softly. He slid his hand inside the bulk of his topcoat, under his suit coat, and closed his fingers on the butt of the Police Positive.

Just as slowly he drew the revolver from under his coat. The hammer made a small cold click. Doan fired straight up in the air.

The report raised a deafening thunder of echoes. The eyes blinked and were gone, and a voice bellowed hollowly at Doan out of the blackness:

"Don't you shoot them dogs! Damn you, don't you shoot them dogs!"

The voice came from somewhere in back of where the yellow eyes had been. Doan dropped on one knee, leveling the revolver in that direction.

"Show a light," he ordered. "Right now."

Light splayed out from an electric lantern and revealed long legs in baggy blue denim pants and high snow-smeared boots with bulging rawhide laces. The yellow eyes were back of the legs, just out of the throw of light from the lantern, staring in savage watchfulness.

"Higher," said Doan. "Higher with the lantern."

The light went up by jerks like a sticky curtain on a stage, showing in turn a clumsy-looking sheepskin coat, a red hatchet-like face with fiercely glaring eyes, and a stained duck-hunter's cap with the ear flaps pulled down. The man stood as tall and stiff as some weird statue with his shadow stretched jagged and menacing beside him.

"I'm the station master. This here's company property. What you doin' on it?"

"Trying to get off it," said Doan.

"Where'd you come from?"

"The train, stupid. You think I'm a parachute trooper?"

"Oh," said the tall man. "Oh. Was you a passenger?"

"Well, certainly."

"Oh. I thought you were a bum or something. Nobody ever comes up here this time of year."

"I'll remember that. Come closer with the light. Keep the dogs back."

The tall man came slowly closer. Doan saw now that he had only one arm— the left— the one that was holding the lantern. His right sleeve was empty.

"Who's our friend here?" Doan asked, indicating the stiff frozen figure against the wall.

The tall man said casually: "Him? Oh, that's Boley, the regular station master. I'm his relief."

"He looks a little on the dead side to me."

The tall man had a lean gash of a mouth, and the thin lips moved now to show jagged yellow teeth. "Dead as a smoked herring."

"What happened to him?"

"Got drunk and lay out in the snow all night and froze stiff as a board."

"Planning on just leaving him here permanently?"

"I can't move him alone, mister." The tall man indicated his empty right sleeve with a jerk of his head. "I told 'em to stop and pick him up tonight, but they musta forgot to do it. I'll call 'em again. It ain't gonna hurt him to stay here. He won't spoil in this weather."

"That's a comforting thought."

"Dead ones don't hurt nobody, mister. I've piled 'em on trench parapets and shot over 'em. They're as good as sandbags for stoppin' bullets."

"That's a nice thought too. Where's this station you're master of?"

"Right ahead a piece."

"Start heading for it. Keep the dogs away. I don't like the way they look at me."

The light lowered. The tall man sidled past Doan, and his thin legs moved shadowy and stick-like in the lantern gleam, going away.

Doan followed cautiously, carrying the grip in one hand and the cocked revolver in the other. He looked back every third step, but the yellow eyes were gone now.

The shed ended abruptly, and the station was around the curve from it, a yellow box-like structure squashed in against the bare rock of the canyon face with light coming very dimly through small, snow-smeared windows.

The tall man opened the door, and Doan followed him into a small square room lighted with one unshaded bulb hanging behind the shining grillwork of the oval ticket window. Yellow varnished benches ran along two walls, and a stove gleamed dully red in the corner between them.

Doan kicked the door shut behind him and dropped his grip on the floor. He still held his revolver casually in his right hand.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Jannen," said the tall man. He had taken off his duck-hunter's cap. He was bald, and his head was long and queerly narrow. He stood still, watching Doan, his eyes gleaming with slyly malevolent humor. "You come up here for somethin' special? There ain't no place to stay. There's a couple of hotels down-canyon, but they ain't open except for the snow sports."

Doan jerked his head to indicate the storm outside. "Isn't that snow?"

"This here is just an early storm. It'll melt off mostly on the flats. In the winter season she gets eight-ten feet deep here on the level, and they bring excursion trains up— sometimes four-five hundred people to once— and park 'em on the sidings over weekends."

There was a whine and then a scratching sound on the door behind Doan.

The tall man jerked his head. "Can I let my dogs inside, mister?"

Doan moved over and sat down on the bench. "Go ahead."

Jannen opened the door, and three shadowy gray forms slunk through it. They were enormous beasts, thick-furred, with blunt wedge-shaped heads. They circled the room and sat down in a silent motionless row against the far wall, watching Doan unblinkingly with eyes that were like yellow, cruel jewels.

"Nice friendly pets," Doan observed.

"Them's sled dogs, mister."

"What dogs?" Doan asked.

"Sled dogs— huskies. See, sometimes them tourists that come up here, they get tired of skiin' and snow-shoein' and then I pick me up a little side money haulin' 'em around on a dog sled with the dogs. Lot of 'em ain't never rid behind dogs before, and they get a big kick out of it. Them are good dogs, mister."

"You can have them. Do you know where the Alden lodge is from here?"

Jannen's lips moved back from the jagged teeth. "You a friend of that girl's?" His voice was low and tight.

"Not yet. Are you?"

Jannen's eyes were gleaming, reddish slits. "Oh, yeah. Oh, sure I am. I got a good reason to be." With his left hand he reached over and tapped his empty right sleeve. "That's a present from her old man."

Doan was watching him speculatively. "So? How did it happen?"

"Grenade. I was fightin' over in China. It blew up in my hand. Tore my arm off. Old man Alden's factory sold the Chinks that grenade. It had a defective fuse."

"That's not the girl's fault."

Jannen's lips curled. "Oh, sure not. Nobody's fault. An accident. Didn't amount to nothin'— just a man's right arm tore off, that's all. Just made me a cripple and stuck me up in this hell-hole at this lousy job. Yeah. I love that Alden girl. Every time I hear that name I laugh fit to bust with joy."

His voice cracked, and his face twisted into a fiendish grimace. The dogs stirred against the wall uneasily, and one of them whimpered a little.

"Yeah," Jannen said hoarsely. "Sure. I like her. Her old man skimped on that grenade job, and skimped on it so he could leave that girl another million. You'd like her too, mister, if an Alden grenade blew your right arm off, wouldn't you? You'd like her every time you fumbled around one-handed like a crippled bug, wouldn't you?

"You'd like her every time the pain started to bite in that arm stump so you couldn't sleep at night, wouldn't you? You'd feel real kind toward her while you was sleepin' in flop houses and she was spendin' the blood money her old man left her, wouldn't you, mister?"

The man was not sane. He stood there swaying, and then he laughed a little in a choking rasp that shook his thin body.

"You want me to show you the way to the lodge? Sure, mister. Glad to. Glad to do a favor for an Alden any old time."

Doan stood up. "Let's start," he said soberly.

5: Miss Million-Bucks

DOAN SMELLED THE smoke first, coming thin and pungent down-wind, and then Jannen stopped short in front of him and said:

"There it is."

The wind whipped the snow away for a second, and Doan saw the house at the mouth of a ravine that widened out into a flat below them. The walls were black against the white drifts, and the windows stared with dull yellow eyes.

"Thanks," said Doan. "I can make it from here. If I could offer some slight compensation for your time and trouble..."

Jannen was hunched up against the wind like some gaunt beast of prey, staring down at the house, wrapped up in darkly bitter thoughts of his own. His voice came thickly.

"I don't want none of your money."

"So long," said Doan.

"Eh?" said Jannen, looking around.

Doan pointed back the way they had come. "Goodbye, now."

Jannen turned clumsily. "Oh, I'm goin'. But I ain't forgettin' nothin', mister." His mittened left hand touched his empty right sleeve. "Nothin' at all. You tell her that for me."

"I'll try to remember," said Doan.

He stood with his head tilted against the wind, watching Jannen until he disappeared back along the trail, his three huskies slinking along like stunted shadows at his heels. Then he shrugged uneasily and went down the steep slant of the ridge to the flat below. The wind had blown the snow clear of the ground in places, and he followed the faint marks of a path across the stretch of frozen rocky ground.

Close to it, the house looked larger— dark and ugly with the smoke from the chimney drifting in a jaunty plume across the white-plastered roof. The path ended at a small half-enclosed porch, and Doan climbed the log steps up to it and banged hard with his fist against the heavy door.

He waited, shivering. The cold had gotten through his light clothes. His feet tingled numbly, and the skin on his face felt drawn and stiff.

The door swung open, and a man stared out at him unbelievingly. "What— who're you? Where'd you come from?"

"Doan— Severn Agency."

"The detective! But man alive! Come in, come in!"

Doan stepped into a narrow shadowed hall, and the warmth swept over him like a soft grateful wave.

"Good Lord!" said the other man. "I didn't expect you'd come tonight— in this storm!"

"That's Severn service," Doan told him. "When duty calls, we answer. And besides, I'm overdrawn on my salary."

"But you're not dressed for— Why, you must be frozen stiff!"

He was a tall man, very thin, with a sharp dramatically haggard face. His hair was jet-black with a peculiarly distinctive swathe of pure white running back slantwise from his high forehead. He talked in nervous spurts, and he had a way of making quick little half-gestures that had no meaning, as though he were impatiently jittery.

"A trifle rigid in spots," Doan admitted. "Have you got some concentrated heat around the premises?"

"Yes! Yes, surely! Come in here! My name is Brill, by the way. I'm in charge of Miss Alden's account with the National Trust. Taking care of the legal end. But of course you know all about that. In here."

It was a long living room with a high ceiling that matched the peak of the roof. At the far end there was an immense natural stone fireplace with the flame hooking eager little blue fingers around the log that almost filled it.

"But you should have telephoned from the station," Brill was saying. "No need to come out tonight in this."

"Have you a telephone here?" Doan asked.

"Certainly, certainly. Telephone, electricity, central heating, all that... . Miss Alden, this is Mr. Doan, the detective from the Severn Agency. You know, I told you— "

"Yes, of course," said Sheila Alden. She was sitting on the long, low divan in front of the fire. She was a small, thin girl with prim features, and she looked disapprovingly at Doan and then down at the snow he had tracked across the floor. She had lusterless stringy brown hair and teeth that protruded a little bit, and she wore thick horn-rimmed glasses.

"Hello," said Doan. He didn't think he was going to like her very well.

"This seems all very melodramatic and very unnecessary," said Sheila Alden. "A detective to guard me! It's so absurd."

"Now, not at all, not at all," said Brill in a harassed tone. "It's the thing to do— the only thing. I'm responsible, you know. The National people hold me directly responsible for your well-being. We must take every reasonable precaution. We really must. I'm doing the best I know how."

"I know," said Sheila Alden, faintly contemptuous. "Pull up that chair, Mr. Doan, and get close to the fire. By the way, this is Mr. Crowley."

"Hello, there," said Crowley cheerfully. "You're hardly dressed for the weather, old chap. If you plan to stay around here I'll have to lend you some of my togs."

"Mr. Crowley," said Brill, "has a place over at the other side of Flint Flat."

"A little hide-out, you know," said Crowley. "Just a little shack where a man can hole in and soak up some solitude now and then."

He had a very British-British accent and a hairline black mustache and a smile full of white teeth. He was every bit as handsome as those incredible young men who are always driving the latest sport motor cars in magazine advertisements. He knew it. He had brown eyes with a personality twinkle in them and wavy black hair and an expensive tan.

"Mr. Crowley," said Brill, "got lost in the storm this afternoon and just happened— just happened to stumble in here this afternoon."

"Right-o," said Crowley. "Lucky for me, eh?"

"Very," said Brill sourly.

Crowley was sitting on the divan beside Sheila Alden, and he turned around and gave her the full benefit of his smile. "Yes, indeed! My lucky day!"

Sheila Alden simpered. There was no other word for it. She wiggled on the cushions and poked at her stringy hair and blinked shyly at Crowley through the thick glasses.

"You must stay the night here, Mr. Crowley."

"Must he?" Brill inquired, still more sourly.

Sheila Alden looked up, instantly antagonistic. "Of course! He can't possibly get home tonight, and we have plenty of room, and I've invited him!"

"A little blow like this," said Crowley. "Nothing. Nothing at all. You should see it scream up in the Himalayas. That's something!" He leaned closer to Sheila. "But of course there's no chance to stumble on to such delightful company when you're in the Himalayas, is there? I'll be delighted to stay overnight, Miss Alden, if it won't inconvenience you too much. It's so kind of you to ask me."

"Not at all," said Sheila Alden.

Doan was standing in front of the fire with his arms out-spread, gradually thawing out, and now someone tugged uncertainly at his sleeve.

"You're— the detective?"

Doan turned to look at another girl. She was small too, smaller even than Sheila Alden, and she had a soft round face and full lips that pouted a little. She had blond hair, and her eyes were very wide and very blue and they didn't quite focus.

"This is Miss Alden's secretary," Brill said stiffly. "Miss Joan Greg."

"You're cute," Joan Greg said, swaying just slightly. "You're a cute little detective."

"Cute as a bug's ear," Doan agreed.

"Joan!" Sheila Alden said sharply. "Please behave yourself!"

Joan Greg turned slowly, still keeping her hold on Doan's arm. "Talking— to me?"

"You're drunk!" Sheila Alden said.

Joan Greg made the words carefully with her soft lips. "Shall I tell you just what you are— you and that thing sitting beside you?"

The tension in the room was like a wire stretched to a breaking point, with them all standing and staring at Joan incredulously. She was swaying, and her lips were twisting to form new words, while her eyes stared at Sheila Alden with glassy, unblinking hate.

"I'll— kill— her," said Joan Greg distinctly.

6: Dangerous Lady

"MISS GREG!" BRILL gasped, horrified. But he did not make a move. He just stood, gaping.

"Wait until I get warm first, will you?" Doan asked casually.

Joan Greg forgot all about Sheila Alden for the moment. She swayed against Doan and said: "You're just the cutest little fella I've ever seen. Lemme help you out of your coat."

Brill stepped forward. "I'll do— "

"No! No! Lemme!"

Fumblingly, she helped Doan take off his topcoat and staggered back several steps holding it in front of her.

"Gonna— hang it up. Gonna hang the nice cute little detective's coat up for him."

She went at a diagonal across the room, missed the door by ten feet, carefully walked backward until she got a new line on it, and made it through. They could hear her in the hall, stumbling a little.

"I could use some of that," Doan said.

Brill stared at him. "Eh?"

Doan made a motion as though he were lifting a glass.

"Oh!" Brill said. "A drink! Yes, yes. Of course. Kokomo! Kokomo!"

A swinging door squeaked, and light showed through the archway opposite the entrance to the hall. Feet scraped lumberingly on the floor, and a man came in through the archway and said in a surly voice:

"Well, what?"

He had shoulders as wide as a door and long thick arms that were corded with muscle. He was wearing a white apron over blue denim trousers and a checked shirt, and he had a tall chefs hat perched jauntily over the bulging shapeless lump that had once been his left ear. He carried a toothpick in one corner of his pulpy lips, and his eyes were dully expressionless under thick, scarred eyebrows.

"Ah, yes," Brill said nervously. "Bring the whisky, Kokomo, and— and a siphon of soda."

"You want ice?"

"I've had mine tonight already," Doan said.

"No," Brill said. "No ice."

Kokomo lumbered back through the archway and appeared immediately again carrying a decanter and a siphon on a tray with a stacked pile of glasses.

Brill took the tray. "Mr. Doan, this is Kokomo— the cook and caretaker. This is the detective, Kokomo."

"This little squirt?" said Kokomo. "A detective? Hah!"

Brill said: "Kokomo! That's all!"

"Hah!" said Kokomo, staring down at Doan. He moved his big shoulders in a casual shrug and padded back through the archway. The swinging door squeaked shut behind him.

"Really, Mr. Brill," Sheila Alden said severely. "It seems to me that I have grounds for complaint about your choice of employees."

Brill threw his hands wide helplessly. "Miss Alden, I've told you again and again that our Mr. Dibben had been handling all your affairs and that he was injured when an auto ran over him and that his duties were suddenly delegated to me without the slightest warning and that he hadn't made any note of the fact that you intended to come up here.

"When you called me I had to find a man at once who would act as caretaker and cook and open this place up for you. This man Kokomo had excellent references— a great deal of experience— all that. You must admit, Miss Alden, that in spite of his uncouth appearance, he is a very good cook, and it's very difficult to get servants to come clear up here..."

Sheila Alden wasn't through. "And I don't think much of your choice of a secretary, either."

Brill lifted his hands. "Miss Greg had the very finest references. There was nothing in them whatsoever that indicated she was— ah— inclined to drink too much."

"Lonely country," Crowley said. "Brings it on. Seen it happen to a lot of chaps in Upper Burma. Probably be all right as soon as she gets back to civilization, eh? By the way, Mr. Doan, how on earth did you find this place? I mean, I got jolly well lost myself, and I can't see how a stranger could find his way here."

Doan had filled a glass half with whisky and half with soda and was sipping at it appreciatively. "The station master brought me around— not because he wanted to. He seemed a bit sour on the Alden name."

"And that's another thing!" Brill said worriedly. "The man's a crank— dangerous. He shouldn't be allowed at large. He holds some insane grudge against Miss Alden, and he might— might... I mean, I'm responsible. I tried to talk to him, but all he did was threaten me. And those damned dogs. Mr. Doan, you had better investigate him thoroughly."

"Oh, sure," said Doan.

Brill ran thin nervous fingers through his hair, mussing up the blazed streak of white that centered it. "I don't like you coming up here in this wilderness, Miss Alden. It's a great responsibility to put on my shoulders." He fumbled in his coat pocket and brought out a shiny metal case.

Doan stiffened, his glass half-raised to his lips. "What's that you've got there?"

"This?" said Brill. "A cigar case."

The case was an exact duplicate of the one Doan had found in his pocket— his deadly present from the mysterious Mr. Smith.

Brill snapped the catch with his thumb, and the case opened on his palm, revealing the six cigars fitted into it snugly.

Doan released his breath in a long sigh. "Where," he said, clearing his throat. "Where did you get it?"

Brill was admiring the case. "Nice, isn't it? Just the right size. Eh? Oh, it was a present from a client."

"What was his name?"

"Smith," said Brill. "As a matter of fact, that's a strange thing. We have several clients whose name is Smith, and I don't know which one of them gave me this. Whoever it was just left it on my secretary's desk with a little note saying in appreciation of services rendered and all that and signed, 'Smith'— "

"What was in it?" Doan asked.

Brill looked surprise. "Why, cigars."

"Did you smoke them?"

"Well, no. You see, I smoke a specially mild brand on account of my throat. I gave the ones in the case to the janitor, poor chap."

"Poor chap?" Doan repeated.

"Yes. He was killed that very night. He had a shack on the outskirts of the city, and he was running a still of some sort there— at least that's what the police think— and the thing blew up and blasted him to bits. Terrific explosion."

"Oh," said Doan. He watched thoughtfully while Brill selected a cigar and put the case back in his coat pocket.

"Well," said Brill, making an effort to be more sociable. "Let's think of something pleasant..." His voice trailed off into a startled gulp.

Joan Greg had come quietly in from the hall. She was holding Doan's revolver carefully in her right hand. She was walking straighter now, and she came directly across the floor to the front of the divan. She stopped there and pointed the revolver at Sheila Alden.

"Here!" Crowley shouted in alarm.

Doan flipped the contents of his glass into Joan Greg's face. Her head jerked back when the stinging liquid hit her. She took one uncertain step backward, and then Doan vaulted over the couch and expertly kicked her feet from under her.

She fell on her back, coming down so hard that her blond head bounced forward loosely with the impact. Doan stepped on her right wrist and twisted the revolver from her lax fingers.

Joan Greg turned over on her stomach and hid her face in her arms. She began to cry in racked, gasping sobs. The others stared at her, and at Doan with a sort of frozen, dazed horror.

"More fun," said Doan, slipping the revolver into his waistband. "Does she do things like this very often?"

"Gah!" Brill gasped. "She— she would have... Why— why, she's crazy! Crazy drunk! Where— where'd she get that gun?"

"It was in my topcoat pocket," Doan said. "Careless of me, but I didn't think there were any homicidal maniacs wandering around the house."

Sheila Alden's face was paper white. "Get her out of here! She's fired! Take her away!"

"Yes, yes," said Brill. "At once. Terrible. Terrible thing, really. And I'll be blamed— "

"Take her away!" Shield Alden screamed at him.

Doan leaned over and picked Joan Greg up. She had stopped crying and she was utterly relaxed. Her arms flopped laxly. Her eyes were closed, and the tears had made wet jagged streaks down her soft cheeks.

"She's passed out, I think," Doan said. "I'll take her up and lock her in her bedroom."

"Yes, yes," Brill said. "Only thing. This way."

Crowley was bending anxiously over Sheila Alden. "Now, now. It's all over. Gives a person a nasty feeling, I know. Saw a chap run amok in Malay once. Ghastly thing. But you're a brave girl. Just a little sip of this."

Brill led the way across the living room and down the hall to a steep stairway with a rustic natural-wood railing. Brill went on up it and stopped at the first door in the upper hallway. He was still shaky, and he edged away from the limp form of Joan Greg as a man would avoid contact with something poisonous.

"Here," he said, pushing the door open and reaching around to snap on the light. "This— this is awful. Miss Alden is sure to complain to the office. What do you suppose ailed her?"

Doan put Joan Greg down on the narrow bed under the windows. The room was stiflingly hot. He looked at the windows and then down at Joan Greg's flushed face and decided against opening one. While he was looking down at her, she opened her eyes and stared up at him. All the life had drained out of her round face and left it empty and bitter and disillusioned.

"What's the trouble?" Doan asked. "Want to tell me about it?"

She turned her head slowly away from him and closed her eyes again. Doan waited a moment and then said:

"Better get undressed and into bed and sleep it off."

He turned off the light and went out of the room, transferring the key from the inside of the lock to the outside and turning it carefully. He tried the door to make sure and then put the key in his pocket.

Brill was wringing his hands in a distracted way. "I— I can hardly bear to face Miss Alden. She will blame me. Everybody blames me! I didn't want this responsibility... . I've got to go down and out-wait that scoundrel Crowley."

"Why?" Doan asked.

Brill came closer. "He's a fortune hunter! He didn't get lost today! He came over here on purpose because he's heard that Miss Alden was here! She's an impressionable girl, and I can't let him stay alone with her down there. The office would hold me accountable if he— if she..."

"I get it," Doan said.

"I don't know what to do," said Brill. "I mean, I know Miss Alden will be sure to resent— But I can't let him— "

"That's your problem," said Doan. "But I'm not supposed to protect her from people who want to make love to her— only the ones that don't. So I'm not out-waiting our friend Crowley. I'm tired. Which is my bedroom?"

"Right there. You'll leave your door open, Mr. Doan, in case— in case..."

"In case," Doan agreed. "Just whistle, and I'll pop up like any jack-in-the-box."

"I'm so worried," said Brill. "But I must go down and see that the scoundrel doesn't..."

He went trotting down the steep stairs. Doan went along the hall back to the bedroom Brill had indicated. It was small and as neatly arranged as a model room in a display window, furnished with imitation rustic bed, chairs and bureau.

It, too, was stiflingly hot. Doan spotted the radiator bulking in the corner. He went over and touched it experimentally and jerked his fingers away with a whispered curse. It was so hot the water in it was burbling. Doan looked for the valve to turn it off, but there was none.

He stood looking at the radiator for some time, frowning in a puzzled way. There was something wrong about the whole setup at the lodge. It was like a picture slightly out of focus, and yet he couldn't put his finger on any one thing that was wrong. It bothered Doan, and he didn't like to be bothered. But it was still there. An air of intangible menace.

He discovered now that he had left his grip downstairs. He didn't feel like going and getting it at the moment. He wanted to think about the people in the house, and he had always been able to think better lying down. He shrugged and headed for the bed. Fully dressed, he lay down on top of it and went to sleep.

7: Nice Night For Murder

WHEN DOAN AWOKE, he awoke all at once. He was instantly alert, but he didn't make any other motion than opening his eyes. The heat int he bedroom was like a thick oppressive blanket— fantastic and unreal against the shuffling whie of the storm outside.

Doan stayed still and wondered what had awakened him. His bedroom door was still open, and there was a dim light in the hall. A timber creaked eerily somewhere in the house. The seconds ticked off slowly and leadenly, and then a shadow moved and made a rounded silhouette in the hall in front of the bedroom door.

Doan moved his hand and closed his fingers on the slick coolness of his revolver. The shadow thickened, swaying a little, and then Joan Greg came into sight. She was moving along the hall with mincing, elaborately cautious steps. She had evidently taken Doan's advice about going to bed. She was dressed in a green silk nightgown that contrasted with her blond hair. She stopped opposite Doan's doorway and looked that way.

Her soft lips were open, twisted awry, and there was a dribble of saliva on her chin. Her eyes were widened in mesmerized horror. She was holding a short broad-bladed hunting knife in her right hand.

"That's fine," said Doan quietly. "Just stand right where you are."

The knife made a ringing thud falling on the floor. Joan Greg drew a long shuddering breath that pulled the thin green silk taut across her breasts. The cords in her soft throat stood out rigidly.

Then she crumpled like a puppet that has been dropped. She was an awkwardly twisted heap of green silk and white flesh, with the gold of her hair glinting metallically in the light.

Doan swung cat-like off the bed and reached the doorway in two long steps. He didn't look down at Joan Greg, but both ways along the hall. One of the doors on the opposite side moved just a trifle.

"Come out of there," said Doan. "Quick!"

The door opened in hesitant jerks, and Crowley peered out at hi. He was wearing nothihng but a pair of blue shorts, and his wedge-shaped torso was oily with perspiration. His face was a queer yellowish green under its tan.

"So beastly hot. Couldn't get the windows open. I thought— I heard— "

"Come here."

Crowley moistened his lips with a nervous flick of his tongue. He came forward one step at a time. "What— what's the matter with her?"

"Stand right there and stand still."

Crowley's breath whistleed between his teeth. "Blood! Look! All over her hands— "

Doan knelt down beside Joan Greg. Her hands were spread out awkwardly beside her, as though she had tried to hold them away from herself even while she fell. There was blood smeared on her fingers and streaked gruesomely across both her soft palms. Doan poked at the knife she had dropped with the barrel of his revolver.

There was blood clotted ont hem, too. On the handle and on the broad blad. Doan raised his head.

"Brill!" he called sharply.

Bed springs creaked somewhere, and Brill's nervous voice said: "Eh? What? What?"

The springs creaked again protestingly. Brill, looking tall and lath-like in white pajamas, appeared in the open door of the bedroom next to Doan's. His slick hair was rumpeld now, and he held one hand up to shield his eyes from the light.

"What? What is it?" His thin face began to lengthen, then, as though it had been drawn in some enormous vise. "Oh, my God," he said in a whisper.

He came forward with the stiff, jerky steps of a sleep-walker. "Did she commit suicide?"

"I'm afraid not," said Doan. "She's fainted. Which is Miss Alden's room?"

Brill stared at him in pure frozen horror. "You don't think she— " He made a strangled noise in his throat. He turned and ran down the hall, his white pajamas flapping grotesqely. "Miss Alden! Miss Alden!"

The door at the end of the hall was hers, and Brill pounded on the panels with both fists. "Miss Alden!" His voice was raw with panic now, and he tried the knob. The door opened immediately.

"Miss— Miss Alden," Brill said uncertainly.

"The light," said Doan, behind him.

Brill reached inside the door and snapped the switch. There was no sound for a long time, and then Brill moaned a little.

Doan said: "Come here, Crowley. I want you where I can watch you."

Crowley spoke in a jerky voice. "Well, Joan— I mean, Miss Greg. You can't leave her lying— "

"Come here."

Crowley edged inside Sheila Alden's bedroom and backed against the wall in response to a guiding flick of Doan's revolver barrel. Brill was standing in the center of the room with his hands up over his face.

"This will ruin me," he said in a sick mumble. "I was going to get a partnership in the firm. They gave me full responsibility for watching out for her. Account was worth tens of thousands a year. They'll hound me out of the state— can never practice again." His voice trailed off into indistinguishable syllables.

This bedroom was as stiflingly hot as Doan's had been. Sheila Alden had only a sheet over her. She was stiffly rigid on her back in the bed. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear, and the pillows under her head were soaked and sticky with blood. Her bony face looked pinched and small and empty, with her nearsighted eyes staring glassily up at the light.

Doan pointed the gun at Crowley. "You talk."

Crowley made an effort to get back his air of British light-heartedness. "But, old chap, you can't imagine I— "

"Yes, I can," said Doan.

Crowley's mouth opened and shut soundlessly.

"It comes a little clearer," said Doan. "You were so scared you got a little rattled for a moment. Just how well do you know Joan Greg?"

Crowley's smile was an agonized grimace. "Well, my dear chap, hardly at all. I just met the young lady today."

"We can't use that one." Doan said. "You know her very well. That was what was the trouble with her. She was jealous. You've been living off her, haven't you?"

"That's not a nice thing to accuse a chap— "

"Murder's not nice, either. You've been living off Joan Greg. You haven't any more got a place on Flint Flat than I have. Have you?"

"Well..."

"No, you haven't. Joan Greg told you that she had gotten a job as secretary to Sheila Alden and was coming up here. You knew who Sheila Alden was, and you thought that was a swell chance for you to chisel in and charm the young lady with your entrancing personality.

"You must have let Joan Greg in on it— told her you'd make a killing and split with her probably. But when it came right down to seeing you make passes at Sheila Alden, Joan Greg couldn't take it."

"Fantastic," Crowley said in a stiff unnatural voice. "Utter— rot."

"You!" said Brill, and the blood made a thick red flush in his shallow cheeks. "You rat! I'll see you hung! I'll— I'll— Doan! Hold him until I get my gun!" He blundered wildly out of the room, and his feet made a wild pattering rush down the hall.

Crowley had recovered his poise now. His eyes were cold and alert and hard, watching Doan. Brill's bedroom door slammed, and then his voice shrilled out fiercely.

"Get up! Get up, damn you! I know you're faking! I saw your eyes open!"

There was a scuffling sound from the hall, and Joan Greg cried out breathlessly. Crowley moved against the wall.

"No," said Doan.

Confused footsteps came closer, and Brill pushed Joan Greg roughly into the bedroom.

"There!" Brill raged. "Look at her! Look at your handiwork, damn you, you shameless little tramp!"

Joan Greg gave a stifled cry of terror. She held her shaking, blood-smeared hands out in front of her helplessly, and then she turned and ran to Crowley and hid her face against his chest.

"There they are!" Brill shouted. He was holding a .45 Colt automatic in his hand and he waved it wildly in the air. "Look at them!

A fine pair of crooks and murderers! But they'll pay! You hear me, do you? You'll pay!"

Doan was looking at the radiator in the corner. He was frowning a little bit and whistling softly and soundlessly to himself.

"Why is it so hot?" he asked.

"Eh?" Brill said. "What?"

"Why is it so hot in the bedrooms?"

"The windows have storm shutters on them," Brill said impatiently. "They can't be opened in a wind like this."

"But why are the radiators so hot? The water in that one is boiling. You can hear it."

"What damned nonsense!" Brill yelled. "Are you going to stand there and ask silly questions about radiators when Sheila Alden has been murdered and these two stand here caught in the very act— "

"No," said Doan. "I'm going to find out about the matter of the temperature around here. You watch these two."

"Doan, you fool!" Brill shouted. "Come back here! You're in my employ and I demand— "

"Watch them," said Doan. "I'll be back in a minute or so."

8: Hi, Kokomo

HE WENT DOWN the hall, down the steep stairs, and across the living room. The log fireplace was dull, glowing red embers now. The wind had blown some of the smoke back down the chimney, and it made a thick murky blue haze. Doan went on across the room through the archway on the other side.

Ahead of him light showed dimly around the edge of the swinging door that led into the kitchen. The hinges squeaked as Doan pushed it back.

Kokomo was sitting in the corner beside the gleaming white and chromium of an electric range. He was still wearing his big apron, and the tall chefs hat was tilted down rakishly over his left eye. He had what looked like the same toothpick in one corner of his mouth, and it moved up and down jerkily as he said:

"What can I do for you, sonny?"

"Don't you ever go to bed at night?" Doan asked.

"Naw. I'm an owl."

"It's awfully hot upstairs," said Doan.

"Too bad."

"I notice you have a central hot water heating system here. What does the furnace burn— coal or oil?"

"Coal."

"Who takes care of it?"

"Me."

"Where is it?"

Kokomo jerked a thick thumb at a door in the back wall of the kitchen. "Down cellar."

"I think I'll take a look at it."

Kokomo took the toothpick out of his mouth and snapped it into the far corner of the room. "Run along and roll your hoop, sonny, before I lose my patience and lay you out like a rug. This here end of the premises is my bailiwick and I don't go for any mush-faced snoopers prowlin' around in it. I told the rest that. Now I'm tellin' it to you."

"On the other hand," said Doan cheerfully, "I think I'll have a look at the furnace."

Kokomo got up out of his chair. "Sonny, you're gettin' me irritated. Put that popgun away before I shove it down you throat."

Doan dropped the gun in his coat pocket, smiling. "Aw, you wouldn't do a mean thing like that, would you?"

Kokomo came for him with quick little shuffling steps, his head lowered and tucked between the hunched bulk of his thick shoulders.

Doan was still smiling. He made a fork out of the first two fingers of his left hand and poked them at Kokomo's eyes. Kokomo knew that trick and, instead of ducking, he merely tilted his head back and let Doan's stiffened fingers slide off his low forehead. But when he put his head back, he exposed his thickly muscular throat.

Doan hit him squarely on the adam's apple with a short right jab. It was a wickedly effective blow, and Kokomo made a queer strangling noise and grasped his throat with both hands, rolling his head back and forth in agony. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes bulged horribly.

Doan hit him again, a full roundhouse swing with all his compact weight behind it. His fist smacked on the hinge of Kokomo's jaw. Kokomo went back one step and then another, shaking his head helplessly, still trying to draw a breath.

"I should break my hands on you, cement-head," Doan said casually. He took the revolver out of his coat pocket and slammed Kokomo on the top of the head with the butt of it.

The blow smashed the tall chefs hat into a weirdly lopsided pancake. Kokomo dropped to his knees, sagging loosely. With cold-blooded efficiency Doan hit him again in the same place. Kokomo flopped forward on his face and lay there on the shiny linoleum without moving.

It had happened very fast, and Doan was standing there now, looking down at Kokomo, still smiling in his casually amused way. He wasn't even breathing hard.

"These tough guys," he said, shrugging.

He dropped the revolver in his coat pocket again and stepped over Kokomo. The cellar door was fastened with a patent bolt. Doan unlatched it and peered down a flight of steep wooden stairs that were lighted dimly from the kitchen behind him. He felt around the door and found a light switch and clicked it. Nothing happened. The light down in the cellar, if there was one, didn't work.

Doan went down the steps, feeling his way cautiously as he got beyond the path of the light from the kitchen door. The cellar was a warm, dark cavern thick with the smell of coal dust. Feeling overhead, Doan located the warmth of a fat asbestos-wrapped pipe and judged from the direction it ran that the furnace was over in the far corner.

He started that way, sliding his feet cautiously along the cement floor. He was somewhere in the middle of it, out of reach of either wall, when something made a quick silent breath going past in front of his face.

He stopped with a jerk, reaching for his revolver. The thing that had gone past his face hit the wall behind him with a dull ominous thud and dropped to the floor. Doan stayed rigidly still, his revolver poised. He was afraid to move for fear of stumbling over something. He listened tensely, his head tilted.

A voice whispered out of the darkness ahead of him. "Don't— don't you dare come any closer. I've got a shovel here. I'll— hit you with it."

Doan was a hard man to surprise, but he was as startled now as he ever had been in his life. He stared in the direction of the voice, his mouth open.

The voice said shakily: "You get out."

"Whoa," Doan said. "Wait a minute. I'm not coming any closer. Just listen to me before you heave any more of that coal."

"Who— who are you?"

"Name's Doan."

"The detective! Oh!"

"That's what I say. And who're you?"

"Sheila Alden."

"Ah," said Doan blankly. He drew a deep breath. "Well, I know I'm not drunk, so this must be happening. If you're Sheila Alden down here in the cellar, who's the Sheila Alden up in the bedroom?"

"That's my secretary, Leila Adams. She's been impersonating me."

"Oh. Sort of a game, huh?"

"No!"

"Well, I was just asking. What's the matter with the light down here?"

"I screwed the bulb out of the socket."

"Well, where is it? I'll screw it back in again. I need some light on the subject."

"Oh, no! No! Don't!"

"Why not?"

"I— I haven't any clothes on."

"You haven't any clothes on," Doan repeated. He shook his head violently. "Maybe I'm a little sleepy or something. I don't seem to be getting this. Suppose you just start and tell me all about it."

"Well, Leila and I came up here alone. Kokomo had come ahead to open up the place. Kokomo and Leila are in this together. When we got here they held me up and locked me in the cellar— in the back room beyond this one. Leila told me she was going to pretend she was me."

"Is Brill crazy? Didn't he know Leila Adams wasn't you?"

"No. Mr. Dibben in the law firm always handled all my business. I don't know Mr. Brill. He's never seen me."

"Well, well," said Doan. "Then what?"

"They just locked me in that cellar room. There's one window, and they didn't want to put bars over it, so they took all my clothes away from me. They knew I wouldn't get out the window then. If I did I'd freeze.

"It's two miles to the station and I didn't know which way. And Kokomo said if I screamed he'd..." Her voice trailed off into a little gasping sob. "He told me what he'd do."

"Yeah," said Doan. "I can imagine."

"Where is he now?"

"Kokomo? He's slightly indisposed at the moment. Go on. Tell me the rest."

"I broke a little piece of metal off the window, and I picked the lock on the door and got out here. I know how the heating system works. The valves are down here. I turned off the ones that controlled the downstairs radiators and opened the ones that control the upstairs radiators wide.

"Then I kept putting coal in the furnace with the drafts wide open. I thought if I made it hot enough in the upstairs bedrooms someone besides Kokomo would come down and look."

"Sure," said Doan. "Smart stuff. If I'd had any brains I'd have been down here hours ago. You stay right here and I'll bring you something to wear. Don't be afraid any more."

"I haven't been afraid— not very much. Only— only of Kokomo coming down here and— "

"He won't be coming down. Stay right here. I'll be right back." Doan ran back up the steps. All his cheerful casual air was gone now. His lips were thinned across his teeth, and he moved with a cat-like, lithe efficiency.

Kokomo was still lying flat on his face in the center of the kitchen floor. Doan, moving with the same quiet quickness, opened the cupboard door and located an aluminum kettle.

He filled it with water at the sink. Carrying it carefully, he walked over to Kokomo and, using the toe of one shoe, expertly flipped the big man over on his back.

He dumped the kettle of water in Kokomo's blankly upturned face. For a second there was no reaction, then Kokomo's pulpy lips moved, and he sputtered wetly. His eyes opened and he saw Doan looking thoughtfully down at him.

"Hi, Kokomo," Doan said softly. "Hi, baby."

Kokomo made noises in his throat and heaved himself up on his elbows. Doan took one short step forward and kicked him under the jaw so hard that Kokomo's whole lolling body lifted clear of the floor and rolled half under the stove. He didn't move any more.

"I'll have another present for you later," Doan said.

9: Black Snow

HE WENT IN through the living room to the front hall. He had opened the door of the closet and located his snow-damp topcoat when he heard a little shuffling noise at the top of the stairs. He turned around to look.

It was Brill. The light behind him made him look grotesquely thin, sagging in the middle like a broken pencil.

"Doan!" he gasped.

He got hold of the railing with both hands, and then he came down the stairs in a crazily shuffling dance, his skinny legs wavering and twisting weirdly. He tripped and fell headlong down the last ten steps before Doan could catch him.

The skin on his face was yellowish, the cheekbones bulging out in ugly lumps. Blood was streaked in a long smear across his forehead. Doan straightened him out on the steps.

"Doan!" he said desperately. "That damned scoundrel, Crowley. Tricked me. Hit me— hit me— chair." He heaved himself up on his elbows, eyes glaring. "Doan! I'll hold you responsible! Got away! Your fault!"

"They didn't hit me with a chair," Doan pointed out.

"You!" Brill gasped. "Leaving me with them. While you wander off... They'll get away! They'll get to the station! Jannen will help them! Flat-car there— go down the grade..."

"We'll telephone ahead and stop them."

Brill rolled his head back and forth helplessly. "No telephone. Tried it upstairs. Line cut. You've got to go after them! They've got only a few minutes start! You can catch them! That girl— she can't go fast."

Doan said: "You mean you want me to go out in that storm again?"

"Oh, damn you!" Brill swore. "Don't you understand that my whole career is at stake? I hired your agency, and you failed me! I'll have you black-listed. I'll sue!"

"All right, all right," Doan said. "I'll go bring them back. Take another coat and give it to the girl you find down cellar."

He went to the front door and opened it. The wind whooped in triumphantly, driving a fine mist of snow ahead of it.

"Light," said Brill weakly. "They've got an electric lantern. You can see— "

Doan slammed the door shut. The wind came whipping down out of the black mouth of the ravine with a fierce howling intensity. Doan was struggling to get into his topcoat, and the wind billowed the coat out like a clumsy sail and blew Doan with it down the steps and across the black, rock-strewn ground.

He stumbled into a drift waist-deep before he caught himself. He stood still for a moment, one arm crooked up to shield his eyes from the cutting whip of the snow. The wind blasted at him, and then he caught the flicker of a light on the path that led up out of the flat.

Doan began to run. He was half-blinded with the snow, and the wind pulled and tugged at him, pushed him in staggering crazy spurts. He stumbled and half-fell, and then the gravel on the steep path grated under his shoes.

The light was high above him, much closer now, and as he watched, it flicked over the edge of the ravine and disappeared.

Doan fumbled under his coat and found the revolver. He went up the path at a lurching run. His breath burned icily in his throat. The air was thin and fine, with no weight to it, and his heart began to drum in a sickening cadence.

He was breathing in sobbing gasps when he hit the top of the ravine, sweat crawling in cold rivulets under his clothes. He paused there swaying, looking for the light, and found it off to his left.

He turned and plowed stubbornly in that direction, and there was no path here, nothing but thick drifts of snow piled against stunted brush that tore at his clothes with myriad clutching fingers.

The light tossed up high ahead of him, very close now, and showed stunted trees lined up in a ghostly gallery, leaning forward in the push of the wind as they watched.

Doan tripped over a snow-hidden log and went down flat on his face in powdery whiteness. He heaved himself stubbornly up on hands and knees, dabbed at his smeared face with his coatsleeve— and he stayed that way, half kneeling, rigid, staring into savagely cruel greenish yellow eyes on a level with his own and not a yard away.

"Hah!" Doan said, grunting with the exhalation of his breath.

The eyes came for him with the sudden slashing gleam of teeth under them. Doan poked the revolver straight out and fired, wondering as he pulled the trigger whether his fall had packed snow in the barrel and whether the gun would blow back at him.

The shot made a bright orange flare, and the eyes were gone. A heavy body kicked and squirmed in the snow. Doan struggled up to his feet, and another dark low form slipped sideways in the whirling darkness, circling him.

Doan leveled the revolver and fired instantly. A shrill ki-yi-ing yip echoed the smash of the shot, and the second dark form went tumbling over and over in the snow, contorting itself into desperate struggling knots.

The third one came in a black streak out of the darkness, up out of the snow in a long lunge, straight at Doan's throat. He fired going over backward. The flat-nosed .38 hit the animal in the chest and turned it clear over in the air. It fell back rigid and still beside the first.

Doan struggled in the snow, heaving himself up, and then Jannen loomed above him, yelling something the wind garbled into an unintelligible, frenzied scream. He had an ax in his hand, and he swung it back up over his shoulder and down at Doan in a full sweep that made its head glitter in a bright, deadly line.

Doan whirled himself sideways, rolling.

"Jannen!" he yelled frantically. "Don't! Don't! I'll shoot— "

The ax-head hissed past is ear, and Jannen caught it on the upswing and chopped back down again with it.

Doan couldn't dodge this time. He didn't try. He shot Jannen just above the grassy gleam of the buckle on the wide web belt around his coat.

Jannen made a queer, choked sound. The ax stopped in midair. Jannen took one step back and then another, trying to get the ax up over his shoulder again.

"Drop it," said Doan.

The ax was going up inch by desperate inch. Jannen's breath made a high whistling sound. He made a clumsy step forward.

"All right, baby," said Doan.

He pulled the trigger of the revolver again. There was a dull, small click— nothing else. Before Doan even had time to grasp what that meant, Jannen reeled queerly sideways and went down full length on his face, as rigid as a log.

"Good God," said Doan in a whisper.

He got up slowly. The thing had happened in split-seconds, and the echos of the gunfire were still rolling lustily ahead of the wind.

Doan stared at his gun. It was bright and deadly in his hand, with the snow moisture gleaming on its thick cylinder, and he remembered now that he hadn't reloaded it. He had fired once at the metal case and once in the snow-shed. There had been four cartridges left in the gun. He had used them all. If he had missed just one of those four shots...

The wind whistled shrilly through bare branches, chuckling in its high, cruel glee.

Doan stumbled forward, leaned down over Jannen. The man was dead, and the snow already was laying a white cold blanket thinly across his distorted face.

Doan plowed back through the drifts and brush, found the hard surface of the path. He felt weak and numb with cold that was more than cold. His legs were stiff, unwieldy sticks under him as he went back down the steep path, across the flat toward the warmly welcoming glow of the windows that watched for him through the whirl of snow.

10: Too Many Guns

DOAN WENT BLUNDERING across the porch with his head down and ran into the front door. He found the knob, fumbled it with numb fingers, finally turned it. The wind swept the door out of his grasp, banged it back thunderously against the wall.

Doan stamped through into the soft luxurious warmth of the hall, fought the door shut again behind him. Sighing in relief, he wiped snow moisture off his face with the palm of his left hand.

"Drop your gun on the floor."

Doan jerked to attention. Brill was standing in the doorway of the living room. He was wearing a blue dressing gown now over his pajamas. He lounged there, quite at ease, with the big .45 automatic bulking huge and black in his right hand.

"Drop your gun on the floor," he repeated in the same confident, quiet voice.

He looked very theatrical, with the white blaze showing up in his smoothly brushed hair, with his eyes narrowed. He was smiling in a dramatically sinister way.

Doan loosened the stiff fingers of his right hand and the .38 thudded on the carpet.

"It wasn't loaded anyway," he observed.

"Come in here," said Brill.

He backed out of the door, and Doan followed him into the living room. Someone had thrown kindling on the fire, and red flames crackled greedily in it.

"You know Miss Alden, I think," Brill said.

She was sitting on the divan. She was wearing a man's overcoat so big that it almost wrapped around her twice. She had brown hair cut in a long bob, mussed a little now, and the fire found warm glints in it. Her brown eyes were wide and scared, and her soft lower lip trembled. There was a smear of coal dust on the end of her short straight nose.

"Hello, again," said Doan.

She didn't answer, and Brill said:

"You're becoming a nuisance, Doan. What happened to Jannen? I heard you shooting."

"I was just target practicing," Doan said, "but Jannen, that dope, stepped right in front of my gun just when I happened to be pulling the trigger. I expect he's sort of dead."

Kokomo came in from the kitchen. There was a lopsided swollen lump on one side of his jaw, and his eyes glittered malevolently at Doan.

"You tricky little devil! When I get my hands on you— "

"I can hardly wait," Doan told him.

"Later, Kokomo," Brill said. He was watching Doan with gravely speculative eyes. "I suppose you are beginning to understand this now, aren't you?"

"Oh, sure," said Doan. "I figured it out quite a while ago."

"Did you, now?" said Brill sarcastically.

Doan nodded. "Yes. You were next in line for the management of Sheila Alden's trust fund after this gent Dibben. You had all the time in the world to figure things out and get ready for this little play. You saw that an accident happened to Dibben at the right time. You knew Sheila Alden was coming up here— probably suggested the idea yourself— and you made all your arrangements beforehand.

"First you got Leila Adams, Sheila's secretary, to throw in with you by promising to split part of what you got from Sheila with her. Then you got Kokomo to do the muscle-work, promising him a split too. When you were prowling around up here beforehand you found out that Jannen was a crackpot with a grudge against the Aldens.

"Now, there was an ideal fall-guy for you all ready-made. Anything that happened you could always blame on him. But Jannen talks too much, and this poor guy, Boley, the regular station master, got suspicious of what you were cooking up with him, and either you or Kokomo or Jannen— or all three of you— got Boley drunk and probably doped him and left him out in the storm to freeze.

"Leila Adams wasn't going to impersonate Sheila Alden unless it was necessary on account of someone like me coming around. You definitely didn't want anyone around— not with the real Sheila Alden locked in the cellar.

"And so— " Doan paused, ran a hand over his cheek.

"Jannen knew a lot about explosives, and so you got him to fix up that little cigar case present for me. You knew I was going to be on the job because the trust company hired the agency, and Toggery told you he was going to send me up. So you dressed up in a fancy costume and laid for me with your cigar case bomb."

"How did you know I was the one who gave you that case?"

Doan grinned. "I couldn't miss. You spent so much time trying to cover yourself up that you stuck out like a sore thumb. You wanted to be sure that if anything went wrong no one could prove that you had anything to do with the whole business.

"That was the reason for your little fairy tale about the janitor and the cigar case and why you put on that elaborate, nervous and worried act and why you wanted to make sure that I knew you'd just been assigned to handle Sheila Alden's business. You wanted me to think that you were a jittery sort of a dope who couldn't possibly know the score. As a matter of fact, you are a dope."

Brill's lip lifted. "So? And I suppose you can tell me what happened tonight, too?"

"Easy," Doan agreed. "When you found out you hadn't put me away and that I was coming up here, you had to get a girl to act as secretary to the phoney Sheila Alden because you knew I'd expect to find a secretary.

"You hired the first girl you could find— Joan Greg. She wasn't in on the impersonation business. She thought Leila Adams was actually Sheila Alden— and, more important, so did her boy friend, Crowley.

"Crowley just messed the whole works up for you. He started impressing his personality on Leila Adams. He's a slick worker. She fell for him. She was a scrawny, homely dame, and she'd never had anybody like Crowley tell her how beautiful, breath-taking, marvelous and generally all-around wonderful she was before.

"She liked it fine. She liked it so well she began to get out of hand, and you knew that if Crowley worked much more of his sex appeal, she'd spill something to him. You killed her.

"Joan Greg was crazy jealous of Crowley, and she gave you the idea by trying it herself. You knew, then, that you could put Leila Adams away and blame it on Joan Greg.

"You had a master key. You could get into her bedroom. You cut Leila Adams' throat and then went in and planted the knife on Joan Greg and bloodied up her hands. When she woke up she actually didn't know whether or not she had killed the phoney Sheila Alden. As soon as I left you alone with her and Crowley, you told them to beat it. You planned to lay all the blame on them, knowing they'd keep under cover.

"Jannen was prowling around the place, and you tipped him off and then sent me out, thinking Jannen and his damned wolves would take care of me. You tipped your hand twice then. First by that phoney entrance coming downstairs. Nobody who actually got banged with a chair ever acted so screwy as you did. And then you weren't even interested when I told you there was a girl down cellar. As an actor, you stink. What crackpot notion have you got up your sleeve now?"

Brill said smoothly: "I've had to alter my plans slightly, Doan, but I don't think it will really matter— certainly not to you. You see, at first all I wanted to do was to force Sheila to give me her power of attorney for a week or so after she got control of the trust fund. If I could have done that, as I planned, I would have made a fortune."

"Sure. By selling her a few million shares of phoney stock."

Brill looked contemptuous. "Nothing so crude. Merely by forcing the market up and down by alternately selling and buying the huge blocks of stock she owns in several corporations and being on the right side of the market myself each time.

"There would have been nothing criminal in that, and no way for her to prove afterward that she hadn't given the power of attorney voluntarily, because it would have been her word against myself, Kokomo and Leila Adams. But due to the way things have happened, I've been forced— not very reluctantly, I must admit— to ask Miss Alden to do me the honor of becoming my wife."

Sheila Alden spoke for the first time. "No," she said in a small, clear voice.

Brill paid no attention to her. "You see, Doan? Even if my original plan did go on the rocks, I can still pull things together. I'll have control over Miss Alden's money if she's my wife— you can be sure of that. And more important, she can't testify against me."

Sheila Alden said: "I am not going to marry you— now or any other time."

"I think you will," Brill said. "It's really quite essential. Kokomo, will you take Miss Alden into the other room and see if you can— ah— reason with her?"

11: Good Bye Now

SHIELA ALDEN DREW in her breath with a little gasp. Kokomo was grinning at her meaningly out of the side of his mouth that wasn't swollen. He came nearer the divan.

"It's warm in there," Brill said. "She won't need that coat."

Sheila Alden wrapped the coat tighter around her, clutching the lapels with fingers that were white with strain.

"No! You can't— "

"Brill," said Doan.

He hadn't made any noticeable move, but now he was holding a flat metal case on the palm of his right hand, looking down at it thoughtfully.

"That's mine!" Brill exclaimed.

"No," said Doan. "No, Brill. Not yours. It's the one you gave me."

Silence stretched over the room like a thin black veil, with the crackle of the flames in the hearth coming through it faint and distant.

"Foolish," Doan said, still staring at the case thoughtfully. "Foolish trying to alibi yourself by carrying one like it and pretending some mysterious Mr. Smith gave it to you and that the cigars in it subsequently blew the janitor to smithereens. There aren't any cigars— explosive or otherwise— in this case. It's packed with explosive."

"Brill said stiffly: "How— how—"

"You're a dope," Doan told him. "Don't you know that the bomb squad on any city police force has equipment— black light, X-ray, fluoroscope— so they can look into suspicious packages without opening them? I took this case down to a pal of mine on the Bay City bomb squad. He squinted into it and told me it was a very neat little hand-grenade, so I kept it for a souvenir. Here. Catch it."

He tossed the case in a spinning, glittering arc. Brill yelled in a choked, horrified voice. He dropped the automatic and grabbed frantically with both hands at the case.

Doan dived for him in a lunging expert tackle. He smashed against Brill's pipe-stem legs. The case was knocked whirling up in the air, and Brill spun around and fell headlong. His head cracked sickeningly against the edge of the hearth, and he stiffened, his whole body quivering, and then was still.

Doan rolled over and sat up and looked down the thick black barrel of the automatic at Kokomo's scared, sagging face.

"Hi, Kokomo," Doan said softly.

Kokomo held both big hands in front of him, fingers spread wide, as though he were trying to push back the expected bullet.

"Don't," he whispered. "Don't shoot."

"Oh, I think I will," Doan said.

Kokomo believed him. He had already had a demonstration of what Doan could and would do. His thick lips opened and shut soundlessly, little sticky threads of saliva glinting at their corners.

Doan got up. "Turn around, Kokomo."

Kokomo turned slowly and stiffly, like a mechanical doll that had almost run down. Doan stepped close to him and slammed him on the head with the barrel of the automatic.

"I'll bet even your cement knob will ache tomorrow after that," Doan said amiably. He winked at Sheila Alden, who was staring with wide unbelieving brown eyes.

"Weren't scared, were you? They never had a chance. They're amateurs. I'm a professional. That case was really Brill's— not the one he gave me. I picked it out of his pocket last night. Wanted to look at it more closely."

She continued to stare.

He went over to the door into the hall and picked up the telephone. It was a French type handset with a long cord attached to it. Stringing out the cord behind him, Doan brought the phone back to the divan and sat down on it beside Sheila Alden. He held the receiver against his ear.

"The dopes," he said to Sheila. "They didn't even cut the line."

She turned her head stiffly, little by little, and looked from Brill to Kokomo. "Are they— are they—"

"Dead?" Doan finished. "Oh, no." He was still listening at the receiver, and now he said:

"Hello. Hello, operator? Get me the J. S. Toggery residence in Bay City. I don't know the number. I'll hold the line."

He waited, smiling at Sheila Alden in a speculative way. She had begun to breathe more evenly now, and there was a little color in her cheeks.

"But— but you did it so easily— so quickly. I mean, it all happened before I knew what—"

"The hand is quicker than the eye," said Doan. "At least mine was quicker than theirs."

"I— I've never met anyone like you before."

"There's only one of us," Doan said.

The receiver crackled against his ear, and then J. S. Toggery's voice said:

"What? What? Who's this?"

"Doan— the forgotten man. How are you, Mr. Toggery? How is Carstairs?"

"You! That damned ghoulish giraffe! He pulled all my wife's new drapes down! He broke a vase that cost me a hundred and fifty dollars! He crawled under the dinner table and then stood up and dumped the dinner on the floor! I've got him chained in the garage, and let me tell you, Doan, if he pulls just one more trick, I'll get an elephant gun and so help me I'll pulverize him! You hear me?"

"He's young and exuberant. He probably misses me. You'll have to excuse him. Goodbye now."

"Wait! Wait, you fool! Are you up at the Alden lodge where you're supposed to be? Is everything all right up there?"

"Oh, yes. Now it is. There was a kidnapping and a couple of murders and some attempted thefts and a few assaults with intent to kill and such, but I straightened it all out. Get off the line, Toggery. I've got to call the sheriff."

"Doan!" Toggery screamed. "Doan! What? What did you say? Murders— kidnapping. Doan! Is Miss Alden all right?"

Doan looked at her. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Toggery. Miss Alden is— quite all right."

He hung up the receiver on Toggery's violent voice and nodded at Sheila Alden.

"You know," he said, "you're so very nice that I think I could like you an awful lot even if you didn't have fifty million dollars "

Sheila Alden's soft lips made a round, pink O of surprise and then moved a little into a faint tremulous smile.

____________________

2

Red Goose

Black Mask Feb 1934

IT WAS a long, high-ceilinged hall, gloomy and silent. The air was musty. Tall, barred windows on one side of the hall let in a little of the bright sunlight where it formed waffle-like patterns on the thick green carpet. There was a polished brass rail, waist-high, running the length of the hall on the side opposite the barred windows.

Shaley came quietly along the hall. He was whistling softly to himself through his teeth and tapping with his forefinger on the brass rail in time with his steps.

Shaley was bonily tall. He had a thin, tanned face with bitterly heavy lines in it. He looked calm; but he looked like he was being calm on purpose—as though he was consciously holding himself in. He had an air of hardboiled confidence.

A door at the end of the hall opened, and a wrinkled little man in a grey suit that was too big for him came hurrying out. He carried a framed picture under one arm, and had dusty, rimless glasses on the end of his nose. He had a worried, absent-minded expression on his face, and mumbled in a monotone to himself.

Shaley stepped in front of him and said: “Hello.”

“How do you do,” said the little man busily. He didn't look up. He tried to side-step around Shaley.

Shaley kept in front of him. “My name is Shaley— Ben Shaley.”

“Yes, yes,” said the little man absently. “How do you do, Mr Shaley.” He tried to squeeze past.

Shaley put out one long arm, barring his way.

“Shaley,” he said patiently. “Ben Shaley. You sent for me.”

The little man looked up, blinking through the dusty glasses.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh! Mr Shaley. Of course. You're the detective.”

Shaley nodded. “Now you're getting it.”

The little man made nervous, batting gestures with one hand, blinking. Apparently he was trying to remember why he had sent for a detective.

“Oh, yes!” he said, snapping his fingers triumphantly. “The picture! Yes, yes. My name is Gray, Mr Shaley. I'm the curator in charge. Won't you step into my office?”

“Thanks,” said Shaley.

Gray trotted quickly back down the hall, back through the door. It was a small office with a big, flat desk next to another barred window. Gray dodged around the desk and sat down in the chair behind it, still holding the framed picture.

Shaley sat down in another chair, tipped it back against the wall, and extended his long legs comfortably.

Gray held up the picture and stared at it admiringly, head on one side. “Beautiful, isn't it?” he asked, turning the picture so Shaley could see it.

“Too fat,” said Shaley.

Gray blinked. “Fat?” he said, bewilderedly.

“It's a picture of a dame, isn't it?” Shaley asked.

“It's a nude,” Gray admitted.

Shaley nodded. “She's too fat. She bulges.”

“Bulges?” Gray repeated in amazement. “Bulges?” He looked from the picture to Shaley. “Why, this is a Rubens.”

Shaley tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I suppose you had some reason for calling me?”

Gray came out of his daze. “Oh, yes. Yes, yes. It was about the picture.”

“What picture? This one?”

“Oh, no. The one that was stolen.”

Shaley took a deep breath. “Now we're getting somewhere. There was a picture stolen?”

“Of course,” said Gray. “That's why I called you.”

“I'm glad to know that. When was it stolen?”

“Three days ago. Mr Denton recommended you. Mr Denton is one of the trustees of the museum.”

“Denton, the lawyer?”

Gray nodded. “Mr Denton is an attorney. He said something about setting a crook to catch a crook.”

“I'll remember that,” said Shaley.

“I hope I haven't offended you?” Gray said anxiously.

“You better hope so,” Shaley told him. “I'm bad medicine when I get offended. There was a picture stolen from the museum, then, three days ago. What kind of picture?”

“The Red Goose, painted by Guiterrez about 1523. A beautiful thing. It was loaned to us by a private collector for an exhibition of sixteenth century work. It's a priceless example.”

“What does it look like?” Shaley asked.

Gray peered at him closely. “You never saw the Red Goose?”

“No,” said Shaley patiently. “I never saw the Red Goose.”

Gray shook his head pityingly.

Shaley took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Listen,” he said in a strained voice. “Would you mind giving me a description of that picture?”

“Certainly,” said Gray quickly. “It's twelve inches by fifteen. It's a reproduction of a pink goose in a pond of green water lilies. A beautiful work.”

“It sounds like it,” Shaley said sourly. “How was it stolen?”

“It was cut out of the frame with a razor blade. I never heard of such an act of vicious vandalism! They cut a quarter of an inch off the painting all around it!”

“Terrible,” Shaley agreed. “When was this done?”

“I told you. Three days ago.”

Shaley took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. “I know you told me three days ago,” he said in a deceptively mild voice. “But what time of the day was it stolen— at night?”

“Oh, no. In the afternoon.”

“Where were your guards?”

“They were stopping the fight.”

Shaley made a sudden strangling noise. He took off his hat and dropped it on the floor. He glared at Gray. Gray stared back at him in mild surprise. Shaley picked up his hat and straightened it out carefully.

“The fight,” he said, his voice trembling a little. “There was a fight, then?”

“Why, yes,” said Gray. “I forgot to mention it. Two men got into a fight in the back gallery, and it took four of the guards to eject them from the premises. And then we noticed that the picture was gone.”

“That's fine,” Shaley told him sarcastically. “Now would it be too much trouble for you to describe these men who fought?”

Gray said: “I noticed them particularly, because they seemed a trifle out of place in a museum. One was a big, tall man with long arms and short legs. He had four gold teeth, and he was bald, and his ear—” Gray stopped, hunting for the word.

“Cauliflower?” Shaley asked.

Gray nodded quickly. “Yes. Thick and crinkly. The man interested me as an example of arrested development in the evolutionary process.”

Shaley blinked. He scratched his head, squinting.

“You mean he looked like an ape?” he asked.

Gray nodded again. “He had certain definite characteristics—the small eyes sunken under very heavy brows, the flattened nose, the abnormally protruding jaw—that have come to be associated with the development of the human race in its earlier stages.”

“That's nice,” Shaley said blankly. “What did the other one look like?”

“A nice-looking young man. A trifle rough-looking— but quiet and self-effacing. He had red hair and big pink freckles. The thumb on his left hand was missing.”

“That's enough,” Shaley said. “Have you notified the police of the theft?”

“Oh, no. Mr Demon advised us not to. He said the thieves might destroy the picture if they thought the police were after them.” Gray shook his head sadly at the thought of such an outrage. “Mr Denton said to tell you to get it back for nothing if you could; but that the museum was willing to pay up to five thousand dollars. The picture must be returned undamaged. It's a matter of honour with the museum. It would be a terrible blow to our reputation if the property of a private collector should be lost while in our possession.”

Shaley stood up. “I'll see what I can do.”

“Mr Denton said he would take care of your fee.”

Shaley said: “I'll take care of him. Calling me a crook.”

SHALEY DROVE his battered Chrysler roadster into Hollywood, entered a drug-store and went into one of the telephone booths in back.

He took a leather-covered notebook from his pocket, flipped through the pages, found the number he wanted. He put a nickel in the phone and dialled.

“Yeah?” It was a thin, flat voice.

“This is Ben Shaley, Mike.”

“Oh, hello, Ben. Wait a minute.” The voice pulled a little away from the telephone. “Turn that radio down. How the hell do you think I can hear?” The voice came closer again. “How are you, Ben? Long time no see.”

“I'm okay, Mike. How you doing?”

“Damn good. I got the place all redecorated. I got a real bar now— a swell one— mahogany. Come on out, sometime, Ben.”

“Thanks, Mike. Listen, is that guy that writes for Ring and Turf there— Pete Tervalli?”

“Yeah. He's upstairs playin' blackjack. You want him?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I'll call him. Hold the phone.”

Shaley waited, tapping out a complicated rhythm on the mouth-piece of the telephone and humming softly.

“Hello, Ben. This is Pete Tervalli.”

Shaley said: “Pete, I want to ask you about a couple of guys. Number one is a big gook that looks like an ape. He's got gold front teeth, a flat snozzle, a thick ear, and he's bald. Know him?”

“Nope,” said Pete. “He's a new one on me.”

“All right. Here's the other one. He's red-headed and sort of quiet, and he's got big pink freckles on his face. He's minus his left thumb.”

“Sure,” said Pete. “Sure. That's Fingers Reed. He fights in prelims at the Legion stadium sometimes. Been on at the Olympic a couple times, too. Had a semi-final down to Venice once— got knocked out.”

“Where can I find him?”

“At Pop's gym down on Main.”

“Thanks a lot, Pete.”

SHALEY WENT up a flight of long, dark stairs littered with white blotches that were ground-out cigarette butts. He went along a short, dirty hall, through swinging double doors with frosted glass panels.

He was in a big high-ceilinged room that smelled strongly of tobacco, liniment, gin and sweat. A youth in a greyish sweatshirt was jumping rope in the middle of the floor. He skipped expertly and solemnly, first from one foot and then the other, counting aloud. In one corner a punching bag battered back and forth in a stuttering roar under the quick fists of a small, bowl egged Filipino. In another corner a fattish man made a rowing machine creak mournfully.

Shaley walked along the wall and entered an open door. It was a small office with a dusty desk in one corner. The walls were papered with the pictures of fighters in various belligerent poses.

Shaley said: “Hello, Pop,” to the man sitting at the desk.

Pop was a small man with a shiny bald head. He wore a celluloid collar so high that it took him just under the ears and made him look like he was always stretching his neck. He had a dead brown-paper cigarette in one corner of his mouth.

“Hello, Ben,” he said without enthusiasm.

“Where can I find Fingers Reed?”

“Fingers Reed?” Pop repeated absently. “Fingers Reed? I wouldn't know him. He a fighter?”

Shaley grinned. “Come on, Pop. Don't pull that stuff. I just want to give him twenty bucks. Which one is he?”

“Give me the twenty,” Pop requested. “He owes it to me for gym fees. He's in the ring.”

Shaley went out of the office, through another door and into a small room with seats in high, close tiers against three of its walls. There was a ring in the middle.

Fingers Reed, in a heavy sweatshirt and helmet, was sparring with a tall, spider-legged middleweight. The middleweight danced around very fancily, stepping high. Fingers Reed shuffled after him, his left poked out in front of him, his right held back shoulder high. He was much too slow for the middleweight. He crossed his right again and again—long, heavy blows that the middleweight slipped easily.

A little man in a chequered cap stood beside the ring. He had a watch in one hand and a string in the other. He pulled the string as Shaley watched. The gong boomed.

Fingers Reed and the middleweight patted each other on the back and started walking back and forth in the ring, breathing deeply and swinging their arms.

Shaley said: “Fingers!”

Fingers Reed stopped and looked down at him.

“I want to talk to you a minute,” Shaley said.

Fingers Reed nodded. He slid through the ropes, jumped down on the floor. With the thumb of his right boxing glove, he hooked a rubber tooth protector out of his mouth. He spat on the floor and ran his tongue over his front teeth.

“What?”

Shaley said: “Who paid you to put on that fracas at the museum?”

Fingers Reed pulled up the front of his sweatshirt. He had an inner tube, cut open, wound tightly around his stomach. He loosened the inner tube a little. Then he rubbed his nose with the back of one glove, squinting sidewise at Shaley.

“I had an idea there was something sour about that.”

Shaley said: “I don't want to get hard about it, but there was a picture lifted while you were having that little to-do, and I want to know about it.”

“Sure,” said Fingers. “Somebody tells me that they got some pictures of some old fight scenes over in his museum in Pasadena and, me not having nothing to do, I think I will go over and take a look at them. So I do, and they are pretty good pictures, too. After I am done looking at them I walk around to take a look at the rest of the stuff, and while I am looking up comes this big monkey and steps on my foot.” He stopped and nodded at Shaley.

“So what?” said Shaley woodenly.

“Well, so I ask him what the hell he thinks he is doing, dancing with me? And then he hauls off and pops me, so I pop him back, and pretty soon a few guys in monkey suits come along and toss us both out on our ears.” Fingers gestured with the boxing gloves. “So that's that.”

Shaley said: “You wouldn't know this big monkey's name?”

Fingers shook his head. “Never saw him before or since.”

Shaley took a twenty-dollar bill out of his vest pocket and folded it lengthwise and looked at Fingers calculatingly.

“That's too bad,” he said regretfully. He poked the twenty back into his vest pocket. “Well, I'll be going, then. Thanks.”

“Wait, now,” said Fingers. “Wait a minute. Don't get in a rush.”

Shaley took the bill out of his pocket and gave it to him.

Fingers said: “Here, Jig. Keep it for me.” He tossed the folded bill to the timekeeper.

“Let's have the real dope,” Shaley requested.

“Well, it's like this. The big monkey's name is Gorjon. He's the stooge for a gent by the name of Carter. The two of them come around the gym here a couple of times, and then they put this proposition up to me. Would I put on a phoney fight at the museum for ten bucks? I was flat, so I said sure, why not? So I did.”

“Where can I get hold of these boys?”

Fingers shrugged. “By me.”

Shaley said gently: “You wouldn't try to be smart with me, would you, Fingers? You wouldn't try to shake me down?”

Fingers held up one gloved hand, palm out. “So help me. I never see them but three times.”

Shaley said: “It'd be worth a hundred to me if I could locate them.”

Fingers blinked thoughtfully, rubbing his nose with the glove on his right hand. “Hm. The big boy is a fight fan. You might stake out the stadiums around here.”

“You do it. You might get some of your pals to help. I could make it fifty for the guy that found them and a hundred to you.”

Fingers nodded. “Okay.”

WHEN SHALEY came into his office, Sadie, his secretary, was tapping away briskly on the typewriter with glossy, pink-nailed fingers.

“Hi-yah,” said Shaley, tossing his hat on the hat-rack and heading for the inner office.

Sadie raised her sleek, dark head and watched him. She didn't say anything.

Shaley got to the door of the inner office, then turned around and came back to her desk.

“Well, what's your trouble?”

Sadie said: “A woman called you up. Who is she?”

“How do I know who she is? Who'd she say she was?”

Sadie sniffed. “She wouldn't tell me her name. Talked like a blonde though.”

“How'd you know she was blonde?”

“Humph! I can tell, all right. Talking baby talk— all about a red goose. Who ever heard of a red goose?”

“Did you get her number?” Shaley demanded.

“Certainly I did. I always remember to ask people their number.”

“Hell— Give me that number.”

Sadie shoved a pad of paper along the desk. Shaley picked up her telephone and began to dial the number.

“And my mother was saying just last night,” said Sadie righteously, “that she didn't think this office was the proper place for a young girl to work. All these questionable people coming in and out all day long and you swearing and yelling at me all the time and—”

“Shut up,” said Shaley absently.

“Hello.” It was a nice voice— small and clear and sweet— shyly innocent.

“This is Ben Shaley. Did you call my office?”

The nice voice said: “Oh, yes.”

“About the Red Goose?”

“Yes, Mr Shaley. I called the museum, and they told me you were in charge. Are you looking for the picture?”

Shaley said suspiciously: “Who're you? A reporter?”

“Oh, no. I'm the one that has the picture.”

Shaley nearly dropped the telephone. “What?”

“Well, Mr Shaley, I haven't exactly got it right here. But I can get it for you. Do you want it?”

“Where are you?” Shaley demanded. “When can I see you?”

“I'll be home tonight at seven-thirty. It's the Hingle Manor apartments on Harcourt just south of Sunset, in Hollywood. Apartment seven. The name is Marjorie Smith.”

“I'll be there, Marjorie,” Shaley said cheerfully, hanging up.

He put the telephone slowly back on Sadie's desk, frowning thoughtfully. He picked up her pencil and drew a pattern of squares on the desk-pad, still frowning.

“You know,” he said absently, “someway or other I didn't like the sound of that. It sounded just a little screwy. I wonder if somebody is trying to lay me an egg?”

“Humph!” said Sadie. “Blondes!”

HINGLE MANOR was a long, neat, two-storey stucco building with turrets on the four corners and blue pennants on each of the turrets. Floodlights placed on the front lawn and slanted up made the building look larger and newer than it was.

Shaley found the card that said: “Marjorie Smith,” and buzzed the bell under it. After a while the latch clicked. Shaley pushed open the door and was in a small, narrow hall, thickly carpeted.

He looked around, then went up a short flight of stairs. At the end of the hall an open door made a yellow square of light that was like a picture frame for the young woman standing there.

Shaley was reminded of an old-fashioned tintype he had once seen in a family album. The woman wore a neat blue dress, modest and plain. She had wide blue eyes and corn-coloured hair wound around her small head in thick braids. Given a sun-bonnet and a slate she would have been a perfect copy of a school girl of fifty years ago.

She smiled and curtsied a little and said shyly: “Won't you come in, please?”

Shaley went into a small, well-furnished living-room and stood there holding his hat in his hands and shifting from one foot to the other uneasily.

The woman came into the room, shutting the door. She sat down on a couch and folded her hands neatly in her lap.

“I'm Marjorie Smith,” she said, smiling nicely.

“I'm Ben Shaley.”

Marjorie Smith smiled up at him with admiring blue eyes. Shaley watched her uncomfortably. Something was wrong with all this. Marjorie Smith didn't fit in with the rest of the picture— with Fingers Reed and Carter and Gorjon.

“Who lives here with you?” he asked.

She shook her head, wide-eyed. “No one.”

“Are we here alone?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes.”

Shaley grunted. He scratched his head, scowling. He said:

“Listen, Marjorie, I'm just a nasty man with mean suspicions. The only kind of fairy stories I believe are the kind they tell about the boys who carry handkerchiefs in their cuffs. Just sit right here while I sniff around.”

“Oh, surely,” said Marjorie.

He nosed through the rest of the apartment— kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, closets. He shot the bolt on the back door. He came back into the front room, opened the front door, peered out into the hall. He sat down in a chair and stared at Marjorie Smith.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said blankly.

She put her hand up over her mouth. “Why, Mr Shaley!”

“Excuse me,” said Shaley. “But this is over my head like a tent. Let's talk business.”

“Oh, yes,” said Marjorie Smith. “Oh, yes. Business.” She leaned forward and watched him with big blue eyes.

“You've got the painting I want—the Red Goose?”

She nodded earnestly. “Yes.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“A man gave it to me— a man by the name of John Jones.”

“That was nice of him,” Shaley said.

“He said you would pay me two thousand dollars for it.”

“He's an optimist,” Shaley said sourly.

“It seems like a lot of money, doesn't it?” Marjorie Smith asked earnestly. “But John Jones assured me that it was worth that much. Have you got the money, Mr Shaley?”

“Huh!” said Shaley. “Where's the picture?”

“John Jones said I was not to give it to you until you gave me the money.”

“John's a smart fellow,” said Shaley. “But I can't give you the money until I know if you have the picture.”

“Oh, but I have got it.”

“Yes, yes. But I want to see it. Where is it?”

She shook her head regretfully. “Not until you give me the money. Then I'll give it to you. Really I will, Mr Shaley.”

Shaley took a deep breath and held himself in. “Listen, Marjorie, I don't want to get hard with you, but if I were you I'd hand over that picture right now.”

“But, Mr Shaley, I explained—”

“Once more— will you give me that picture?”

“But, Mr Shaley—”

Shaley jumped for her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her off the couch and shook her.

“Now, you little dummy—” he snarled.

She made no resistance. Her body was soft and relaxed in his hands. She moved just enough to bring her right hand up under Shaley's nose.

She held a small bottle in her hand, uncorked.

Shaley got one whiff of the contents of that bottle. He choked suddenly. He let go of Marjorie Smith and jumped backwards, gasping.

“Acid!” he said, one hand over his nose.

“Yes,” she said, smiling just as nicely as before. “Touch me again, and I'll throw it in your face.”

Shaley swallowed hard. The picture wasn't out of focus any more. Marjorie Smith fitted right in.

“Wow!” said Shaley in an awed voice, backing away from her warily. He backed clear to the door, keeping his eyes on the bottle.

“Now listen, boob,” said Marjorie Smith in her clear, childlike voice. “Let me tell you something—”

THE DOOR BEHIND Shaley opened suddenly, bunting him forwards. He whirled around, one hand inside his coat, and looked squarely into the blunt, round muzzle of an automatic. His hand came out, empty.

“Take it easy, baby.”

Gray had given a good description. This man Gorjon looked like an ape. He had enormously broad, sloping shoulders, hunched forwards. He stood there, swaying a little easily. The gold front teeth gleamed as he grinned at Shaley.

Another man was standing in the doorway behind Gorjon. This man didn't look at Shaley. He was looking at Marjorie Smith.

“Double-crossing little tramp,” he said levelly.

He stepped around Gorjon and went towards her, walking springily on the balls of his feet. He was short and round and plumply dapper. He had thick red lips and a small black moustache. He wore a soft white felt hat. He was smiling a little.

Marjorie Smith had hidden the hand holding the acid bottle behind her. She watched the fat man. She waited until he put out a plump, white hand, reaching for her, and then she said something to herself in a tight whisper and hurled the acid at him with a quick sweep of her arm.

The fat man was astoundingly quick. He dropped into a crouch, ducking his head. The acid missed him, spattering on the wall in a bubbling brown stain.

The fat man bounced up again instantly and hit her with his fist. Marjorie Smith fell over a chair and lit on her hands and knees in the corner.

Gorjon hadn't moved either his eyes or the automatic from Shaley. He reached out one big hand and shut the door.

“Sit down, mister,” he said to Shaley.

Shaley sat down slowly and tensely in the chair in back of him.

The fat man picked up Marjorie Smith effortlessly and planked her down on the couch. He was still smiling.

She didn't say anything. She watched the fat man expressionlessly. There was a red mark on her face where he had hit her.

The fat man turned to Gorjon. “Take his gun.”

Gorjon reached inside Shaley's coat and pulled out the big automatic Shaley carried in a shoulder-holster. He hefted it, grinning.

“It's a.45. He goes loaded for bear. Maybe he's one of these here rough characters you read about in the papers.”

The fat man said: “Who is he, Marj?”

Marjorie Smith said sullenly: “Ben Shaley. He's a private peeper— from the museum.”

Shaley said: “And you are Carter.”

The fat man smiled at him. “So you found Reed, did you? I knew that dead-head would blab all he knew. Yeah, Carter is one of my names. Take a good look at me. Me and Gorjon are gonna be your shadows until you get that money from the museum.” He turned back to Marjorie Smith. “Where's the picture?”

“Try and find it.”

Carter said: “I will,” softly.

He picked her up by the front of her dress and slapped her in the face— quick, sharp slaps that rocked her head back and forth.

“Hey!” said Shaley.

Gorjon pushed his automatic into Shaley's neck. “I wouldn't poke my head out, boy.”

Carter said: “Well?” and stopped slapping Marjorie Smith.

She spat at him. He hit her in the mouth with his fist and knocked her back on the couch.

“Rap that boob on the nut,” he said calmly to Gorjon, “and take her shoes off. We'll have to get rough with her.”

Marjorie Smith wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lips left a little smear of blood on her hand.

“I'll tell you,” she said thickly. “Tannerwell has it.”

Carter watched her thoughtfully. “Tannerwell, huh? You wouldn't fool an old Civil War vet, would you, Marj?”

“Tannerwell has it.”

Carter moved his plump shoulders. “So it was that artist sap, huh? I didn't think he had it in him. Where is he?”

“I don't know.”

Carter said very gently: “Where is he, Marj?”

She shrugged impatiently. “I tell you I don't know. I've got his telephone number. I can get him to come here.”

“That's just dandy,” said Carter. “What's the number?”

“Rochester 2585.”

Carter went over to the stand near the door and picked up the telephone. “I'll talk to him first, and then I'll let you. You tell him to come over here— and make it good. I'm going to be mad if you try something funny.”

Marjorie Smith said: “He'll come.”

Carter dialled the number. He waited, listening. Then he said:

“Hello, Tannerwell? This is Carter.” He listened, grinning at Shaley. Then he said: “Yes. Your dear old pal, Carter. Now listen, smarty, while I tell you something. I'm over at Marj's apartment. You get that picture and come over here, or something sudden will happen to her. She's going to talk to you.”

He held the mouthpiece of the telephone in front of Marjorie Smith.

She said brokenly: “Bill— Bill. Come quick. Bring the picture.” Then she screamed suddenly, so loudly it made Shaley jump.

Carter pushed down the receiver hook with his thumb and put the telephone back on its stand. “Dandy, Marj. You should go on the radio.”

“He'll be here in about fifteen minutes,” Marjorie Smith said, still sullen.

Carter pulled up a chair and sat down. He tipped his hat back and began to whistle softly and patiently between his teeth, watching Marjorie Smith unblinkingly. Gorjon stood just behind Shaley's chair.

Shaley said: “How about sitting down? You make me nervous.”

Gorjon chuckled. “Don't get too nervous, because if you start jiggling around this thing is liable to go off.”

“Do you think you're going to put this over?” Shaley asked Carter.

Carter stopped whistling long enough to say: “I think so,” and then began again. He stopped and looked at Shaley. “Just keep your nose out of this, baby. When I get that picture, then you and me will have a little talk. Until then you're just a kibitzer. Don't get the idea that anybody has dealt you a hand.”

Marjorie Smith moved impatiently on the couch. “Can I have a cigarette?”

Carter said: “I don't smoke, dearie. You know that.”

“There's some cigarettes in my right-hand coat pocket,” Shaley said.

Gorjon fished the package out and tossed it on the couch. Marjorie Smith took one and used the lighter on the table at the end of the couch.

Carter got up and turned on the radio. He found a dance orchestra, nodded approvingly, sat down, and began to whistle in tune with it, tapping his foot.

They waited.

IT TOOK Tannerwell sixteen minutes. His footsteps came up the hall noisily, running. He rapped loudly on the door.

Carter got up quickly and got against the wall beside the door. He nodded at Marjorie Smith.

She said: “Come in, Bill.”

Tannerwell came in with a rush. Carter pushed the door shut behind him.

Tannerwell didn't pay any attention to him. He went straight to Marjorie Smith and stood over her anxiously.

He didn't look like an artist. He looked more like a football player. He was tall, and he had wide, square shoulders. He was blond, and his features were evenly handsome, except for his nose, which had been broken and set crookedly.

“You screamed,” he said to Marjorie Smith.

She sniffed a little, sadly. “D-did you bring the pic-picture, Bill?” She looked woebegone and bedraggled. She looked like a hurt child, crying there on the couch.

Tannerwell jerked a roll of parchment from inside his coat. “Sure. Here.” He tossed it over his shoulder at Carter. He never took his eyes from Marjorie Smith.

Carter unrolled the parchment and examined it approvingly.

“Well,” he said pleasantly. “Here we are at last.”

“Marjorie,” Tannerwell said. “Over the telephone. You screamed. Did they hurt you?” He put his hands out in front of him. He had big hands with long, thick fingers. He moved the fingers a little. “Did they hurt you, Marjorie?”

She sobbed. “Y-yes. Look.” She pulled aside the neck of her dress and showed a round, ugly burn on the white skin of her shoulder. “Carter burned me with a cigarette to make me scream. He laughed when he did it.”

Carter looked up from the picture. “Here!” he said, blankly amazed. “What—”

Tannerwell stared at the burn on Marjorie Smith's shoulder. Suddenly his face twisted crazily. He spun around and grabbed Carter by the neck with both big hands.

“Hey!” said Gorjon, starting around in front of Shaley.

Shaley braced his arms on the chair and kicked him savagely in the stomach with both feet. Gorjon doubled over, grunting.

Shaley jumped out of the chair. He got hold of the barrel of the automatic and twisted it out of Gorjon's hand.

Gorjon straightened up. He was grinning. He hit Shaley's wrist with the edge of one palm and knocked the automatic on the floor. He reached for Shaley.

Shaley swung on him with both fists, backing away. He hit Gorjon five times as hard as he could, squarely in the face. Gorjon shook his head, still grinning. He shuffled after Shaley, reaching.

Shaley hit him some more. It was like pounding on a wall. Gorjon didn't even try to block the blows. He let Shaley hit him. He even chuckled a little, his gold teeth gleaming. He was like a cat playing with a mouse. He had forgotten all about Carter and Tannerwell. He kept shuffling after Shaley, one hunched shoulder pushed forward, sidling a little.

Shaley bumped into a chair, and Gorjon got him. He got one big hand in the front of Shaley's coat. He pulled him forwards and hit him with the other hand.

Shaley's coat ripped, and he went backwards. He bounced off the table, fell over a chair. He got up quickly. He was breathing in gasping sobs. Over Gorjon's shoulder he caught a quick glimpse of the rest of the room and realised that all this was happening in seconds instead of hours.

Tannerwell was still shaking Carter by the neck. Carter's plump face was beginning to turn purple. He was trying to get a revolver from his pocket, but apparently the sight had caught in the cloth and, with Tannerwell shaking him, he couldn't get it free.

Marjorie Smith was still sitting on the couch. And she was laughing. She was laughing at Carter, pointing her finger mockingly at him.

Shaley slipped along the wall away from Gorjon's reaching hands. Gorjon got too close, and Shaley began to hit him again, putting everything he had in each blow. Gorjon grinned and shuffled after him.

Shaley tripped over a stool and fell. Gorjon dropped on him. He got Shaley by the neck, loosely, and began to pound his head on the floor slowly and methodically, chuckling gleefully to himself.

The room rocked in front of Shaley in a red haze. His fingers scrabbled on the floor, touched the barrel of Gorjon's automatic. He twisted and squirmed, scraping at the automatic with stiff fingers.

The red haze began to get black slowly. Gorjon's face was a long way above him— like a gleaming pin-point that nodded and bobbed and leered.

Shaley got his stiff fingers around the butt of the automatic, pushed the muzzle against Gorjon's side.

At its blasting report the room suddenly cleared in front of Shaley's eyes. Gorjon fell over sideways, very slowly, and hit the floor and lay there without moving.

Shaley got slowly to his feet, staggering a little. His nose was broken. He could feel the blood running down his face. He started towards Tannerwell and Carter.

Carter saw him coming and finally got his pistol free. He slapped Tannerwell on the side of the head with it. Tannerwell dropped him and bent over, holding his head.

Carter took a quick snap shot at Marjorie Smith that pocked the plaster just above her head. Then he whirled and ducked towards the door. He still held the roll of parchment in his left hand.

Shaley dived for him. He hit Carter's knees just as Carter was going through the door. They rolled out into the hall.

Carter was amazingly strong and quick. It was like trying to hold a squirming ball of soft rubber. He got one leg loose, kicked Shaley in the face. He hit Shaley's broken nose, and Shaley writhed on the floor, swearing thickly, losing his grip on Carter's legs.

Carter bounced to his feet instantly. He ran down the hall towards the stairs.

“Carter!”

It was Marjorie Smith. She was standing in the doorway, and she had the .45 automatic Gorjon had taken from Shaley in one small hand.

Carter whirled around like a dancer and jumped sidewise crouching. Marjorie Smith shot him.

The bullet caught Carter and slammed him back and down in a limp pile. His arms and legs moved aimlessly. After a second he got slowly to his feet and staggered down the hall.

Marjorie Smith shot him again, deliberately, in the back. Carter collapsed weakly and slid down the stairs, bumping soddenly on each step.

A woman was screaming somewhere close by.

Shaley got up off the floor. He walked down the hall, guiding himself with one hand on the wall and trying to keep his feet from walking out from under him. He got to Carter and leaned over to pick up the picture. He fell down and got up again slowly, holding the picture.

Marjorie Smith came running down the hall. She was pulling Tannerwell along behind her. She looked calm, sure of herself, as if she knew just where she was going. Tannerwell was shaking his head foggily, and he staggered a little as he ran.

They went by Shaley without even looking at him.

Feet were pounding up and down the hall overhead. A half dozen people were screaming for the police into telephones and out windows.

Shaley climbed the stairs, shuffled slowly towards the rear entrance.

A man opened a door, looked at him blankly, said: “Good God! He's all blood!” and slammed the door.

Shaley got out the back door into cool darkness. He fell over a hedge, got up, and ran heavily through a weed-choked lot, swearing to himself in a mumbling monotone. A siren began to moan in the distance.

SHALEY HAD a piece of white court-plaster over his nose. It made his tanned face look darker and thinner. He had his hat tipped forward over his face because the back of his head was swollen.

He walked down a long, gloomy hall and found Gray at the end of it. Gray was on top of a high step-ladder carefully dusting a painting with a brush about an inch wide. He dusted in quick, dabbing strokes, stopping every minute to squint sidewise at the picture through his thick, dusty glasses.

Shaley said: “Hello!”

Gray said: “How do you do, Mr Shaley,” without looking around.

Shaley leaned against the brass railing and watched him. “Well,” he said. “It's a long story. Want to hear it?”

Gray dabbed busily at the picture. “Certainly, Mr Shaley.”

“A guy by the name of Carter stole the picture. The fight was staged by a pal of his and another bird they had hired, to attract the guards' attention while Carter got the picture. Carter had spotted this scatter as an easy one to crack, but he didn't know anything about pictures. So he hired an artist to pick out the right one to steal. The artist selected the Red Goose.”

Gray nodded. “A good choice, I must say. It's a very beautiful painting.”

“Carter didn't care whether it was beautiful or not. He wanted something the museum would want back in a hurry—something that couldn't be replaced. So he took the Red Goose. But Carter had a girl by the name of Marjorie Smith. The artist fell for her. She got ideas. She stole the picture from Carter and lit out with it and the artist. She got in touch with me, intending to sell me the picture for the museum. But Carter found her, just about that time. Are you listening?”

“Yes, yes,” said Gray absently. “Go on.”

“The artist had the picture. Carter had Marjorie Smith. She pulled a fake screaming act over the telephone to get the artist to bring the picture to Carter. Then, when the artist got there, she double-crossed Carter again. She told the artist that Carter had actually tortured her to make her scream over the telephone. She had burned herself with a cigarette to make it look better. The artist is nuts about her, and he went screwy and tackled Carter. Carter and his pal got themselves killed in the excitement, and I got a broken nose, and Marjorie and her friend Tannerwell got away.”

“Tannerwell,” said Gray thoughtfully. “Tannerwell. Oh, yes! He's the man that brought back the picture.”

There was a long silence.

At last Shaley said: “Brought back— the picture?” in a strained voice.

Gray looked down at him. “Oh, yes. I must have forgotten to notify you. A man by the name of Tannerwell came around yesterday afternoon some time after you left. He had the Red Goose, and I paid him three thousand dollars for it. We had promised not to ask any questions about how he happened to have it— we only wanted the picture back.”

Shaley took the roll of parchment from his coat pocket with fumbling fingers. “What's this, then?”

Gray trotted down the step-ladder. He examined the picture, holding it up to the light and nodding in a pleased way to himself.

“Yes. Nice work. Of course it hasn't the depth, the colour blending of the original, but it's very nice work.”

Shaley said thickly: “It's— it's a copy?”

“Oh, yes. Couldn't you see that? Mr Tannerwell told me, after it came into his hands he had made a copy of the picture to keep for himself.”

Shaley said: “That little tramp. She had Tannerwell copy the painting, intending to shake me down with it. Then when Carter butted in, she just switched her plans a little.”

Gray smiled at him. “I'm sorry you were deceived, Mr Shaley. You could say that the Red Goose was a sort of red herring, couldn't you?”

“I could say a lot worse than that,” said Shaley.

___________________

3

Something for the Sweeper

Dime Detective Magazine May 1937

JONES LIMPED slowly along, his rubbers making an irregular squeak-squish sound on the wet cement of the sidewalk. He was not a large man and, walking as he was now, humped forward in an unconscious effort to favor his feet, he looked small and insignificant. He wore an old trench-coat with grease stains running jaggedly down the front. The sun was bright on the slick-black wetness of the asphalt paving, and he had his hat-brim pulled low over his tired eyes.

The houses on this street were gaunt, ugly and brown, and as alike as the teeth in a saw. They all had a wide flight of worn stairs leading up to the front door with another flight beside it leading down into the basement. They had all been built by one man, those houses, and he evidently was a person who believed in getting a good, plain plan and then sticking to it.

Jones was watching house numbers out of the corners of his eyes. He was coming pretty close now, and he began to walk even slower. His mouth twisted up at one side every time he came down on his right foot.

Ahead of him he could see a man's head and shoulders. The man was halfway down one of the basement flights of stairs. His head and shoulders moved back and forth in a sort of a jigging rhythm. Approaching, Jones saw that he was sweeping up the stairs of the basement. He swept in careful, calculating little dabs, as precisely as if he were painting a picture with his broom.

“Hi,” said Jones, stopping and standing on his left foot.

The man made another dab with his broom, inspected the result, and then looked up at Jones. He was an old man, small and shrunken and wiry, with white, smooth hair that was combed straight back from his softly plastic face. He nodded silently at Jones, solemn and wordless.

“Hendrick Boone live here?” Jones asked.

The old man sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Who?”

“Hendrick Boone.”

The old man considered for a moment. “Live where?”

“Here,” said Jones.

“Yes,” said the old man.

Jones stared at him sourly. “Thanks a lot,” he said at last.

“Oh, that's all right,” the old man said, and smiled.

Jones went up the stairs, grunting painfully, and, when he got to the top, leaned over and pinched the toe of his right rubber and muttered to himself under his breath. He straightened up and looked at the closed double doors ahead of him. There was a narrow frosted-glass panel in each one, and the pair of stiff-legged storks, with toothpick beaks depicted on them, leered disdainfully at him with opposite eyes. Jones looked around for a doorbell, finally located a little iron lever that protruded out of a slit in one of the doors. He pulled it down and then up again, and a bell made a dismal blink-blink-blink sound inside.

Jones waited, standing on his left foot, and the door opened slowly, squeaking a little. Jones touched his hat and said: “Hello. Is Mr. Hendrick Boone here, and if so, can I talk to him for a minute?”

“He's not here. He's really not here.”

“Oh,” said Jones.

She was a very small woman with gray hair that was puffed up in a wide knot on the top of her head. She wore thick, rimless glasses and behind them her eyes were a distorted blue, wide and a little frightened and anxious to please. She wore a long skirt that rustled and a white waist with lace stiffen the front. She had a timid, wavering smile.

“Where is he?” Jones asked.

“He's in the hospital.”

“Hospital?” Jones repeated.

“Yes. He fell downstairs. Are you the man from the installment company?”

“No,” said Jones. “I'm a detective, believe it or not. I know I don't look like one. I can't help that. I didn't pick this face, and, to tell the truth, I don't think so much of it myself.”

“Oh, but he didn't do it! Really he didn't, officer! He couldn't have, you see. He's been in the hospital, and his condition is very serious, really if is, and he couldn't have done it.”

“Done what?” said Jones.

She moved her hands a little, helplessly. “Well— well, whatever you think he did. Was it—windows again?”

“Windows?” Jones asked.

“I mean, did you think he broke some windows, like he usually does?”

“He makes a habit of breaking windows?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. But only plate glass ones.”

“Particular, huh? What does he break windows for?”

Her sallow face flushed slightly. “He sees his image. You know, his reflection. And he thinks he is following himself again. He thinks he is spying on himself. And so he breaks the windows.”

“Well, maybe it's a good idea,” said Jones. “Is he ever troubled with pink elephants?”

“Yes, he is. He often sees them walking on the ceiling when he wakes up in the morning.”

“What does he do for them?”

“Oh, he always saves a half pint, and as soon as he drinks that they go away.”

“I should think they would,” said Jones. “I'm still talking about Hendrick Boone, by the way? Are you?”

“Yes. My husband.”

“Oh,” said Jones. “You're Mrs. Boone. Could I come in and sit down and speak to you for a moment? I've got some news for you, and besides my feet hurt.”

“Oh, yes. Surely. Excuse me, please. I was a little flustered when you said 'detective'—”

The hall was dark and small and narrow with a carpeted staircase running up steeply just to the right of the front door. The wallpaper was a stained brownish-black. There was a hole worn in the carpet at the foot of the stairs.

“Right in here,” Mrs. Boone said anxiously.

It was the parlor that stretched across the narrow front of the house. The furniture was stiff and awkward, mellowed with age, and there was a clumsy cut-glass chandelier that had been originally designed to burn gas.

Jones sat down on a sofa that creaked mournfully under him and looked down at his feet, wincing involuntarily.

“Now,” said Mrs. Boone. She was sitting primly upright, looking very small against the high carved back of the chair, with her hands folded on her lap and smiling a little, timidly. “Now— you wished to speak to me?”

Jones nodded, still thinking about his feet. “Yes. Your husband was born in Awkright, Idaho, wasn't he?”

She nodded brightly. “Yes.”

“Had one brother—by the name of Semus Boone?”

“Yes.”

“Not any more,” said Jones. “Semus Boone died a couple of months ago.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Boone. She was silent for a moment. “We hadn't seen him for over twenty years. He didn't like Hendrick. He invited us to a Christmas party, and Hendrick took a drop too much and broke the plate glass window in Semus' living room. Semus was very angry.”

“He must have gotten over it,” said Jones. “He left your husband all his money.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Boone. She smiled vaguely. “Was it enough to pay his funeral expenses?”

Jones nodded. “Yes. And a little bit to spare. About a million and a half.”

Mrs. Boone's hands gripped tight. Her eyes glazed behind the thick glasses, and her lips moved soundlessly. After a while she drew a deep breath. “You're not— joking?”

“No,” said Jones.

“You're— you're sure there's no mistake?”

“No,” said Jones. “I don't make mistakes— not when there's a million and a half in the pot. I've been hunting your husband for two months.”

“A million and a half!” said Mrs. Boone dreamily.

“Yes,” said Jones. “Your husband can't touch the principal, though. It's in trust. That's where I come in. I'm an investigator for the Suburban Mortgage and Trust Company. The company's the trustee— handles the principal. Your husband gets the income— he and his heirs and assigns and what not—for twenty years. Then the principal sum goes to certain charities. The income amounts to over a thousand a week.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Boone. “Oh!” Her eyes began to gleam behind the glasses, and she swallowed. “Sarah!” she called, and there was a gasping catch in her voice. “Sarah! Sarah!”

There was the flip-flop of slippers in the hall, and a girl came and stopped in the doorway. She had a wide red mouth and cigarette drooping in the corner of it that slid a smooth blue stream of smoke up past her cheek and the faded blondness of her hair. She was big and heavy-boned, but had a lazy, cat-like gracefulness. Her eyes were a deep-sea blue, set far apart. They were narrowed sullenly now, and she looked Jones up and down.

“Well,” she said. “And now what?”

She wore a blue kimono with the sleeves rolled back and was wiping her hands on a towel. Her forearms were white and smoothly muscled. There were birthmarks on both of them.

“Sarah,” said Mrs. Boone. “This gentleman here just came to tell us that your Uncle Semus died.”

“Too bad,” said Sarah. “What'd he do—bite himself on the tongue and die of hydrophobia?”

“No,” said Jones. “As a matter of fact he had a heart attack.”

“Somebody must have cheated him out of a nickel,” said Sarah. “That would do it, all right.”

“Don't speak ill of the dead,” Mrs. Boone said in a gently reproving voice. “He left your father a lot of money.”

“How much?”

“The income from a million and a half,” Jones told her.

Sarah's wide set eyes blinked once and then narrowed slowly. “Oh yeah? What's the gag, mister?”

“No gag,” Jones said. “I don't have anything to do with it. The trust company that handles the principal hired me to find you, and here you are. I'm through.”

“A million and a half,” said Sarah slowly. “About how much would that be a month?”

“Around five thousand.”

Sarah's breath made a little hissing sound between her white teeth. “Five thousand a month! The old man will drink himself to death in a week.”

“Won't make any difference to you if he does,” Jones said. “The income will go to your mother in that case.”

“Oh,” said Sarah thoughtfully. “It would, hey? That's something that needs a little thinking about.”

Jones got up. “I'll run down and see Mr. Boone before I leave town.”

Mrs. Boone blinked at him, worried. “He's in the City Hospital. But, I don't know. He's really pretty seriously ill. I don't know whether they'll let you in his room.”

“I just want to look at him,” Jones said. “I'll have to put it in my report. You say he fell?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Boone. “He came home late, and he was—”

“Fried,” said Sarah. “Drunk as a skunk. He crawled up the front steps and started walking around in circles looking for the front door and fell down again. He cracked his noggin on the sidewalk. He'll get over it, though, I'm afraid.”

“Sarah,” said Mrs. Boone. “Sarah, now. He's your father.”

“That's your fault,” said Sarah. “Not mine.”

“Well, I'll be going,” Jones said.

“Mr. Morganwaite,” Mrs. Boone said brightly, getting up with a sudden swish of her long skirt. “I must tell him! He'll be so pleased! I won't have to worry—” She hurried out of the room.

“Morganwaite?” Jones said inquiringly, looking at Sarah.

“He's an old stooge we keep around to clean up the joint now and then,” Sarah told him. “He takes care of the old man when he gets potted. You probably saw him when you came in. He was sweepin' the basement stairs.”

“Oh, yes,” Jones said. “Well, so long.”

“So long,” Sarah said. “Lots of thanks, mister, for coming around and doing a Santa Claus for us.”

Jones smiled. “I got paid for it.” He went down the dark hall and out the doors past the two storks that were still leering at him and the world in general.

The city hospital was a great square pile of brick, masonry and steel that covered a complete city block. Three hours after he had visited the Boones, Jones rode up and down on seven elevators and limped through a mile and a half of silent cork-floored corridors and finally located the section he wanted. He went in through a glass door in a glass partition that blocked off the short end of a hall. There was a middle-aged woman sitting behind a flat desk in a little cubby-hole off the corridor.

“Yes?” she said. Her voice had a low, practiced hush, and her face looked as stiff and white and starched as her uniform and cap.

“Hendrick Boone?” Jones inquired wearily.

She nodded. “Mr. Boone is in Room Eighteen Hundred.”

“Hah!” said Jones triumphantly, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Can I see him?”

“No. Mr. Boone is allowed to receive no visitors except the members of his immediate family. His condition is very serious.”

“I'm not a visitor,” said Jones. “I just want to look at him. Don't worry—it's not curiosity. It's my job. I was hired to find him.”

“He's here.”

“Look,” said Jones. “How do you think that would sound in my report? I can't say I think he's here, or he's supposed to be here, or somebody by his name is here, or you told me he's here. I got to know he's here. I've got to see him. They're not paying me for guessing.”

The nurse regarded him silently.

“Just a peek,” said Jones. “Just open his door and give me a squint. I've got his picture and description. I won't say a word to him.”

The nurse picked up a precisely sharpened pencil, opened a leather-bound notebook. “Your name, please?”

“Jones,” said Jones.

“Your first name?”

“Just Jones.”

The nurse looked up at him, and her lips tightened a little.

“All right,” said Jones quickly. “Don't get mad. You asked for it, and that's really my name—just plain Jones. J. P. Jones. See, my mother had a lot of kids, and she always thought she ought to give them something fancy in the way of first names on account of there being lots of Joneses around. She named 'em Horatius and Alvimina and Evangeline and things like that. But she began to run out of names pretty soon, and she had an awful time with Number Twelve. She said: 'If there's any more, I'm not going to all this trouble. The next one is going to be just plain Jones.' So here I am.”

The nurse wrote in her book. “Address?”

“Suburban Mortgage and Trust— New York City.”She closed the notebook, laid the pencil carefully beside it. “This way, please.” She went along the hall to the last door on the right and, standing in front of it, turned to look at Jones. “You are not to speak to him. You understand?”

“Right,” said Jones.

The door swished a little, opening slowly. The room was a small one, and the high iron bed was in the corner beside the big window. The man in the bed made a bulging mound of the covers. He was lying on his back, and there was a white bandage like an adhesive and gauze skullcap on his head. There was something the matter with his face.

The nurse made a gasping sound, and her starched stiffness seemed to crack. She ran across to the bed, and Jones trailed right behind her. She fumbled under the covers, found the man's limply slack wrist. It was a thick wrist, big-boned, and the hand was big and square and powerful.

The nurse's voice was breathlessly small. “No pulse. He strangled himself—”

“He didn't have to do it, himself,” Jones said. “He had some help.” He pointed to the red blotches, slowly turning dark now, on the thick throat.

“Pulmotor,” the nurse said, and started for the door.

Jones caught her arm, spun her around. “No. A pulmotor won't do him any good. Look at the color of those marks on his throat. Who came to see him this afternoon?”

The nurse jerked against his grip. “His daughter. She left a half hour ago. Said he was asleep.”

“He was, all right,” said Jones. “You sure it was his daughter? Sarah? You've seen her before?”

“Yes—yes. Let go!”

“You sure it was Sarah?” Jones repeated. “You positively saw her?”

“Yes! She was veiled, but her arms— the birthmarks—”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jones. “Anybody else come?”

“No!” She twisted free, ran out the door.

Jones looked closely at the face of the man on the bed. It was Hendrick

Boone. Jones went out of the room. There was no one in sight in the corridor, and he went out through the glass partition and walked along the hall until he found a stairway and went down it.

In five minutes, he came out in the main entrance hall of the hospital and entered one of the public telephone booths beside the reception desk. He consulted the directory, finally deposited a nickel and dialed a number. He could hear the telephone at the other end ring and ring. It rang for a long time while Jones squinted at the black hard-rubber mouthpiece in front of him and muttered to himself inaudibly. Finally, the line clicked.

“Hello,” a voice said casually.

“Is Sarah Boone there?” Jones asked.

“Who?”

“Sarah Boone.”

“Where?”

Jones drew a deep breath. “Oh, it's you again, is it? Listen, Morganwaite, this is Jones, the detective that was there this morning. I want to know if Sarah Boone is there and by there I mean where you are. Now, quit playing around and answer me.”

“No,” said Morganwaite.

Jones choked and then recovered himself. “Are you saying no, you won't answer me, or no, she isn't there?”

“No, she isn't here.”

“Is Mrs. Boone there?”

“No. She left as soon as she got Sarah's message.”

“Message?” Jones said. “Sarah sent her a message?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Mrs. Boone told me.”

“When?”

“When she got it.”

“That's what I want to know!” Jones said explosively. “When did she get it?”

Morganwaite was silent while he evidently considered the matter at some length. “About a half hour ago.”

“What did the message say?” Jones asked.

“I don't know. Mrs. Boone didn't say. She just left.”

“What kind of a message was it? Telephone— telegraph?”

“No.”

“Well, what kind?”

“A written message— in an envelope.”

“Who brought it? Come on now, shake yourself and think hard.”

“It was a boy,” said Morganwaite pensively. “A boy in a gray uniform on a red bicycle. A small boy with freckles.”

“Thanks,” said Jones. He hung up, took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Then he got up and walked quickly out of the hospital.

There was a taxi-stand across the street. Only one taxi was there now, and its driver was sitting disconsolately on the running-board cleaning his fingernails with a jackknife. He stood up when Jones approached and said, “Taxi?” in a not very hopeful voice.

“Is there a messenger service around town that specializes in red bikes and gray uniforms?” Jones asked him.

“Sure. Bullet Service.”

“Have they got a branch office near here?”

“Sure, on Court Street. Three blocks down and one to your right.”

“Show me,” said Jones. He opened the door of the taxi, climbed in, and plumped himself down on the seat with a sigh of relief.

It was a 'small, neat office with a big plate glass window that ran clear across the front and had an enormous bullet painted on it with red lines trailing behind to show it was traveling at tremendous speed. There were several people waiting when Jones limped up to the high counter and leaned on it with his elbow, looking as mysterious and hard-boiled as possible in view of the fact that his feet were hurting him more and more all the time.

A clerk with a polished haircut and a vacantly cordial smile stepped up to the other side of the counter. “Yes.”

“I'm a detective,” Jones sneered at him. “Don't act funny. Just be natural. Treat me like anybody else.”

The clerk gulped. “Police! What—”

“Shut up,” said Jones. “I said act natural. I want some information about a party who sent a message by one of your boys to Mrs. Hendrick Boone at Forty-five-fifteen Raleigh Street. Was it sent from this branch?”

The clerk nodded once, then again, and finally said, “Yes,” in a frightened stage whisper.

“When?”

“About— about an hour ago.”

“Did a woman send it?”

“Yes,” the clerk said. He swallowed and then said: “Her 'name was Sarah Boone.”

“So?” said Jones sharply. “And how do you know that?”

“Well, we have a rule about messages. A few months ago someone started sending poison-pen letters— anonymous— through our messenger service. Brought us a lot of bad publicity. Now, we require anyone sending a sealed message to sign it in our presence. This lady did.”

“What'd she look like?” Jones asked.

The clerk stared. “Well, she was a woman—I mean, sort of young, I think. She was veiled. I didn't notice. She had a lot of birthmarks on her arms.”

“Yeah,” said Jones absently. He squinted thoughtfully at the clerk for a moment, then suddenly pulled one of the blank pads of paper on the counter toward him, picked up a pencil, and wrote rapidly You're a liar.

“I'm not!” the clerk denied, instantly indignant. “You—”

Jones slapped the pad down. “I thought so! You're a shark at reading handwriting upside down, aren't you? That's the why of your signature rule, to give you boys a chance to spot a poison-pen letter before it goes out. Now, what did Sarah Boone's message say? Don't stall me.”

The clerk shifted uneasily. “Well, I can't repeat it, word for word. I didn't pay enough attention. I saw right away it wasn't anything like what we've been looking for. It was headed 'Dear Mother,' and it said something about a lot of serious trouble and for the mother to meet her right away at Ten-eleven Twelfth Avenue.”

“Where?” Jones asked.

“Ten-eleven Twelfth Avenue. I remembered that on account of the sequence of figures—ten, eleven, twelve. I was thinking that ought to be a lucky address—”

“Maybe not so lucky,” said Jones. “Keep this under your hat— if you have a hat. Thanks.”

Half the pickets were gone out of the fence, and it swayed backward wearily toward the wet brown square of earth that had once been a lawn. The house was gaunt and weather-beaten and ugly, and it had boards nailed haphazardly across the windows on the lower floor. It looked long deserted. A sign beside the gate said For Sale or Lease and gave the name of a realty company.

Jones looked from the sign to the house and back again, squinting thoughtfully. He turned his head slowly. There were no other houses within a half block.

Jones said, “Huh,” to himself. He dropped his right hand into the pocket of the trench-coat. He was carrying a pair of flat brass knuckles in the pocket, and he slid his fingers through the metal loops and closed his fist. He unfastened the middle button of the coat with his left hand and touched the butt of the.38 Police Positive he carried in his waistband. Then he nudged the sagging gate open with his knee and strolled aimlessly up the narrow walk.

There were some children playing in the street a block away, and their excited cries carried high and shrill in the stillness. Jones' feet made hollow thumps on the steps, on the damp-warped boards of the porch. The front door was open about an inch. Jones took his right hand out of his coat pocket and rapped with the brass knuckles. The echoes came back from empty rooms, hollow and thin and ghostly. Jones put his right hand behind him and waited. Nothing happened.

Jones closed the fingers of his left hand more firmly around the grip of the Police Positive and then suddenly kicked the door open and stepped to one side. The door swung in a dark, silent arc and banged against the wall. After about thirty seconds, Jones looked cautiously around the edge of the doorway and saw Mrs. Boone and Sarah.

Mrs. Boone was lying in front of the door. She wore a long, old-fashioned coat with a thin fur collar and an old-fashioned hat that sat high on her gray hair. The hat was tipped sidewise now at a grotesquely jaunty angle. She was lying on her back, and she had one arm thrown across her face.

Sarah was crumpled in a heap under one of the boarded windows, and the failing sunlight made a barred pattern across her broad face. A little trickle of blood on her cheek glistened brightly. One smooth white arm was flung limply wide. Jones could see the birthmark on it. The lax fingers just touched a stubby automatic lying there beside her.

Jones came inside the room, taking one cautious step, then another. He knelt beside Mrs. Boone. She was breathing faintly. There was a swollen, blue-black welt on her cheek. Jones leaned over Sarah and touched the smooth white arm. Then he suddenly spun around and ran out of the room. He ran down the walk, through the gate, on down the street. He ran two blocks to a corner drugstore, dodged into a telephone booth, dropped a nickel in the instrument, and dialed the operator.

“Ambulance,” he said breathlessly.

Dusk was a soft-gray smoothness closing down slowly over the row of houses that were just alike when Jones stopped on the sidewalk in front of the Boones' and looked up the steep front stairs at Morganwaite. Morganwaite was sitting on the top step, leaning forward weakly, as if he had collapsed there. His broom was lying beside him, and he had the evening paper spread across his knees.

“Hello,” Jones said, and climbed the steps slowly and sat down beside him…

Morganwaite's hand was trembling a little, and he touched the paper on his knees with his forefinger gingerly. “This paper— I picked it up. The newsboy—delivered it just like any other night. It says that Sarah killed her father and tried to kill her mother and then— had an attack of remorse and killed herself.”

“It's mostly right,” said Jones. “Only Sarah didn't kill herself. She isn't dead.”

“Not dead,” Morganwaite repeated dully.

“No. They thought she was, at first. I did, too. I never saw anybody that looked deader. But the bullet was a small-caliber one. It didn't penetrate her brain. Gave her a multiple skull-fracture. It's a toss-up whether she'll pull through or not. The doc thinks she's got a good chance. Funny thing—she's in the same room her father was in at the hospital. That's the wing where they put the head injuries, and it was the only room vacant. She doesn't know it, of course. She's unconscious.”

“Mrs. Boone,” Morganwaite said. “There— there was no mistake about her? She's—all right?”

Jones nodded. “Just a concussion and shock. She's not even in the hospital. She's staying at a private nursing-home.”

“Sarah,” said Morganwaite. “I can't believe it. I can't think she'd do that.”

“People do,” said Jones. He stretched his feet out on the stairs, grunting painfully. “Chilblains— I get 'em every spring. They're killing me. Ever have 'em?”

“No,” said Morganwaite.

Jones sighed. “You're lucky. Can you look after things around the place here for a couple days? Mrs. Boone will be O.K. by then.”

“Yes,” said Morganwaite.

Jones got up. “Well— I've got to go. So long.”

Morganwaite didn't answer. He sat staring straight ahead with eyes that were wide and unseeing.

There were two big stone pillars on either side of the broad walk that led up to the entrance of the City Hospital. Jones was leaning against one of them, a thin indistinguishable shadow in the darkness, with his hat pulled low over his eyes. He was peering around the edge of the pillar, up toward the entrance of the hospital. After a moment, he stepped from behind the pillar, walked quickly up to the steps, pushed the plate glass door open.

A thick-set man with square, heavy shoulders was standing just inside the door. He wore a blue overcoat and a black felt hat, and he had a thin white scar on his face that ran from the corner of his left eye straight down across his cheek to the line of his jaw.

“Jones?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” said Jones in a surprised voice.

The scarred man stepped forward and picked up Jones by the front of the trenchcoat. He swung Jones around and slammed him against the wall.

“Careful,” said Jones. “Don't step on my feet, or I'll kill you.”

He said it in such a murderously calm voice that the scarred man let go of him. Jones straightened the front of his coat with a jerk and a shrug of his shoulders. “You don't have to tell me,” he said. “I know you're a cop.”

“Yeah,” said the scarred man. “Maybe you didn't think there were any cops in this town. Maybe you think you've been playing a little game of hide-and-seek with yourself. What's the big idea of trying to make us look like monkeys?”

“I can't help what you look like. You wanted to see me, you said.”

“All right. You've been in this case from the first. In fact, you started the ball rolling. You found Hendrick Boone. Did you stick around? No, you ducked out before we got here. You found the other two. Now, just what do you think you're doing?”

“Trying to find a murderer.”

The scarred man stared at him. “Are you so dumb you haven't figured it out yet? Sarah Boone did for her father and tried to do for her mother so she'd get the money her uncle left.”

“Did she?” said Jones.

“Why, sure. What—” The scarred man's hard eyes narrowed. “Oh, so you've got something else up your sleeve, have you? All right, then. Who is the murderer?”

“The person I was following. You can come along and take the credit for the arrest, if you don't bother me with a lot of dumb questions.”

The feet of Jones and the scarred man were soft and noiseless on the cork flooring. They walked side by side, tensely, and ahead of them was the bright, clean glitter of the glass partition that blocked off the short corridor where Hendrick Boone's room had been.

Through it they could see the nurse sitting behind her desk and looking up into Mrs. Hendrick Boone's thick glasses and shaking her head in a blank, surprised way. Jones nodded at the scarred man and then reached down and turned the knob on the glass door very softly.

“No,” said Jones. “Sarah isn't here. That was just a gag to see if I couldn't get you out from under cover. You really killed Sarah. She's in the morgue. Your feet are too big, Mrs. Boone.”

Mrs. Boone's skirt rustled silkily. Mrs. Boone's white-kid gloves made a blurred streak rising above the collar of her old coat, flipping down again. The knife was a flat, hissing glitter coming at Jones.

The scarred man ducked with an inarticulate cry. Jones dove under the knife and it smashed through the glass partition and rattled on the corridor floor beyond. Jones' shoulder hit against bony knees. There was a strangled cry, and Mrs. Boone's coat ballooned clumsily, falling…

Jones got up, drawing in a long breath. “You were a big help,” he said to the scarred man. “Thanks.” He looked at the white-faced nurse. “Sorry, Miss. I didn't figure on any knife-throwing.”

The scarred man pointed. “She— Mrs. Boone— she killed her husband and daughter?”

“No,” said Jones. “Of course not. Morganwaite killed them. What do you think I just tackled him for?”

“Him?” the scarred man said blankly.

Jones leaned down and picked up Mrs. Boone's glasses and loosened the collar of Mrs. Boone's coat and pulled it down. Morganwaite's face looked white and peaceful and kindly.

“Morganwaite killed Sarah and Hendrick Boone,” Jones said. “He did it so he could marry Mrs. Boone and live in comfort on her money. He had been planning it even before I turned up. Mrs. Boone had a little property. The news I brought about the trust fund just gave him added incentive. I don't think there's any doubt that he would have married Mrs. Boone had his plan gone through. She was a timid, trusting soul, beaten down by years of living with her drunken husband. She wouldn't be hard for anyone as clever as Morganwaite.”

“Well, how?” said the scarred man.

“Easy for him,” said Jones. “He's quite a female impersonator. Must have been an old-time actor. He looks like one. First, he got rid of Sarah. On some pretext, he got her to go to that old house on Twelfth Street. He'd picked out the spot a long time ago. He shot her when he got her there— in the temple, close enough so it would look like suicide. Then he dressed himself in Sarah's clothes, painted some birthmarks on his arms, came down here and finished Hendrick Boone. Then, still pretending to be Sarah and laying a nice plain trail, he sent a note to Mrs. Boone and signed Sarah's name to it, asking Mrs. Boone to meet Sarah at the house on Twelfth.”

“Huh!” said the scarred man. “You mean the old lady didn't even know her kid's writing?”

Jones held up the thick glasses. “Morganwaite thought of that, too. He stole Mrs. Boone's glasses. Look at 'em. They're an inch thick. Mrs. Boone couldn't read anything without 'em. Some neighbor read the note to her, or else the messenger did. Of course, she didn't question the writing. She went right down to the house on Twelfth. Morganwaite was waiting there for her. He hit her on the head as she came in, before she saw him, and left her there. The set-up was supposed to look as if Sarah had planned to kill her father and mother, but that, when she got to the point of actually doing for her mother, she had an attack of remorse and killed herself, instead.

“I was pretty sure of the set-up, but I didn't have any proof. So I went around and told Morganwaite Sarah wasn't dead—that she was here. Well, that upset his whole apple cart. Sarah knew he shot her, and, if she told, why there he'd be in the soup. So he came down to finish the job. This time he dressed up in Mrs. Boone's clothes to keep from being identified. He knew Mrs. Boone wouldn't be suspected, actually, because she was in a rest-home and would have an airtight alibi.”

Jones looked around. “If you've got any more questions, we'll have to go somewhere where I can sit down. My feet are killing me.”

_____________________

4

The Rag-Tag Girl

The Phantom Detective May 1936

LUNSFORD was alone in the room. He was sitting in a straight-backed chair, hunched forward, elbows on the table. He had a cigarette in one drooping corner of his wide mouth. He was a big man with a heavy-featured face that had deep lines etched in it. The hair on the top of his head was a scanty blond fuzz. He wore horn-rimmed glasses that had been broken and fastened together with adhesive tape. His grey tweed suit had cost a hundred and fifty dollars and had never been pressed.

The door of the room opened, and the turnkey put his head inside. “Here he is, Karl. Remember, only fifteen minutes. It’s the rules.”

Saunders came in the room, and the turnkey withdrew his head and shut the door. Saunders smiled anxiously at Lunsford.

“Hello, Karl.”

Lunsford pointed at a chair. “Sit.”

Saunders eased himself cautiously into the chair. He was a small man, turning pudgy. He needed a shave, and his hair was rumpled stickily.

He always had an air of being slightly fuddled.

Lunsford glowered at him. “So now you’re in jail again!”

“Yes, Karl,” Saunders said meekly.

“And for murder! Why do you always have to pick out the worst thing possible? Why couldn’t you make it manslaughter or mayhem or something?”

Saunders blinked. “Well—”

“Shut up! You remember what I told you the last time you got in a jam? I told you I was all through going to bat for you. Sure, I know you used to work for me. I ran a two-bit detective agency once, and I was dumb enough to give you a job. But I’m all through with that crazy racket. I’ve got myself a real business to attend to. I haven’t got time to be always running around and getting you out of some jail.

“I’ve got twenty-five people working in my importing office. They depend on me for their living. I can’t be wasting my time on no-goods like you, and besides I’m all through with this rough stuff. You hear me? Through!”

“Yes, Karl,” Saunders said gently. “I just thought—”

“You can’t think,” Lunsford snarled. “That’s your big trouble.” He jerked his thick body back in his chair and grunted disgustedly. “All right. Tell me about it. But this is the last time I help you, you hear? Positively the last time!”

“Sure, Karl,” Saunders agreed amiably. “Sure. Well, it’s like this. I’m having a little crap game at my place. Pete Haley and Dizzy Carnes and Loop Smith were there.”

“Those chiselers? What do you want to play with them for?”

Saunders moved his shoulders nonchalantly. “They don’t know any tricks that I don’t, so it’s all even. There is another guy in the game—this Hobland, that I’m supposed to have knocked off. I met him down at the Canton dog-track. He’s always hangin’ around there. So I invite him up just as a friendly gesture.”

“You mean you invited him up so you and your three gyp pals could take a cut at ribbing him out of his roll.”

Saunders was gently reproachful. “No, Karl. That was the furthest thing from my mind. It was purely a friendly gesture. He did have a big wad of dough on him, though. Anyway, we are playing nice and friendly and not cheating any more than we usually do, when what does this Hobland do but run in a set of tap dice and take the three of us to the cleaners. Now was that right, Karl? Was that the polite thing to do?”

“Very bad manners,” Lunsford said sarcastically. “And what happened then?”

“Well, I spotted the tap dice after my roll was all gone, so I called him on it. And what does he do but stick a rod on us! Imagine that! In a friendly game! Not only that, but he calls us a bunch of crooks. And me his host! So then he goes out, and we get to talking. I’m a little drunk, and you know how I talk when I’m drunk, Karl.”

“I seem to remember,” Lunsford said.

“Yeah. Well, I get madder and madder and tighter and tighter. So I say I’m going out and look up this Hobland and blow him down for playing such a dirty trick on his friends. So I go out and look for him. Only I can’t remember where I looked, except that he wasn’t there, and lucky for me he wasn’t, probably. But I talked around a lot, and it seems like I confided in a lot of people that I was gonna put holes in Hobland. And what do you think? The damned guy turns up dead this morning in a ditch outside of Susanville with a couple of holes in his head. And the big roll he was packin’ was gone. And me with no more alibi. How’s that for a dirty break?”

“Probably Hobland would feel the same way,” Lunsford said. “I bet he’d have felt pretty bad if he’d known he was going to put you to all this bother just by getting killed. How about those three dopey pals of yours?”

Saunders shook his head. “They’re out. I mean, they’re in. In jail. Right after I left, the three of them got into a fight about something and made a lot of racket, and the cops ran them in for disturbing the peace. That was no more than twenty minutes after I left, and Susanville is twenty miles from my place. It was somebody else did for Hobland, I think.”

“You really think so, do you?” Lunsford asked politely. “You’re certainly a big help to me. Got any more bright ideas?”

“It must have been somebody that didn’t like him,” Saunders offered seriously.

“Now maybe you’re right,” Lunsford agreed. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.” He stood up. “All right. I’ll get you out of this if I can. But no more, you understand? The next time you pull any of your crackpot tricks, you stay in jail until you rot for all of me!”

“Yes, Karl,” Saunders said meekly.

Lunsford owned a big grey touring car. It was fairly new, but it was spattered with old mud that had dried in flaky brown patches and smeared with fresher dust in a thick layer. He had the top down now, and he turned off the pavement with a wailing squeal from the tires and drove across the big square of vacant ground without slackening speed in the slightest.

He drove up to a high, whitewashed fence, bore down hard on the brakes. There were words painted on the fence in big, slanting letters:

CANTON PAVILION

DOG RACING

Lunsford got out of the car and slammed the door. He turned around heavily and almost ran over a little man who was glaring up at him in tightly wordless anger.

“You!” said the man, and shook a gnarled fist in his face. He wore a grey sweater, a checkered cap pulled down low over snapping blue eyes. The cap bulged out ridiculously on top due to the fact that it half-covered a dirt-stained bandage that was wrapped around and around the man’s head just over the level of his ears. Rage turned the tan of his face to a dull purple.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lunsford asked blankly.

“You—you—” the man stuttered, jerking his arms up and down, fists tightly clenched. “What’s the idea of drivin’ across that lot as fast as that? What if somebody was walkin’ some dogs out there? You want to run over ‘em? Kill ‘em?”

“Nerts,” said Lunsford impatiently. “If there’d been anybody out there I’d have seen them.”

The man strained up on tiptoe, glaring. “I wish I was ten years younger, I do! I’d beat you to a thin froth, you big ugly lummox!” He whirled around and went back along the fence at a jerky half-trot, sputtering curses to himself in a futile mutter. He ducked through a door and disappeared.

Lunsford stared after him in amused amazement. “Talk about your cuckoos,” he said to himself, grinning. He walked along the fence, went through the same door.

He came into the dog track at the side of the small grandstand. In the bright sunlight, the place was forlorn, cheap and tawdry. It seemed strange without the lights and the ballyhoo, the push and mutter of the crowds that had thronged it whenever Lunsford had been in it before.

THE grandstand reared up whitely, skeleton-like rafters supporting its roof. There was a man working on the backstretch of the track, and in the enclosure in the middle another man buzzed a motor-driven mowing machine back and forth busily. Off to the left, near the low buildings that were the kennels, a third man was exercising six greyhounds, holding three leashes to each hand, walking the thinly graceful dogs back and forth slowly.

Lunsford went around to the front of the grandstand, started up the steps that ran through the center of it, toward the betting and business offices at the back of the second story. Two men came through the wide door at the top of the stairs and started down toward him. One of them called:

“Hello there, Karl.”

“How are you, Barker?” Lunsford nodded. Barker was the business manager of the track.

He was a thin man with grey hair that was smoothed evenly back on his narrow head. He had the dead, expressionless face of a gambler, and when he smiled he moved only his mouth. He wore an excellently tailored powder-blue suit, a white carnation in his lapel. He shook hands and said cheerfully:

“It didn’t take you long to get here.”

Lunsford blinked, surprised. He had told no one that he was coming to the dog tracks, yet Barker seemed to have been expecting him.

Barker indicated the other man. “Meet Jake Eaton.”

Eaton shook hands with a jerk and said: “How yuh?” curtly. He was a short man with a round paunch. He wore a floppy-brimmed panama, a light suit. He had a pasty white face, loose at the jowls, shot with little purple splotches that were broken veins.

“Jake is the gent that owns her,” Barker said amiably.

“Does he?” Lunsford asked, waiting patiently to learn what this was all about.

Barker smiled in his smooth way. “I bet you were surprised to get a call from me, Karl.”

“Get a call from you?” Lunsford repeated blankly.

“Sure,” Barker said.

Lunsford covered up quickly. “Oh, yeah. I was. I didn’t know it was you that called. They didn’t tell me who it was.”

Barker squinted thoughtfully. “That’s funny. I told your secretary who I was. It’s funny she didn’t tell you.”

“She’s pretty careless,” Lunsford said.

Barker shrugged his smoothly tailored shoulders. “No matter. I’ll tell you, Karl, when we got into this jam, I thought of you right away. I knew you weren’t in the detective business any more, but I thought you might be willing to give me a hand just for old times.”

“Uh-huh,” Lunsford said, still waiting patiently. “I’ll tell you how it is,” Barker went on. “You know we got some competition now from the new Crowley track over west of town. They’ve been pulling in some good crowds. They’ve got a better location than we have. So we thought we better try some new stuff and see if we couldn’t draw better. We decided to run some whippets. We’ve been running greyhounds exclusive, and so have the Crowley bunch. We’re putting in a new track there.” He pointed at the front of the grandstand.

“Whippets run on a straight track, you know.” Lunsford nodded. “Yeah.”

“So I got in touch with some whippet owners. Jake, here, like I said, owns the Rag-Tag Girl. She’s a champion—been cleaning up the Mexican tracks. Nothing can touch her.”

“Damn good dog,” Eaton cut in suddenly, jerking at the brim of the floppy panama. “Damn good.”

“She’s good, all right,” Barker agreed smoothly. “Jake brought her up here to run. He left her at the track kennels. Last night somebody cracked our watchman, MacGowan, over the head, and walked off with her. We were keeping it under cover that she was here. We didn’t want to tip off the Crowley crowd that we were going to run whippets. That’s what makes it so damned funny.”

“Yeah,” Eaton said sourly.

Barker smiled. “I didn’t mean it that way. But you can see how it is, Karl. Hardly anybody knew the dog was here. I don’t see who could have lifted her— or why. It wasn’t the Crowley outfit, I know. They’re not looking for trouble with us, and they wouldn’t pull that kind of funny business anyway.” Lunsford understood everything now. Barker had sent for him on account of the theft of the Rag-Tag Girl. When Lunsford had arrived a few moments ago, Barker had naturally assumed he had come in answer to the request. Lunsford decided to let Barker keep on thinking so. It couldn’t do any harm, and he might get a little more cooperation in his investigation of Hobland’s murder.

“What were you going to ask me to do about the theft?” he asked.

Barker frowned. “The track’s willing to go twenty-five hundred to get that dog back, Karl. We feel sort of responsible.”

Eaton snorted. “Sort of responsible! Sort of, he says!”

“Twenty-five hundred dollars?” Lunsford repeated, staring hard at Barker. “For a dog?”

Barker nodded. “Yeah. I’m telling you, she’s a valuable dog. You should read her record.

She’s worth that to us as a drawing card. Lots of people are going to come to see her run.”

“I’ll put in another five hundred,” Eaton said suddenly. “That makes it an even three thousand.”

“How about it, Karl?” Barker asked anxiously.

“This hasn’t been reported to the police. We’re trying to keep it under cover.”

Lunsford scratched his chin with a blunt thumbnail. “I tell you, Barker, I’ve got a business of my own to attend to, and I don’t like to mix in this rough stuff. But I’ll look around and see what I can see, as a favor to you.”

“Thanks, Karl,” Barker said, smiling more broadly. “I’ll appreciate it.”

“Tell me some more about it,” Lunsford requested.

Barker moved his slim shoulders. “Nothing much to tell. MacGowan was prowling around the kennels on his rounds. He heard a suspicious noise out back and went to have a look-see. Somebody cracked him from behind. He never even saw the guy. When he came around, the dog was gone.”

“Is this MacGowan a funny little guy that chews tobacco and hops up and down when he gets mad?”

Barker nodded. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“He tackled me out by the gate because he thought I was drivin’ too fast.”

Barker smiled. “That was Scotty, all right. One of the greyhounds got knocked over by a car awhile back, and ever since then Scotty goes into a frenzy whenever he sees anybody driving fast.”

“Got any other watchmen?”

“Yeah. Dick, the second one, was down by the far gate. He’s got a bum leg. He stays down there, and Scotty MacGowan patrols the grounds. He didn’t hear anything.”

Lunsford raised his eyebrows. “Nothing at all?” Barker shook his head. “Nope. Nothing. I questioned him myself.”

Lunsford scratched his head in a casually thoughtful way. “Ever hear of a guy named Hobland?”

Barker stared at him sharply. “Sure. Why?”

“He was picked up in a ditch this morning with a couple of holes in his head. I was just wondering if there was any connection.”

“Why should there be?”

Lunsford blinked at him dully. “I dunno. He used to hang around here a lot, I hear.”

Barker was watching him narrowly. “He wouldn’t have anything to do with this. He was a slick-card man. Everybody knew he carried a big roll with him, and lots of people didn’t like him.”

Lunsford shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Just wondering. I’ll look around. I’ll call you if I get anything.”

Lunsford had to spend the rest of the morning and the afternoon at his office attending to a shipment and some correspondence with his Sydney agent.

IT WAS about eight o’clock, and the day was changing smoothly from the greyness of dusk into the warm blackness of night, when he turned off Tower Boulevard on West Fifty-third Street and parked in front of a narrow building of faded red brick with the shingles on its flatly sloping roof curling up dryly, like splintery fingers. There were weed-grown vacant lots on either side. There were only two apartments in the building—one upstairs and one down.

This was where Scotty MacGowan lived. He had been temporarily relieved of his job as night-watchman at the dog track.

Lunsford went up two cement steps, between two plants that were forlorn and withered and neglected in the brown, dry earth of the two big pots that held them. There were two doors close together. One was open a little, and he could see stairs stretching up dimly. He pushed the door open wider, climbed up toward the second story. At the landing on top he stopped and rapped loudly on the door facing him.

The door opened suddenly in front of him, and a heavy voice said: “Well, what do you want?” The man was as big and thick as Lunsford, but much taller. He had a bullet head with short-cropped hair that stuck up stiffly. His features were small and queerly pinched together. Tiny glittering eyes, a blob of a nose, thickly wet lips.

“Scotty MacGowan here?” Lunsford asked.

The big man looked him up and down slowly, and then craned his thick neck to look down the stairs.

Lunsford said: “I asked you if Scotty MacGowan was here.”

“Why, no,” said the big man innocently. “No. He went—out. Who’re you?”

“My name’s Lunsford. From the track.”

“Oh,” said the big man, and his eyes narrowed suddenly. “The detective, huh? I’ll tell him you called.”

“Never mind. I’ll wait for him.”

“Well now,” said the big man, moving the door suggestively, “I don’t know as he’ll be back very quick. Now if you’d call back a little later—”

Lunsford shook his head. “I’ll wait inside,” he said, pushing forward.

The big man stepped back and tried to slam the door. Lunsford had his foot inside, and he lunged forward with all his weight, shoving. The door gave easily, opening wide. The big man made no effort to hold it.

Lunsford staggered into the room, trying to get his footing. The big man stepped out of his way, and his right hand came around from behind his back holding a big blue-black automatic. He swung the gun swiftly at Lunsford in a flat, glittering arc.

Lunsford tried to duck, tried to get his arm up. He wasn’t quick enough. The automatic cracked solidly on his temple. There was a great bursting blast of flame inside his head, and he fell forward blindly—

HE came out of it slowly. He was lying face down on the floor. He felt no pain at all, except for a dim aching that seemed to come from all over him, and after a moment his brain was very clear. He knew just what had happened, and he cursed himself for being such a fool.

He let the lids of his eyes open a little bit. Directly ahead of him he could see a man’s two feet. They were in ragged, grass-stained tennis shoes. The man was sitting in a chair, and his ankles were tied tightly to its legs with a thin, strong cord.

Lunsford let his eyes open a little wider and saw the rest of the man. His hands were tied behind the chair back, and there were more loops of the cord across his chest. He had a gag in his mouth, and a little blood had slid redly from under it, where it had cut his lips.

It was Scotty MacGowan, and his bright blue eyes were as snappily alert as they had been the first time Lunsford had seen him. He was watching Lunsford, and his blue eyes blinked frantically, warningly.

Heavy footsteps crossed the floor toward him, and he felt the toe of a shoe nudge him hard in the ribs. He was limply inert.

The footsteps moved away, and Lunsford opened his eyes again. The big man was now leaning over Scotty. He was still carrying the big automatic in his hand, and he nudged Scotty in the stomach with it, chuckling in a cruelly suggestive way.

“I hope you told the truth, you old water rat. If that dog ain’t there when Nick gets there, it’s gonna be mighty tough for you.”

Lunsford raised his head and nodded at Scotty meaningly. Scotty’s blue eyes went wide, and he started to waggle his head back and forth and mumble wordlessly at the big man through the gag. “Wanta talk, huh?” the big man said. His thick fingers fumbled at the gag. “You try squawkin’ and see what it gets you.”

Lunsford raised himself noiselessly to his hands and knees and started to crawl for his hat, which was lying on the floor near the door.

Suddenly there was the scrape of feet from behind him and a wordlessly startled grunt. Lunsford clutched the hat to his chest and rolled over on his back. He managed to jerk the little wire clip inside the hat, and the revolver he always carried there popped out into his hand. The gun had a cut-down handle and a barrel no more than an inch long. The big cylinder bulged disproportionately large, the leaden ends of the cartridges in it shining dully slick.

There was a smashing report almost in his face, and the floorboards splintered beside him. He pointed the gun up at the vague bulk of the big man and pulled the trigger. There was a ragged boom.

The big man spread his arms wide, making a sick, choking noise deep in his throat. Then his knees bent a little, and he went straight over backward and crashed to the floor. His big feet bounced up and then came down limply. All the strength went out of his ankles, and the feet turned out stiffly and were still. His small head rolled from side to side loosely twice, then stopped.

Lunsford sat up slowly and wearily. Grunting, he got to his feet, found a jackknife in his pocket, and cut the cord that bound Scotty’s hands. The little man jerked the gag out of his mouth, sputtering incoherent profanity.

“Man! Man!” he said excitedly, when he could get his breath. “That was slick! But when you started to crawl for that hat I thought you had gone daft!”

Lunsford grunted disgustedly. He didn’t like this rough stuff.

Scotty had untied the rope around his feet. “A gun in your hat!” he marveled.

“I’m not one of these quick-draw artists,” Lunsford said. “I have to get a head start by carrying my gun some place where nobody’ll get suspicious when I start to reach for it. You got neighbors below?”

“Nope,” said Scotty, “and not on either side. You could hold artillery practice here and nobody would know the difference.”

“What happened?”

Scotty was looking down at the big man. “Deader than hell,” he said callously. “And a damned good thing, too, if you ask me. Him and a weasel by the name of Nick walked in on me a while back and accused me of stealing the Rag-Tag Girl and started to push me around, wantin’ to know where I had hid her. So I told them I had her in a joint out on Columbus Street. Nick went out to look.”

“Where on Columbus Street?” Lunsford demanded.

Scotty winked at him slyly. “There ain’t no such street.”

“How long ago did this Nick leave?”

“About twenty minutes, maybe. Just before you came barging in. Don’t worry about him comin’ back right away, though. I gave him a lot of complicated directions. It’ll take him about an hour to find the place where I said the street was.”

“While we’re waiting for him, you can tell me where you hid the Rag-Tag Girl,” Lunsford said. “And don’t give me any phony song and dance about it, either.”

Scotty stared at him narrowly. “You know, you ain’t nowheres near as dumb as you look. When I seen you this morning, I knew you must be the detective Barker sent for, and I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble fooling such a stupid dope. But by golly, you got the right answer, and it didn’t take you so long, neither.”

Lunsford shrugged. “That was easy. The answer was in plain sight all the time. There wasn’t any noise.”

“Huh?” said Scotty blankly.

“The other dogs,” Lunsford explained. “They didn’t make a racket. There were a dozen greyhounds in that kennel besides the Rag-Tag Girl. You take a dozen dogs of almost any breed and put them together in the dark and then let somebody come stumbling around among them, knocking a guy on the head and trying to grab one of ‘em and walk off, and you’ll hear some noise. It’s just natural. They’d get excited and bark and make a hell of a racket. But these dogs didn’t. The answer is that they knew the guy that came in there and stole the Rag-Tag Girl. Knew him so well they didn’t bark at all.”

“Yep,” said Scotty shamelessly. “They know me pretty well. I wouldn’t fool you, mister. I stole her.”

Lunsford nodded. “And then there was the matter of the reward. The guy that stole her had to know the special setup at the track. Ordinarily the track wouldn’t offer a reward for a stolen dog. They aren’t racing now, and they’d just report the matter to the police and let it go at that. The only reason they offered a reward is because they did not want it known they were thinking of running whippets.”

“Hell,” said Scotty. “I never thought of ‘em offerin’ a reward.”

“What?” said Lunsford, startled, “You didn’t steal her to get the reward?”

“Hell, no,” said Scotty.

“Then why did you steal her? You can’t race her; don’t you know that? No matter what track you took her to, somebody around there would know her.”

“I stole her because I want her,” Scotty said, suddenly bitter. “She’s mine. You hear that, mister? She’s my dog!”

“Yours?” Lunsford said blankly.

“You bet. Mine. I raised that dog from a pup. I taught her to run. Look up her registry if you don’t believe it. I owned her before Eaton bought her, and whether I can run her in races or not, I’m gonna have her. She’s my dog!”

Lunsford shrugged indifferently. “Okay. It’s all one to me. You’ll have to argue it out with Eaton. But I was hired to get the dog back to the track, and back she’s going. Where is she?”

“Mister,” said Scotty, “you saved my neck for me. Nick and the big moose would’ve been pretty nasty when they found out I was givin’ them the runaround. If it wasn’t for that, I’d tell you to go right straight to hell. But as it is, she’s here.”

He walked across to the kitchen door, swung it back, and pointed to a big clothes hamper beside the sink.

“In there?” Lunsford asked incredulously.

Scotty nodded, grinning. He opened the top of the hamper, lifted out a thick mass of soiled clothes. The hamper had a false bottom about halfway down. Scotty lifted it out and clucked his tongue gently at the dog whose head popped into view.

The Rag-Tag Girl was small and nondescript and thin. It had bright, intelligent eyes, eagerly affectionate. It was brown, spotted with black, as though someone had dabbed at it hastily and clumsily with a paintbrush. It lolled out a long red tongue, slapped it against Scotty’s gnarled hand.

Lunsford stared. “You mean to tell me that thing is worth a three-thousand-dollar reward?” he asked incredulously.

Scotty straightened his thin body with an angry jerk. “What you mean— ‘thing’? Did you ever see this dog run? Why— why, it’s beautiful. It’s— it’s poetry! That’s what it is! Why, she’s a champion! Ain’t you, girlie?”

The Rag-Tag Girl whined eagerly.

“All right,” Lunsford said impatiently. “I don’t care whether she’s a champion or not. Pick her up, and let’s get out of here. We’ll stop at the nearest drugstore and call the cops. They can stake this place out and wait for Nick to come back.”

Scotty tucked the dog under one arm, and they went back across the living room, past the sprawling body of the big man. Scotty opened the door into the hall and stopped short with a startled grunt. Lunsford crowded close behind him, peering over his shoulder.

There was a man halfway up the stairs, coming very quietly. He stopped when he saw them, looking up. He was small, sleekly dapper, and his thin, dark face, staring up at them, twisted in a surprised grimace.

“It’s Nick!” Scotty exclaimed suddenly.

With one smoothly blurred motion, Nick’s hand flipped inside his tight coat and out again holding a thin automatic. Lunsford straight-armed Scotty, knocking him out of the way. He fumbled for the .38 he had dropped into his coat pocket. The cut-down grip was slippery in his suddenly sweaty palm.

The thin automatic smacked out sharply. Scotty bent over in the middle with a short, gasping cry. He folded up then, limply, and his head banged on the floor. The Rag-Tag Girl, twisting out of his lax arms, yelped in shrill fright.

Nick whirled and ran, jumping down the stairs four at a time. Lunsford finally got the short .38 free of his pocket and fired once. He saw the bullet smack into the wall over Nick’s head as he spun through the door and out of sight.

Lunsford swore in a thickly breathless voice and went down the stairs after him in long jumps. He reached the door, jerked it open.

Nick was running hard, diagonally across the front lawn, head down, arms pumping frantically. He was heading for a car parked at the curb. The engine of the car suddenly roared, and it started to roll away from the curb.

And as it moved, long slits of orange flame suddenly flapped out of its interior, and there was the muffled, rapping reports of an automatic. Nick yelled hoarsely in incredulous amazement. And then suddenly he staggered, flinging his arms wide. He tripped and slammed down hard on the ground, rolling over and over.

The big car whipped away from the curb, roared into speed. Lunsford dug his heels in the hard ground, stopping short. He raised the blunt .38 and fired twice, aiming carefully. The big sedan skidded crazily around the first corner and disappeared, leaving only the ripping blast of its exhaust that faded rapidly.

Lunsford wiped his coldly moist forehead and swore slowly and bitterly to himself in a monotone.

T was a long hall with greenish walls and ceiling and a pale green rug, richly thick, on the floor. There were cream-colored doors at regular intervals with streamlined brass numerals on them.

Lunsford came along the hall, his heavy feet noiseless on the thick rug. He walked a little more slowly than usual. He was very tired, and his head ached in dull, slow waves. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he had been talking to policemen for two hours. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.

He stopped in front of one of the doors and knocked on it gently. He leaned against the green wall, waiting. His eyes burned behind the glasses, and he had to keep blinking in order to clear his vision. Objects seemed a little distorted and unreal.

He knocked on the door again, and it opened in front of him. It was Eaton. He was holding a highball glass in his hand. He had his coat off, and his pale blue shirt bulged tightly over his paunch. His words were slightly blurred.

“Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

“I’d like to talk to you a minute,” Lunsford said. Eaton opened the door wider. “Come in.” Lunsford went into a long low living room with cream-tinted walls. The furniture was low and modernistic, with brightly metal arms and legs, leather cushions of contrasting colors. Eaton indicated a chair with a jerk of his head.

“Scotch?”

Lunsford nodded. He sipped gratefully at the liquor Eaton gave him, relaxing in the chair.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Eaton asked, stifling a yawn.

Lunsford nodded slowly. “Yeah. I found the dog.”

Eaton’s hand jerked, and the ice in his glass tinkled lightly. “You found her! Where?”

“In Scotty MacGowan’s apartment. He stole her. He owned her before you did. Didn’t you know that?”

“I knew somebody by the name of MacGowan had owned her,” Eaton said. “But I didn’t know it was this one. I’d never met the guy. I never thought of such a broken-down old guy as this Scotty MacGowan was as having owned a dog like the Rag-Tag Girl.”

“Was?” Lunsford repeated gently. “As Scotty MacGowan was?”

Eaton didn’t say anything, watching Lunsford with bulging, yellowish eyes. After a moment, he turned his head a little and looked at the chair where his coat lay. He moistened his lips, swallowing.

“No,” Lunsford said softly. He slid the stubby .38 out of his hat. “Just take it easy.”

Eaton’s breath came hard, wheezing. “What’s the idea? What’re you tryin’ to pull on me?”

“You thought Scotty MacGowan was dead, didn’t you?” Lunsford asked. “You thought Nick killed him tonight. That’s why you shot Nick. But you played in bad luck. Scotty isn’t dead. And neither is Nick. They’re both in the hospital. And when Nick comes around, he’s gonna be a little sore at you, I think.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eaton said nervously.

“Oh, yes, you do. You bought the Rag-Tag Girl from a gambler by the name of Hobland, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Eaton breathlessly. “Sure I did. What of it?”

“Hobland got her from Scotty MacGowan. He got Scotty drunk and cheated him out of the dog in a crooked poker game. Scotty told me all about it while they were getting ready to operate on him in the hospital. Scotty’s crazy about that dog. He didn’t care whether it was a racer or not. He wanted it because it was his dog, and he loved it. That’s why he stole it from you.”

“This is all crazy,” said Eaton.

“Crazy is right,” Lunsford agreed. “This case has been crazy from the first. I couldn’t figure just what was the idea of all this funny business, but I’ve got the answer now. Scotty told me. He’s a smart old bird. He taught the Rag-Tag Girl to race, but he taught her not to race, too. Not to race for anybody but him. Hobland cheated Scotty out of the dog, but he got cheated in turn. The dog wouldn’t race for him. Wouldn’t run worth a damn. Maybe he could have taught it to run for him if he’d had the time and skill and patience. But he didn’t. So he sold the dog to you on the strength of its past record, just forgetting to mention that it would not run for anybody but Scotty.

“You were gypped, and gypped plenty. You started right after Hobland. You trailed him up here. Scotty came after you, to be with his dog. You found Hobland, and he just laughed in your face when you accused him of cheating you. You didn’t have nerve enough to tackle him yourself, so you hired Nick and his big pal to go after him. They did. But Hobland is a tough guy. He shot it out with Nick, and Nick killed him.

“Then you were in for it. A murder. And on top of that Scotty steals the dog. You tumbled to who he was, after that. You knew he had the dog. But you didn’t dare say anything, because if you did he’d connect you up with Hobland’s murder. You were in a bad spot. You had to get that dog, shut Scotty’s mouth, and clear out. Tonight, when there was that shooting at Scotty’s place, you thought Nick had killed Scotty, and you took a chance and shot Nick. He knew too much about you.”

“Listen,” said Eaton. “Listen, now. You know I didn’t kill Hobland. Nick is only wounded. Listen, let me get out of this. I’ll give you a bill of sale for the dog. You claim the reward. Let me out.”

“No,” said Lunsford regretfully. “No, I’m afraid not. You see, a friend of mine by the name of Saunders is in jail accused of killing Hobland. Saunders is a drunken good-for-nothing, and if he was hung it wouldn’t be any more than he deserves. But he’s my friend. He used to work for me. He stuck to me when times were mighty tough. When I couldn’t pay his salary for months at a time.

“He was my friend when I needed a friend bad. And now he needs me. That’s why I started out on this business. To get him out of jail. I took quite a lot of detours, but I finally got there in the end. You are going to testify against Nick and get Saunders out of jail.”

There was a sudden thunderous knock on the door. Eaton jerked up, half out of his chair.

“Don’t get excited,” Lunsford said soothingly. “It’s just the cops coming to pay you a social call.”

__________________

5

Dead Man’s Chest

Thrilling Adventures Nov 1936

1: Below the Border

THE tequila smelled like rotten eggs and tasted like carbolic acid slightly diluted with ground glass, but “Poco” Kelly drank it down without the slightest change in the expression on his face.

“How much?” he asked.

The greasy mestizo behind the bar was an excellent judge of character. He had to be in this place. One mistake, and they buried him. He took a calculating look at Poco Kelly. He saw an immensely tall man with a long, gaunt face and rust-colored hair and huge hands and feet. Poco Kelly looked thin, in fact, skinny, until examined closely, then it was discovered he just wasn’t carrying any spare flesh.

His face was a bony caricature that looked as though he had been thoroughly worked over with a war club when he was very young. His nose was bent crookedly, his jaw bone was lumpy. A saber scar stretched from the corner of his mouth straight across his cheek to his ear. The bottom of the ear was gone.

Poco Kelly looked clumsy and harmless and a little dumb, until you saw his eyes. They were a clear blue, steely, glittering a little. It was like seeing a clumsily wrapped package of dynamite, and then noticing suddenly that it had a lighted fuse on it.

The bartender bowed gracefully. “Nada,” he said. “Nothing to you, senor. It is my pleasure.”

“It’s your luck, you mean,” Poco Kelly said amiably. “I was going to make you eat whatever you charged me for that poison. Adios, amigo.”

“Malo hombre,” the bartender muttered as the door slapped shut behind Poco Kelly’s wide shoulders.

Poco walked away from the lighted grease- smeared windows of the cantina stumbling on the rough cobblestone pavement of the darkly crooked street. He was disgusted. There was nothing to see, nothing to do in this Tepeyac place.

Tepeyac was far south of the border in Old Mexico. A sleepy village hidden among the mountains thrown up around it like a tumbled blanket. Dusty and dirty and full of strange smells.

Hotter than fire in the daytime with the sun blazing down. Beautiful maybe, if you liked clashing colors and the picturesque. Poco Kelly didn’t.

He was in Tepeyac because, traveling up from the south, he had run out of funds here. He had sold his horse and what personal effects he could spare to the town’s one innkeeper and so had a place to eat and sleep for the moment and some small change to jingle in his pocket. He wasn’t worried.

Something would turn up.

He had almost reached the corner when a small dark figure spun around it running hard and slammed headlong into him. Kelly had just enough warning to have time to brace his legs against the shock. The figure bounced off him as though he had been a cement post, tripped, and fell down against an adobe wall in a huddled heap, panting in gasping sobs.

“Here—” Kelly leaned over.

He had time to say no more. Three other figures pounded around the corner, skidded to a stop when they saw him and the dark figure on the ground. They were only vague outlines in the darkness, thick shadows with an air of menace about them and with rasping breaths coming harshly from their throats.

“Well?” said Poco Kelly, straightening.

They didn’t utter a sound. They spread a little apart in a moving semicircle, then suddenly they came for him in a silent rush. A fugitive ray of light caught and glittered on a knife blade.

“Ho!” said Poco Kelly, grimly amused. “So that’s it!”

His hands whipped inside his shirt and out again. He held a .45 Colt. It was a queer weapon, with the barrel sawed off until it was no more than two inches long and the butt cut down to a skeleton of its regular size. It kicked like a mule, that gun, and it would break the hand of anyone not used to it.

It roared, slapped out an orange flare of smoky flame. The man in the center of the three went over backward and hit the pavement so hard his head bounced. He made no other movement.

The gun crashed again, and another of the men went whirling away, clawing at the air and screaming in a high, thin voice. The third didn’t wait. He turned and ran.

POCO KELLY was suddenly alone in a thick, dead silence. He stared around him. The small dark figure was no longer crouched against the wall. It was creeping cautiously away in the shadows.

As soon as he took a step toward it, the figure bounced up and ran. But Poco Kelly could move like a streak. He caught the dark figure by the shoulder before it had taken more than ten steps, whirled it around.

“No, you don’t!” he said. He could see it a little more clearly now.” A boy, with a battered hat crushed down over the pale, frightened oval of his features. He was still panting brokenly, and whimpered in Poco Kelly’s grasp, trying to squirm away.

“What’s the idea of all this?” Kelly demanded.

“What were they chasing you for?”

The boy spoke in a frightened whisper. “No habla Ingles, senor.”

Poco Kelly flipped out a big hand and knocked the hat off. Thick coppery hair gleamed in the dimness down over the boy’s shoulders.

“Ah!” said Kelly. “I thought so! You make a better looking girl than you do boy!”

“Let me go! Let me go!” the girl said, then, in English. She tried to jerk away, pulling frantically. “Now wait a minute,” said Poco Kelly calmly.

“Don’t be in such a hurry. I thought you said you couldn’t speak English.”

She stopped struggling. “Please! Those men that were after me—they’ll come back—”

“Two of them won’t come back until Gabriel blows his horn,” said Poco Kelly, “and if the third kept on traveling like he was when he left here he’s probably halfway to China already.”

The girl’s breath was coming more evenly now. “You—you saved my life. I’m very grateful. But I’ve got to go—run—”

“Now wait,” said Kelly. “A girl can’t just go running around in the dark like this. And what’s more, I haven’t seen anyone that can speak English for two months, and I’m tired of hearing myself speak Spanish.”

She stared up at him. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Poco Kelly. Ever heard of me?”

She shook her head.

“Huh!” said Poco Kelly. “I guess you don’t make a habit of reading South and Central American reward posters. They’ve always got my mug plastered on ‘em somewhere. Seems like I always pick the wrong side in anybody’s revolution.”

“You’re—you’re a soldier of fortune?”

“No,” said Kelly sadly. “Just a soldier—no fortune involved. Who are you?”

“Sue Carlyle.”

“Sue,” Poco Kelly repeated reflectively. “Good old Yank name, huh? But you haven’t told me why those guys were chasing you or who they were.”

“Did you ever hear of Manuel Sargi?”

“Hah!” said Kelly, snarling suddenly. “That slimy snake! The last time I ran across him I put a dent in his skull with a beer bottle. I didn’t hit hard enough, though. He lived.”

“Those were his men.”

“And I let one get away!”

She remembered herself suddenly. “I’ve got to go now! I left my uncle—I’m afraid Sargi—”

“I’ll go with you,” Kelly said determinedly. “I want to meet Sargi again. He sold a general I was working for some machine-gun ammunition that had sand in it instead of powder. Damn’ near got me killed. I got a bayonet through the ribs and this.” He touched the saber scar on his cheek. “Yeah, that guy owes me for half an ear. There I was sitting in the middle of a field on the wrong end of a cavalry charge with a jammed machine-gun. Just one swipe with a beer bottle won’t near pay for that.”

“Look!” Sue said suddenly.

A group of figures had gathered at the mouth of the alley, peering into the dimness.

“Sargi’s men!” she said in a tense whisper.

‘No,” said Poco Kelly, recognizing the bulging figure in the forefront, “that’s what passes in this pueblo for a police force. Watch.”

He fired the sawed-off .45 into the air and followed its whamming report with a screech that sounded like a combination of a locomotive whistle and a banshee on a spree.

The men at the alley mouth boiled into frenzied action, pushing and shoving and mauling, fighting to get away. In seconds they were all gone.

“I won a lot of fights with that yell,” Poco Kelly said. “It’s sure a hair-raiser, ain’t it? Let’s go.”

They dodged through a niche in the adobe walls, followed a crooked, twisting little alley through the thick blackness, came out into a street three blocks away. Poco was chuckling quietly.

“Did you see them run? That’s the best yell I let out for a long time.”

She stared up seriously at his face.

“You just killed two men,” she said. “And you’re laughing now.”

“Why, yes,” said Poco Kelly. “I did, and I am.” “You killed them to save me,” she said in the same tone. “But you didn’t know who they were, nor who I was. They might have been police chasing a thief.”

“Yeah,” said Poco Kelly, “they might have been, and they’d be just as dead now, and I wouldn’t care. I figure if people are going to run at me in the dark waving knives around they’re engaging in a pretty risky business. Whatever happens to them sort of comes under the head of hazards of this interesting but dangerous profession.”

“Two men dead,” she said, shivering a little. “Why, yes,” said Poco Kelly. “Two men dead in an alley. And I’ve seen a thousand go down in ten minutes, and every one of ‘em worth more than those two multiplied by six. If they’re Sargi’s men they’re in hell where they belong. I could tell you things about that snake. But I know what you mean, Sue Carlyle. I killed two men, and I don’t seem very put out about it. You think I’m a pretty bad character, and maybe you’d like to get away from me. Maybe you’re afraid of me.”

She was very small and slim in her boy’s clothes. She had small, even features, delicate yet with a resolute firmness. Her nose was short and straight and her lips soft. Her eyes were wide and blue, a much softer and deeper blue than Poco Kelly’s.

“No,” she said. “I’m not afraid of you. It’s—it’s just—that I’m not used to—to—”

“Murder and sudden death,” said Kelly.

Abruptly she put out her hand. “I want you to be my friend, Poco Kelly.”

Poco Kelly gripped her small hand firmly in his big one. “It’s as good as done.”

“We’ve got to get to my uncle. I’m worried. He’s sick, and I had to leave him with Juan, our Hopi boy, while I went out to buy some provisions. Those men saw me—”

“Let’s go,” said Poco. “You can tell me the rest later.”

2: “Make Them Pay!”

IT was a little adobe hut with white walls and a sagging thatch roof, at the outskirts of the town, a little away from the rest of the houses. Alone and forlorn with the thick brush growing up around it hungrily. It looked deserted. There was no ray of light from the blackened windows in its thick walls.

Sue Carlyle’s voice was thin with foreboding. “There was a light when I left. My uncle had a candle.”

“He might have blown it out,” Poco said comfortingly.

“No. No, he’d leave it for me. He was worried about me going out alone.”

“Wait here, then,” Kelly said.

He left her in the shadow of the scrub brush and went quietly toward the little house, moving as noiselessly as the drift of a shadow. At one of the sunken front windows he tried to peer in. There was no covering across the window, no light anywhere inside the house.

“Hello,” said Poco softly. “Here’s a friend.” There was no answer, no sound at all but the stealthy rustle of a lizard in the roof thatch. Poco slid around toward the front, flat against the wall, keeping below the level of the windows.

The front door was ajar on its sagging strip-leather hinges. Poco pushed it open and it grated on the dirt floor. He slid inside into the close, hot darkness and stood with his back against the wall, listening.

Poco Kelly had done a great deal of night prowling. It was no business in which to make wild guesses and a man didn’t get the chance to make many mistakes. But he hadn’t been standing against that wall for more than a minute before he knew that the little house was empty. He was in it alone.

He stepped out the front door and signaled to Sue Carlyle.

“What is it?” she asked breathlessly, hurrying to him.

“There’s no one here,” Poco said. “Are you sure this is the place? This house has been empty ever since I hit town, and it’s empty now.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “My uncle and Juan and I came in last night. We were hiding because—”

“No time for that now,” Kelly said quickly. “Come inside.”

They went quietly into the house.

“Stand away from me,” Kelly ordered. “I’m going to strike a light, and there might be somebody wanting to take a shot through a window.”

The match head spurted into yellow flame under his thumbnail and threw the room into light and dancing shadows. It was small and bare. A rickety table, a couple of sagging chairs made of tanned cowhide, a straw pallet in the corner with a blanket over it.

“Ah!” Sue gave a sudden gasp.

She was staring at the straw pallet. The blanket was rumpled, half pulled away, and there was a darkly sinister red stain on it. Poco saw now that the table had been dragged half across the room. The marks of its leg were scraped in the hard dirt floor. One of the chairs sat crookedly, its back legs broken.

“Uncle Jack!” Sue sobbed. “Sargi found him! They—they’ll kill him!”

The match sputtered out in Poco Kelly’s fingers, and in the sudden dark silence there was the faint scrape of feet from outside the hut.

“Quiet!” Poco whispered. “Stand flat against the wall. We’re going to have callers.”

Sliding the sawed-off .45 out of his shirtfront and cuddling its short butt familiarly in his palm he slipped to the door, stood flat against the wall beside it.

The scraping of feet came closer, slowly, furtively. Only one man. Poco reversed the gun in his hand, held it up over his shoulder, ready to strike.

THE scraping footsteps were at the door now, and someone was breathing hard. Raggedly panting gasps with a little bubble hidden deep in them.

“Senorita—” a voice said thickly.

“Juan!” Sue cried. “It’s Juan, our Hopi boy!” She tried to push past Poco.

“Wait!” he said gently. “He may have been followed.”

He opened the door wider. “Come in,” he said. The bubbling sound was thicker in the Indian boy’s voice. “Senorita,” he said weakly. “I can’t— walk—anymore—” With a thud his body hit the ground.

Poco Kelly jerked the door open. The Indian boy was lying flat on his face in the dust of the threshold, a thin, slight figure in dark trousers and a white buckskin jacket decorated with gaily colored beads.

There was another color on the jacket now. Red. In a great spreading stain across the back.

“Stabbed!” said Kelly. “In the back!”

He lifted the slight, limp figure gently, carried it inside. He put the boy down on the straw pallet and, lighting another match, found a stub of candle that had rolled into a corner. Its jerking yellow flame chased the shadows back against the walls.

“Juan!” Sue choked. “Oh, Juanito! What happened? What have they done to you?”

The boy’s face was thinly drawn, pale under the coppery tan. Great beads of perspiration were on his forehead, and his eyes, staring up at Sue Carlyle kneeling beside him, were bright and glittering with pain.

“Senorita!” he gasped, and thin frothy red bubbles formed and burst on his lips. “They came— after you had gone, knocked on the door. I— opened the door. There was— no one in sight. I stepped outside— to look. They caught me— struck me with the knife—”

“My uncle!” Sue cried. “The senor, Juan! Did they—did they—”

“They beat— the senor down with their fists. They took him—away—”

Sue stared at Poco Kelly with blue eyes that were deep wells of agony.

Juan was struggling to speak, gasping for breath. “I could not—help him. I was lying on the ground— like one dead— I could not rise. But when they left with the senor, I crawled, I crawled—”

“Yes?” Sue urged breathlessly. “Yes, Juan?”

“Crawled— crawled— followed them. The old white house—beside the road from the south. Used to be—an inn. Empty—took the senor there. I crawled— back— to tell you—”

“Over a mile,” Poco Kelly said softly. “He crawled over a mile with that hole in his back, after they’d left him for dead.”

Sue was sobbing, cradling Juan’s head in her arms.

“Sargi,” Juan said in the faintest whisper. “Sargi took— the senor. I—” His eyes closed wearily, and his breath was only a little bubbling mutter in his throat.

Again Sue was staring up at Poco Kelly. “Can’t we do something for him? A doctor— something—”

Poco shook his head slowly. “He’s dying,” he said. “That knife went through his lungs, and there’s no telling how much blood he lost. Perhaps if he hadn’t crawled so far—”

“Senorita,” Juan whispered.

“Yes, Juan,” she said, her voice choked. “Senorita,” Juan repeated faintly. The deep pain lines seemed to wash away from his young face. He smiled a little with his bloodstained lips. And then he wasn’t breathing anymore.

Sue cried softly and brokenly.

Poco took off his hat. “God rest him,” he said, “and keep him. He was very brave.” He knelt down beside Juan and gently pulled the blanket over the still face.

He stood up and turned to Sue. “Now I want some information in a hurry. I know Sargi. He’s a murderer and a liar and a thief. He runs a gang of cutthroats and specializes in smuggling. He’s after you and your uncle. Why?”

“He knows we have a map he wants.” “Has your uncle got it?”

“No. I have it.” As she touched the boy’s blouse she wore something rustled a little.

“All right,” said Poco. “I’m going after Sargi and your uncle. I know where that old inn is. You stay here. I can go faster and fight better without you to think about. Will you stay?”

She nodded, the tears on her cheeks glistening in the candlelight. “I’ll stay here,” she promised. And then suddenly she gripped his arm hard. “Only make them pay! Make them pay, Poco Kelly! For what they did to Juan— and my uncle!”

3: The Map of Human Skin

PEDRO GUITERREZ could hear the screaming only faintly, and he kicked the rotted board that was the front step of the old inn and swore in a muttering undertone. He always missed the fun. He always got the worst jobs. Now he was assigned to guard the door with nothing to see but a few winking stars.

Another scream scaled up and up in a paean of agony, broke off into a bubbling wail. Hah! Pedro thought, that was a good one. He would have liked to have seen the old man’s face when he uttered it.

The old man was stubborn, but he’d break pretty soon. Gold! Pedro Guiterrez could imagine it in a glittering yellow pile, could feel it weighing down his pockets, could taste the good liquor it would buy. Gold!

He heard a sudden little scuffling noise behind him in the darkness. He whirled around, half raising the short carbine he carried under one arm. A black, towering shadow was very close— the swirl of an arm swinging toward him.

That was all that Pedro Guiterrez ever saw in this world. There was a muffled thump, a little crunching sound. Pedro Guiterrez went sprawling in the soft dust and never moved again.

Poco Kelly Leaned over him a second, straightened up. He mounted the rotting steps noiselessly, knelt in front of the big door.

The scream came again, a wailing screech that went on and on as if it would never stop and then did stop suddenly in mid-note. A gloating laugh followed the scream, an ugly, oily sound that raised the bristles at the back of Poco Kelly’s neck. He knew that laugh.

Bracing himself against the thick wall and raising his right foot, he drove the heel with terrific force against the door just under the rusty lock. The door flung open, smashed back against the wall with a battering thud that echoed in empty rooms like a thunderclap.

The room into which Poco burst was long, low, and littered with splintered and broken furniture. A big table stood in its center and on its top a man was bound flat on his back. His bare feet extended over the end of the table, but they no longer resembled feet. They were horribly blackened lumps with red, raw flesh showing through the seared skin. The sickening smell of burned flesh filled the room. The man’s face was turned toward Poco Kelly, his mouth twisted into an agonized grimace. He was an old man with a short-clipped grey beard, and a bloody bandage was wound around his head.

Three other men were in the room. One evidently had been standing in front of the door when Poco Kelly kicked it in. He was sprawling on the floor, and now he sat up dazedly and reached for the rifle lying beside him.

Poco Kelly’s first bullet took him squarely in the mouth and blew out the back of his skull.

“Sargi!” Poco snarled. He was crouched in the shadows of the doorway with the .45 poked out in front of him. “Sargi! You rat!”

Sargi, standing beside the table, had the lighted stub of a candle in his hand. He had been applying the flame to the bound man’s bare feet when Poco Kelly came in. He couldn’t see Poco, hidden in the shadows of the doorway, but he recognized the voice.

“Poco Kelly!”

Sargi was small, only a little over five feet, and slight. His face was dark and thin and cruel, cut blackly across by a small waxed mustache and his eyes were so light they looked white—a smoky flinty white. High-heeled boots increased his height and he wore a big sombrero with little silver bells around the wide brim, with a twisted leather cord that looped under his chin, a short decorated vest and tight Mexican trousers with a slash of red velvet inset in the legs at the bottoms.

His lieutenant, Gorgio, stood beside him, an immense man, thickly powerful, with a flat, stupid face and dull little eyes.

Sargi moved like a streak as he uttered Poco Kelly’s name. He dropped the candle stub, swiped viciously at another candle on a chair, the only other light in the shadow-filled room.

Poco Kelly shot. Sargi was whirling when the bullet hit him and it knocked him into the chair, smashing into the floor, snuffing out the candle.

Poco shot again into the thick darkness, twice, and lunged forward. He stumbled over a broken table, went sprawling on hands and knees. The rattle of his fall and the hurried pound of footsteps mingled.

Pushing himself up to a squatting position, Kelly crouched on the floor, listening. The room was silent all of a sudden—no sound anywhere. Then he heard the pounding thud of horses’ hoofs from outside the inn.

Poco spun around, made the door in two long jumps. The horses were already better than fifty yards away. Kelly recognized Gorgio’s thick figure on one, saw the spare outline of Sargi on the other. Sargi hadn’t been wounded badly enough to prevent his riding.

Poco fired twice, but the range was too great for the sawed-off barrel of the .45. The horses clattered over the top of a knoll, out of sight.

Stepping back inside the inn, Poco snapped a match on his thumbnail. The spurting yellow flame showed the wreck of the room, the man he had shot lying on the floor.

Kelly leaped to the table where the old man lay bound. The tortured figure was lying very still, the face still twisted in its agonized grimace. The black handle of a knife stood up straight directly over his heart, and blood was spreading in a slow stain on his ragged shirt.

Sargi’s work, that knife. Like a scotched snake, when he was wounded he had struck at the first thing into which he could sink his fangs. The old man was dead—

No light was showing when Poco Kelly approached the house where he had left Sue Carlyle. He paused in the shelter of the thick brush and whistled softly.

Sue Carlyle appeared in the doorway, watching him silently as he approached her.

“My— my uncle is dead,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” Poco said.

“Sargi killed him.”

“Yes.”

She nodded slowly. “I knew it. I knew my uncle would never tell Sargi where the map was.” All her tears were gone now, but sorrow had pinched her face, made her seem older.

Poco Kelly said nothing. There was nothing he could say. It was better not to tell her about the manner of her uncle’s death.

“It was only about two hours ago that I met you and yet it seems like years,” she said slowly. “I— I can’t ever thank you for what you’ve done, Poco Kelly.”

Poco shook his head uncomfortably. “I didn’t help things much.”

“You did everything that any man could— more than any other man would have done— Now I want to tell you what was the cause of everything tonight—”

“Not unless you want to,” Poco told her. “I’ve fought in a lot of wars without knowing why they started.”

“I would rather talk than— than think. Here—” She took a small oilskin pouch from her blouse and handed it to him. “You take it out. I— I hate to touch it.”

He untied the drawstring of the pouch and took out a thin, fine-textured piece of leather. It was light, like chamois skin, only it was not chamois skin. Faint spidery lines were traced on it in red in a weird-looking design.

“The map Sargi wanted?” Poco asked, looking up from it.

She nodded. “Yes. A treasure map. It was made of human skin.”

“Human skin!” Poco Kelly repeated, startled.

She shivered. “Yes— skin torn from the chest of a dead Spanish capitan. Dead almost two hundred years, now. It’s a weird, horrible story—it always makes me shiver just to think about it. That map was made by a criminal by the name of Pedro Lacerein. Long ago, when Mexico belonged to Spain, he killed a man and ran for the desert country near where the Border is now to hide. I think he must have been insane, because the Indians thought he was a great medicine man and let him wander wherever he pleased.”

“A map made by a madman out of human skin,” Poco said softly.

“Yes. In his wanderings Pedro Lacerein found a gold deposit. It must have been just a pocket, but it was a large one and almost pure gold. He got the idea of buying himself a pardon with the gold, so he took samples of the gold, went down into Mexico, surrendered to the authorities and made his mad proposition. Their cupidity was aroused by the gold samples and they pretended to fall in with his plan to buy his pardon. They sent a small detachment of soldiers and workers back into the desert country with him, found the gold again, mined the pocket.”

“And then?” Poco asked.

“The Spanish capitan who led the expedition talked too much. After they had the gold, he saw no point in continuing to fool Pedro Lacerein and told him the truth. The Spanish officials had no intention of pardoning him. They had tricked him to get the gold and he would hang for his crime.”

“A nice doublecross,” Poco said.

“Yes. Pedro Lacerein was raging at being tricked. He escaped into the desert, led some of his Indian friends back to the Spanish camp. They attacked at night and killed every one of the Spaniards. Pedro Lacerein blamed the Spanish capitan for the whole trick. He made two maps out of his skin. One map showed where Pedro Lacerein and his Indian allies had buried the gold the Spaniards had mined.”

“And the other?” Poco Kelly asked.

“This is it,” Sue pointed to the one Kelly held. “It shows where that first map is hidden.”

Poco Kelly held the map to the light, trying to trace the faint spidery lines, the scribbled words.

“It’s in Spanish,” she said. “It indicates a spot on the watercourse near a mountain called Thlotec, that is the Tres Piños River in the rainy season.”

“I know that place!” Poco nodded. “About four days travel south of here. I passed it on my way up.”

“Yes. There’s a big rock shaped like a skull. It must be quite large from the description. The map is hidden in a little iron box under the rock. Lacerein buried the box and rolled the rock on top of it. He was disgusted with white men by then, so he went back and lived with the Indians, a bigger medicine man than before. He died with them. He never went back for his treasure. He had no use for gold.”

“How did you get the map?”

“My— my uncle found it. He wasn’t any real relation to me. He was my father’s partner. My mother died when I was born, and when my father was killed in a mine cave-in several years later Uncle Jack— John Burns was his name— took me in as one of his family and raised me. Recently he’s been an Indian agent on a reservation in Arizona— with the same tribe with which Pedro Lacerein lived and died. The map was a souvenir that had been presented to one of the other agents years ago. He didn’t know it had any value, but he framed it and hung it on the office wall. It was there for years.”

Poco whistled softly. “A fortune gathering dust on the wall!”

“Exactly. Uncle Jack was interested in tribal legends and naturally he heard this one about Pedro Lacerein and his map of human skin. One day an old Indian identified the picture on the office wall as the map in the skin of Lacerein. Uncle Jack had the map analyzed, found it was human skin. And the faded writing was that of Pedro Lacerein written in the blood of the Spanishcapitan.”

Yeah, and the map’s subsequent history was also written in blood, Poco was thinking grimly.

“The man who analyzed the map talked. Manuel Sargi heard of it and he came to my uncle and claimed the map, said he was a direct descendant of Pedro Lacerein. He isn’t, and he couldn’t show a bit of proof. Besides, my uncle knew him for a criminal. He refused to give him the map and Sargi threatened him. He swore he’d kill my uncle to get it.”

“He’d kill anybody to get a dime,” Poco said, his lips tight. “But Sargi’s no relation of Pedro Lacerein. He’s not even Spanish, though he claims to be. He’s about a third Portuguese, a third Indian, and a third Chinese. How much gold is there?”

Sue shook her head. “No telling. The legend was too vague. Evidently quite a lot. Uncle Jack and Juan and I slipped over the border to find the second map. If we found it, then we could bring a bigger party and find the gold itself. We traveled secretly, at night, because we knew Sargi would be watching for us. Uncle Jack got sick—and then Sargi found us anyway.”

“He has his men all through this country,” Poco told her. “What are you going to do now?”

Her lips grew firmly resolute. “Go on—alone. I’ve got to. You see, Uncle Jack and I weren’t interested in the gold for itself. Uncle Jack has a son four years older than I am. He was terribly injured in an airplane crash. His spine was hurt. He’s been in the hospital for a year now, and it’s taken every cent of money Uncle Jack had saved. He can be cured— be all right— but it will take another year, several operations. He has to go back East, see specialists, have nurses day and night. His son was all Uncle Jack had. Now that son has only me.”

“You?” Poco said softly.

“We were to have been married the day he crashed. He was flying to our wedding.” She held out her hand. “Good-by, Poco Kelly.”

“Why, no,” said Poco. “I think I’ll go along with you just for the ride, if you don’t mind.”

She stared at him for a moment, then firmly shook her head. “No. You’ve risked your life for me a dozen times tonight. Now you want to help me more because you’re sorry for me. I won’t have you being sorry for me! I can take care of myself! It’s my fight!”

“You’re wrong,” said Poco Kelly gravely. “I’m not a bit sorry for you, and I don’t go around helping damsels in distress. I was thinking that if I was along when you found that gold I might be able to slip a few pieces in my pocket when you weren’t looking.”

She smiled a little. “You’re not a very good liar, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, yes,” grinned Poco. “An expert. But I’ll tell you the truth for a change. I haven’t got any place to go right now, and even if I had I haven’t got any money to go there with. So how would you like to hire a soldier? Honest, I’m a pretty fair fighter when I get going.”

“You mean that?” she asked gravely.

Poco Kelly held out his hand, and they shook gravely.

“And now,” he said, “we’ve got to move. The authorities in this country stay pretty well under cover at night, but tomorrow they’ll be going strong. They’ll want a lot of explanations. And then there’s always Sargi. I wounded him tonight, and I hope he dies of blood poison. Have you horses?”

“Yes. Hidden back in the brush further out from town.”

“We’d better be riding south then.”

“There— there’s Juan and—and Uncle Jack.”

“We can’t help them now,” said Poco. “They’d want you to do it if they could speak— ride on.”

4: Captured

FOR three days they had been riding south, swinging in a wide semicircle toward the spot where the now dry Tres Piños River’s course went near the mountain called Thlotec. It was magnificent country, ripped and tumbled and slashed by the earth’s tortured writhings in ages long dead. Mountains tossed up like giant monuments with the rock showing red and grey and blue on their scarred sides. Shadowed gorges cool even in the dazzling hot glare of the sun.

They had seen no one. There had been no signs of pursuit by Sargi and his men, and Poco Kelly was beginning to hope that the man had died of his wound.

Then— It happened without warning, in the morning with the sun fighting its way brightly through the mist. They were riding single file through a steep-walled little canyon with Poco ahead on the gaunt roan that had belonged to John Burns. Sue was behind him, and following her the pack-horse carrying their provisions and gear.

They had almost reached the mouth of the canyon when Poco saw a glinting little spark from the brush high on one wall. It moved a little, then glinted again. He swung around in the saddle to stare at the opposite wall. A bush was moving a little there, as though the breeze were shaking its limbs. Only there was no breeze.

Poco acted instantly. He jerked his horse back on its haunches, reached back and caught the rein of Sue’s dun. He hauled it savagely around, while she stared at him in white-faced consternation.

“Ambush!” Poco yelled at her.

He slashed the dun with his quirt, and it went pounding down the canyon with Sue clinging to its back.

A rifle suddenly whammed up on the canyon side and Poco saw dust spurt up under the dun’s flying feet.

“Aiiyaah!” Poco Kelly howled at the top of his voice.

He jerked John Burns’ carbine from the sheath on the saddle and went charging up the canyon, firing blindly into the brush as fast as he could pump the lever.

Other reports came, biting sharply through the thin air, and powder smoke drifted in a thin haze over the brush.

Poco hauled the roan around and dug in his spurs, charging up into the brush. A man suddenly rose up beside him. Poco slammed him over the head with the butt of the empty carbine.

And then there were men all around him, popping out of the brush like life-sized jack-in-the-boxes. Swart, chunky men with broad, dark faces and cartridge belts crisscrossed across their chests like queerly savage ornaments.

“Aiiyaah!” Poco Kelly howled, and spurred the maddened horse into their center, swinging the carbine over his head like a war club.

Three smacking reports came all at once. Poco felt the roan shudder under him, then it went down, sliding heavily over the rocks. He kicked clear and got half to his feet, jerking the sawed-off .45 out of his shirtfront but he never got a chance to use it. A rifle barrel smashed across his head and he seemed to shoot down into blackness that was liquidly soft and closed over his head like a thick, dark blanket—

The jarring awoke Poco Kelly first. Then the ache in his head. It felt like someone was driving red-hot rivets in front of each ear. He opened his eyes dazedly and found that he was riding a horse—a ratty, shaggy little animal that picked its way nimbly along the trail without any guidance.

Poco tried to raise his hands to feel his head and made another discovery. His hands were tied tightly behind him.

He blinked and increased the range of his vision. A man was riding ahead of him. He could see the broad back with its crisscrossing cartridge belts, the sweat-stained, ragged shirt, the floppy Mexican sombrero. Poco twisted around. More men were strung out behind him, riding silently.

They were the men he had fought in the canyon. He recognized the broad, dark faces, the glittering, cruel little eyes staring at him impassively.

“Hey, you!” Poco called to the leader.

The man riding in front paid no attention. “Hey, dog-face!” Poco called in a louder tone. The man pulled off the trail a little and let Poco’s horse come up abreast. He resembled the other men except for the broad blue scar that ran jaggedly on the diagonal across his face, bisecting the middle of his flattened nose. He looked at Poco’s bonds, grunted at him.

“Who the hell are you?” Poco demanded. “And where do you think you’re taking me?”

“Uh!” the man said, pulling his horse ahead again.

POCO made another try. “Sargi’s men?”

The man turned to stare back at him. “El Aguila.” “Ho!” said Kelly, surprised.

El Aguila—“the Eagle.” It was the imposing name self-selected by a not so very imposing gentleman. El Aguila, to hear him tell it, was a man who soared high above the desolate land of his mother country and swooped down screeching on the oppressors of the peon. As a matter of fact he was merely a murderer and a thief who would steal anything he could lay hands on. He was also an accomplished liar and braggart and so treacherous it was said he couldn’t even look himself in the eye in the mirror when shaving. The cavalcade with Poco Kelly in its midst cut through a narrow, twisting gorge, came out into a little pocket. A cluster of adobe huts was dead ahead, evidently El Aguila’s temporary headquarters.

They rode up to the accompaniment of the yapping of scrawny dogs. Women, wearing thick skirts and bright blouses, loaded down with cheap, flashy jewelry peered out of dark doorways with indolent disinterest. Fat, brown children played naked in the thick dirt, staring with brightly curious eyes.

The scarred leader pulled up in front of the largest hut, dismounted.

“Hello, Aguila,” Poco said to the man who came lazily out of the door.

“Ah, Poco Kelly,” said El Aguila.

The Eagle had been a section hand in the United States before he took up the more languorous, as well as more profitable, life of a bandit chief and could speak passable English. He was short and greasily fat with a round face that had no more expression in it than the painted face of a cheap doll. His eyes were small and black, dully slick, and no matter what expression the rest of his face assumed they always stared emotionlessly with a savage little flicker deep back in them.

“This is a hell of a greeting,” Poco said, indicating his bound hands with a jerk. “What’s the idea?”

El Aguila smiled. “My frien’, I am desolate. But you have the something we are wanting.” The bandit with the scarred face had untied the leather thongs that bound Poco’s feet under his horse, and now he jerked him out of the saddle. Poco stumbled on rubbery legs, caught himself.

“We want?” he questioned. “Oh, yes,” said El Aguila.

Another man appeared in the doorway of the house—Sargi. He walked carefully and his thin, dark face looked palely tired. His left arm was in a sling, and a bandage on his left shoulder bulged his shirt.

“Hello, you snake,” Poco Kelly said.

Sargi paid no attention. “The girl!” he exclaimed. “Where’s the girl?”

The scarred man grunted something to El Aguila. Poco Kelly couldn’t understand. It was some Indian dialect—probably Yaqui.

“He says she got away,” El Aguila translated.

“Got away!” Sargi screeched. “You fool, she’s the one we wanted! Not this red pig!”

The scarred man spoke in a rumbling mutter.

“He says he searched Poco Kelly,” El Aguila said. “He has carry nothing that looks like a map.”

“Of course not!” Sargi snarled. “Do you think the girl would trust that map out of her hands?”

The scarred man spoke some more, illustrating with short, choppy gestures. El Aguila looked curiously at Kelly.

“He says Poco Kelly is see them hiding. He make girl for run away, and then he charge at them all alone. He fight like crazy. They think they’re going to have to kill him until one hit him with rifle.”

“Why didn’t they kill him?” Sargi asked, angrily. “We don’t want him!” He jerked a Luger automatic from under his short jacket.

Aguila moved like a streak, knocked the Luger to the ground. “No! Anybody’s get killed, I say so!”

Sargi cursed in a hissing stream of words, nursing his wrist.

The scarred man spoke again, staring angrily at Sargi. He resented criticism. And El Aguila translated.

“He says he sends three men after this girl. They’ll be getting her.”

“Maybe!” Sargi said. “Then kill this red pig now! He’ll only make trouble!”

“No,” El Aguila decided. “We shut him up now. We kill him pretty soon—when we find girl.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Kelly said.

El Aguila’s scarred lieutenant and two more of his men dragged Poco Kelly around in back of their chief’s hut to another and smaller hut with only thin slits in its adobe walls to serve for windows. Its thick door was studded with iron bolts and it had an iron crossbar. They hurled Kelly into the darkly shadowed interior of the hut. “You sure have swell guest’s quarters,” Poco remarked. “How’s for taking off these ropes, dog-face, or are you afraid I’ll break out of here and beat up on your whole army bare-handed?” He held his bound hands out toward the scar-faced man and grimaced. The man hesitated a second, then shrugged. He cut the leather thongs with his sheath knife.

“You’re sure nice to me,” Kelly said sourly. When they slammed the big door of the hut on him it was as though an immense hand had been clapped down, shutting off all light and air and the hurried, babbling noises of the encampment, the brown, curiously peering faces of the children.

Poco stretched his arms in the darkness. He felt the back of his head gingerly and grunted a little when he touched the egg-shaped lump there.

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light he looked curiously around. It was a one-room hut, no more than ten feet in diameter, absolutely bare. Not one piece of furniture. Only the bare, streaked walls of adobe, the slit-like windows, the heavily thatched roof.

POCO KELLY’S gaunt face was serious, worried. He was in a bad spot, and he had been in enough of them to realize that this was one out of which he wasn’t going to be able to talk his way. El Aguila had meant just what he had said about shooting Poco. He would likely have done it already except that he had wanted to impress Sargi with his leadership in his own camp. One more murder wouldn’t be much of a burden on El Aguila’s bloodstained soul. And then there was Sargi. That murderer would certainly do for him at the first opportunity.

It was not a cheerful outlook, but Poco Kelly shrugged. He never spent much time worrying, had long since come to the conclusion that it didn’t do much good.

He searched through his pockets. The scarred lieutenant had done a good job. He had not left one single article but he had left Poco his belt buckle. It was an army belt buckle that Kelly had picked up during the war in the Chaco, was made of heavy bronze, slightly oval, about six inches long and almost two inches wide.

Poco Kelly detached it from his belt and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. It didn’t seem to have much utility as a weapon. Kelly squinted at it a long time calculatingly. It was all he had. It was up to him to make some use of it.

Suddenly he had an idea. He dug his heel into the floor of the hut. The dirt was hard, well-packed—but it was dirt. Kelly grinned tightly.

In the corner behind the door he knelt on the floor, commenced to dig at the earth against the wall. The belt buckle didn’t serve so well as a spade. It kept turning in his hand and the dirt didn’t seem to get much softer as he went down. But he kept at it patiently. He had dug out of much better jails than this with less to work with.

5: When Thieves Fall Out—

IT was almost an hour later when he heard the iron crossbar on the door squeak against the bolt heads as it was lifted. By the time the door swung back he was sitting in the farthest corner from the hole he had been digging, with his hat pulled down over his eyes as though dozing.

It was the scarred lieutenant. He peered into the dimness of the hut, blinking. Poco Kelly tipped his hat up from his eyes and yawned.

“What the hell do you want?” He inquired crossly. “Don’t you ever give your guests any privacy around here?”

The man held a heavy automatic in his hand. He gestured with it commandingly and grunted at Kelly.

Poco was a little white around the lips, but he got up casually and sauntered toward the door. The scarred man caught him by the arm and dragged him out into the open. The bright sunlight was like steely hot needles poking at his eyes as he stumbled forward with the man’s gun poking him in the back. He got a blurred impression of naked brown children, of indifferently staring women and a few of El Aguila’s men lounging in the shade. And then Poco was being pushed inside El Aguila’s hut.

The Eagle sat in a rawhide chair, fatly squashy, behind a roughly hewn table made of logs that had been halved and fitted together with the smooth sides up. Another of his men was sitting beside the door with a carbine across his knees. Sargi sat on the side of the table nearest the door with his big follower, Gorgio, standing directly behind him.

And in the corner, looking small and frightened, with blue eyes staring widely, sat Sue Carlyle.

Poco Kelly frowned. “I was hoping you’d slipped them,” he said. “Did they hurt you?”

She shook her head silently, tight-lipped.

The scarred man shoved Kelly from behind again. Taking advantage of it, Kelly pretended to stumble and fell headlong on top of Sargi. They crashed on the floor in a writhing heap as Sargi screamed with the pain of his wounded shoulder.

Before Gorgio could make a move, the scarred man picked Poco Kelly up off the floor as easily as if he had been a child and planked him down in another chair on the opposite side of the table. Poco sat there, blinking innocently.

Sargi fought his way up off the floor. His elaborately brocaded jacket had been soiled by the dirt floor and there was a black smear across his cheek. He was spitting incoherent blasphemy and jerking at the hilt of the knife under his jacket.

“No!” El Aguila said. “You be sitting down!” Sargi’s breath whistled through his thin nostrils.

“He—he did that on purpose—”

“Sitting down!” El Aguila’s sleepy voice suddenly cracked like a whiplash.

Reluctantly Sargi settled back into his righted chair, holding his wounded shoulder and glaring malevolently at Poco Kelly.

Poco was paying no attention to him. A coldly dull gleam from the far corner of the room had caught his eye. Two machine-guns lay there, side by side, with their long glinting belts of ammunition already attached. Poco was aware that the difference between a successful bandit leader and an unsuccessful— and dead one— is often no more than a couple of ready machine-guns with which to argue at the proper moment. And so El Aguila kept his right at hand.

“Ah, now,” said the Eagle, smiling around at them, “now we are being all together so we can be talking.” He glanced at Kelly. “My men are chasing the girl and catching her like I’m telling you. But I’m don’t finding any map on her.”

“So,” said Poco, and there was a nasty gleam in his blue eyes. He hadn’t the slightest idea where the map was. Sue Carlyle had been carrying it at the time El Aguila’s men had ambushed them. But he fabricated a story instantly with the ease of long practice.

“Sure she didn’t have it. I had it all the time.”

“You?” El Aguila said, surprised.

Sargi twitched and muttered in his chair.

Poco nodded calmly. “Yeah—had it sewed in my pants. See?” He pointed to a rip in his trousers he had acquired when El Aguila’s men had shot the roan from under him.

The bandit’s cruelly glittering eyes stared calculatingly at him. “Where’s that map being now, eh?”

“I burned it.”

Sargi cursed in a choking mutter.

“Burned!” El Aguila exclaimed incredulously.

“Yup,” said Poco calmly. “It was kind of hard to burn. Took a long time, but I made it. I memorized the directions on it first.”

“You mem’rize directions?” El Aguila repeated. “You be telling them to us now!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Kelly said.

“You talk—or you get shot!” The Mexican nodded to the scarred man, standing behind Kelly, and the safety on the automatic clicked suggestively.

“That’ll be your hard luck,” Poco said easily. “The only way you’ll get those directions is to have me tell ‘em to you, and I probably won’t feel like talking if I have a bullet in my brain.”

Aguila’s eyes were like blackly glittering little slits of obsidian. “You talk!” he said in a hissing whisper.

The scarred man pushed the muzzle of his automatic against Poco’s ear.

SUE CARLYLE suddenly gave a cry. “No. Don’t! I’ll tell! Not a word of what he said about the map was true! He was lying to save me! I was carrying it with me, and when those men started to chase me I threw it into the brush. I know where I threw it. I can find it again!”

“Ah, so,” said El Aguila, and reassumed his greasy smile.

“You see?” Sargi snarled. “I told you this red pig would do nothing but cause us trouble! He would have tricked you then if it hadn’t been for the girl! He’s a better bluffer than you are!”

“Every time I see you, you remind me more of a skunk,” Poco said. “You even smell like one.”

Sargi cursed in a spitting snarl. He whipped the knife from under his jacket and lunged across the table at Kelly, slashing viciously at his throat.

Poco ducked back in his chair and the scarred man behind him caught the glittering blade on the barrel of his automatic deflecting it with a grating clash. And then there was a soft, ringing little thud on the top of the table.

Everyone in the room froze into startled immobility, staring at the object that had made the noise. It was a little yellow slug lying on the rough boards of the table and gleaming softly, richly yellow.

Gold! There was no mistaking it from its appearance or the sound it made when it fell. Fell out of the silken folds of Sargi’s shirt.

“Well, well,” said Poco. “I was wondering why it was you were so anxious to kill me. You wanted to shut me up before I told El Aguila where the map was, because you’d already found the treasure. You knew if he got the map and found where the gold had been it wouldn’t take him long to figure out who had it, and you didn’t want to split it with him.”

“A lie!” Sargi gasped, jerking back a little.

They all saw it happen this time—saw another little golden slug slip out of Sargi’s shirtfront, fall tinkling to the tabletop to roll beside the first. Sargi stared at them, his whitish eyes bulging incredulously.

“So,” said El Aguila in a whisper. “You make for double-crossing me, eh?”

Sargi shot him a glance, startled. El Aguila was moving slowly, like some fatly sluggish spider, drawing the pearl-handled revolver from the holster at his waist.

Without a word or the slightest sign of warning, Sargi whipped forward as fast as a striking snake and buried his knife up to the hilt in El Aguila’s thick chest.

Then the whole room exploded into action. As Poco Kelly kicked his chair over backwards the smashing roar of the automatic in the scarred man’s hand almost deafened him. The scarred man had shot at Sargi, and he shot again and again. The impact of the bullets spun Sargi against the wall, knocked him into a twitching heap.

Poco Kelly rolled over on the floor and dived for the machine-guns in the corner. Gorgio shot pointblank at the scarred man and in the same second the man in the doorway shot at Gorgio with his carbine. The room rocked with the explosions. The air was thickly blue with powder smoke.

Gorgio’s thick body fell heavily across the table. The whole side of his face was gone. The scarred man was down on his knees, both hands folded across his chest, gaping, while the blood ran thickly red out of the corners of his mouth. El Aguila had never moved. He was still sitting in his chair with the knife hilt standing up blackly straight over his heart.

Poco fell over one of the machine-guns, jerked it around, found the grip.

The first burst of bullets was high. It chewed the door into splinters just over the head of the man with the carbine. He screamed in terror, tripped over his own feet, fell out of the door.

“Muert’!” he shrieked incoherently. “El Aguila es muert’!”

Kelly dragged the machine-gun over to the door and let a couple of bursts go at the nearby huts, shooting high. The whole camp was in a riotous uproar with the hoarse yells of the men, the screams of the women, the piping squalls of children, the shrill yapping of excited dogs. A few aimless rifle shots popped out, but none of the bullets came near El Aguila’s hut.

Kelly let the machine-gun racket through a couple more bursts. Then he ducked back inside the hut, grabbed El Aguila’s sodden body, hauled it to the door and hurled it outside. It rolled over and over limply in the dust.

“Listen, you men!” Poco yelled in Spanish, and there was comparative quiet for a second. “El Aguila is dead! I had nothing to do with his death as the man who was in here can tell you! I have no quarrel with you! Go your way in peace! If you don’t, I use the gun that talks fast!”

He let the machine-gun roar as suggestive emphasis to his words. When he stopped it, he could hear the man who had been in the room shrieking that what he had said was true— telling them that Sargi had killed El Aguila, and that Sargi was dead, killed by the scarred lieutenant. The mad red one had done nothing, but now he had the machine-gun and he knew how to use it.

Poco Kelly let the machine-gun racket an agreement with this last thought. He dusted bullets up and down the empty street, whipping the dust into writhing clouds, let them chug through the thatched roofs of nearby buildings.

When he stopped the camp was churning with concerted motion, but it was motion away from El Aguila’s hut. The bandit’s men could see no sense in charging at a madman armed with a machine-gun when there was no point in it and their general was dead.

Sue Carlyle was kneeling close beside Poco. “Are— are they going to attack?” she whispered.

“Maybe something,” Kelly said cheerfully, “but not us. They don’t like the machine-gun. They’re pulling out.”

She held out her hand with the two little slugs gleaming on her palm. “All— all this was for nothing. Sargi found the treasure and he surely must have hidden it somewhere else.”

“Oh, no,” Poco said calmly. “I’ve got it.”

“You!”

“Sure. I slipped those slugs into Sargi’s shirt when I fell on top of him. That’s why he was sorta surprised when they popped out all of a sudden. Remember that map you had with all the directions about the rock like a skull and the Tres Piños and the mountain was only a map showing where the treasure map was hidden. Well, I found the treasure without any map. It’s under that hut where they had me shut up. I found it while I was tryin’ to dig under the wall. It’s sure a joke on old El Aguila. He was lookin’ all over for the treasure and all the time it was in his jail!”

“But—” Sue said faintly.

“Say,” Poco said thoughtfully. “I hope those birds leave an extra horse. I want to take this machine-gun along with us. It’s a good one— brand-new. I need a machine-gun. I had to pawn the last one I had in Tampico.”

_____________________

6

You'll Die Laughing

Black Mask Nov 1940

1: Blood From Turnips

HE WAS A short pudgy man, and he looked faintly benign even now with his eyes almost closed and his lips twisted awry with the effort of his breathing. He had silver‐white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. It was almost dawn and it was bitter cold.

The outer door of the apartment lobby was open, and the wind made a sharp hurrying sound in the dark empty canyon of the street outside.

The pudgy man was sitting on the tiled floor of the lobby with his back against the wall, resting there, his stubby legs outspread in front of him. After a long time he began to move again, pushing his body away from the wall, turning very slowly and laboriously. His breath sounded short and sharp with the effort, but he made it and rested at last on his hands and knees.

He began to crawl toward the door and there was something inexorable about his slow stubborn progress. He opened the door wider, fumbling blindly ahead of him, and crawled out into the street.

The wind whooped down and slapped the folds of his long blue overcoat tight around his legs, pushed with impatient hands as if to hurry him. But he crawled down the steps very slowly, one by one, and reached the sidewalk and turned and made his inching patient way down the hill toward the wan glow of the street light on the corner.

Behind him, the apartment lobby was empty and cold, with the wind pushing at the half‐open door and making the hinges complain in fitful little squeaks. On the wall at the spot where the pudgy man had leaned his back there was an irregular smear of blood, bright red and glistening with a sinister light all of its own.

Dave Bly had hurried as much as he could, but it was after six o’clock in the evening when he came in from the street and trotted up the long dingy flight of stairs to the second story of the office building.

Janet was still waiting for him and he could hear the tap‐tap‐tap of her typewriter. He whistled once and heard the typewriter stop with a faint ping, saw her slim shadow through the frosted glass as she got up from her desk and started to put on her hat.

Bly ran on up a second flight of stairs to the third floor, hurrying now, with the thought of the interview ahead making something shrink inside him. He went down the third‐floor corridor toward the lighted door at the end. The letters on its glass panel were squat and fat and dignified, and they made the legend—

J. S. CROZIER

PERSONAL LOANS

Bly opened the door and went into the narrow outer office. The door into the private office was open and J. S. Crozier’s harsh voice came through it.

“Bly, is that you?”

“Yes, sir.”

A swivel chair squeaked and then J. S. Crozier came to the door and said: “Well, you’re late enough.”

“I had to do quite a lot of running around.”

“Let’s see what you got.”

Bly handed him a neat sheaf of checks and bills and the typewritten list of delinquent debtors. J. S. Crozier thumbed through the bills and checks, and the light overhead made dark shadowed trenches of the lines in his face. He had a thick solid body that he carried stiffly erect. He wore rimless glasses that magnified his eyes into colorless blobs and a toupee that was a bulging mat of black hair so artificial it was grotesque.

“Forty‐three dollars!” he said, throwing the sheaf of bills on Bly’s desk. “And half these checks will bounce. That’s not much to show for a day’s work, Bly.”

“No, sir.”

J. S. Crozier flicked his finger at the typewritten list. “And what’s the matter with this Mrs. Tremaine? She’s been delinquent for six weeks. Did you see her?”

“She’s had a serious operation. She’s in the hospital.”

“Well, why didn’t you try there?”

“I did,” said Bly. He hadn’t, but he knew better than to try to explain why. “They wouldn’t let me see her.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t! When will they?”

“Next week.”

“Huh! Well, you get in there to see her as soon as you can, and you tell her that if she doesn’t pay up her loan—plus the back compound interest and the delinquent collection fee—she might just as well stay in the hospital because she won’t have any furniture to come home to.”

“All right.”

J. S. Crozier grinned at him. “Haven’t got your heart in this, have you, Bly? A little on the squeamish side, eh?”

Bly didn’t say anything. J. S. Crozier kept grinning at him and he let his colorless eyes move slowly from Bly’s shoes, which were beginning to crack through the polish across the toes, up along the shabby topcoat to Bly’s face, pale and a little drawn with pinched lines of strain around his mouth.

“I can’t afford to be squeamish, Bly. Maybe you can.”

Bly didn’t answer, and J. S. Crozier said reflectively: “I’m disappointed in your work, Bly. Perhaps you aren’t suited to such a menial task. Are you contemplating a change soon?”

“No,” said Bly.

“Perhaps you’d better think about it. Although I understand jobs are very hard to find these days… Very hard, Bly.”

Bly was quivering with a feeling of sick hopeless anger. He tried to hide it, tried so hard that the muscles of his face seemed wooden, but he knew he wasn’t succeeding. J. S. Crozier chuckled knowingly. He kept Bly standing there for a full minute, and then he said with the undertone of the chuckle still in his voice: “That’s all, Bly. Good‐night.”

“Good‐night,” Bly said thickly.

J. S. Crozier let him get almost to the door. “Oh, Bly.”

Bly turned. “Yes?”

“This janitor at your place. This Gus Findley. He’s been delinquent for three weeks now. Get something out of him tonight.”

“I’ll try.”

“No,” J. S. Crozier said gently. “Don’t try, Bly. Do it. I feel that you have a responsibility there. He mentioned your name when he applied for the loan, so naturally I had confidence in his ability to pay. Get some money from him tonight.”

Bly went out and closed the door. Janet was waiting there, a slim small girl with her face white and anxious for him under the dark brim of her hat. She took his arm, and Bly leaned heavily against her, his throat so thick with the choking anger that gripped him that he couldn’t breathe. He pulled himself upright in a second and started walking because he knew J. S. Crozier would be listening for his footsteps and grinning. Janet walked close beside him. They went down the steps, and Bly’s anger loosened and became a sick despair.

“He knew you were there waiting, Janet. That’s why he talked so loud. So you could hear him bawl me out.”

“I know, dear. Never mind.”

“Every day he does something like that. He knows I wouldn’t do his dirty work for half a minute if I could find something else. I wouldn’t anyway—I’d starve first—if it weren’t for you and Bill and—and hoping…”

They were in the street now and she was standing small and straight beside him, looking up into his face. “We’ll go on hoping, Dave.”

“For how long?” Bly demanded bitterly.

“How long?”

“Forever, if we have to,” said Janet quietly.

Bly stared down at her. “Thank you,” he said in a whisper. “Thank you for you, my dear.” He grinned wryly. “Well, I’m through crying in my beer for the moment. Shall we go squander our money on Dirty Dan’s thirty‐five cent de luxe dinner?”

2: The Blonde In 107

IT WAS after ten when Bly got to the apartment building where he lived, and he had to use his key to open the entrance door. The air was thick and sluggish inside the small lobby, full of a wrangling jangle of sound made by a radio being played overly loud in one of the apartments upstairs.

Bly went on a diagonal across the lobby, rapped lightly on a door beside the staircase. He could hear limping steps inside coming across a bare floor, and then Gus Findley opened the door and peered nearsightedly at him.

“Hello, Mr. Bly. You come in?”

Bly shook his head. “No thanks, Gus. I hate to ask you, but how about the money you owe on that loan you got from Crozier?”

Gus Findley had a tired resigned smile.

“No, Mr. Bly. I’m sorry. I ain’t got it.”

Bly nodded slowly. “All right, Gus.”

“I honest ain’t got it.”

“I know. Gus, why did you borrow money from him?”

“I thought you worked for him, Mr. Bly. I thought he’s all right if you work for him.”

Bly said: “He’s a shark, Gus. That contract you signed carries over a hundred percent interest. It doesn’t show on the contract as interest, but there it is.”

“It don’t make no difference, Mr. Bly. You shouldn’t feel bad. I couldn’t read very well anyway, that fine print, with my eyes not so good. I had to have the money for the hospital. My sister’s boy got an operation.”

“Why didn’t he go to the clinic— on charity?”

“No,” Gus said gently. “No. I couldn’t have him do that. Not my sister’s boy. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” said Bly.

Gus moved his thin, stooped shoulders.

“Now he’s got to have cod liver’s oil and special milk and tonics. It costs so much I ain’t got none left for Mr. Crozier. I ain’t tryin’ to cheat him, Mr. Bly. I’ll pay as soon as I can.”

“Sure, Gus,” said Bly wearily, knowing that as soon as Gus could wouldn’t be soon enough for J. S. Crozier. It would be the same bitter story again—garnishment of the major part of Gus’s meager salary, attachment of what few sticks of furniture he owned. And more humiliation for Bly. J. S. Crozier would never miss the chance of making Bly serve the papers on Gus.

The lobby seemed colder and darker. The muffled wrangle of the radio went on unceasingly and a woman’s laughter sounded through it, thin and hysterical.

“Someone having a party?” Bly asked.

Gus nodded gloomily. “Yeah. That one below you—that Patricia Fitzgerald. She is no good. Six or eight complaints about the noise I got already. I called her up a couple of times and it don’t do no good. I got the misery in my back and I don’t like to climb them stairs. Would you maybe stop and ask her to keep quiet, Mr. Bly?”

“Sure,” said Bly. “Sorry about your back, Gus.”

Gus shrugged fatalistically. “Sometimes it’s worse than others. How is your brother, Mr. Bly? The one that’s in college.”

Bly grinned suddenly. “Bill? Just swell. He’s a smart kid. Going to graduate this year, and already they’ve offered him a job teaching in the college.”

“Good,” said Gus, pleased. “That’s good. Then maybe, when you don’t have to send him money, you can marry that nice little lady I seen you with.”

“I hope so,” Bly said. “But first I’ve got to get Bill through college. That’s why I’m hanging on to this lousy job with Crozier so hard. I can’t lose it now, just when Bill’s all set to graduate. After he does, then I can take a chance on looking for another—something decent.”

“Sure, sure,” said Gus. “And you’ll find it, too.”

“If there is one, I will,” Bly said grimly. “Well, I’ll run up and see if I can tune that party down. So long, Gus.”

He went up the grimy shadowed stairs and down the long hall above. The noise of the radio was much louder here, packing itself deafeningly in between the narrow walls until it was one continued formless blare. Bly stopped before the door through which it was coming and hammered emphatically on the panels. The woman’s shrill thin laughter came faintly to him. Bly waited for a while and then began to kick the bottom of the door in a regular thumping cadence. He kept it up for almost two minutes before the door opened.

Patricia Fitzgerald, if that was her real name, was a tall thin blonde. She must have  been pretty once, but she looked haggard now and wearily defiant, and there was a reckless twist to her full‐lipped mouth. She was drunk enough to be slightly unsteady on her feet. Her bright hair was mussed untidily and she was wearing what looked like a black fur mitten on her right hand.

“Well?” she said over the blast of the radio.

Bly said: “Do you have to play it that loud?”

She kept the door almost closed. “And who do you think you are, sonny boy?”

“I’m just the poor dope that lives above you. Will you turn that radio down a little, please?”

She considered it, swaying slightly, watching Bly with eyes that were owlishly serious. “If I turn it down will you do a favor for me, huh?”

“What?” Bly asked.

“You wait.” She closed the door.

The sound of the radio suddenly went down to a thin sweet trickle of music and the hall seemed empty without its unbearable noise.

Patricia Fitzgerald opened the door again. She no longer wore the black mitten. She was jingling some change in her right hand. “You know where Doc’s Hamburger Shack is—over two blocks on Third?”

Bly nodded. “Yes.”

“You be a nice guy and run over there and get me a couple of hamburgers. If you do I won’t make any more noise.”

“O.K.,” Bly agreed.

She gave him the change. “You tell Doc these hamburgers are for me. He knows me and he knows how I like ‘em. You tell him my name and tell him they’re for me. Will you?”

“All right.”

“Be sure and tell him they’re for me.”

“Sure, sure,” said Bly. “Just keep the radio turned down like it is and everything will be dandy.”

“Hurry up, fella,” said Patricia Fitzgerald, and neither her eyes nor her voice were blurred now.

Bly nodded patiently. He went back down the hall, down the stairs and across the lobby. The last thing he heard as he opened the front door was Patricia Fitzgerald’s laughter, sounding high and hysterical without the radio to muffle it.

Doc’s Hamburger Shack was a white squat building on the corner of a weed‐grown lot. Its moisture‐steamed windows beamed out cheerily at the night, and when Bly opened the door the odor of frying meat and coffee swirled about his head tantalizingly.

Doc was leaning against the cash register. He was gaunt and tall and he had a bald perspiring head and a limply bedraggled mustache.

There was only one other customer. He was sitting at the far end of the counter. He was a short pudgy man and he looked pleasantly benign, sitting there relaxed with a cup of coffee on the counter in front of him. He had silver‐white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. He watched Bly, sitting perfectly still, not moving anything but his round blandly innocent eyes.

“Hello, Doc,” Bly said, sitting down at the counter and reaching for the crumpled evening paper on it. “I want a couple of hamburgers to go. They’re not for me. They’re for a blonde by the name of Patricia Fitzgerald who lives over in my apartment house. She said you’d know just how she wanted them fixed.”

Doc put his hand up and tugged at one draggled end of his mustache. “Patricia Fitzgerald? Lives at the Marton Arms? Apartment 107?”

Bly nodded, engrossed in the sports page. “Yeah.”

“She send you over?”

“Sure,” said Bly.

“She tell you to give her name?”

Bly looked up. “Well, certainly.”

“O.K.,” said Doc. “O.K.” He plopped two pats of meat on the grill and then sauntered casually down the counter and leaned across it in front of the pudgy man.

Bly went on reading his favorite sports column. The hamburger sizzled busily. Doc came sauntering back to the grill and began to prepare a couple of buns.

Bly had finished his sports column and was hunting through the paper for the comics when a siren began to growl somewhere near. After a while it died down and then another started up from a different direction.

“Must be a fire around here,” Bly observed.

“Naw,” said Doc. “Them’s police sirens. Fire sirens have a higher tone.” He put a paper sack on the counter. “Here’s your ‘burgers, all wrapped up. Be careful of ‘em. She don’t like ‘em mussed up at all.”

“O.K.,” Bly said. He paid Doc with the change Patricia Fitzgerald had given him and went to the door.

The pudgy man was sipping at his coffee, but he was watching Bly calculatingly over the rim of his cup.

THERE were several cars parked in front of the apartment building and one of them was a blue sedan with a long glittering radio antenna strung across its sloping top.

Bly no more than half noticed it, and its identity didn’t register on him until he unlocked the front door of the apartment house and very nearly bumped into a policeman who was standing just inside the entryway.

“What—” Bly

said, startled. “You live here?” the policeman asked. He was standing, spread‐legged, as immovable as a rock, his thumbs hooked into his broad leather gun belt.

“Yes,” Bly answered blankly. “You been in here before this evening?”

“Yes. I went out to get these hamburgers for the girl who lives below me in 107.”

The policeman’s expression was so elaborately disinterested that it was a dead give‐away. “Dame by the name of Fitzgerald?”

“Yes. She asked me—”

The policeman came one smooth sliding step closer, suddenly caught Bly’s right arm by wrist and elbow.

Bly struggled unavailingly. “Here! What— what—”

“March,” said the policeman. “Right up those stairs. Get tough and I’ll slap you down.”

He steered Bly across the lobby and up the stairs. He went down the hall with Bly stumbling along beside him willy‐nilly like a clumsy partner in some weird dance.

The door of Patricia Fitzgerald’s apartment was partially open and the policeman thrust Bly roughly through it and followed him inside.

“This is the bird,” he said importantly. “I nabbed him downstairs in the lobby.”

Bly heard the words through a thick haze that seemed to enclose his brain. He was staring unbelievably at Patricia Fitzgerald. She was lying half twisted on her back at the end of the couch. There was a bright thin line across the strained white of her throat and blood had  bubbled out of it and soaked into the carpet in a pool that was still spreading sluggishly. Her eyes were wide open, and the light above her glinted in the brightness of her hair.

There were two men in the room. One was sitting on the couch. He was thick and enormously wide across the shoulders. He sat with his hands on his knees, patient and unmoving, as though he were waiting for something he didn’t expect to happen very soon. His eyes were blankly empty and he wheezed a little when he breathed. The other man was standing in the center of the room with his hands folded behind him. He was small and shabby‐looking, but he had an air of queer dusty brightness about him, and his eyes were like black slick beads. He had a limp brown‐paper cigarette pasted in one corner of his lower lip.

“Name?” he asked, and then more loudly, “You! What’s your name?”

“Dave Bly,” Bly said. “Is—is she—”

“Claims he lives upstairs,” said the policeman. “Says he went out to get some hamburgers for the dame, here. I figure they was havin’ a party and he gave her the business and then run and got them hamburgers and came back all innocent, tryin’ to fake himself an alibi so—”

“Outside,” said the shabby little man.

The policeman stared. “Huh?”

“Scram.”

“Well sure, Lieutenant,” the policeman said in an injured tone. He went out and shut the door.

“I’m Vargas,” the shabby man said. “Lieutenant of detectives. This is my partner, Farnham. What do you know about this business here?”

Bly fought to speak coherently.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. She was playing her

radio too loud and I asked her to stop, and she

said she would if I’d go get her a couple of

hamburgers…”

The big man, Farnham, got off the couch slowly and ominously. He came close to Bly, caught him by the front of the coat. Effortlessly he pulled Bly forward and then slammed him back hard against the wall. His voice was thick and sluggishly indifferent.

“You lie. She was drunk and you got in a beef with her and slapped her with a knife.”

Bly felt a sinking sense of nightmare panic. “No! I didn’t even know her! I wasn’t here—”

“You lie,” Farnham droned, slamming Bly against the wall again. “You’re a dirty woman‐killer. She got sassy with you and you picked up that knife and stuck it in her throat.”

Bly’s voice cracked. “I did not! Let go—”

The policeman who had brought Bly in was having some trouble in the hall, and they could hear him say indignantly: “Here now, lady! You can’t go in there! Get away from that door! Lieutenant Vargas don’t want nobody— Lady! Quit it, now! There’s a corpse in there—all blood…”

A thin querulous voice answered snappily: “A corpse! Phooey! My dear departed husband was an undertaker, young man, and I’ve seen a lot more corpses than you ever will, and they don’t scare me a bit. You want me to jab you right in the eye with this knitting needle?”

Evidently the policeman didn’t, because the door opened and a little old lady in a rusty black dressing‐gown pushed her way into the room. She had a wad of gray hair perched up on top of her head like some modernistic hat, and she wore rimless spectacles on the end of a long and inquisitive nose.

“Hah!” she said. “I thought so. Bullying people, eh? My husband—dear Mr. Tibbet, the mortician—knew a lot of policemen when he was alive, and he always said they were extremely low‐class people—rude and stupid and uncouth.”

Farnham sighed. He let go of Bly and went back and sat down on the couch again. The springs creaked under his weight, and he relaxed into his position of patient ominous waiting.

“Who’re you?” Vargas asked.

“Tibbet. Mrs. Jonathan Q, Tibbet—Q, for Quinlan—and you’d better listen when I talk, young man.”

“I’m listening,” said Vargas.

“Hah!” said Mrs. Tibbet. “Insolent, eh? And your clothes aren’t pressed, either, and what’s more, I’ll bet you drink. Go ahead and bully me! Go ahead! I dare you! My dear dead husband was a personal friend of the mayor, and I’ll call up and have you put in your place if you so much as lay a finger on me or this nice young man.”

“Lady,” said Vargas in a resigned tone, “I

wouldn’t touch you for ten dollars cash, but this lad is a suspect in a murder case and—”

“Suspect!” Mrs. Tibbet repeated contemptuously. “Bah! Did you hear me? I said bah!”

“I heard you,” said Vargas.

Mrs. Tibbet jabbed a steel knitting needle in his direction like a rapier. “And why isn’t he a suspect? Because he has an alibi, that’s why! And I’m it. I was listening to this hussy carrying on in here. I saw this young man come and request her very courteously to stop playing her radio so loudly. I was watching right through my keyhole across the hall. He didn’t even go inside the room. And when he left I heard her laughing in here. There was another man in here all the time, and if you and your low‐class companion on the couch weren’t so stupid and lazy you’d start finding out who it was.”

“Did you see this other gent?” Vergas asked patiently.

“Oh! So you’re insinuating I’d snoop and spy on my neighbors, are you? I’ll speak to the mayor about this. Mr. Tibbet laid out his first two wives, and they were very friendly all Mr. Tibbet’s life, and if I tell him that his drunken policemen are insulting and bullying me, he’ll—”

“Yes, yes,” said Vargas. “Sure. Absolutely. Did you see the other guy that was in here?”

“I did not.”

“Did you hear his voice?”

“Yes. It was a very low‐class voice—like yours.”

“Yeah,” said Vargas. He raised his voice.

“O’Shay!”

The policeman peered in the door.

“What, Lieutenant?”

“Escort Mrs. Tibbet back to her room.”

The policeman looked doubtful. “Take it easy with that needle, lady. Come on, now. The lieutenant is very busy.”

Mrs. Tibbet allowed herself to be guided gingerly to the door, and then turned to fire a parting shot. “And let me tell you that I won’t hear of you bullying this nice young man any more. He’s a very courteous and quiet and honest and hard‐working and respectful young man, and he could no more commit a murder than I could, and if you had any sense you’d know it, but if you had any sense you wouldn’t be a policeman, so I’m telling you.”

“That’s right,” said Vargas, “you are. Goodbye.”

Mrs. Tibbet went out with her escort and slammed the door violently and triumphantly. Farnham, sitting stolidly on the couch, wheezed once and then said: “Back door.”

Vargas glanced at him with his beadily cruel eyes, then stared at Bly. “Maybe. Yeah, maybe. What about it, sonny?”

“About what?” Bly demanded, bewildered.

Vargas said: “Farnham thinks maybe you went around and came in the back after you left the front door.”

“I didn’t!” Bly denied angrily. “You can check up at the stand where I got these hamburgers.”

“Yeah. You said you didn’t know the dame. Then why did you get her those hamburgers?”

Bly’s face was flushed with anger. “I could have told you in the first place if you’d given me a chance!”

“You got a chance now. Do it.”

“Gus, the janitor, asked me to stop here on the way up and ask her to be more quiet. She was tight and she said she would if I’d run over and get some hamburgers for her. I didn’t want to argue with her and I didn’t have anything in particular to do, so I went. She gave me the money for them.”

“What hamburger stand?”

“Doc’s place—over on Third. He’ll remember.” Bly had a sudden thought. “I was in there when I heard your sirens. I was waiting then. Do—do you know when she was killed?”

“And how,” said Vargas. “She let out a screech like a steam engine when she got it. We got three calls from three different tenants. Did you see the guy that was in here with her?”

“No,” said Bly. “I thought there was someone, but I didn’t see him. She didn’t open the door wide.”

Vargas nodded. “O.K. Beat it. Stick around inside the building. I’ll maybe want to talk to you again.”

Bly stood his ground. “Well, you listen here. You have no right to grab me and push me around and accuse me—”

“Sure, sure,” Vargas agreed lazily. “Yourconstitutional rights have been violated. Write a letter to the governor, but don’t do it here. We’re going to be busy. Scram, now.”

3: Fall‐Guy

BLY went out into the hall. He was so blindly indignant at the manhandling he had received that it wasn’t until he had reached his own room that the reaction began to take effect. When he fumbled for his key, he found that he was still carrying the paper sack with the two hamburgers inside. The odor of them and the feel of their warmness seeping through the wrappings against his palm suddenly sickened him. He went very quickly through his apartment and dropped them, still wrapped, into the garbage pail on the enclosed back porch. He sat down then in the living‐room and drew several deep steadying breaths. He noticed that his forehead was wet with nervous perspiration.

Bly had never before run into violent and criminal death, and coming as it had without the slightest warning made it seem like a hazily horrible nightmare. Even now he could see Patricia Fitzgerald as plainly as if she were in the same room with him—lying so queerly crumpled on the floor, with the bright red thread across her throat and the light glinting in the metallic yellow of her hair. Back of him the door into the kitchen swung shut with a sudden creaking swish. Bly’s breath caught in his throat. He came up out of the chair and swung around, every muscle in his body achingly tense.

There was no other sound that he could hear, no other movement. He approached the door in long stealthy strides, pushed it back open again.

The kitchen was as empty as it had been when he had gone through it just the moment before, but now, standing in the doorway, he could feel a distinct draft blowing against the back of his neck.

Puzzled, he turned around. The door into his bedroom was open. There was no other place from which the draft could be coming. Bly went across the living‐room and turned on the light in the bedroom.

One of the two windows on the other side of his bed was open. Bly started at it, frowning. He remembered very distinctly that he had closed and locked both of the windows before he had left for work in the morning because it had looked like it might rain. He stepped closer, and then he saw that the glass in the upper pane of the window had been broken at a spot which, had the window been closed, would have been just above the lock. Fragments of glass glinted on the floor below the window, and there was a long gouge in the white paint of the sill.

Bly turned and walked quickly out of the apartment and down the stairs to the first‐floor hall. The policeman was still on guard in front of  Patricia Fitzgerald’s apartment, and he surveyed Bly with evident displeasure.

“So it’s you again. What do you want now?”

Bly said: “I want to see Vargas.”

“It’s Lieutenant Vargas to you,” said the policeman. “And what do you want to see him about?”

“I’ll tell that to him.”

“O.K., smarty. He’ll throw you right out of there on your can, I hope.” The policeman opened the apartment door and announced: “Here’s that dope from upstairs again.”

Vargas and Farnham had changed places now. Vargas was sitting on the couch. He had his hat pulled down over his eyes and he looked like he was dozing. Farnham was standing in the center of the room staring gloomily at the rumpled contents of an ornamental desk he had hauled out into the middle of the floor.

“There ain’t nothing like that in here,” he said to Vargas.

“Look out in the kitchen,” Vargas ordered. “Sometimes dames stick stuff away in the coffee cups or the sugar bowl. Don’t paw around too much until the fingerprint guy gets here.” He pushed his hat‐brim back and stared at Bly.

“Well?”

Bly said: “There’s something upstairs— in my apartment—I think you ought to look at.”

“There’s plenty of things I ought to look at around here, if I could find them,” Vargas said. “O.K. Come on.”

The policeman said: “You want I should go along with you, Lieutenant? This guy is a suspect and—”

“If I wanted you to go along, I’d say so,” Vargas informed him. “You get out in that hall and keep your big feet and your big mouth out of this apartment.”

“Yes, sir,” said the policeman glumly.

Vargas jerked his head at Bly. “Come along.”

They went back upstairs to Bly’s apartment, and Bly took Vargas into the bedroom and showed him the broken window.

“So what?” Vargas asked.

“I locked both those windows when I left this morning,” Bly told him. “This apartment is directly above Patricia Fitzgerald’s, and the fire‐escape goes past her windows and mine. I think the man who killed her came up the fire‐escape from her bedroom, broke in this window, and then went through my apartment and out into the hall.”

“You’re quite a thinker,” Vargas said sourly. “Just why should he clown around like that when he could just as well go out the back door of Fitzgerald’s apartment?”

“Because of the lay‐out of the apartment building,” Bly explained. “If he went out her rear door, he couldn’t get away without going past the front of the building because there is a blind alley on this side that doesn’t go through the block. But if he came through here, he could go along the second‐floor hall, down the back steps, and out through the garage underneath and at the rear of the building. He probably didn’t want to come out the front door of Patricia Fitzgerald’s apartment because someone might be watching it after she screamed.”

Vargas grunted. Hands in his pockets, he strolled closer to the window and examined it and the glass on the floor carefully. “Look and see if you’re missing anything,” he said over his shoulder.

Bly looked in his closet and the drawers of his bureau. “No. Nothing. There’s nothing around here anyone could take except a few old clothes.”

Farnham came quietly in the bedroom and nodded at Vargas. “I couldn’t find it, but I found out why I couldn’t.”

“Why?” Vargas asked.

“She didn’t pay none.”

Vargas swung around. “What? You mean to say they let a tramp like her in here without payin’ any rent in advance?”

“Yeah,” Farnham said. “They had a reason for it. It seems another tenant—a party who’s lived here for over a year and paid his rent on the dot every month—recommended her and said that she was a good risk.”

Vargas’ eyes looked beadily bright. “And who was this accommodating party?”

Farnham nodded at Bly.

“So?” said Vargas very softly. He and Farnham stood there motionless, both of them watching Bly with the coldly detached interest of scientific observers, and Bly had the same sense of helpless bewilderment he had had when they were questioning him in the apartment below.

“What is this?” he demanded nervously.

“What are you two talking about?”

“Sonny,” said Vargas, “it seems like every time we turn around in this case, we fall over you. We’re beginning to get tired of it. When you interrupted us downstairs, we were looking for Fitzgerald’s rent receipt, just because we didn’t have anything better to look for. We didn’t find it, because she didn’t have one, because she hadn’t paid any rent yet. The reason she hadn’t paid any is because you told the guys who own this building that she was O.K. and a good risk.”

Bly swallowed hard. “You said that—that I recommended—”

“Yeah,” said Vargas. “You. It seems mighty funny. You don’t know this Patricia Fitzgerald at all, as you say, but you run errands for her and you recommend her as a good credit risk. You’d better come up with some answers about now.”

“I never recommended her for anything

to anyone!” Bly denied indignantly.

FARNHAM took a long step closer. “Don’t pull that stuff. I called up the bank that owns the place, and I talked to Bingham, the vice‐president in

charge of all their rental property. He looked it up, and said you did.”

“But I didn’t!” Bly said. “I don’t know—”

Farnham took another step. “Maybe you lost your memory. Maybe if you fell downstairs, you’d find it again.”

“I heard you,” said Mrs. Tibbet. She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, nodding her head up and down meaningfully.

“Oh, I heard you, all right. I’m a witness. Falling downstairs, eh? I know what that means. Third degree. Dear Mr. Tibbet told me all about it. I’m going to report you to the mayor.”

The policeman’s anxious face appeared over her shoulder. “Lieutenant, I couldn’t help it. She sneaked up the stairs when she seen Farnham come up—”

“Scram,” said Vargas curtly. “You too, lady. I got no time for fooling now. I’m busy. Get out of here.”

Mrs. Tibbet still had her knitting needle, and she held it up now and sighted down its thin shining length. “Make me. Go ahead. I dare you. You’re not going to beat up this poor boy, and I’m going to stay right here and see that you don’t. You can’t bully me. I’m not afraid of you. Not one bit. Dear Mr. Tibbet always said that policemen were bums and that he could prove it by figures.”

Vargas took a deep breath. “Look, lady. We just found out now that this guy Bly, here, is the bird that recommended the Fitzgerald dame when she came in here.”

“That’s a lie,” said Mrs. Tibbet.

Farnham wheezed indignantly. “It ain’t neither! I telephoned to Bingham, the vice‐president—”

“I know him,” said Mrs. Tibbet. “Horace Bingham. He’s fat. Not as fat as you are, nor quite as sloppy, but almost. And he’s even dumber than you are—if that’s possible. If either one of you had asked me I could have told you who was responsible for the Fitzgerald creature’s presence here, but no, you wouldn’t think of a simple thing like that. You’re too busy going around shouting and threatening innocent people. Mr. Tibbet always said that no detective could count above five without using his fingers and what’s more—”

“That’s enough for this time,” Vargas told her. “You said you knew who was responsible for the Fitzgerald girl being here. Who is it?”

“If you had any sense you’d know by this time and wouldn’t have to go around asking. It is Gus Findley, of course. The janitor.”

“Are you sure about that?” Vargas asked.

“I’ll have you know,” said Mrs. Tibbet, “that I don’t go around lying to people, not even to policemen, although that would hardly count because they aren’t really people. Mr. Tibbet always said that all you needed to do was furnish a policeman with a tail and he’d be at home in any tree. Gus Findley was in and out of that Fitzgerald hussy’s apartment on the average of ten times a day, and in my opinion it’s a scandalous affair and has been from the very first.”

Vargas jerked his head at the policeman, who was still waiting nervously in the doorway. “Get Findley.”

Farnham said doubtfully: “Seems like this Findley is a pretty old boy to go in for—”

“Hah!” said Mrs. Tibbet. “Men! I could tell you a thing or two—”

“Don’t bother,” Vargas advised wearily.

They waited and in five minutes the policeman came back and thrust Gus Findley roughly into the bedroom. “Here he is, Lieutenant.”

Gus Findley blinked at them fearfully. He looked old and sick and shaken, and in the strong light his face had a leaden pallor.

“What—what is it, please?”

Vargas strolled over to him. “Now look here, you. We know that you’re responsible for Patricia Fitzgerald coming to this joint, and we know you’ve been hanging around in her apartment all the time. We want some facts, and we want ‘em right now. Start talking.”

Gus Findley’s face twisted painfully.

“She— she was my niece, sir.” He turned to Bly. “Mr. Bly, I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad with me. She come here, and she didn’t have no money, and I didn’t have none I could give her on account of my sister’s boy having the operation. So I—I said she could live here, and I—I told Mr. Bingham that you had recommended—”

“That’s all right, Gus,” Bly said uncomfortably. “If you had asked me, I probably would have recommended her anyway. Don’t worry about it. It’s O.K.”

“It’s not O.K. with me,” said Vargas.

“Just tell us a little more about this matter.”

“She was no good,” Gus said miserably.

“She was never no good. Her name ain’t Patricia Fitzgerald. It’s Paula Findley. Her folks died, and I tried to raise her up right, but she wouldn’t never do nothing I said, and then she run away with some fella and— and he didn’t even marry her I don’t think.”

“What fella?” Vargas asked sharply.

Gus shook his head wearily. “I dunno. I never seen him. She said, when she come back, that he’d left her a long time ago. She said she was lookin’ for the fella and that when she found him she was gonna get even with him and make herself a lotta money doin’ it.”

“What was his name?” Vargas inquired.

“I dunno, sir. Seems like he had a lot of names, from what she said. Seems like he wasn’t no good, either.”

“That’s the boy we want,” said Farnham.

Vargas nodded absently. “Yeah. Now listen, Findley—”

“You listen,” Mrs. Tibbet invited. “Mr. Findley is an old man, and he’s sick, and he’s had a great shock. You’re not going to ask him any more questions now. Not one more question, do you understand that? I’m going to take him right down to my apartment and give him a nice hot cup of tea, and I don’t want to see any drunken, dirty, foul‐mouthed detectives blundering round there while I’m doing it. You hear me, you two?”

“Oh yes, indeed,” said Vargas.

4: Garbage Collection

BLY was ten minutes late to work the next morning, and J.S. Crozier was waiting for him, standing in the open door of his private office with his sallow face set in gleefully vindictive lines. “Well, Bly, I’m glad to know that you feel you are so necessary here that you can afford to disregard the rules I’ve been at some pains to impress on your mind.”

“I’m sorry,” Bly said tightly. “I was delayed…”

The bulging mat of black hair that made up J. S. Crozier’s toupee had slipped askew over one ear, and he poked at it impatiently. “Yes, yes. I noticed, however, that you entered the building some fifteen minutes ago. I suppose your delay, as you so nicely term it, had something to do with the little lady who works as a typist in the office downstairs.”

“I spoke to her on my way up,” Bly admitted.

“No doubt, no doubt. I notice that you spend quite a little time speaking to her lately. Are you contemplating matrimony, Bly?”

“I think that’s my affair—and hers,” said Bly.

J. S. Crozier raised his eyebrows elaborately. “And mine, Bly, if you are talking to her when you are presumably working for me. Or are you?”

“Yes,” said Bly.

“Thank you for telling me. I was wondering. If I may presume to advise you, Bly, I would say that it would be best for you to secure a position of a little more permanence before you take any rash steps. I’m not at all satisfied with your work, Bly. You’re inclined to dawdle and find any excuse to keep from working. Aren’t you, Bly?”

“I try to do my best,” Bly answered.

“Yes,” said J. S. Crozier. “Try. A good word. It is misfits and idlers like you who fill our relief rolls and burden the taxpayers. You haven’t got any get‐up‐and‐go about you, Bly. You’ll never amount to anything. I feel sorry for your pretty friend downstairs if she marries you. I suppose you were so engrossed in her last night that you forgot all about the slight matter of the money Gus Findley owes me?”

Bly had to swallow and then swallow again before he could steady his voice. “I didn’t really have a chance to talk to him about it. There was a murder at my apartment house last night and—”

“A murder!” said J. S. Crozier. “Now what kind of a fantastic fairy tale is this? I suppose you’re going to try to tell me that someone murdered Gus Findley!”

“I didn’t say so,” Bly said, keeping a tight grip on his temper. “But the police were questioning him about the murdered girl and the other tenants—”

“I see,” said J. S. Crozier. “Very interesting. Do you suppose you might possibly, by the exercise of some great ingenuity, get to see him tonight? I’m growing impatient with you and your excuses, Bly.”

“I’ll see him tonight.”

“You’d better,” said J. S. Crozier grimly.

“Now I have a call for you to make, Bly. The party’s name is Perkins. He lives in the Marigold Apartments on Halley. Judging from that hovel that you live in, you wouldn’t know, but the Marigold is an expensive residence. This party called and wants to borrow five hundred dollars with his furniture as security. The furniture should be worth three or four times that. You go over and check up on it. Tell Perkins, if you find things satisfactory, that he can take a taxi and come back here with you, and I’ll have the money for him.”

“All right,” said Bly.

J. S. Crozier pointed a blunt forefinger.  “Don’t make any mistake about the value of that furniture, Bly. And check up on the title. Do you understand? Have I made it perfectly clear to your limited intelligence, or do you want me to write it down?”

“I understand,” said Bly thickly.

“All right. And don’t you take a taxi, getting there. You take a street‐car. I’ve noticed these delusions of grandeur in you. You seem to think you’re too fine and sensitive a person to hold such a menial position as this, but just remember that if you had any brains you’d have a better one. Get out, Bly. And don’t stall around with your lady friend on the second floor as you go, either.”

THE Marigold Apartments was an immense terraced gray stone building that filled a whole block. Even without J. S. Crozier’s word for it, Bly would have been immediately aware that it was an expensive residence. The doorman, after one look at Bly, was superciliously insolent and the glittering  chrome‐and‐black‐marble expanse of the lobby made Bly painfully aware of his own shabby clothes and cracked shoes.

Mr. Perkins, it seemed, lived on the fifth floor in a triplex de luxe apartment. The desk clerk— as supercilious as the doorman, but even more expertly insolent—made very sure Bly was expected before he would allow him to go up.

The elevator boy acted as though Bly’s appearance was a personal affront to him. He deliberately stopped the elevator a foot below the floor and let Bly step up, and he stayed there ostentatiously watching until he made sure Bly was going to the apartment where he was expected.

The doorbell of Mr. Perkins’ apartment was a black marble knob. Bly tried pushing it without effect, finally pulled it and heard chimes ring inside on a soft rising scale. The door opened instantly and a voice said: “Won’t you come in, please, Mr. Bly?”

Bly stepped into a long low room with a  far wall that was one solid expanse of windows, facing out on a private flagged terrace that looked bright and clean in the sunlight.

“Shut the door, if you please, Mr. Bly.”

Bly pushed the door shut behind him, trying to place the man who was speaking to him. He was a short, pudgy man with an air that was benignly pleasant. He had silver‐white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. Suddenly Bly realized he was the same man he had seen in Doc’s Hamburger Shack the night before when he had gone in to order the hamburgers for Patricia Fitzgerald. He realized that and, in the same second, without quite knowing why, he felt a little cold tingle along the back of his neck.

The pudgy man had small pink hands. He put the right one in his coat pocket now and brought it out holding a flat automatic. He was still smiling.

“Sit down in that chair. The one beside the telephone, if you please.”

Bly went sideways one cautious step after another, sank numbly in the chair beside the stand that held a chrome‐and‐gold telephone set.

“If this is a hold‐up,” he said huskily, “you— you’re wasting your time. I didn’t bring the money you wanted to borrow with me. There’s no way you can get it without appearing at the office yourself.”

“No hold‐up,” said the pudgy man in his softly amiable voice. “My name is not Perkins. It is Johanssen—two’s’s, if you please. You have heard it, perhaps?”

“No,” said Bly numbly.

“You recognize me, though?”

Bly nodded stiffly. “Yes. You were in Doc’s Hamburger Shack last night when I came in.”

“Just so.” Johanssen stood staring at him for a second, his bland eyes speculatively wide. “You do not look like a thief, but then one can never tell in these matters. I would like to tell you a story, Mr. Bly. You do not mind? I will not bore you?”

“No,” said Bly.

Johanssen smiled. “Good. Since you do not know my name I will tell you I am a pawnbroker. But not the ordinary kind. You believe me, Mr. Bly? Not ordinary.”

“Yes,” said Bly.

“Good,” Johanssen repeated. “My business is under my hat. I have no office. I go to my customers. They are all rich people, Mr. Bly. But sometimes they need cash—lots of cash—very quickly and very badly. They do not want people to know this. So they call Johanssen. I come to them with the cash. You see?”

“Yes,” Bly admitted.

“One year ago, Mr. Bly, a person called me and gave me the name of a very prominent person with whom I had done business many many times. This person wanted ten thousand dollars at once. He is good for much more, so I say I will bring it to him. But, he says, he is not at home. He is at the apartment of a friend. Will I bring it to him there?

“So I bring the money where he says. But it is not my customer that has called me. It is a thief. You are listening carefully, Mr. Bly?”

“Yes,” said Bly.

“Good. This thief, he is waiting for me on the darkness of the stairs of the apartment house. He gives me no chance, Mr. Bly. He stabs me in the back with a knife and takes my money and runs away. He thinks I am dead. But no. I crawl down the stairs and through the lobby and to the street. I crawl two blocks away before someone sees me and calls an ambulance. It was very hard, that crawling. I remember that, Mr. Bly.”

Bly swallowed. “Why—why didn’t you

wake someone in the apartment house?”

“No,” said Johanssen gently. “That would bring the police. This is not a business for police. This is Johanssen’s business. You see?”

“Oh,” said Bly blankly.

“You do not understand,” Johanssen said. “It is known everywhere that Johanssen carries large sums of money with him. It must be known, also, that it is not safe to rob Johanssen. Not because the police will come after you, but because Johanssen will come after you—and find you. Now do you understand?”

Bly had the same sense of nightmare panic he had felt the night before when he had been accused of murdering Patricia Fitzgerald.

“You’re not saying—saying that I—”

“No, no. May I go on with my story? I found out who stabbed me. It took much money and time and then I did not find the man. Only some of the names he had used. I found out that he had done many crimes— not bad ones like this, only cheating and swindling. This time he is very afraid. He runs and hides, and hides so well that I cannot locate him. But I do locate his woman. He leaves her when he runs with my money. You can guess who his woman was, Mr. Bly?”

“Patricia Fitzgerald,” Bly said automatically.

“Yes. She is very angry because he left her. When I offer her five thousand dollars to point this man out to me she says she will do it if she can find him. She did. Last night he was in her apartment. He murdered her. Do you know who that man was, Mr. Bly?”

“No!” Bly exclaimed.

“I am willing to pay you five thousand dollars if you will tell me who it was.”

“But I don’t know!” Bly said. “I didn’t see him.”

“Then,” said Johanssen gently, “then you will give me back my five thousand dollars, please.”

“You—your what?”

“My five thousand dollars.”

“But I haven’t got—I never saw—”

“Yes. It was in an envelope in the paper sack that contained the hamburgers.”

Bly’s mouth opened slackly. “Envelope— hamburgers…”

“Yes. You see, this Patricia Fitzgerald did not trust me. First, before she points out the man who stabs me, she must see the money. We arrange it. I will wait in the hamburger stand. She will send someone who will mention her name. I will put the money with the hamburgers.

Then she will lead this man to this apartment. I will be waiting for them. The five thousand dollars is a reward I have offered, Mr. Bly. I have even put it in the papers that I will pay that much to anyone who shows me the man who stabbed me. But you have not done so. Give me the five thousand dollars back, please, at once.”

Bly shook his head dizzily. “But I didn’t know—”

Johanssen moved the automatic slightly.

“I am not joking, Mr. Bly. Give me my five thousand dollars.”

“Listen,” Bly said desperately. “I didn’t even open the sack. I threw the whole business, just as Doc gave it to me, in the garbage.”

“Garbage?” Johanssen repeated gently. “This is not the time to be funny, Mr. Bly. You had better realize that.”

Bly leaned forward. “But it’s true. I did just that. Wait! Gus Findley! The janitor at my apartment house! He’s got a lame back and I hardly ever cook in my apartment…”

“Yes?” Johanssen said very softly.

“Maybe he hasn’t emptied the garbage! Let me call him up. It’s a chance—”

“A chance that you are taking,” Johanssen said. There was an icy little flicker deep back in his eyes. “You may call him up. I will listen. Be very careful what you say.”

FUMBLINGLY, with cold and stiff fingers, Bly dialed the number of the apartment house. He could hear the buzz of the telephone ringing, going on and on interminably while the icy little flame in Johanssen’s eyes grew steadier and brighter.

And then the line clicked suddenly and Gus Findley’s voice said irritably: “Yes? What you want, please?”

Bly drew in a gulping breath of relief.

“Gus! This is Dave Bly.”

“Ah! Hello, Mr. Bly. How are you? I ain’t got that money to pay Mr. Crozier yet, Mr. Bly. I’m sorry, but—”

“Never mind that. Listen to me, Gus. Have you emptied the garbage in my apartment this morning?”

“No, I ain’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Bly, but my back has been sore like anything and them damned police has been botherin’—”

“Gus!” said Bly. “I want you to do a favor for me. Go up to my apartment. Go on the back porch and look in the garbage pail. There’s a small paper sack right on top. It’s closed. Bring the sack down with you. I’ll hold the line.”

“Well, sure…”

“Hurry, Gus! It’s very important!”

“You ain’t sick, are you, Mr. Bly? You sound—”

“Gus!” Bly exploded. “Hurry up!”

“O.K. Sure. Hold the wire.”

Bly heard the receiver bump as Gus put it down, and then there was nothing but the empty hum of the open circuit. He waited, feeling the sweat gather in cold beads on his forehead. Johanssen had come quietly closer, and Bly could catch the black slick glint of the automatic, leveled a foot from his head. After centuries of time the receiver bumped again and Gus said cheerfully: “Sure, I got it. What you want I should do with it?”

Bly leaned back in his chair, sighing, and nodded once at Johanssen. “All right. What now?”

Johanssen’s eyes had lost their frosty glint. “This Gus—he is an honest man?”

Bly nodded weakly. “Yes.”

“Tell him to open the sack and the envelope.”

“Gus,” Bly said into the telephone,

“inside the sack you’ll find an envelope. Take it out and open it.”

“Sure, Mr. Bly. Wait.” Paper crackled distantly and then Gus’s voice suddenly yammered frantically. “Mr. Bly! It’s money! It’s thousands—millions! Mr. Bly! Mr. Bly!”

“Take it easy, Gus,” Bly said. “It was put in there by mistake. I’m going to let you talk to the man who owns the money. He’ll tell you what to do.”

“I don’t want so much money here! I’m gonna call a cop! I’m afraid—”

“Here’s Mr. Johanssen. Talk to him.”

Johanssen took the telephone. Gus was still shouting at the other end of the line, and Johanssen nodded several times, beginning to smile a little more broadly, finally managed to get a word in.

“Yes, Gus. Yes, yes. It is my money. No. Don’t call a policeman. Just keep it for me.” The receiver fairly crackled at that last and Johanssen held it away from his ear, wincing. “No, no. No one will rob you. All right. Lock yourself in. Yes, I will knock three times and then twice. Yes, I will bring a writing from Mr. Bly. All right. Yes. Just be calm.”

He hung up the receiver and nodded at Bly. “That is a good man.” The flat automatic had disappeared.

Bly wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Yes. Gus is a swell old gent. He has a tough time.”

“And you have had a tough time,” said Johanssen. “Yes. I am very sorry, Mr. Bly. I beg your pardon. Can I do something for you to show I am sorry, please?”

“No,” Bly said. “No. It’s all right.”

Johanssen watched him. “Mr. Bly, I am very anxious to find the man who was in that apartment. You may still have the reward if you will tell me anything that will lead me to him.”

Bly shook his head wearily. “I don’t know anything.”

“Think,” Johanssen urged. “Something small, perhaps. Some little thing you may have noticed. Some impression.”

“No,” said Bly woodenly.

Johanssen shrugged. “So it will be, then. But please let me do something to show I am sorry for this today.”

“No,” said Bly in an absent tone. “If you want to do something for somebody, give Gus a couple of hundred out of the five thousand so he can get free of that shark I work for.”

“I will do that. Surely.”

“I’ve got to go,” Bly said. “I’m— in a hurry.”

“Surely,” said Johanssen, opening the door. “I am so sorry, Mr. Bly. Please forgive me.”

5: The Black Mitten

BLY took a taxi back to the office. All the way there he leaned forward on the seat, pushing forward unconsciously trying to hurry the taxi’s progress. When it stopped at the curb in front of the office building he was out of it before the driver had time to open the door. He flung a crumpled bill over his shoulder and raced up the steep stairs, past the second floor and Janet’s office, up to the third floor and down the corridor. The hammer of his feet must have warned J. S. Crozier, because he was just coming out of his private office when Bly burst through the front door. Bly closed the door behind him and leaned against it, panting.

“Well,” said J. S. Crozier, “you’re back in a hurry, Bly. And I don’t see any customer. Have you some more excuses to offer this time?”

Bly was smiling. He could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his lips, but it was like a separate thing, no part of him or what he was thinking.

J. S. Crozier noticed the smile. “Bly, what on earth is the matter with you? You’ve got the queerest expression—”

“I feel fine,” Bly said. “Oh, very fine. Because I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

“Bly! What do you mean? What are you talking—”

Bly stepped away from the door.

“You’ve had a lot of fun with me, haven’t you? You’ve bullied and insulted and humiliated me every chance you got. You knew I had to take it. You knew I had a brother in college who was dependent on me and my job. You knew I wanted to get ahead, but that I couldn’t unless I had more training. You knew when I came here that I was taking courses in a night school, and you deliberately gave me work that kept me late so I couldn’t finish those courses.”

“Bly,” said J. S. Crozier, “are you mad? You can’t—”

“Oh, yes I can. I can tell you now. You’ve had your fun, and now you’re going to pay for it. You’re going to pay pretty heavily and you’re going to know I’m the one who made you pay”

“You’re being insulting,” J. S. Crozier snapped. “You’re fired, Bly. If you don’t leave at once I’ll call the police.”

“Oh, no,” said Bly. “You won’t call the police, because that’s what I’m going to do. How does it feel to be a murderer, Mr. Crozier?”

“Eh?” said J. S. Crozier. The color washed out of his cheeks and left the lines on them looking like faint indelible pencil marks. “Wh― what did you say?”

“Murderer.”

“You—you’re crazy! Raving—”

“Murderer,” said Bly. “You murdered Patricia Fitzgerald.”

“Bly! You’re a maniac! You’re drunk! I won’t have you—”

“You murdered Patricia Fitzgerald and I’m the one who knows you did it. I’m the one who will get up on the stand and swear you did it. I’m the one—Bly, the poor devil it was so much fun for you to bully because you knew I couldn’t strike back at you. Was the fun worth it, Mr. Crozier?”

J. S. Crozier’s mouth opened, fish‐like, and closed again before he could find words.

“Bly! Bly! Now you can’t make mad accusations like that. You’re insane, Bly! You—you’re sick.”

“No. I happened to remember a couple of small things. When I came to Patricia Fitzgerald’s door last night and she opened it, she was wearing what I thought was a black fur mitten. It wasn’t. It was that wig of yours—your toupee. She had it wrapped around her right hand. She had been laughing at how you looked without it, or perhaps she had been trying it on herself.”

“You lie!” J. S. Crozier shouted, putting his hand up over the bulging toupee protectively. “You lie!”

“No. I saw it. I’ll swear I saw it. And another thing. Just a little while ago, when you were speaking about the Marigold Apartments and how luxurious they were, you said, ‘Judging from that hovel you live in…’ You knew where I lived, but you’d never been in my apartment— until last night. You were then. You broke in the window after you murdered Patricia Fitzgerald.”

Under the toupee the veins on J. S. Crozier’s forehead stood out like purple cords. “You’re a liar and a fool!” He laughed chokingly. “You think that evidence is enough to base a charge of murder on? Bah! Get out! Go to the police! They’ll laugh at you! I’m laughing at you!” His whole body shook with insane raging mirth.

The door opened quietly and Johanssen stepped inside the office. “May I laugh, too, please?” he asked softly.

J. S. Crozier’s breath hissed through his teeth. He seemed to shrink inside his clothes.

The toupee had slipped down over his forehead and it fell now and lay on the floor like an immense hairy spider. J. S. Crozier’s own hair was a blond, close‐clipped stubble.

Johanssen smiled and nodded at Bly.

“You should never play poker, Mr. Bly. Your face gives you away. I knew you had remembered something, so I followed you here. It is nice to meet you again, Mr.— ah— Crozier.”

“Bly,” J. S. Crozier said in a shaky whisper. “Run for help. Quick. He’ll kill me.”

“Mr. Bly will not move,” said Johanssen gently.

“No.”

Bly literally couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to. He was staring, fascinated, from Johanssen to J. S. Crozier. Johanssen had his right hand in his coat pocket, but he apparently wasn’t at all excited or in any hurry.

“I have been looking for you for a long time,” he said. “It is so very, very nice to see you at last.”

J. S. Crozier began to shake. His whole body shuddered. “Johanssen,” he begged hoarsely. “Wait. Wait, now. Don’t shoot me. Listen to me. It was an accident. I didn’t mean— Johanssen! You can’t just shoot me in cold blood! I’ll pay back the money I stole from you! I— I’ve made a lot! I’ll give it all to you! Johanssen, please—”

The door opened in back of Johanssen, pushing him forward. He stepped aside quickly and alertly, and Vargas came into the office. His eyes were bright and beadily malicious.

“Police,” he said casually to Crozier. “Hello, Bly. I’ve been following you around today. Checking up.”

J. S. Crozier caught his breath. “Officer!” he shouted hoarsely, “Arrest this man! He’s going to kill me!”

“Which man?” Vargas asked. “You mean Johanssen? Why, he’s a respectable businessman. Are you thinking of killing anyone, Johanssen?”

“No, Mr. Vargas,” said Johanssen.

“See?” said Vargas to Crozier. “You must be mistaken. Well, I’ve got to run along. Behave yourself, Bly.”

“No!” J. S. Crozier pleaded. “No, no! You can’t! Take me with you!”

“What for?” Vargas inquired reasonably. “I couldn’t take you with me unless I arrested you for something. And what would I arrest you for— unless it was maybe for murdering Patricia Fitzgerald last night?”

J. S. Crozier swayed. “That— that’s absurd!”

Vargas nodded. “Sure. That’s what I thought. Well, so long.”

J. S. Crozier held on to a desk to keep upright. “No! You can’t go and leave me to this— this… Wait! Johanssen thinks I stabbed him and robbed him! You’ve got to arrest me for that! You’ve got to lock me up!”

Vargas looked at Johanssen in surprise.

“Did he stab you, Johanssen?”

“I have not said so.”

“So long,” said Vargas.

J. S. Crozier’s face was horribly contorted. “No, no! You can’t leave me alone with— with—”

Vargas stood in the doorway. “Well? Well, Crozier?”

“Yes,” Crozier whispered hoarsely. “I did it. I killed her. I knew— the way she looked and acted after Bly went for the sandwiches. I twisted her arm and— and she told me…” His voice rose to a scream. “Take me out of here! Get me away from Johanssen!”

Vargas’ voice was quick and sharp now. “You heard it, both of you. You’re witnesses. Farnham, come on in.”

Farnham came stolidly into the office. “Come on baby,” he said in his heavy indifferent voice. J. S. Crozier’s legs wouldn’t hold his weight, and Farnham had to half carry him out the door.

“Could have nailed him anyway on that toupee business,” Vargas said, casual again. “But this way made it more certain. Johanssen, you stick around where I can find you.”

“I will be very glad to testify. I will also wish to witness the execution, if you please.”

“I’ll arrange it,” Vargas promised. “Kid, that was clever work—that business about the toupee.”

“It just—came to me,” Bly said shakily. “It seemed all clear at once— after Mr. Johanssen told me about the arrangement for him to wait in the hamburger stand. I knew then that Patricia Fitzgerald was playing her radio loud on purpose. She thought Gus, the janitor, would come up and then she would have sent him for the sandwiches. And then I remembered the black mitten…”

High heels made a quick tap‐tap‐tap along the corridor and Janet ran into the office.

“Dave! Are you all right? I saw Mr. Crozier going downstairs with another man. He— he was crying…”

Bly said: “It’s all right now, dear. Mr. Crozier was the man who murdered that girl in my apartment house. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“I’ll be going,” said Vargas. “Bly, you stick around where I can find you.”

“That will be easy,” Bly said bitterly. “Just look on the handiest park bench. I was so clever I thought myself right out of a job.”

“I will go also,” said Johanssen, “but first there is this.” He took a black thick wallet from his pocket. Carefully he counted out five one‐thousand‐dollar bills.

“The reward, which I have offered legally and which I have advertised in the papers. Mr. Vargas is a witness that you earned it and that I paid it.”

“It’s yours,” Vargas said. “He made a public offer of it. If he didn’t pay you, you could sue him.”

“Yes,” said Johanssen. “And then there is this.” He took a folded sheet of blue legal paper from his pocket. “This is a lease for my apartment at the Marigold, paid a year in advance. It is too big for me. For two people it would be good. You will take it, please, Mr. Bly.”

“No!” Bly said. “I couldn’t.

“Bly,” said Vargas conversationally, “I’ve been standing around here wondering when you were going to kiss this girl of yours. Don’t you think it’s about time you did?”

_____________________

7

The Price of a Dime

Black Mask  April 1934.

SHALEY WAS SITTING behind the big desk in his private office. He had his hat on, pushed down over his forehead, so that the wide brim shaded his hard, narrowed eyes, his thin, straight nose. He had an opened penknife in his hand, and he was stabbing the soft wood of a drawer of the desk in an irritated way.

There was a sudden shrill scream from the outer office.

Shaley started. He scowled at the door. In the outer office a chair tipped over with a crash. There was another scream, louder than the first one.

Shaley tossed his penknife on the desk and got up.

“She’ll drive me crazy one of these days,” he muttered, heading for the door in long‐legged strides.

He banged the door open, looked through into the outer office.

Sadie, his secretary, was scuffling with a fattish blonde woman. Sadie had the woman by the shoulders, trying to push her through the door into the corridor. The blonde woman’s face was puffy, tear‐stained. She had a desperately hopeless expression. She was the one who was doing the screaming.

Sadie had her sleek, dark head down, pushing determinedly, but the blonde woman’s weight was too much for her.

Shaley said: “Well?” in an explosively angry voice.

Both women turned on him. Sadie got started first.

“You told me you didn’t want to see anybody this morning, and she wanted to see you, and I told her you couldn’t see her, and she wouldn’t go away, and so I tried to put her out, and she started to scream.” Sadie said this all in one breath.

The blonde woman sniffed a little. “I’ve got to see you. I’ve got to see you, Mr. Shaley. It’s about Bennie. I’ve got to see you.”

“All right, all right,” Shaley said helplessly. “All right! Come on in here.”

“But you told me—” Sadie protested.

“Will you kindly sit down and get to work?” Shaley asked in an elaborately courteous voice.

Sadie blinked. “Yes, Mr. Shaley,” she said meekly.

Shaley jerked his head at the blonde woman. “Come in.” He shut the door of the private office again, pointed to a chair. “Sit down.” He walked around his desk, sat down in his chair, and dropped his hat on the floor beside him. He frowned at the blonde woman.

“Now what is it?”

She was dabbing at her puffy eyes with a handkerchief that was a moist, wadded ball. “I’m sorry I screamed and acted that way, Mr. Shaley, but I had to see you. Bennie told me to see you, and he’s in bad trouble, and so I had to see you.”

“Who’s Bennie?”

The blonde woman looked surprised.

“He’s my brother.”

“That makes it all clear,” said Shaley. “Does he have a last name?”

“Oh, sure. Bennie Petersen.” The blonde woman looked like she was going to start to cry again. “He told me you knew him. He told me you’d help him. He’s a bellboy at the Grover

Hotel.”

“Oh,” said Shaley understandingly. “Bennie Peterson, huh? That little chiseler—”

He coughed. “That is to say, yes. I remember him. What’s he done now?”

“The blonde woman sniffed. “It wasn’t his fault, Mr. Shaley.”

“No,” said Shaley. “Of course not. It never is his fault. What did he do?”

“He just lost a dime, Mr. Shaley. And now Mr. Van Bilbo is going to have him arrested.”

Shaley sat up straight with a jerk. “Van Bilbo, the movie director?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Van Bilbo is going to have Bennie arrested because Bennie lost a dime?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” Shaley said, scowling. “Now let’s get this straight. Start at the beginning and tell me just what happened—or what Bennie told you happened.”

“Well, Bennie took some ginger ale up to a party on the seventh floor of the hotel. This party tipped him a dime. Bennie was coming back down the hall to the elevator. He had the dime in his hand, and he was flipping it up in the air like George Raft does in the movies. But Bennie dropped the dime on the floor. He was just leaning over to pick it up when Mr. Van Bilbo came out of one of the rooms and saw him, and now he’s going to have Bennie arrested.”

Shaley leaned back in his chair. “So,” he said quietly. “The old dropped dime gag. Bennie dropped a dime in front of a keyhole, and he was looking through the keyhole for the dime, when Van Bilbo caught him at it, huh?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no! Bennie wouldn’t look through a keyhole. He wouldn’t do a thing like that, Mr. Shaley. Bennie’s a good boy. Our folks died when we were young, and I raised him, and I know.”

Shaley studied her calculatingly. She really believed what she was saying. She really believed that Bennie was a good boy.

“All right,” Shaley said gently, smiling at her. “Forget what I said. Of course Bennie wouldn’t peek through a keyhole. What did he tell you to say to me?”

“He told me to tell you to go to Mr. Van Bilbo and tell him that it was all right. That Bennie was Mr. Van Bilbo’s friend, and that they could get together on this matter and fix it all up. Bennie said you’d understand.”

Shaley nodded slowly. “Oh, yes,” he said meaningly. “I understand all right. Where is Bennie now?”

“He’s hiding so the police won’t find him. He told me not to tell anybody where he was.”

Shaley smiled at her. “I can’t help him unless I know where he is.”

“Well...” Her voice broke a little. “You are his friend, aren’t you, Mr. Shaley? You will help him, won’t you? Just this time, Mr. Shaley, please. He promised me he’d never get into trouble again.” She stared at him anxiously.

“I’ll help him,” Shaley said.

She sighed, relieved. “He’s hiding in a boarding‐house. I don’t know the street address, but you can easily find it. It’s a big white house with a hedge around it, and it’s right in back of the Imperial Theater in Hollywood. He’s going by the name of Bennie Smith.”

“I’ll find him,” said Shaley. “Where can I get hold of you?”

“I work in Zeke’s Tamale Shop. On Cahuenga, north of Sunset.”

“I know the place,” said Shaley, standing up. He went over and opened the door. “Don’t worry about it any more. I’ll fix things up for you.”

She fumbled with the worn bag she was carrying. “I drew my money out of the bank this morning, Mr. Shaley. I can pay you. I’ll pay you right now.”

“Forget it,” Shaley said, uncomfortably. “I’ll send you a bill. And don’t give Bennie any of that money. I’ll take care of him.”

He stood in the doorway and watched her go through the outer office and out the door into the corridor.

Sadie looked over one slim shoulder at him, with a slight hurt expression.

“I heard what you said to her,” she stated, nodding her sleek head. “And you told me just this morning that you weren’t going to take any more customers unless they paid you in advance.”

“Phooey!” said Shaley. He slammed the door shut and went back and sat down behind his desk.

He picked up the penknife and stared at it thoughtfully.

“I’ll fix him up, all right,” he said sourly to himself. “I’ll wring the little cuss’ neck. Picking me to be the stooge in a blackmailing squeeze.”

He began to stab the drawer again with the penknife, scowling.

Suddenly the penknife stopped in mid air. Shaley sat still for several seconds, his eyes slowly widening.

He said: “My gawd!” in a thoughtfully awed voice. He sat there for a while longer and then yelled: “Sadie!”

Sadie opened the door and looked in.

“What?”

“Listen, there was a murder in some hotel around here about a week back—some woman got herself killed. What hotel was it?”

“The Grover,” said Sadie.

Shaley leaned back in his chair. He smiled— a hard, tight smile that put deep lines around his mouth. He said: “So,” in a quietly triumphant voice.

“I read all about it in the paper,” said Sadie. “The woman’s name was ‘Big Cee.’ She was mixed up with some gangsters or something in Cleveland, and the police thought she came out here to hide, and that some of the gangsters found her. The papers said there were no clues to the murderer’s identity. Mr. Van Bilbo, the movie director, read about her death, and he felt sorry for her, and he paid for her funeral. I think that was very nice of him, don’t you, Mr. Shaley? A woman he didn’t know at all, that way.”

“Yes,” said Shaley. “It was very nice of Mr. Van Bilbo. Go away now. I want to think.”

Sadie slammed the door. Shaley picked his hat up off the floor and put it on, tipping it down over his eyes. He slid down in his chair and folded his hands across his chest.

After about ten minutes, he reached out and took up the telephone on his desk and dialed a number.

A feminine voice said liltingly: “This is the Grover—the largest and finest hotel west of the Mississippi.”

Shaley said: “Is McFane there?”

“Yes, sir. Just a moment, sir, and I’ll connect you with Mr. McFane.”

Shaley waited, tapping his fingers on the desk top.

“Hello.” It was a smoothly cordial voice.

Shaley said: “McFane? This is Ben Shaley.”

“Hello there, Ben. How’s the private detecting?”

“Just fair. Listen, McFane, have you got a bellhop around there by the name of Bennie Petersen?”

“We did have. The little chiseler quit us last week without any notice at all. Just didn’t show up for work. He in trouble?”

Shaley said: “No. Uh‐huh. I was just wondering. He quit right after that murder you had, didn’t he?”

“Yes, come to think—” McFane stopped short. “Hey! Are you digging on that?”

“No, no,” Shaley said quickly. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“Listen, Ben,” McFane said in a worried tone. “Lay off, will you? We spent a thousand dollars’ worth of advertising killing that in the papers. It gives the hotel a bad name.”

“You got it all wrong,” Shaley said soothingly. “I’m not interested at all. I was just wondering. So long, McFane, and thanks.”

“Wait, Ben. Listen, I’ll make it worth your while—I’ll retain—”

Shaley hung up the receiver. He walked quickly out of the private office.

“If a guy by the name of McFane calls,” he said to Sadie, “tell him I just left for Europe. I’ll call you in an hour.”

“From Europe?” Sadie asked innocently.

Shaley went out and slammed the door.

THE HIGH BOARD fence had once been painted a very bright shade of yellow, but now the paint was old and faded and streaked. It was peeling off in big patches that showed bare, brown board underneath.

Shaley parked his battered Chrysler roadster around the corner and walked back along the fence. There was a group of Indians standing in a silent, motionless circle in front of the big iron gate. They all had their arms folded across their chests. They all wore very gaudy shirts, and two of the older ones had strips of buckskin with beads sewn on them tied around their heads.

They didn’t look at Shaley, didn’t pay any attention to him.

Shaley walked up to the iron gate and peered through the thick, rusted bars. There was a car—a yellow Rolls‐Royce—parked in the graveled roadway. The hood was pushed up, and two men were listening to the engine.

“If that’s what you call a piston slap,” one said, “you should be chauffeuring a wheelbarrow.”

Shaley said: “Hey, Mandy.”

The man straightened, turned around. He was short, dumpy. He was wearing golf knickers and a checked sweater and checked golf hose and a checked cap. He had a round, reddish face sprinkled with brown spots. He was chewing on the stub of a cigar, and tobacco juice had left a brown trail from the corner of his mouth down his chin. He stared at Shaley without any sign of recognition.

“Let me in, Mandy,” Shaley requested. Mandy strolled up to the gate, looked at Shaley through it.

“I don’t suppose you’d have a pass, would you?”

Shaley said: “Come on, Mandy. Let me in. I want to talk to you.”

“Huh!” said Mandy. He opened the gate grudgingly.

Shaley slipped inside, and Mandy slammed the gate with a clang.

“Go ahead and talk,” he invited. “It won’t do you any good. I won’t buy anything.”

Shaley looked at the other man meaningly. This one wore a plum‐colored military uniform with silver trimmings. He looked as a motion picture director’s chauffeur should look. He was thin and tall with a swarthily dark face and a small black mustache. He had his military cap tipped at a jaunty angle. He stared from Mandy to Shaley, then shrugged his thin shoulders.

“Excuse me,” he said. He slammed the hood down and got into the front seat of the Rolls and backed it up the road.

“Pretty fancy,” Shaley said, jerking his head to indicate the chauffeur and the car.

“He gripes me,” Mandy said sourly. “I liked old Munn better.”

“Why all the war‐whoops outside?” Shaley asked.

“Extras. Waitin’ to be put on. We ain’t gonna shoot any exteriors today. We’re shootin’ a saloon scene. I told ‘em that six times, but you can’t argue with them guys. They just grunt at you.”

“How’s Van Bilbo coming since he’s been producing independent?”

Mandy shrugged. “Just fair, I think we got a good one this time—forty‐niner stuff.”

They were silent, watching each other warily.

Shaley said suddenly: “Who was Big Cee, Mandy?”

“Huh?” Mandy said vacantly.

Shaley didn’t say anything. He squatted down on his heels and began to draw patterns in the dust with his forefinger.

After a while, Mandy said bitterly: “I mighta known you’d get on to that. You find out everything, damn you.”

There was another silence. Shaley kept on drawing his patterns in the dust.

“Her name was Rosa Lee once,” Mandy said sullenly. “She worked with the old man on some serials way back in ‘09 or ‘10.”

Shaley drew in a long breath. “So,” he said quietly. He stood up. “Thanks, Mandy.”

“Don’t you try any of your sharp‐shooting on the old man!” Mandy warned ferociously. “Damn you, Shaley, I’ll kill you if you do!”

Shaley grinned. “So long, Mandy.” He opened the gate and slipped outside.

Mandy put his head through the bars. “I mean it now, Shaley. You try anything funny on Van Bilbo, and I’ll kill you deader than hell!”

Shaley went into a drug‐store on Sunset and called his office.

“Anybody call me?” he asked, when Sadie answered the telephone.

She said: “Yes, Mr. Shaley. That man McFane called three times. He seems to be mad at you. He swore something terrible when I told him you’d gone to Europe. And that woman called—that woman that was here this morning and didn’t pay you any money.”

“What’d she want?”

“She wanted to thank you for getting Bennie that job in Phoenix.”

“For what?” Shaley barked.

“For getting Bennie that job in Phoenix.”

“Tell me just what she said,” Shaley ordered tensely.

“She called just a little while ago. She said she wanted to thank you. She said the man you had talked to had called her up and told her that he would give Bennie a job in a hotel in Phoenix, and that she had told the man where Bennie was so the man could go and see him about the job.”

Shaley stood there stiffly, staring at the telephone box.

“Hello?” said Sadie inquiringly.

Shaley slowly hung up the receiver, scowling in a puzzled way.

“Good gawd!” he said to himself suddenly in a tight whisper.

He banged open the door of the telephone booth and ran headlong out of the drug‐store.

Shaley parked the Chrysler with a screech of rubber on cement. He got out and walked hurriedly along the sidewalk, along a high green hedge, to a sagging gate. He strode up an uneven brick wall, up steps into a high, old‐fashioned porch.

A fat man in a pink shirt was sitting in an old rocker on the porch with his feet up on the railing:

“Where’s Bennie Smith’s room?” Shaley asked him abruptly.

“Who?”

“Bennie Smith?”

“What’s his name?” the fat man inquired innocently.

Shaley hooked the toe of his right foot under the fat man’s legs and heaved up. The fat man gave a frightened squawk and went over backwards, chair and all. He rolled over and got up on his hands and knees, gaping blankly at Shaley.

Shaley leaned over him. “Where’s Bennie Smith’s room?”

“Upstairs,” the fat man blurted quickly. “Clear back. Last door on the left.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Gee, guy, no need to get so hard about it. I’d ‘a’ told you. I was only fooling. No need to get so rough with a fellow.”

Shaley was running across the porch. He went in the front door into a dim, moist‐smelling hall with a worn green rug on the floor. He went up a flight of dark, carpeted stairs, along a hall.

The last few steps he ran on his toes, silently. He had his hand inside his coat on the butt of the big .45 automatic in his shoulder‐holster.

He stopped in front of the last door on the left, listening. He pulled out the automatic and held it in his hand. He knocked softly on the door with his other hand. There was no answer. Shaley said: “Bennie,” and knocked on the door again.

He turned the knob. The door was locked.

Working silently, Shaley took a ring of skeleton keys out of his left‐hand coat pocket. The lock was old and loose. The first key turned it.

Shaley pushed the door open cautiously, standing to one side. He drew in his breath with a hissing sound.

Bennie was lying on the bed. He looked very small and thin and young. In death his face had lost some of its sharpness, its wise‐guy cynicism. He had been stabbed several times in his thin chest. The bed was messy.

Shaley shut the door very quietly.

SHALEY turned off of Sunset and drove up Cahuenga. He parked the Chrysler and walked slowly across a vacant lot towards a long, shack‐like building that had a big red Neon sign on top of it that said: Zeke’s.

Shaley walked around to the back and knocked on the door.

An angry voice from inside said: “How many times must I tell you bums that I can’t give you no hand‐outs until after the rush—” The man opened the door and saw Shaley. He said: “Oh! Hello, Mr. Shaley.” He was a short, fat man with a round face that was shiny with perspiration. He wore a white chef’s cap.

Shaley craned his neck, peering in the door. He could see into the interior of the dining‐car. Bennie’s sister was standing at the cash register, joking with a policeman and a man in a bus driver’s uniform.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Shaley?” the short man asked.

Shaley nodded his head to indicate the blonde woman. “Her brother has just been murdered.”

The short man said: “Bennie?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, ――!” said the short man. “And she thought he was the grandest thing that ever lived.”

“You’ll have to tell her,” Shaley said.

“Me? Oh, ―― no! No. I don’t want to. You tell her, Mr. Shaley.”

Shaley said: “I can’t.”

The short man stared at him. “I got to tell her. And she thought he was so swell. She gave him most of her wages.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Oh, ――! That poor kid.”

Shaley turned around and walked away. He was swallowing hard.

When Shaley came up and peered through the big iron gate, Mandy and the chauffeur were looking into the engine of the Rolls‐Royce much in the same attitude as before.

“It’s a wrist‐pin,” Mandy said. “I’m telling you it’s a wrist‐pin.”

Shaley said: “Mandy.”

Mandy came over and opened the gate.

“You’re like a depression,” he told Shaley sourly. “Always popping up when people don’t expect you. What do you want now?”

“I want to see Van Bilbo.”

“He’s in his office. They’re just gettin’ ready for some re‐takes on that saloon scene. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

Shaley said: “I just saw a kid that was murdered. He was a little rat and a chiseler and a liar, but he had a swell sister. She trusted me, and I let her down. I’m going to talk to Van Bilbo and then I’m going to start something. Stick around.” He walked along the road, his feet crunching in the gravel.

The chauffeur looked at Mandy.

“Screwy?” he inquired.

Mandy was squinting at Shaley back. He shook his head slowly.

“No. He gets that way when he’s mad. And when he’s mad, he’s a great big dose of bad medicine for somebody.”

Shaley turned around the corner of a barnlike building and was in a short dusty street with false‐fronted sets on each side. There were board sidewalks and a couple of big tents that had saloon signs in front of them.

There were saddled horses tied to a long hitching‐rack. There were men in fringed buckskin suits with coonskin caps and long rifles, and men in big sombreros wearing jingling spurs on their boots and big six‐shooters in holsters at their waists, and men clad in black with high stovepipe hats. There were girls in low‐necked dresses, and girls in calico and sun‐bonnets. A man up on a wooden tower that held an arc lamp was yelling angrily at a man on the ground, who was yelling back at him just as angrily. Two carpenters were having a loud argument in front of a saloon door. Another man had a long list in his hand and was running around checking up on the costumes of the extras. At the side of the street three men had a camera apart, examining its interior gravely.

Shaley walked along the middle of the street, went into a small wooden office building at the far end. He walked down a dusty corridor, knocked on a door that had a frosted glass panel with a crack in it running diagonally from corner to corner.

A voice said: “Come in.”

Shaley opened the door and went into a small, cubby‐hole of an office.

Van Bilbo was sitting behind the desk.

Van Bilbo was a small, thin man. He was bald, and he wore big horn‐rimmed glasses that gave him an owlish look. He always reminded Shaley of a small boy making believe he was grown up.

“Hello,” he said shyly, peering over his glasses at Shaley.

“Do you remember me?” Shaley asked.

Van Bilbo shook his head, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I meet so many people... I don’t remember....”

Shaley shut the door and sat down in a chair. “I’ll tell you a story—a true one. One time there was a man who was a racetrack driver. He cracked up badly, and his nerves went haywire. He couldn’t drive any more. He came out to Hollywood, hoping to find something to do. He didn’t. He went broke. One day he was standing outside a studio. He’d pawned everything he owned but the clothes he wore. He was hungry and sick and pretty much down. While he was standing there a director came along. The director gave that man a ten‐dollar bill and told him to go get something to eat. He gave the man a work‐slip and let him work as an extra for a month, until he got on his feet again. I was that man, and you were the director. I don’t forget things like that.”

Van Bilbo made flustered little gestures.

“It— it was nothing... I don’t even remember…”

“No,” said Shaley. “Of course you don’t. You’ve helped out plenty that were down and out and plenty that were in trouble—like Big Cee.”

Van Bilbo repeated: “Big Cee,” in a scared voice.

Shaley nodded. “That wasn’t very hard to figure out, knowing you. She used to work for you a long time ago. She was in a jam. She called on you to help her out, and you did. She was running a joint in Cleveland. She got in wrong with some politicos, and they closed up her place. She was sore. She got hold of some affidavits that would look mighty bad in a court record. She skipped out here, intending to hide here and shake the boys back in Cleveland down for plenty. But they didn’t want to play that way. They sent a guy after her, and he biffed her.”

Part of this Shaley knew, and part he was guessing; but he didn’t have to guess very much; with what he knew, the rest was fairly obvious.

Van Bilbo was staring at the door with widened eyes. Shaley turned to look. A shadow showed through the frosted glass—a hunched, listening shadow. Shaley slid the .45 out of his shoulder‐holster and held it on his lap, watching the shadow. He went on talking to Van Bilbo:

“That was what happened and everything would have been closed up now and over with, only you and a bellhop, by the name of Bennie, put your fingers in the pie. Big Cee got scared somebody might be after her, and she called you in and gave you the affidavits to keep for her. Bennie saw you leaving her room, and, being a chiseler by trade, he got the idea that he might shake you down a little. He was curious about Big Cee, and he kept on watching the room. He saw the murderer go in and out. Then when he found out Big Cee had been knocked off, Bennie thought he was on easy street for fair.”

Shaley paused, watching the shadow. The shadow was motionless.

“Bennie planned to put the squeeze on both you and the murderer. He made a bad mistake as far as the murderer was concerned. This murderer wasn’t the kind of a boy to pay hush money. He’s a dopey and a killer. Bennie found that out and went undercover while he tried to get in touch with you through me. The murderer was looking for Bennie. In the first place, Bennie knew too much, and in the second place the murderer didn’t want Bennie putting the squeeze on you for fear you’d get scared and turn those affidavits over to the police.”

The shadow was moving very slowly, getting closer to the door.

Shaley went on quickly: “The murderer was trailing Bennie’s sister, trying to locate Bennie. He trailed the sister to me. He used my name to get the sister to give him Bennie’s address. He killed Bennie. But he hasn’t got those affidavits yet, and he wants them. He paid your chauffeur to quit, so he could get his job and be close to you without anybody getting suspicious. Come on in, baby!”

The glass panel of the door suddenly smashed in. An arm in a plum‐colored uniform came through the opening. A thin hand pointed a stubby‐barreled revolver at the two men inside. Shaley kicked his chair over backwards just as the revolver cracked out.

Shaley’s big automatic boomed loudly in the small room.

There was the pound of feet going quickly down the hall.

Shaley bounced up, kicked his chair aside, jerked the door open. The thin form in the plum‐colored uniform was just sliding around the corner at the end of the hall. Shaley put his head down and sprinted.

He tore out through the door into the street in time to see the plum‐colored uniform whisk through the swinging doors of the saloon. Extras stared open‐mouthed. A man with two heavy six‐guns and a fierce‐looking mustache was trying to crawl under the board sidewalk. One of the dance‐hall girls screamed loudly.

Shaley started across the street. There was a little jet of orange flame from the dimness behind the swinging doors. The crack of the revolver sounded slightly muffled. The horses tied to the hitching‐rack reared and kicked, squealing frantically. Shaley trotted across the dusty street. He had one hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. He had his automatic balanced, ready, in the other hand. He got to the swinging doors, pushed them back.

The place was fixed up as a dance‐hall and saloon. There was a long bar and a cleared space for dancing with a raised platform for the fiddler at the far end.

Shaley ducked suddenly, and a bullet from the back window smashed into the wall over his head.

He ran across the room and dived headlong through the window. He saw that he had made a mistake while he was still in mid‐air. The man in the plum‐colored uniform hadn’t run this time. He had decided to make a fight of it. He was crouched under the window.

Shaley tried to turn himself around in the air. He hit the ground on one shoulder and rolled frantically. And as he rolled, he caught a glimpse of a thin, swarthy face staring at him over the barrel of a stubby revolver.

There was a shot from the corner of the building. The man in the plum‐colored uniform whirled away from Shaley, snarling. Mandy was standing there, dumpily short, cigar still clenched in his teeth. He had a big, long‐barreled revolver in his hand. As the man in the plum‐colored uniform turned, Mandy pointed the revolver and fired again. The man in the plum‐colored uniform shot twice at him, and then Shaley’s heavy automatic boomed once.

The man in the plum‐colored uniform gave a little gulping cry. He started to run. He ran in a circle and suddenly flopped down full‐length. The plum‐colored uniform was a huddled, wrinkled heap on the dusty ground.

Shaley got up slowly, wiping dust from his face. Heads began to poke cautiously out of windows, and excited voices shouted questions.

Van Bilbo came running—a small, frantic figure with the horn‐rimmed glasses hanging from one ear. He ran up to Mandy, pawed at him.

“Are you hurt? Are you hurt, Mandy?”

Mandy said: “Aw, shut up. You’re like an old hen with the pip. Of course I ain’t hurt. That guy couldn’t shoot worth a damn.” He pushed Van Bilbo away.

Shaley said to the people who came crowding around: “This man is a dope fiend. He went crazy and suddenly attacked Mr. Van Bilbo. You can all testify that I shot in self‐defense.”

Mandy was pushing away through the crowd. Shaley followed him.

“Mandy,” Shaley said.

Mandy turned around.

“Give me that gun,” Shaley demanded and jerked the revolver out of Mandy’s hand. It was a single‐action six‐shooter. Shaley opened the loading gate, spun the cylinder. He punched out one of the loaded cartridges and looked at it.

The cartridge had no bullet in it. It was a blank.

“I thought so,” said Shaley. “You grabbed this one off one of the extras. You damn’ fool, you stood out there in the open with a gun full of blank cartridges and let that monkey shoot at you, just to give me a chance at him. That’s guts, Mandy.”

“Aw, nerts,” said Mandy uncomfortably. “I just didn’t think about it, that’s all. He got old Munn’s job and I didn’t like him anyway.”

Shaley glanced over where the

whiskered man with the two big six‐guns was just appearing from under the board sidewalk. “There’s a guy that thought, all right.”

Mandy scowled—

“Oh, them!” He spat disgustedly. “Them heroes of the screen ain’t takin’ no chances gettin’ hurt. It’d spoil their act.”

End

Table of Contents

1: Holocaust House

2: Red Goose

3: Something for the Sweeper

4: The Rag-Tag Girl

5: Dead Man’s Chest

6: You'll Die Laughing

7: The Price of a Dime