Past Masters 22
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: The 22nd in a series of short story anthologies containing stories from magazines and newspapers which are not available in existing abthologies or author collections. All stories are in the Life+70 Public Domain. This issue contains mostly longer stories, novelettes, tending to a crime/noir theme, although the Ranger Gull tale is a romantic story. 1: Punk / Cleve F Adams 2: The Miracle Man / Eric Howard 3: Stool Pigeon / Frederick C Painton 4: The Dead Speak Once / Frederick C Painton 5: Murder Suspect / Frederick C Painton 6: Chicken King / Perley Poore Sheehan 7: The Red Road to Shamballah

PAST MASTERS

TWENTY-TWO

March 2021 Part 2

Produced by "Pulpmeister"

(Terry Walker)

Contents

1: Punk / Cleve F Adams

2: The Miracle Man / Eric Howard

3: Stool Pigeon / Frederick C Painton

4: The Dead Speak Once / Frederick C Painton

5: Murder Suspect / Frederick C Painton

6: Chicken King / Perley Poore Sheehan

7: The Red Road to Shamballah / Perley Poore Sheehan

8: Shrinking Violet / Cleve F Adams

9: The October Blight / Anthony M Rud

10: "General Utility" / C Ranger Gull (Guy Thorne)

11: Cannibal Isle / Albert Richard Wetjen

12: In Deep Purple / C S Montanye

Cumulative Index

______________________

1: Punk

Cleve F Adams

1895-1949

Detective Fiction Weekly. March 19, 1938

I WAS LOWER than the well-known snake’s abdomen and the day’s take from the machines wasn’t making me feel any better. Counting up in Luigi’s, my last stop, I found I had about two hundred bucks in nickels and while that’s a lot of nickels to lift it isn’t such a hell of a lot to spend. Not that I had the spending of the whole two hundred. My cut was only ten per cent. Twenty bucks, I thought. A lousy twenty bucks is all I’ve got to show for two months in the racket. Eight or nine weeks at a daily average of twenty-five to thirty dollars and all I’ve got is twenty bucks. I wished I was back driving a truck.

It was around nine o’clock. Luigi’s was crowded, as it usually was at that time of night. The bar was lined three deep and the tables around the postage stamp dance floor were full up. The slot machines and pin-ball games were red hot and the suckers playing them had been real indignant when I horned in to make the collection. I ought to be ashamed, interrupting their fun like that. If the damn fools had only known it they might just as well have dropped their nickels directly into my bag instead of putting ’em in the machines first. It just made a lot of unnecessary work. You couldn’t tell the that, though.

Luigi tipped me the wink and we went down along the length of the bar to his cubbyhole of an office. He signed the receipt for his cut and got out a bottle. “You weel have the leetla dreenk weeth Luigi, no?”

“And how!” I said. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind having six little drinks with Luigi. Or maybe eight.” I watched him pour the Scotch. He was a round, paunchy little guy with very small hands and feet and neatly parted, slicked-down hair. His smile was so white it reminded you of the dental ads, and he had soft, velvety brown eyes, like a setter dog’s; wise and intelligent and friendly, yet watchful, too. I rather liked Luigi.

He said, lifting his glass and smiling at me over the rim, “You better lay off too moch from thees stoff, hah, Jerry?”

I set my glass down, empty. “Oh,” I said, “like that, huh? Okay, my fraan, I’ll buy my own from now on.” I picked up my bag of nickels and started out the door.

He laid a hand on my arm. “You theenk Luigi, heesa tight weeth hees liquor, hah?”

“Well, what would you think?”

“A smart boy,” he said, “a smart guy might theenk mebbe Luigi heesa like you, Jerry? Mebbe heesa try saving you more trobble as you already got, hah?”

I just stood there looking at him, not saying anything for a minute because all of a sudden my tonsils felt funny; kind of all knotted up, if you know what I mean. The little guy was telling me he liked me too, and that most of the jams I’d got myself in were on account of red-eye. He didn’t know about the worst one, of course. Nobody did except Big Ed Harmon, the guy I worked for, and a couple more of his boys who’d been in the room at the time. And oh, yes, I’d spilled to Cora, my wife. Luigi and apparently everybody else in town knew about Cora. Just thinking about the little tramp made me see red all over again and I shook Luigi off and went outside to the bar.

THE MOB had shifted a little so that there was a cleared space about a foot wide. I squeezed in, ordered a rye. Somebody grabbed my elbow as I picked up the drink and I thought it was Luigi again and pulled the old Olsen & Johnson gag. The one that goes: “Get away from me, boys, you bother me.” It turned out to be my wife instead of Luigi and she didn’t think the gag was as funny as Olsen & Johnson did.

She said, “So I bother you, do I?” She was a little tight and her lip rouge was smeared. I wondered who’d been kissing her now. She gave me a baby-faced stare. “Okay, so I bother you. Well, for fifty bucks I won’t bother you any more. Not tonight, anyway.” She smiled then, a mean smile.

The guy next to me said, “Hello, sugar. If your boy friend ain’t got the fifty, see me. See li’l ol’ Georgie.”

No, I didn’t hit him. I’d practically worn out my right fist on other guys’ jaws trying to put an end to cracks like that. It just wasn’t any use. Maybe I was a little tight too; maybe I was just seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her, I mean. Seeing behind her big violet eyes and her corn silk hair and all the rest of her; seeing the thing that made cracks like this mug’s possible. For a while I’d thought she was just a fool, but now I knew different.

I reached down in the leather bag and got out ten rolls of nickels. Twenty bucks. “Here’s twenty,” I said. “All I’ve got in the world. I wish it was twenty grand and you’d use it to buy a one way ticket.”

She looked at the loaded bag. “What’s the matter, Terry— afraid of Big Ed?”

“No,” I said. My lips felt tight across my teeth. “No, Ed wouldn’t care if I gave you the whole works, only I won’t.” I dumped the ten rolls of nickels in her hands. “Now scram.”

Her voice got shrill. “You heel! What am I going to do with four hundred nickels?”

I said I didn’t care what she did with them. I didn’t, either. All I wanted was to get away from her before I killed somebody. I tossed a quarter on the bar, started toward the front door. Her voice topped the slam of the music against my ears. She was calling the bartender names because he wouldn’t change the nickels into bills.

It was raining again; not hard, just a sort of discouraged drizzle. I stood there on the sidewalk for a minute, letting the rain hit my face. It felt good. A couple of guys came out, looked at me, giggled as they went by. I knew they were laughing at me and I faded back into the shadows. Cora came out. She was laughing too. She was with the guy that had made the crack. I went back inside and hoisted a couple of quick ones.

The bartender looked at me as though he’d never seen me before; the crowd was working hard at having its fun again. Not even a ripple, I thought. Something can happen to you right in plain sight of a couple of hundred people; something that tears the heart out of you and makes you want to get your hands on somebody’s throat and squeeze and squeeze— I looked around to see if I was wrong; see if somebody in that mob wasn’t reading my mind. And then I got the shakes. Read my mind? Was I actually planning on doing it? No, I thought; no, it isn’t me, it’s the liquor. And then I got more scared than ever. If I kept on like this I might get cocked some time and...

The bartender came back with a fresh bottle. He set it down in front of me, started away. I said, “Hey, wait a minute! I want you to see my latest trick.” He looked bored, but waited, leaning his elbows on the bar and watching me. I poured a stiff drink as if it were a very difficult feat. It wasn’t so easy at that. My hands were shaking so that some of the rye slopped over on the bar. I lifted the glass and held it to the light; then, very deliberately, I inverted it and dumped the lousy stuff into a gobboon. I gave him a tight grin. “That,” I said, “is the trick. It’s supposed to be the picture of a guy’s last drink. Pretty good, huh?”

He looked doubtful. He said, “Well, if you pay for it I guess I can’t stop you doin’ what you want with it.” He took the bottle away with him, though. Somebody touched my shoulder and I whirled nervously. It was Slats McKenna.

McKenna said, “I heard that, Jerry. Sounded okay to me.”

Slats McKenna was a dick; a hell of a good one, according to the papers. I wasn’t thinking of him as a dick, though; not even after the tap on the shoulder, exactly the way I’d been expecting it for quite a while now. You see, Slats and I and Big Ed Harmon had all grown up together south of the tracks. Just the three of us for a while. Then big-eyed, skinny-legged Fran had moved into our block. She was Mrs. Ed Harmon now. Funny how things turn out, huh? Big Ed had shouldered his way to the top of the rackets, picking up Frances on the way. Slats McKenna was a dick. And what was I? Well, you’ve got me there. Just a bum, I guess.

McKenna said, “Let’s go outside, Jerry. I want to talk to you. Seeing you dump that slug of rye makes it easier.” He was a tall rangy guy with a pronounced stoop and a dark serious face. He hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. Marriage and a couple of kids on a cop’s pay had given him the stoop, I guessed. The serious look had always been there.

WE WENT OUT and sat in his car at the curb. The rain was coming down a little harder now. The sound of it on the turret top; that and being with a guy like Slats did something to me; made me feel a little better, somehow.

Slats said quietly, “I’ve been watching you, boy. Ever since you got crocked and married that little Cora tramp. She’s bad medicine, Jerry.”

Well, you wouldn’t think a guy would let another guy talk that way about his wife, would you? I did. In the first place, McKenna was my friend and he wasn’t trying to be funny. In the second place, there was no argument about Cora being a tramp. All I said was a lop-sided, “You’re telling me!”

After a while Slats said, not looking at me, just staring out through the streaming windshield, “Why not try reversing the English for a change, kid? I mean, when Fran gave you the air you got crocked and joined the navy. That was smart.”

“Well,” I said, grinning, “I learned a trade, anyway.”

“I’m coming to that presently, Jerry. You learned a trade but you lost Frances for good. The hitch in the navy kept you out of circulation for quite a spell if you remember. When you finally did get out, and found Big Ed had copped Frances, what did you do? You got crocked again and woke up married to Cora. Smart, huh?”

Well, putting it like that, it didn’t look very smart, did it? Being married you’re supposed to support the gal and so I’d signed on as radio op on a Standard Oil tanker. Yep, that’s the trade they’d taught me in the navy. Only it kept me away from home too much. I’d get back from a three weeks’ trip and find Cora hadn’t been exactly lonesome, if you know what I mean. Not that I was in love with her; not like I’d been with Fran. But still and all she was my wife and a guy likes to carry his head up.

Slats went on as though I’d been talking out loud. “There weren’t any radio jobs ashore and all you could get was the chance to nurse a truck around all day. Only thing was, you weren’t making enough dough to please cutie. She kept nagging you about how you’d grown up with Big Ed, and why didn’t you get him to do something for you.”

I gave him a surprised look. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve got eyes,” he said, and his profile looked older, more tired. Somehow I couldn’t get sore at him. He was using No. 4 sandpaper on me and still I couldn’t get sore. He said, “You’re working for Ed, aren’t you?” Explaining quite simply that one and one added up to two. “Working for Big Ed is also bad medicine, Jerry.”

I said stubbornly, “It pays some real dough. And what I’m doing is on the up and up as far as the law’s concerned. If the D.A. says the machines are games of skill who am I to tell the suckers different?”

He reached forward, wiped fog off the inside of the glass. “All right, what you’re doing now is maybe not so bad. But how do you know it’ll stop there? Once you’re in, boy, you’re in.”

“Nuts,” I scoffed. “Ed would be the first one to mitt me if I got out of the racket. The only reason he gave me the job at all was because of old times. Show me a real job and I’ll get out.”

He turned then, grinned at me. “Okay, keed, that’s a promise. I was talking to Kramer up at C.B.S. I told him how good you were and he said if you were that good—”

“You mean a technician’s berth at C.B.S.?”

“Maybe chief. They’re having a sort of shakeup. Maybe you could talk yourself up better than I did.”

I couldn’t say anything for a minute. I mean, this guy beside me was real people. Ed was okay too, of course, but I’d been thinking about what I’d do if he ever asked me to step over the line. This way, I wouldn’t have to find out. I could take a brace and maybe pay Cora off some way and... I didn’t go any farther than that. The reason I didn’t was that Slats had gotten tired of waiting for me to say thanks and was talking again. About something else. “I can’t get a line on the lug,” he was complaining. “You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you, Jerry? Guy by the name of Heinie Ziegler?”

I felt as though he’d just clouted me behind the ear. This guy Ziegler was going to be pretty hard to find— I hoped. He was the mug I’d killed a month or so back. Thirty-seven days, to be exact. You don’t forget the date of things like that. I got a cigarette out, scratched the match, but somehow I couldn’t get the two together. Then I noticed that my hands were shaking. “Ziegler?” I coughed. “No, I don’t think I know him.”

Slats reached over, held the match steady for me. “I’m glad you’re off the stuff, keed. Another week and you’d be in the D.T. ward out at the County.” His eyes burned me. I flipped the match out the window as an excuse to turn away so he couldn’t read the fear that must have been plastered all over my face.

He didn’t seem to notice.

“Funny you don’t know him,” he said musingly. “He used to be one of Big Ed’s punks. I went up to see Ed and he said the guy had gone to Chicago, but I think he was lying.”

The cigarette fell out of my mouth. I just couldn’t help it. Slats McKenna wasn’t my friend any more. He was a dick and I was a murderer. He leaned down and got the cig where it was burning a hole in the floor mat, took a couple of quick drags, threw it away. It reminded me of how we used to share snipes when we were kids south of the tracks. For a second I almost broke down and told him the whole works. Then I took a gander at his face and knew I couldn’t. He was not only a tough cop; he was an honest cop. He’d crucify me if he knew.

I twisted the door handle. “Well, thanks a million, Slats. I’ll go up and see Kramer tomorrow.”

“Better make it tonight, Jerry. These things don’t wait. I told Kramer I’d have you on deck if I could find you.”

“Okay, tonight, then.” I was out on the sidewalk now, in a hurry. I had to get to Big Ed and find out what was happening. “I’ll go down and check in and then I’ll go see Kramer.”

“Swell,” Slats said. “A shower will snap you out of it, Jerry. Better take something for that breath, though.”

I told him I’d do that too, and then I was slogging toward my own car, lugging the sack of nickels. That damned sack was beginning to remind me of an anchor, something I couldn’t get away from. I laughed at that. Of course I could get away. Just as I could from Big Ed Harmon. All I had to do was drop them both. Getting in my car I was surprised to note that it was raining. Then I remembered that it had been raining all evening. I reached in the door pocket for the spare bottle that I usually carried, had the cap off and the neck rattling against my teeth before I remembered; remembered what fat little Luigi had said, and Slats. I hurled the bottle through the window. It smashed on the sidewalk and little rivulets of liquor ran down to the curb. Somewhere down the street, back of me, a horn tooted twice. That would be Slats, I thought, applauding me for busting the bottle. I didn’t feel very heroic. I felt like hell.

ii

THE TITLE GUARANTEE Building was all lit up like a church when I got there. Usually at that time of night it was pretty quiet, but it must have been tax time or something because everybody connected with the real estate racket, title searchers and all, were working late. I’d always gotten a kick out of Big Ed having his headquarters in a building like that. Of course, Ed was the first big shot I’d ever known personally, but nearly every one I remembered reading about transacted his business from a more or less swanky night club. It seemed to be the thing to do. Big Ed was different. He had over half of the seventh floor of the Title Guarantee and the doors that weren’t marked “Private” were labeled “The Harmon Amusement Enterprises, Inc.” As far as I knew he didn’t have any hideaways, or cafés, or any of the usual clap-trap. Maybe he had ’em, but I didn’t know about ’em. I didn’t want to know about them.

I rode up in the elevator with four or five clerks who’d been out for a snack. A couple worked for Ed, and they looked at my leather grip and grinned. I might have been a collector for the telephone company, even including the gun in my shoulder clip.

Only I wasn’t.

I checked in with the cashier, went through a couple semi-private offices and knocked on Ed’s door. There were a couple gorillas sitting there in the anteroom, coats off and rods exposed, but they didn’t pay me a bit of attention. Believe it or not, they were playing checkers. After a minute Ed himself opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you, Jerry.” He was a little bigger than I was, though it wasn’t his size that got him his name. He wore good clothes as if he were used to them, always had a gardenia in his lapel, and a faint scent of soap clung to him, as though he’d just stepped out of his bath. He looked like a senior executive in a business whose stock was selling above par. I guess he was, at that.

I said, “Yeah, it’s me. Could I talk to you for a minute, Ed? Something has come up that...”

He gave me a smile, opened the door wider. I went in. He came around and sat down behind his desk. “Okay, Jerry, shoot.”

I told him first about Slats McKenna looking for Heinie Ziegler. “You sure I’m covered, Ed? Sure somebody hasn’t popped off?”

Ed looked at his nails, hike everything else about him they’d had plenty of the right kind of attention. He’d come a long way since he and I and Slats prowled the freight yards for scrap iron to sell to the junkie. Somehow I was embarrassed in front of him; not like I was with Slats. I guess it’s the same as two guys who go to college together and one of them turns out to be a success. I hadn’t gone to college, but I was the other one, just the same. I didn’t blame Fran for picking the winner.

Ed looked at me and for the first time I noticed how cold his eyes were. “You’re covered,” he said briefly. “Unless you’ve gotten drunk and belched to someone yourself. Have you?”

I thought about how I’d told Cora, my wife, the night I did it. God, I’d had to tell someone! I was half off my nut. Not that this Heinie Ziegler hadn’t had it coming; in a way it was even self defense, but there wasn’t a chance of making a jury believe that.

Ed’s voice had a little undertone of menace in it when he repeated, “Have you, Jerry?”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked him. “It’s bad enough to have you and Danville and Skeeter in on it. I’m not doing any advertising, thank you. It’s just that McKenna picking me to ask— well, I got the jitters is all.”

“I see,” he said. And then, giving me a quick, level stare: “What else did you and McKenna talk about? You were with him quite a while.”

I didn’t get it for a minute. Then I did and I was sore as a boiled owl. “Having me tailed, huh? What’s the matter, afraid I’ll knock down a few of your lousy nickels?”

“Now don’t get red-headed, Jerry. One of the punks just happened to be in Luigi’s and phoned me. He thought you might be in a jam of some kind.”

“As if I’m not! And that reminds me, Ed, I’ve got a chance to go to work for C.B.S. I’m checking out on you.”

He went back to studying his nice nails. “McKenna?”

“Yes, he’s the one got me the break.”

“And will your wife think it’s a break, Jerry? They tell me that even what you’re making with me isn’t enough for Cora.”

“To hell with her. I’m through, washed up.”

He shook his head. “No, Jerry, I can’t let you do it.”

“You mean you won’t? You mean I can’t walk out if I want to? The hell with that. I’m going.”

Again he shook his head. He was smiling, but it didn’t mean a thing. His eyes were diamond hard. “Nobody walks out on me, Jerry. Maybe they’re carried out, but they don’t walk. I need good boys, Jerry; boys I can depend on. I can depend on you, can’t I, Jerry?”

You couldn’t miss what he meant. You either stuck— or you got stuck. With me, it was just a little murder rap, of course. Nothing serious. Looking at it from his angle I wondered what he had to be afraid of from me. The answer was nothing. I didn’t know a thing more than the whole town knew. He could hire a hundred guys to do the work I was doing. Well, then, why didn’t he? Why did he want to hang onto me? Sort of desperately I asked him. “I wasn’t cut out for the big time, Ed. I’m just a punk, I guess. What’s it to you?”

This time when he looked at me I actually shivered. “Punks,” he said, “are useful sometimes, Jerry. Especially with a rap hanging over them like yours. And if you ever get the bright idea that I could be clipped as an accessory, just forget it. I couldn’t.” He sat up a little straighter, touched a button on his desk. “I think we’ll be able to get along, Jerry. Now that we understand each other.”

THE DOOR OPENED and the two gorillas came in. I took my hand away from my gun. Yep, for a second I’d seen the well-known red. I’d been on the point of letting him have it. Sick, actually sick at my stomach, I stumbled toward the door. Ed’s voice halted me. “Better lay off the liquor, keed. It’s bad for you.”

“I know,” I said dully. “You’re about the fifth guy that’s told me tonight.” I went out and got in an elevator and dropped to the lobby. A guy looking at the building directory turned and gave me a screwy stare. “Did you speak to me?”

I guess I must have been mumbling out loud. I said, “It was two other guys, mister,” and pushed out to the street. In the car I reached for the bottle in the door pocket before I remembered that it wasn’t there any more. There didn’t seem to be anything to do except stop somewhere and get tanked to the eyes, only I couldn’t think of any place where there wouldn’t be somebody else too and I didn’t want to see even a bartender for a while. I went home hoping Cora hadn’t found that last pint. She had, though. I flopped on the davenport in the living room, too tired to even undress. After a while I went to sleep.

The ringing of the front door bell woke me. I didn’t identify it as the front door hell right off the bat. I’d been dreaming I was in a broadcast station control room, trying to get an S.O.S. through on account of an earthquake was rapidly making kindling out of our fair city. It was pretty real. I mean, I could feel the building tottering under my feet. But the most vivid of all was Big Ed Harmon holding a gun on me and telling me to lay off; that he didn’t want anybody to know there was an earthquake. I kept thinking, “They’ve gotta know. I’ve gotta tell ’em,” and then I remembered the little alarm button recessed in the floor. I put my foot on this and a dozen alarms started singing so loud it woke me up. The dozen alarms turned out to be the apartment bell. Maybe I should have been relieved at that, but I wasn’t. I just lay there for a minute, shivering, wondering if maybe Big Ed hadn’t changed his mind about me. Not about letting me go, but about making the parting permanent. Maybe I’d worried him, almost pulling my rod like that. Maybe he’d sent a couple of the boys over to see that it didn’t happen again. The bell kept ringing.

Finally I couldn’t stand the suspense any more and got up and went over to the door. Maybe, I thought, it’s just Cora. She might’ve forgotten her key. I jerked my gun out of the clip, twisted the knob and leaped back. I was so surprised I couldn’t shut my own mouth. It wasn’t Cora standing there. It wasn’t the couple of hoods I’d imagined. It was Fran. Yep, that’s right: Frances Harmon, Big Ed’s wife. She was as scared as I was. Her big eyes looked enormous in the dead white of her face, and her dark hair was all mussed up and wet from the rain. She didn’t have any coat on and her gown was sopping, what there was left of it. Somebody had been playing rough.

I grabbed her, yanked her inside before some of the other tenants could see her in case they got curious.

She started sobbing then; not noisily, but as if she’d run her heart out. I put my two arms around her, held her close for a minute, trying to kid her out of it. “It’s okay, Fran. I’m here and you know how I’ve always felt about you. Take a brace, keed. Tell papa.”

She put her hands on my chest, pushed me away a little, so that she could look up into my ugly mug. “Oh, Jerry, I’m sorry if I’m putting you on a spot. I... I just couldn’t seem to think of anybody else to go to, and I didn’t have any money, or clothes or—” She broke off and her eyes sort of rolled up in her head. “Oh, Jerry, I’m scared!”

“That makes two of us,” I said. J picked her up and carried her over to the couch. “Come on, Fran, tell me what happened and then I’ll see about getting you some dry clothes.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Not like a guy removing the last of the mashed potatoes, but trying to stop her lips from quivering. “Ed just shot and killed a man. I... I saw it.”

“Where? In his office?”

“No, at home.” Home was a penthouse out in Beverly Hills. I looked at my wristwatch. I’d been asleep two hours. It was just a little after midnight.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me about it. Fast, Fran.”

“It... it was State Senator Delgardo. He’d been waiting for Ed to come home. Ed brought another man with him, a man named Ames, I think. The three of them went into the library and I went to bed. Not long after that I heard shots. I ran to the library door, got it open and... and there was the senator on the floor. Ames was stooping over him, cursing, but it was Ed who had the gun. It... it was still smoking. I guess I must have screamed at that. They turned and Ames started cursing Ed. Then they both started for me. They caught me in one of the guest rooms and Ames insisted they kill me too. Ed said that could wait. Finally they locked me in and went back to the library, I guess.”

“How did you get away?”

She shivered. “Out the window. I crawled along a ledge till I got to a fire escape.”

I did a little shivering myself. I knew the penthouse; knew how it was built on a corner instead of in the middle of the roof. Crawling along a narrow parapet, in the rain, thirteen stories above the street— well, it was no wonder she was jittery.

I said, “Look, Fran, how much do you know of Big Ed’s business besides this kill? Who is this Ames guy?”

“I don’t know, Jerry. Somebody important, I guess. About Ed... well, I’ve heard rumors, of course. I read the papers. Lately things haven’t been going so well between us.” She gave me a direct look. “I... I guess I never loved him enough to overlook some of the things they’re saying about him. But that’s all I know; he’s never told me anything himself, except to mind my own business.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll get you some of Cora’s clothes.”

“That’s what you think,” Cora said. She was standing in her bedroom door, a nasty little grin on her face and not much else on her body. You could see right through the filmy nightie but somehow I didn’t get a thrill. I wondered how long she’d been there.

She told me that, too. “Long enough to get the whole picture, you heel.” Big violet eyes stared insolently at Frances. “I guess you’re the dame my husband is sorry he didn’t marry.”

Fran’s dark eyes went wide at that, but she didn’t say anything. I said, “Now look, Cora, you and I have had our differences but this gal’s in a spot. Do you give her an outfit or do I have to slap you to sleep?”

“Just try slapping somebody,” Cora said. She brought a hand around, the one she’d been holding behind her, and she had one of those small pearl-handled purse-guns in it. I’d dropped my own rod when I picked up Fran. I felt kind of foolish.

I said, “Now take it easy, Cora. We’ll work this thing out.”

“You’re damned right we will, punk. We’ll work it out so it adds up to some real money. Not the kind you’ve been handing me lately.” She got a curious, speculative look on her beautiful pan. You had to hand her that much; she certainly was beautiful. But she was as hard as nails. She grinned. “In fact, Jerry, I don’t think I’ll need you any more.”

Well, I suppose I could have jumped her gun. At another time I’d have tried it, at least. But she was all keyed up to shoot and she had everything on her side. I mean, she was my wife; it was our apartment. Fran didn’t have many clothes on either and Cora could shoot the both of us and claim we’d violated the sanctity of the home. Probably Big Ed and this Ames guy would pay her a bonus for doing the job herself instead of just fingering us. A sweet setup, huh?

I said, “Okay, baby, it’s your play.”

She came out into the room, kicked my rod under a chair. Then, gun held almost negligently, she gestured us into the coat closet in the hall. The key turned. I’d never noticed it before but that damned closet door opened in. Fran and I were liable to stay put for a long time.

The situation wasn’t funny.

iii

ORA’S TINKLY LITTLE laugh, brittle as glass, came to us. After that we didn’t hear any more until the outside door closed. In the dark I wrapped a spare overcoat around Fran. She was shivering with the cold.

I said, “Cheer up, kid. We’re not licked yet.”

She didn’t sound frightened. “I didn’t know women like that really existed, Jerry. Do they, or is it all just a bad dream?”

“No,” I grated, “it’s bad, but it isn’t a dream. Cora is just part of the well-known Cassidy luck. Funny, you coming here, Fran. I mean, of the million and a half people in Los Angeles you’d have to pick Jerry Cassidy and his wife.” I didn’t tell her that she’d run from one killer straight into the arms of another. There didn’t seem to be any point to making her feel worse than she did. Well, I thought, I won’t have to worry any more about taking the rap for the Heinie Ziegler kill. I’ll just disappear like he did. And like Fran will.

Frances said, “You think she will try to sell us to Ed?”

“No, I’m sure of it.” I told her to move over out of the way, grabbed the doorknob with both hands, wedged my back against the wall and put my feet up under the knob. You get a lot of leverage that way. My luck still held. The knob came off in my hands. I hit the floor at the same time the other half of the knob did, only it had the edge. It was on the outside.

Fran flopped down beside me. “Jerry, are you hurt?”

“Only my vanity,” I told her. Suddenly I chuckled. Not because that was a new name for the place that hurt, but because I’d just remembered something. Up on the shelf in that closet was a kit of car tools; the ones I’d swiped out of the old car when I traded it in. You’ve probably done that same thing yourself. It’s one of those little not-quite-honest tricks that goes under the head of good sense. You don’t get any more allowance for a car with tools than you do without, so why waste ’em? They say crime don’t pay. Well, if lifting those tools was a crime, the moralists must have slipped because they sure came in handy. We were outside in two minutes.

Fran picked out an armload of Cora’s clothes, went into the bath. I prowled through Cora’s vanity, came up with two diamond rings I’d given her and a small roll of bills. You’ll maybe get a better idea of Cora when I tell you there were two C’s in that roll. Two hundred dollars, and not three hours ago she’d nicked me for my last twenty!

Fran came out. She’d picked the more quiet things: a brown sport suit, brown hat and shoes. She looked tired, but like a million to me.

“Fran,” I said, “I’ve found a little stake. Enough to do us for a while if we’re careful and stick together. We can’t make it separately. You ready to go with a bum like me?”

She gave me her hand. “Anywhere, Jerry Cassidy. If you’re a bum, we’ll be bums together.”

I couldn’t say anything to that. I just took her arm and went out to the living room, stooping on the way to get my rod from under the chair. We went down to my car. It had stopped raining and I thought that might be a good sign.

We were about half way down the first block when I happened to look in the rear vision mirror. A car without lights had just pulled up in front of the apartment. A couple of guys got out, started inside. Then one of them half turned, looked down the street and spotted my tail-light. Anyway, I guess that’s what made him wave his arm in my direction. The car without lights got under way. That’s all I waited to see. I romped on the accelerator till the Chewy thought it was a super-charged vibrator. We raced around the first corner on two wheels, straightened out from a skid that almost smashed us against the curb, reversed at the next turn and did it all over again. We were probably making about fifty but it seemed like ninety.

Fran was on her knees, looking out the rear window and cheering me on like it was a race of high school kids at three in the afternoon. There was a little pinggg and a slug cut through the window and smashed the mirror. All right, I thought, you’re asking for it. I yelled at Fran: “Get down on the floor, nit-wit! We’re gonna play games too.”

The scenery, consisting mostly of darkened store-fronts, was going by us a mile a minute; the street was still as wet as the bottom of the ocean, only slicker. Fran was down on the floor now, saying little prayers, and I hoped the Chevvy’s body was as good as the ads said. I didn’t slam on the brakes. I was afraid to on that greasy pavement. It wasn’t necessary, anyway. From the tail of my eye I saw the emblem on the other car’s nose creep up, then part of the hood. All I did was take my foot off the throttle. You’d think we had stopped dead. I put two quick slugs in an open window as the other job leaped ahead, not knowing how many guys were inside, not caring. The big car was a full length up on us before it went into a kind of tail spin. It skidded the width of the street, bounced back to the center, started whirling. Round and round it went and I knew its brakes were locked. I was half around in a U turn by this time. Somebody in the spinning car took a shot at us, missed, then the machine he was in suddenly quit acting like a dizzy ballet dancer and went flying off at a tangent. The last I saw of it was when it crashed a light pole.

I straightened out in the opposite direction and began fanning the air in earnest. The main reason was a prowl car’s siren. I didn’t want to meet any cops till I’d had time to stash Frances in a safe place. Maybe not even then. What with Big Ed being on familiar terms with State Senators and one thing and another, I had no assurance I’d be any safer in jail. This guy Ames had me kind of worried too. I mean, I thought his name had a familiar sound to it, but I couldn’t seem to place it. Fran had said he’d cursed Ed. Anybody big enough to curse Ed must be no small potatoes. Maybe he’s lieutenant-governor or something, I thought. Anyway, between the two of them, they were pretty sure to swing a mean drag politically; enough to see that a punk named Jerry Cassidy didn’t talk to the wrong cops...

I left the car in an alley and Fran and I walked the two blocks to the Hotel Mercer. It was a good middle-class house, not too gaudy, not too cheap. The clerk lifted an eyebrow at our lack of baggage.

“Fire,” I explained. “Practically ruined our flat, and what the fire missed the smoke-eaters took care of. We left it as is for the adjusters to worry over.”

He accepted that at face value. I thought it was pretty good myself. I peeled a twenty off Cora’s roll, asked for a suite, or at least two rooms with connecting bath. We got the two rooms, registering as John Jones and Frances Jones, brother and sister. Not that I expected Big Ed or Cora to ever use the register in a divorce action.

A hop took us up to the third, opened all the windows in both rooms, put them down again when I yelled at him, finally went away with a dollar and a request for some cigarettes. I gave Fran the old grin.

“Well, kid, here we are. Not so bad, huh?”

She nodded. “Pretty swell, Jerry. You, I mean.”

I said, “Nuts. You want something to eat? Drink?”

She said she didn’t. She took off her hat and the suit coat. “Mind if I stay in here with you for a while, Jerry?”

I saw she was getting the jeebies all over again. Well, who wouldn’t? I wasn’t feeling any too good myself. But it wasn’t sympathy that made me say, “Baby, you can stay with me the rest of our lives if you want to.”

Her nice mouth quirked a little at that. “The rest of our lives,” she said. “That may not be very long, Jerry.” I let that ride because there was no use kidding her. After a while she said, “Jerry, would you mind kissing me? Just once?”

It wasn’t any chore. I kissed her, then straightened and stood looking down at her. “Why did you want me to do that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just thought it might be a good idea.” She got up, took her— or rather Cora’s— hat and coat and went to the connecting door. “I’m going to lie down for a while, Jerry.”

“But look,” I said, “hey, you just claimed you wanted to stay in here with me!”

“I know,” she nodded. And then, “We gals are funny, Jerry. You’ll find that out some day.” The door closed behind her.

I just stood there.

SOMEBODY KNOCKED on the hall door and I thought it was the hop coming back with the cigarettes. “Come on in,” I said. The door opened quietly and there was Detective-Sergeant Slats McKenna, as big as life and just about as unpleasant.

To give you some idea of how unpleasant he really intended to be, he had his gun out in plain sight. His lean dark face was drawn, tired-looking, and the down-drooping mouth was more than just tired; it was cynical. His eyes looked like two burned holes in a navy blanket. He shut the door quietly behind him, stood leaning against it.

“Well, Jerry,” he said, “we do find out things about people, don’t we? Why’d you do it? I mean, why did you have to do it that way?”

“Why did I do what?” I sparred. I knew, of course. Somehow the guy had found out about the Heinie Ziegler kill. “And what do you mean by that way? What difference does it make?”

He gave me a screwy look. “So you do know what I’m talking about! I’d sort of hoped you wouldn’t.”

Well, I’d certainly left myself open on that one. That’s the trouble with cops and a guilty conscience. They ask you two questions at once and you’re so busy trying to evade one that you trip on the other.

He said, “All right, Jerry, turn around. Slowly, now. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“No,” I said, “I can see that. All you want to do is have my neck stretched about a yard.” I turned around, though, and he came up behind me, reached around and got my gun. He was sniffing it when I looked at him again. Like a bloodhound. I couldn’t quite figure this out. I mean, it had been thirty-seven days since I’d blasted Ziegler and even a punk as dumb as me wouldn’t be expected to carry a dirty gun all that time. Besides, it wasn’t the same gun. Big Ed had gotten me a new one. Then I remembered that I’d just got through using the rod on the hoods that were chasing us. Maybe, I thought, he don’t know about Ziegler. Maybe I’m being picked up for this other thing.

I said, “Now wait a minute, Slats. Maybe I can explain.”

“You don’t have to,” he said tiredly. “It’s all quite clear. Cora caught you cheating with this other dame and you let her have it.” He dropped my heater in his pocket. He could have made it vanish in thin air and I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was numb from head to foot already. I was supposed to have killed my wife!

Funny, huh? I’d really killed Ziegler. I’d more than likely killed a hood or two in that car. But was I wanted for either of those things? No, indeed. No, I was being arrested for murdering Cora. It was to laugh— if you felt like laughing. Me, I didn’t. My brain suddenly unlocked. Slats was saying: “I knew you hated her, Jerry. Everybody knew it. And you had plenty cause. But to do it over another woman— to just toss her out in the gutter like that... well, you never seemed like that kind of a guy, is all. Who is this dame posing as your sister?”

I tried not to look at Fran’s door. It was closed a little while ago, I knew. I hoped it still was; hoped she wasn’t getting a load of this. Oh, I know; it all looks quite simple on the surface. All I had to do was get Fran to tell Slats it couldn’t have been me who let Cora have it. She’d say, “Why, Big Ed did it, of course! Right after he got through killing Senator Delgardo!”

Only thing was, Slats wouldn’t believe it. There was the old record of Fran and I going together back in the days when we were all kids. There was my known hatred for Cora, and my hot gun. Ballistics, of course, could prove that it wasn’t the gun that had done for Cora, but at the moment I was all out of ballistics experts. Slats would naturally think Fran was trying to cover me and not doing a very good job of it. He’d say, “Okay, you can come along too, Fran.” Suppose he did that. Suppose we all went down to Headquarters. By this time Big Ed and the Ames party would thoughtfully have gotten rid of Delgardo’s body. There wouldn’t be any proof. They’d think Fran was lying, and let Big Ed spring her. Once sprung, it didn’t take a very vivid imagination to picture what would happen to her.

I wet my lips. “Look, Slats, how come you found me?”

He gave me a sour grin. “They found Cora first. After that there was a general alarm out for you. A prowl car located your car in an alley near here and it had a bullet hole in it— you must have missed Cora with that one— and so they sent me out because I could describe you better than most. Funny, huh?” He wasn’t liking this much better than I was.

I said yes, it certainly was very funny. All the time I kept wondering what to do about Fran. If I didn’t drag her into it, let Slats think she’d lammed, then what? Why, then he’d grab me and she’d be left alone. With a general alarm out, he couldn’t keep the pinch quiet. Big Ed, knowing Fran had been with me, would send a batch of hoods after her.

I almost went down on my knees to the guy. “Slats,” I jittered, “I didn’t kill Cora. She had it coming, and I admit I’m not so awfully sorry, but I didn’t kill her. I swear it.”

His dark eyes said I was a snivelling heel. “Who else would want to, punk?”

WELL, I’d look cute telling him Big Ed had done it. I wasn’t even sure he had. He’d probably ordered it done and had an unbreakable alibi. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight; maybe you can figure what I should have done. All I’m telling you is what I did. I took a chance on McKenna’s gun, came out of a sort of half crouch and hung a hard right on his lantern jaw. His head snapped back against the hall door. After that he just kind of folded up in sections, a little at a time, till he was sprawled out flat. All but his head. That still leaned against the door. I wondered if I’d broken his neck, got down on my knees beside him. His neck was all right. He was just out.

Fran’s door opened and she popped in, gave a little screech. “Oh, Jerry, is he dead?”

“No,” I said. “Better get your coat and hat, Fran. We’ve gotta go places before your dear husband hears where we are.” I was going through Slats’ pockets now, after my gun. Believe it or not, the guy had a big hole in the pocket he’d dropped my rod in. The damn thing had slid way down into the lining. I let it go, grabbed his own gun, clipped it under my arm as Fran came back. Together we went out and caught a down elevator. The lobby of the Mercer was L-shaped, the elevator bank around the turn from the desk. Fran and I got to the turn just as the night clerk glanced in that direction. I saw his mouth flop open, saw the movement of his body as his toe reached for the alarm button under the desk. He didn’t step on it, just waited to see if Slats McKenna was behind us.

I grabbed Fran’s arm, pulled her back out of sight. My left hand located the roll of dough, pressed it into her fist. The elevator operator was watching us now. I said, “Here, kid, don’t stop to argue. You’ve got clothes now, and money. Beat it out the back way, go down the alley and snag a cab on Fifth. Go to the Palais in Hollywood and wait for me.”

She shook her head. “Jerry, I can’t leave you like this. You’re in trouble of some kind. Besides me, I mean. I... I heard part of what Slats said. I can clear you.”

“You might,” I agreed. “If you lived long enough.” I put on the old act here. “It’s really for my sake, Fran. It sounds like Ed and this guy Ames might swing a lotta weight. I don’t want you picked up by either Ed or the cops till I know just where we stand. In other words you’ll do me more good at present if nobody knows where you are.” A fat house dick waddled around the ell, looking important. I gave Fran a shove toward the service entrance, tripped the fat guy as he went by. He started yelling bloody murder. So did the kid in the elevator. I took it on the lam out past the desk. The clerk had a gun. He shut his eyes as he pulled the trigger and naturally you can’t expect to hit much with your eyes closed. All he hit was one of the big plate-glass windows and this went out with a booming crash just as I made the sidewalk. Slats McKenna’s police job was at the curb; there was not a cab in sight. I scrambled into Slats’ car. The well-known Cassidy luck was still with me. Slats had taken his keys with him.

The clerk and the operator and the fat house dick were all stuck in the revolving door. I crawled out the far side of the car just as another car swung into the street. Two men got out, slanted toward me, not running, just a couple of jay walkers headed for the hotel. The car came on. I swiveled, ran smack into a second car. This one was without lights, coming from the other direction. I hadn’t even heard it. As I went to my hands and knees from the impact, the brakes locked. Two guns started a sort of rhythmic one-two, one-two blasting and from the sound of falling glass I guessed they were shooting at the revolving door of the Mercer. I had Slats’ rod out when the car nudged me again, not hard, just enough to knock me sprawling without exactly running over me. Somebody stepped on my hand. Somebody else kicked me in the head. Then both somebodies reached down and hauled me to my feet.

“Going some place, Cassidy? We’ll give you a lift.” This polite offer was followed by a swing that practically jerked my head right off and I was only vaguely conscious of being shoved into a car. Motor sound drummed in my ears. Presently that too faded out.

iv

BY AND BY I got the idea that somebody was shaking me, and opening my eyes I discovered that this was the first Jerry Cassidy idea that had panned out all evening. The guy really was shaking me. I was still in the car, in the back seat, and the guy working me over had an assistant. I was sandwiched between them.

Up front, under the wheel, was a third guy who was paying strict attention to his driving. We must have been miles away from the Mercer Hotel. I hoped Frances was too. The guy shaking me found out that I was awake and rapped his knuckles against my teeth.

The other one said, “Hey, cut that out. You been working for ten minutes tryin’ to get him awake and the minute you do you wanna slap him back to sleep. Where’s the percentage?”

“My pal,” I thanked him.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, and smacked me himself. He was nothing but a hypocrite, that guy. He took out a knife and flipped open a four inch blade and tested the edge on his thumb. I watched that knife with a great deal of interest, wondering which part of me he was going to try it on first. First my stomach got goose pimples, then my throat. He fooled me. He jabbed the point into my knee. “Where’s the dame?” he wanted to know.

“What dame?”

Jab went the knife again. This time in my ribs. He must have measured off the exact distance because it didn’t go past the ribs. He pretended it was a corkscrew, taking it out. The other guy had an arm under my chin. That’s all that kept me from yelling.

The guy with the knife wiped the blade fastidiously on the back of the front seat. “All right, Percy, leave him talk.” He had a face like a wedge. Percy took his arm away and I began to talk. You learn a lot of nice words in the navy. I gave them the whole works in one breath. Percy got hold of one of my flailing arms, shoved it up between my shoulder blades. “Shut up, punk.”

I shut up. The guy with the knife licked his lips. He reminded me more and more of a hyena I’d seen in the zoo when I was a kid. This hyena had been watching a keeper with a chunk of meat, and it was a toss-up which he wanted most: the keeper or the meat. Hatchet-face made up his mind on the exact spot he was going to carve next. He turned a little more in the seat, got my right ear between a thumb and finger and sliced off a little piece of the lobe. I let him have my right fist in the kidney. Percy snapped my left arm. I passed out.

I have no recollection of being taken out of the car or going up in the elevator or anything. The first I remember was waking up in a chair in front of a big desk, and on the other side of the desk was Big Ed Harmon. My broken left arm was swollen tight inside my coat sleeve and shooting flaming arrows of pain clear out the top of my head. Ed’s face would loom up big as a house for a minute, then fade out till you couldn’t see anything but the eyes.

Percy and Hatchet-face were telling him all about it. I gathered that they’d left a couple of their pals behind to find Frances, but that they couldn’t wait themselves because the blasting had brought down a wagon load of cops. Big Ed told them off as good as I could have done it myself. Not loudly, though. His voice sounded dead level, perfectly controlled.

“You damned fools, you knew there were cops in the neighborhood. We expected that when we heard about them finding the punk’s car in the alley. Why’d you have to start blasting?”

Percy cleared his throat. “We never started it. It was the punk himself. He had three-four mugs chasin’ him outa the lobby and we hadda stop ’em, didn’t we?”

A new voice said, “But you didn’t have to half kill Cassidy.”

Big Ed said, “I’ll take care of this, Ames.”

I turned my head a little and looked at this Ames party. Not until then had I associated the name with the man himself. The reason, of course, was that probably there weren’t more than a half dozen people in the whole town who called him Ames. He was A. H. Hutchins to the papers and the public at large. He owned the Title Guarantee Building; the one where Big Ed had his offices. He was chairman of the State Central Committee, on the boards of most of the banks, an honorary police commissioner and a lot of other things I was too busy to think of. He had nice curly white hair and one of those skins you love to touch. Boy, would I have loved to touch it! The fingers of my right hand started jerking I wanted to get at him so bad. My left hand didn’t do much of anything except hurt like hell.

THIS HUTCHINS guy was the first to notice I was awake. He said, “Get rid of these— these men.” Meaning Percy and Hatchet-face. Ed told them to get the hell out. I got the impression that they didn’t really know what it was all about. All they’d been told was to get me and the gal that was with me. The short wave had given Ed the general locality of where I might have holed up and he’d sent out a couple of cars to patrol the neighborhood. Even the cops didn’t know the gal was Big Ed’s wife, though.

He got up as soon as the two mugs were gone, came around the desk and held a glass to my lips. I drank. The room stopped going round and round. Ed sat on the edge of the desk, one foot on the floor, the other swinging. I remember he was wearing spats.

“Where is she, Jerry?”

I gave him a grin. “In China, I hope.”

He reached down, quite casually, got hold of my broken arm and twisted it. You could hear the bones grating. I went off my nut for a minute, tried to kick him. It was then I discovered that my ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair I was in. “Where is she, Jerry?”

I screamed then. I couldn’t help it. But screaming or not I stuck to my story. “She’s in China!” I yelled. “In China, China, China, you hear?”

Hutchins said, “Stop it, Harmon! I can’t stand it!” As if Big Ed had hold of his arm. I wanted to laugh at that, but somehow all I could do was sob. And here I’d been thinking I was a tough guy.

Ed let go my arm, held the glass to my mouth again. I slobbered all over it. Then I remembered I had two arms and tried to paste him one with the right. He just pushed it down as if I was a baby. “Did you tell Slats McKenna anything?”

So he knew about Slats being there too. I choked on the last swallow. “Sure,” I gasped. “Fran and I told him the whole works. He oughta be along most any minute now.”

Mr. Hutchins said, “Great Scott!”

Ed just laughed at him. “Imagine me working for you all these years. Why, you’re a weak sister, Ames, and I thought you were a big shot. I might have guessed when you went haywire and shot Delgardo. Well, we’ll have a show-down after we get this thing straightened out. Maybe you’ll be working for me.”

Mr. Hutchins groaned.

Ed said, “Don’t worry, the punk didn’t tell McKenna anything. He bopped the dick and lammed. All we’ve got to do is find Frances and then we can wash the whole thing up.”

The telephone rang. Ed swung around, answered it. “Okay,” he said, “bring her right up.” I almost passed out. Something told me the “her” they were bringing up was Frances. Desperately I got the kinks out of my neck and really looked around. We were in the living room of the Beverly Hills penthouse. I hadn’t known it before.

The door opened and two guys carried Frances in. They must have brought her up in the freight elevator. Even the dumbest clerk on earth wouldn’t have passed them like that. Her feet and hands were taped very neatly and there were two strips of adhesive crossed over her lips. X marking the spot, I thought. The spot where Ed will kick her teeth in. He didn’t do it right away, though. He just jerked his big, good-looking head toward a fireside divan and the two lugs dumped her on it. Her eyes met mine with a sort of horrified surprise. I guess I didn’t make a very pretty picture. I could feel the smear of dried blood on my cheek where the guy had operated on my ear.

The two guys looked kind of like the ones that had got out of the car, there in front of the Mercer. I couldn’t be sure because it had been pretty dark in the street at the time and I’d had one or two other things on my mind. I couldn’t see that it made much difference anyway. Neither Frances nor I were going to do any identifying.

Ed said quietly, “You have any trouble?”

“A little,” one guy admitted. “She’d already gotten a cab and was on her way by the time we found out all the angles. We had to wait for the cab to come back. Then it was duck soup. The Palais is a nice dump,” he added.

“I’ll make a note of that,” Ed said, and Mr. Hutchins, over by the windows, cursed him irritably. “Let’s get this over with, Harmon!”

Ed said, “Sure, Ames, sure. You want to take care of it personally?”

Mr. Hutchins turned green and looked like he was going to be sick. “Hell, man, no! How can you be so callous?”

“Well,” Ed said, “after all, it wasn’t I who killed—” He broke off as Mr. Hutchins lifted a shaking hand. Then, smiling a little as at some secret joke, he said, “Excuse it, please,” and told the two mugs to scram. They went out. That left only him and Mr. Hutchins and Fran and me.

HUTCHINS said accusingly, “See here, Harmon, it’s true I shot Senator Delgardo, but it was in a moment of panic. I’m not a cold-blooded murderer.”

“No? Then what would you suggest we do with this pair of tramps— give ’em our blessing and turn ’em loose?”

“Couldn’t... couldn’t you have your men...”

Ed gave him a hard little laugh. “Listen, lame-brain, you and I are in this together. It doesn’t make any difference to the police who actually pulled the trigger on Delgardo. It was my gun and it’s my penthouse. Nobody but the four of us here even knows the senator is dead. We’ll just keep it that way, and after a while there’ll only be two who know. You and I will take care of it.”

The telephone buzzed again. This seemed to be Big Ed’s busy night. He picked it up, listened a moment and for the first time I actually saw emotion register on his face. He looked scared. Then he slammed the phone down, whirled on Mr. Hutchins. “Okay, punk, we’ll have to make this fast. A flatfoot named McKenna is on his way up.”

“Can’t... can’t you have him stopped downstairs?”

“Sure,” Ed said. “Sure I can but I’m not going to. Now don’t go off your nut. Just give me a lift with the punk’s chair.”

They lifted me, chair and all, and carried me over to what looked like a solid-paneled wall. I couldn’t see how Ed worked it but the wall opened up and there was a cute little room behind it. It was already occupied. Yep, that’s right. Senator Delgardo was lying on a leather couch with a very pretty Afghan pulled up to his chin and a look of utter peace on his face. Somebody had very thoughtfully closed his eyes for him. I wondered if I’d look that nice— afterward.

Ed had a roll of adhesive. He slapped a strip of it around my right arm, pinning it to the chair. I tried to bite him when he tackled my mouth but it was no go. That got taped too. He went back and got Fran and tossed her carelessly on the floor beside the senator’s couch.

Then, appraisingly, he looked at Mr. Hutchins. “You’d better stay in here too, baby. You’re too hysterical for McKenna. You’d make him nervous.”

“I want a gun,” the old man babbled. “I want a gun in case anything happens. I won’t be taken alive, I tell you.”

“If you don’t shut up,” Ed said, “I’ll take you myself.” He went back into the big room and got a gun though. He tossed this through the panel, like a bone to a whining pup. The panel closed.

The little room wasn’t soundproof. You could hear Ed moving around out there, straightening things. It seemed like an awfully long time before somebody opened the hall door and said, “Lieutenant McKenna, sir.”

Ed said, “Hello, Slats,” in a careless voice and there was a faint rustle of papers. I could imagine him sitting at his desk, very preoccupied with his work. “What’s new with you?”

“Same old sixes and sevens,” Slats said. “Nothing startling except I want that heel Cassidy. You knew he murdered his wife, didn’t you?”

Ed said yes, he’d heard about it over the radio. “Too bad about Jerry. I kept telling him to lay off the liquor, but you know how some of these guys are. Have a slug yourself, Slats?” There was a tinkle of glass.

Slats said, “No. No, thanks, I’ve got a bad liver and I have to watch it.” I could picture him walking around nervously while Ed drank. Slats never could stay still very long. Presently he went off at a tangent. “What time did Senator Delgardo go home?”

I thought Mr. Hutchins was going to faint. His eyes rolled up in his head and he leaned weakly against the panel, gasping. If it hadn’t been for that damned chair I’d have tackled him then. Even bound I could have made something happen.

Ed, taking his time, answered the question. “About eleven, I think. Why?”

“I just wondered. Did he take his chair with him? There’s one missing. I can see the leg marks in the rug and there don’t seem to be another chair in the room that would fit. Maybe you made him a present of it?”

There was a hell of a long pause this time. Finally Big Ed said with a trace of irritation: “What’s on your mind, McKenna? I paid for the chair. What I did with it is none of your business though I don’t mind telling you somebody burned a hole in the fabric and I had it taken out.”

“Well,” Slats said, “I hope there wasn’t somebody tied in it at the time. I mean the hole might have been burned in the party first, huh?”

IT WAS very quiet for a minute; so quiet I thought Slats might have gone and I got jittery. Trying to get out of the chair I overturned it instead and fell on my face, skidding smack into Hutchins. Well, he’d heard everything I had and was pretty jittery to start with. He fell down on top of me and the gun went boom-boom-boom right in my ear. Like an echo another gun blasted out in the living room, only this one did it just once. That was like a signal touching off a whole string of cannon crackers down in Chinatown. Maybe it was because I had my ear to the floor that it sounded so plain; the shooting wasn’t going on in the living room. It was farther away than that. I tried to scrooge around to see what Mr. Hutchins was doing all this time, and then the wall panel opened and Slats came in.

He bent down and took the gun out of Mr. Hutchins’ fist. Mr. Hutchins didn’t seem to mind a bit. He didn’t look quite as peaceful as State Senator Delgardo but he was just as dead. The last of those three slugs he’d fired had gone in his mouth. Maybe he’d done it on purpose.

Slats still didn’t say anything. He righted my chair, went over and untied Frances. There was a lot of noise out in the living room now. Sounded like the marines had landed. A harness bull with a sergeant’s stripes came to the panel and said, “All clear, Lieutenant. Big Ed’s awake if you want to talk to him.”

Slats nodded gloomily. His lantern jaw needed a shave and his dark eyes had pouches under them. Fran got stiffly to her knees, clumped over to my side. “Oh, Jerry, what have they been doing to you?” She fumbled at the adhesive on my mouth. It hurt so bad coming off I forgot about my busted arm for a minute. Slats seemed to come to some kind of a decision and helped Fran get me out of the chair. When I tried to stand up I fell flat on my face again. A couple of cops came in at that and picked me up and carried me out to the divan by the fireplace.

Slats looked down at me threateningly. “You wanna drink?”

I did. But all I did was give him a grin that he mistook for a sneer and say, “Nuts, I’m off it.”

He sneered right back at me. “Oh, yeah?” He turned away to answer somebody’s question, turned back after a minute and said carelessly, “By the way, you didn’t kill your wife with that gun. We checked.”

Frances, kneeling beside me, gave him an indignant, “Of course he didn’t! I could have told you that!”

Slats said, “He did a pretty good job on Heinie Ziegler, though.”

I nearly passed out. Well, I’d been expecting it and here it was. I said weakly, “How... how did you know?”

“Your gun, sappo, your gun. When they brought Ziegler’s body in we checked that too. The slugs matched.”

“But they couldn’t have!” I yelled. “Hell, it wasn’t the same gun! And besides, Ziegler’s been dead for... for thirty-seven—”

“Not even that many hours, kid. You killed him when he was chasing you in that car. I didn’t know about it when I collared you in the Mercer; didn’t know the gal was Fran, but give a case enough cops and they’re bound to fit some of the pieces eventually. Even dumb cops.”

I don’t know. Maybe it was the news that I wasn’t a murderer. Maybe it was just looking at his face, and at Fran; maybe it was my broken arm that made my vision get kind of fuzzy all of a sudden. Somehow I got a handkerchief out and blew my nose and it sounded just like a foghorn at sea. Everybody in the room turned to stare at me resentfully. Even Big Ed Harmon who was cuffed to his chair and submitting to an interne’s cursed instructions. Apparently all that was wrong with Big Ed was a creased scalp.

Slats said, keeping his voice low, “If you hadn’t been such a punk you’d have smelled the frame, Jerry. It’s the old gag, pinning a trick kill on a new recruit so he won’t squawk when he’s really told to do something. Only sometimes it’s a real kill and that’s what I was afraid of. That’s why I wanted you to break out of the racket before it was too late.” He reached down, touched Fran’s head lightly. “I’ve got him a job, kid. Not much dough in it, but it’s the right kind.”

I COULDN’T see why he was explaining this to her. They seemed to have something in common that I didn’t know about. I said, “Okay, okay, I’m a punk and I don’t know which end is up. So maybe you’ll tell me how you got wise to so much.”

“Sure,” he said. “I was up here earlier in the evening looking for Big Ed to ask him about Heinie Ziegler. We got a pick-up order from St. Louis on Heinie. An old rap. Well, Ed was still at the office but I saw Senator Delgardo who was waiting. That’s how I knew he’d been here.

“Then we found your wife, and trying to find you we found where somebody had busted out of your hall closet. I figured that might have been Cora at first. Later on the boys bring in a wrecked car and a dead guy named Ziegler who I knew used to work for Big Ed. You were also working for Big Ed. And when I finally woke up after you bopped me there in the hotel— well, I got curious about this sister of yours and got a pretty fair description of Frances, Ed’s wife. It all seemed to tie into Ed, see?”

“Kind of,” I admitted. The interne was working on my busted arm now and I wasn’t feeling so hot.

“Well,” Slats went on, “Ballistics reported that your slug hadn’t killed your wife, but that it had done for Heinie Ziegler. I couldn’t, of course, know that it was Heinie you thought you’d killed before. I just figured it was a similar frame on account of you hadn’t gone to see Kramer at C.B.S. like you promised. Again it sounded like Big Ed’s work.

“Then there was the battle in front of the Mercer. The clerk and the house dick said you’d been snatched. I wondered what had happened to Fran— if it was Fran. It stood to reason that both of you knew something big; something Big Ed didn’t want to spread, and that reminded me of Senator Delgardo who I’d seen here. Anyway, it was a fair guess that somebody would make a try for the gal, so I just waited around till a couple of guys started asking questions of a cabby. Then I followed the two guys out to the Palais and there you are.”

“Like hell I am!” I snorted. “Who did kill Cora, and why’d you let those mugs grab Fran?”

“We’ve got the boys that killed Cora,” he said quietly. “She came to Big Ed with the news that she had you locked up in that closet. She wanted money. He paid her off by sending her back with Heinie Ziegler’s crew and they just dumped her on the way. About Fran: I didn’t have a damn thing but guesses so far. I figured the two mugs would take Fran to where you were, and if I couldn’t do any better I’d hand Big Ed a kidnap rap.”

I grunted. “Well,” I said, “I guess I helped some. I sort of helped wreck Mr. Hutchins anyway.”

“If he didn’t commit suicide,” Slats sneered. “The only thing I can think of you’re good for is for really tough guys to practice on. Just a punk at heart.”

Fran said indignantly, “He is no such thing!”

Slats grinned then, shook his head. “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. When you’re finally free of Big Ed maybe you can explain the answers to the punk. You’ll probably have to.”

I saw a hot flush creep up around Fran’s eyes and it made me sore. I said, “Hey, you big lug, whadda you mean by that crack?”

“You wouldn’t know,” he said. “You’d never guess— punk.”

______________________

2: The Miracle Man
Eric Howard

(Howard Ernest Schaefle, 1895-1943)

Detective Fiction Weekly, March 19, 1938

IF IT MEANT anything at all, it was over my head. But a thousand people, mostly women, were eating it up, nodding their heads, murmuring to themselves “How true!” This fellow up on the platform, in the auditorium, was as handsome as a matinee idol, Mangasarius, he called himself. No first name, no initials. Just Mangasarius; like Caesar or Napoleon. Mangasarious, the Great!

In his forties, perhaps, with a little gray at the temples and a full head of curling dark hair. Big, strong, with a suggestion of great vitality about him. Graceful gestures and a voice that was a velvet flow in the great hall. What he said didn’t have to make sense.

He had a good racket, if it was a racket. Free lectures, like this, several mornings a week. Just enough to lure them into special courses of lectures, for small groups, at a hundred bucks a course; and private lessons, at still higher fees. Besides that, he collected anything they wanted to give— money, stocks and bonds, property, jewels.

That’s why I was here. Mrs. Rufus G. Hyde was about to give Mangasarius something, and Rufus objected. He didn’t know what to do about it, so he hired me to watch her and Mangasarius. If she handed him a necklace, a bunch of securities, or a wad of dough, I was to try to get the goods on him, evidence that would show he had unduly influenced her.

A tough job, but Rufus was paying the bills. Rufus had plenty of the root of all evil; he could afford to let his wife shell out to a grifter, if Mangy— as I got to calling him— was a grifter. But Rufus hated to see the jack he had taken away from people dropped into Mangy’s hand. Rufus hated to be out-smarted.

Mangy spread his hands in a wide gesture. “Let us not pray, dear friends,” he said in that dulcet voice. “Rather, let us pause for a meditative moment. Let us look inward. Let us tap that reservoir of power, that well of spirit, that dwells within our hearts.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then he gestured finally and walked briskly off the platform. Immediately, a beautiful girl in a white dress came out. She was Mangy’s niece and co-worker, so he said. She went into a crisp, businesslike number. Mangy’s book was on sale in the lobby; they’d better buy it or they’d never know happiness. It was only four dollars. And for those who wanted to take Mangy’s special course of lectures, the line formed on the left. For private lessons in the Miracle Way, which was what Mangy modestly called his method, they’d have to see her, Dolores, the niece, and pony up. She announced other lectures. She was a bright, clever baggage, but she didn’t have Mangy’s velvet flow. But she sold them.

I was watching Mrs. Rufus G. Hyde. She was a little woman, and she must have been very pretty once. Now you could see that she was desperately trying to hang on to her youth. She had been through the mill— diet, facials, hair dyes, massage and all the rest. She looked worked over. She had a kind of silly look on her face, and there was probably only one idea in her head— to try to stay young and beautiful. She was getting on to fifty, and it was hard to take, because she had the idea that she should always be a beautiful twenty-year-old. She had nerves. She fidgeted. But Mangy was her hope. He could give her everlasting youth, as no one else could. He had even implied that his dope would conquer death.

I chewed my gum and looked at her. Also, at the girl beside her. Her social secretary, a sweet blonde package named Irene. The blonde wasn’t falling for Mangy’s line. She didn’t need it— yet. She had youth and beauty and allure. When Mangy’s dark, beautiful niece, Dolores, went into the sales song and dance, Irene smiled cynically. She knew the ropes.

THE MEETING was breaking up. People moving around. All the dames had a glow in their eyes. Mangy had given them something, whatever it was. Faith, hope, but no charity.

My job was to follow Mrs. Rufus. I did. But my eyes were on Irene. She could have had my vote in any beauty contest— bathing beauty, especially. The girl had everything.

Mrs. Rufus was heading for the hall, back-stage, that led to Mangy’s office here in the auditorium. That’s where he gave his small group lectures. Private lessons were dished out at his home, a big old place on a knoll overlooking a lake on the edge of town. Dolores, the niece, lived there, too. And a few servants.

Dolores met Mrs. Rufus and greeted her warmly, cordially. They were going to collect. For Irene, she had only an icy nod, a cool “How do you do?” No soap from Irene, and she probably knew the secretary was trying to keep the old dame from tossing baubles into Mangy’s kitty.

“Darling,” Mrs. Rufus gushed to Dolores, “tell the dear master that I have arranged it. I—”

“Don’t you wish to see him now, dear Mrs. Hyde?” asked Dolores sweetly. “He expects you.”

“Oh, dear. May I?” Mrs. Rufus fluttered.

Dolores led her to the door that opened into the suite of offices. I saw another girl at a typewriter as the door opened. She got up, at a word from Dolores, and led Mrs. Rufus on to the dear master’s private office. Well, I wasn’t going to see what she gave him, or hear what she had arranged.

I moved up next to Irene.

“Great stuff, isn’t it?” I said.

She froze me, but said, “What?”

“The Miracle Way,” I said. “The master, Mangasarious.”

“Excuse me,” she said, and hurried through the mob to a tall, quick-moving young fellow in gray tweeds who was going towards the master’s office. She joined him and they went on together. Just before they entered the office, she looked back over her shoulder. I had been staring at her, but I wasn’t then. I was telling the fussy old woman next to me that it was great stuff. She was agreeing.

They went into the office. The typist wasn’t at her desk. Then the door closed.

I missed Dolores in the crowd, for a few minutes. Then I heard her talking to a woman near me. She had been somewhere and had come back. She was telling the woman, who wore expensive clothes and some real jewelry, that Mangy would see her soon.

Then Dolores moved off toward the office. But she didn’t go in. She went to another door and entered that. Her own private office, I guessed.

Irene, Mrs. Rufus, and the young fellow in tweeds came out of the door, maybe ten minutes later. There was a loud scream and the girl I had seen at the typewriter ran after them, pointing her finger, crying “They killed him!”

I CRASHED THROUGH the mob and got to the door. Dolores ran out of her room and started asking excited questions. She called to somebody to clear the hall. Mrs. Rufus looked dazed and happy. Irene looked mad. The young fellow, holding both women by the arm, looked silly and surprised.

The typist was still yelling, “They killed him!” And the women of the audience didn’t want to be shoved out. If it was their dear master the girl was yelling about, they wanted to lynch the three who had just left him. Several of them— Amazons, too— made a rush for Irene and the other two. I spread my arms and shoved all three back to the door.

“Back up.” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Irene snapped something angrily at me. The young fellow began, “I say, sir, you can’t...” Mrs. Rufus was still dizzy.

I saw that some of the ushers were herding the gang out, so I shoved these three back into the office.

“Police!” yelled the typist.

“The marines are here,” I told her and grabbed her shoulder. I tossed her into the office, too.

Then I joined them and shut the door, snapping the lock.

“Sit down!” I said.

“What authority have you to do this?” Irene asked.

I winked at her and reached for the telephone. Dolores was coming out of Mangy’s private office. And she left the door open.

“Dead!” she murmured, like a girl in a trance. “Dead! Stabbed! My uncle...”

I could see Mangy. He was at his big, shiny desk. He had been using the phone. At least, he had his hand on it and the phone was off the cradle. Now he was sprawled forward over the desk, and I saw the bright handle of a knife over his left shoulder.

I picked up the phone and called Headquarters.

“Joe Burke talking,” I told the desk sergeant. “Give me Kelly— homicide.”

“Another murder? Wherever you go, Joe—”

“Give me Kelly!”

Kelly came on the wire and said he would be right there, with his staff. I hung up and grinned at the suspects.

“We’ll wait for the cops,” I said pleasantly.

“You fool,” Irene snapped at me, “we didn’t kill him— we couldn’t have killed him.”

“Tell it to Kelly,” I said. “Don’t leave here. I want to take a look at him.”

I went to the other door and looked in. The knife must have gone right into his heart. I gave his office the once-over, standing in the door so I could watch the others. The typist was sobbing; maybe she liked Mangy, or maybe she wondered where she’d get another job. The look of goofy happiness on the face of Mrs. Rufus had changed; now she looked stricken, gray, pathetic. Irene was downright mad. The young fellow still looked silly.

There was a coat closet at one side, the door partly open. The office was on the ground floor, with large windows on a court. They were closed. The whole place was furnished like a movie set— a six-inch carpet, chairs upholstered in velvet, heavy drapes at the windows, swell pictures.

Opposite the coat closet was another door, closed. I took a chance and crossed to it. The door was unlocked. It led into a simply furnished office with a desk, a typewriter, a dictaphone and a filing cabinet. This was where Dolores worked— the room she had entered from outside.

They were all sitting there when I went back. But the young fellow had been leaning over to whisper to Irene. Then Kelly started hammering on the door and I let him in.

“Some day,” he growled, “you’ll be the corpse at one of these killings. Who’s dead and why?”

HIS GANG got to work in Mangy’s office. Kelly started questioning the others. According to the typist, the three— Mrs. Rufus, Irene and the young fellow— had come out of his office. She had heard the young fellow say, “That’s that!” She had gone to Mangy’s door, to give him some letters to sign, and had seen him with the knife in his back. She had run out after the others, accusing them.

The young fellow was the nephew of Mrs. Rufus— Ronald Darrow. He and Irene admitted they had followed Mrs. Rufus into Mangy’s office, hoping to dissuade her from giving him a necklace worth ten grand, hoping to scare Mangy into refusing it. Mrs. Rufus would not be dissuaded and Mangy wouldn’t be scared. He had been smooth and hypocritical; he had said he could not reject the free-will offerings of his devoted followers, who wished to help him with his great work.

“Did you threaten him?” Kelly asked.

“I told him he could be stopped,” Ronald admitted.

“And I said we’d stop him,” Irene added. She was still angry.

Mrs. Rufus couldn’t talk much. She was dazed. But Kelly got out of her that she had left the office a moment or two before the others, who were still talking to Mangy. The door was open, but her back was turned.

“Then either one of you,” Kelly observed, looking at Irene and Ronald, “could have stabbed him without her seeing you. Which one did?”

Ronald put his hand over Irene’s. She smiled bitterly.

“You fool!” she said to Kelly.

Kelly grinned at her, said: “We’ve got a jail matron who likes to work over dames like you.”

He had told one of his men to find the necklace. There wasn’t any. Mrs. Rufus had given it to Mangy, he had dropped it into a desk drawer. But it wasn’t there now; or anywhere else.

I went out to a phone booth and called Rufus. He exploded, when I told him what had happened, and said he’d come right down. I met him outside when his big car slid up to the curb. Rufus was a handsome, gray-haired, Pink-faced old boy; gruff and surly on the surface, but with a hearty laugh. He put away plenty of good food and liquor, and he had an eye for a pretty girl. He grabbed my arm and started cussing; he cussed like a longshoreman. Then we went in.

He put his arm protectingly around his wife, nodded to Irene and Ronald, glared at Kelly.

He suggested to Kelly that they all be allowed to leave.

“Yeah?” said Kelly. “Where were you when this guy was stabbed? If you knew your wife was goin’ to toss him the necklace— if there was any necklace— you’d be just the one to bump him.”

Rufus got apoplectic. I put my hand on his arm and whispered, “Take it easy, boss. Don’t let him ride you.”

The reporters were in, by this time, and the camera boys. With all of Mangy’s followers in town, it was a swell story. In spite of Rufus’ objections, they shot pictures all over the place.

Dolores, sitting by herself in a corner, was a perfect picture of a grief-stricken niece. I ambled over to her.

“Sister,” I said, “where were you when this happened?”

She looked at me, wiping her eyes. “I?” she asked. “Out there in the hall, talking to—”

“You ducked into your office,” I told her, “a minute or two before this other girl started yelling ‘Murder!’ You could have got through that door between the offices and up behind him— he wouldn’t expect you to knife him— and out again. Neat timing, but you could have done it.”

She stared at me. “You think that I...”

I shrugged. “You had a chance, too,” I said. “As much chance to do it as they had.”

She started sobbing. “My poor dear uncle!” she said. “He was so good! He did so much for others! Now—”

Kelly cut in with an announcement. “I’m holding you, Darrow,” he said, “on suspicion. Mr. Hyde, you can take your wife and this girl home. But I warn you—”

Ronald Darrow was as tense as a race-horse. He stepped up to Kelly, said, “You damned fool!”, and swung at him. Kelly blocked the punch and socked the idiot. Two bulls grabbed him, then. Rufus protested, but it didn’t do any good. There was nothing he could do. Irene put her arms around Ronald, kissed him, whispered something to him. Then Rufus shook his hand and said he’d send his lawyer around, get him out quick. I went out to the car with Rufus.

“If you were any good on your job, Burke,” he snapped at me, “you’d have prevented this.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And if you hadn’t let the missus give Mangy trinkets, it wouldn’t have happened. You firing me? Or do you want me to stay on the job and find out who did kill him?”

He was mad enough to bite. Mrs. Rufus and Irene were in the car.

“Ronald didn’t do it,” he said. “Nor Irene. So it’s no concern of mine.”

“Okay. Then I quit, huh? No concern of mine, either. But if you think Kelly can’t build a case against Ronald, you’re wrong. Somebody has to be tried and convicted. Looks like Ronald is the guy— unless Kelly switches to Irene. She’d be an accessory in any case. Or he would. But they’re your friends, not mine.” I shrugged and started away.

“Wait, Burke!” he protested. “Stay on the job.”

“Murder cases come higher, boss. From now on the ante is raised. Fifty a day and expenses.”

He growled, but agreed.

I WENT BACK to Kelly. He was questioning Dolores, pretty gently, for him. I grinned to myself. I was the only one who knew she had had a chance at Mangy. There’d probably be a lot of women willing to testify she’d been talking to them from the time the meeting ended until the typist yelled that he was dead.

The necklace was missing. Kelly’s men searched the place, but couldn’t find it. The knife belonged to Mangy— an Oriental thing he had picked up in India, Dolores said, where he had studied with the masters, whoever they are.

Kelly had traced the call Mangy had been making. He had been talking to a rich divorcee, Mrs. Lindsey Barrett, when the knife had silenced him. She was one of his followers. She had been trying, ever since he was silenced, to get him again. One of Kelly’s dicks told her he was dead and she must have fainted. A cop went up to her penthouse to see how she was taking it and found her maid had called two doctors and a nurse.

Kelly’s mob was moving out, taking Ronald with them. Kelly stopped and said to me, “Joe, if you know anything, come clean! I’ll get your license, this time, if you hold out on us!”

“It’s open and shut, ain’t it?” I said. “Ronald or Irene had to do it, didn’t they?”

“I’ll know more when we get the fingerprint checkup,” he grunted. “I’m just telling you—”

“I’d better come clean. Yeah!” I grinned at him. “Or you’ll get my license. Seems like I heard that before, somewhere.”

When they had gone, Dolores and the typist, Agnes Smith, were left. They had been warned not to leave town, of course, and to keep in touch with Kelly. He had men tailing them, too.

Agnes was a dumb bunny. She didn’t count. But Dolores— there was a deep one.

“What will you do now?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can only try to carry on his work as he would have wished me to do. But I am ill-trained. I don’t know—”

“He really had something, huh?” I asked. “Not just a grifter?”

She looked puzzled. “Grifter?” she said. “What’s that? He was a great teacher, a man who taught people how to live richly and fully. He brought them an ancient wisdom with which to cure the maladies of our age.”

“Made money, didn’t he?”

“His grateful pupils made him many gifts, of course. But he taught the poor, too, for nothing.”

“You think this Ronald guy did for him?”

She spread her hands, gracefully. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I know only that Ronald Darrow wanted his aunt to give him money and that he and her secretary, Irene Farr, had threatened my uncle before. I heard them. They were angry because they thought he had influenced Mrs. Hyde against them. He hadn’t, really. It was her own thought— that money would do Ronald no good until he had learned to live.”

“Until he had accepted Mangasarius as a teacher, you mean?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “But Ronald was a stubborn materialist. Irene, too.”

“Why didn’t he get money from Rufus? He’s a materialist, too, or I never met one.”

Dolores smiled. “He had tried and failed. You see, Mr. Hyde wanted security, always, and Ronald naturally had none.”

“Why did he want money?”

“To buy an interest in a business, so that he could marry Irene. So Mrs. Hyde said.”

She looked up at me, out of her moist, large dark eyes. She smiled forgivingly.

“And you suggested that I,” she said, “might have— stabbed my uncle?”

“Sorry, sister,” I said. “I just meant you had a chance. He was your uncle, huh?”

She gave me. that sweet, forgiving smile again. “How terrible it must be to be a detective!” she said. “Do you distrust everyone, everything? Have you no faith?”

I got red and ran my finger around my collar. “A dick can’t take anything for granted,” I said.

I WENT AWAY from there and down to the office of the Messenger, where I prowled through the paper’s morgue. There wasn’t much about Mangy. He had advertised his meetings, but they hadn’t run many news stories about him. In one or two brief notices, Dolores was mentioned. Then I dropped around to the printing company that had published his book. Mangy had paid for it, cash in advance, and they had run off five thousand copies. He had just placed an order for another five thousand. At four dollars a crack, he was doing pretty well for himself. The head of the company was moaning because he had read the extras; with Mangasarius dead, the order would probably be cancelled.

“Have you no faith?” I handed him Dolores’ line. “Leave it to his niece. She’ll carry on and sell his books. Maybe he’ll autograph ’em, if there’s ink in heaven.”

But I didn’t gather up any info about Mangy. He had hit town a year ago, returning from years of study in India, so he said. Dolores had joined him a little later. He had gone over big from the start. Once the dames heard him talk, they were sold— and told their neighbors over the back-fence or the bridge-table. The cops had nothing on him; they can’t tackle a great teacher like Mangy unless complaints pour in. A few husbands, like Rufus, may have kicked; but it was their fault if their wives tossed presents to Mangy.

Getting into the penthouse apartment of Mrs. Lindsey Barrett, where I went next, was no cinch. I finally got in, but I didn’t see the lady. One of her doctors talked to me. She was suffering from severe shock; she had tried to commit suicide by jumping over the parapet that surrounded her garden. The doctor was a dry, cool, spectacled fellow; he made no bones about his feeling for Mangy. Mrs. Barrett had refused medical care and had put her trust in Mangy’s Miracle Way.

“Like hundreds of other fool women,” the medico said savagely, “she was in love with the fellow.”

“How did he feel about her?”

“Mrs. Barrett is an extremely rich woman,” he said. “Excuse me, please. And do not come here again. Mrs. Barrett can see no one.”

“Okay, doc,” I said, and strolled out past the butler.

I had skipped lunch. I gathered up all the papers and found a steak and chop joint. I chewed a thick one, washed it down with a bottle of beer, and read the papers. Kelly had Ronald hanging. His prints were on the knife along with Mangy’s. He admitted he had touched it as it lay on the desk before him while he had argued with Mangy. No other prints. Both Ronald and Irene told the same story: they had accused Mangy of hypnotizing Mrs. Rufus and had threatened him. He had laughed at them, fingering the necklace the old lady had given him. But they hadn’t killed him. He was alive, and triumphant, when they walked out. If that was true, he had been killed during the few minutes that elapsed before the typist gathered up her letters and started in to him.

I thought of Dolores again. She might still be the candidate.

Then I saw a sob sister’s story. She had been to Mrs. Barrett’s penthouse, too, and she had it from the rich dame’s secretary that Mangy and Mrs. Barrett had planned a trip to Yuma— and marriage. They were talking about it when he was stabbed.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And what does that add up to?”

I didn’t know, but I checked on Mrs. Barrett’s ex. No, he wasn’t interested; married again, and on a world cruise. Who else wouldn’t want her to marry Mangasarius? Some of her family, maybe; others who might hope to inherit something from her or otherwise get it; perhaps a disappointed suitor Mangy had cut out. But how could any of those get in and stab Mangy at just that time? No dice.

I still gave Dolores a good deal of thought. She was smooth; Kelly didn’t suspect her. She put on a good act. Even if the cops had suspected her, they would have a time proving anything. Mangy’s followers would spring to her defense; her act would convince any jury. Dressed in white, with her forgiving smile and her dark eyes, she looked too angelic for murder.

I phoned Rufus from the steak and chop dump.

“Listen,” I said, “they’ve got a lot on your wife’s niece. How much is it worth to you if I dig up the real killer and get Ronald out?”

“I’m already paying you well, Burke,” he said. “Are you earning your wages? No!”

“All right, then. I’ll quit. Never let it be said Joe Burke hung on to a job when he wasn’t earning his pay. Good-by, Mr. Hyde.”

“Wait!” he snapped. “It’s worth— anything— to get Ronald out. Mrs. Hyde—”

“Ten grand?”

“You mean ten thousand dollars?” he gasped. “Don’t be absurd, Burke.”

“How much?”

“Well, maybe five thousand.”

“Take you!” I said. “Put it in writing, send it right down to my office. And don’t welsh!”

He agreed. “You know who killed that... that faker?” he asked.

“You’ll get my report in due time,” I said. I didn’t like that nickel nurser too well.

“Try to recover my wife’s necklace!” he begged.

“For another five grand,” I said, and hung up on his sob.

I felt better, then. If I got a break, it would mean money in the pocket.

WHEN I STEPPED into my two by four office, my confidential secretary, Rose O’Brien, gave me a disgusted look.

“Where have you been, big boy? Playing marbles? I wish you’d stick around and take some of these fool calls.”

I leaned over and kissed her ear. “Mister Burke!” she said.

“Tell me, babe. Who’s bothering you?”

“Captain Kelly and a dozen others.”

“Just tell ’em I’m not in.”

“I do, but they think I’m lying. I see you were on the spot at another killing. Tell me!”

I told her, to get it all straight for myself as well as for her. Rose is a bright kid; her father and uncle were cops. She knows the cop business. When I got through, she frowned and tapped her pencil on the desk.

“I wish I could see Dolores and Irene,” she said.

“You can. We shut up shop. You’re a sob sister, babe. Let’s go get your story.”

Rose can be anything at a moment’s notice— sob sister, actress, chorus girl, tough moll, debutante, or shopgirl. She does a few things to her hair and makeup, gives her mouth a different twist, switches her accent— and there she is, a new girl.

We grabbed a cab and started for the Mangasarius house.

“Go up and interview her,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

Up she went, swinging along the walk. And I thought, What a gal! She had everything Dolores or Irene had, and plenty of brains in her red head.

She was back pretty soon, too soon to have got an interview.

“The lady is not seeing the press,” she said. “So I was told by a couple of servants. They pushed me around, but I got in. I made a plea to her— told her I’d lose my job, my sick mother and three small brothers would suffer. She still wasn’t giving interviews. You said she had a sweet, forgiving smile, big boy? She’s as hard as nails right now. And the mug with her is a stir-bird or I’m a Chinaman.”

“You’re no Chinaman,” I said. “Who is he?”

“I dunno, but ten to one his picture’s in the Rogues’ Gallery. She shouldn’t play around with his kind, unless— You better go up, big boy. But put on your overshoes, wear your red flannels, and take care of yourself.”

“Yeah. You stay here. Understand English? Right here in this cab!”

“Yes, sir,” she said, too meekly.

The driver hadn’t heard all this. I told him to wait. Rose hopped in. I went up toward the house.

I was saying to myself, “Somebody who didn’t want Mangy to wed the widow is the one. And that spells Dolores.”

They gave me a song and dance, too. Dolores wasn’t seeing anybody. But a maid took my name in, and she was seeing me.

She was alone in a big room when I walked in. Rose’s stir-bird wasn’t there.

“Yes, Mr. Burke, what did you wish to see me about?”

I walked over to her. She was all in white— an evening gown, this time, that looked swell on her.

“Lady,” I said, “Ronald didn’t kill Mangasarius. The cops are wrong. It had to be someone who didn’t want him to marry Mrs. Barrett. See? Now you had a swell chance to do the job. I’m betting you can’t prove you’re his niece. I’m betting he was shoving you aside for the rich dame and you wouldn’t stand for that.”

She laughed, in that gentle forgiving way, and then said, “You have a marvelous imagination. But your wild surmises do not concern me.”

I had expected to draw the thug out of hiding. Dolores yawned and put her hand up to her lips. That was a signal, I guess, because something bored into my back and I looked over my shoulder into the dark and ugly face of the guy Rose had seen. He was a stir bug all right.

“What’ll we do?” he asked hoarsely.

Dolores shrugged. “Better put him away, Jack,” she said. “He’s the only one that knows I had a chance to go into the office. It would be just as well if he— disappeared.”

“Yeah. I’ll take him down cellar and put him away.”

I laughed. “Everybody knows I’m here,” I said. “I told Kelly I was coming. So you didn’t stab Mangy, Dolores? This mug did, eh? He was in the closet when the others were with the boy friend. He stepped out and knifed him while he was phoning Mrs. Barrett. He nabbed Mrs. Hyde’s necklace and you let him out through your office. Nice work, but—”

The mug kept his gat against my back, socked me behind the ear. It stung.

Dolores said, “How absurd!”

“Not half as absurd as the arrest of Ronald,” I told her. “Who is this thug back of me?”

The guy growled. “She’s my daughter,” he said. “And if you think I’d let Mangasarius doublecross her an marry—”

“Jack!” Dolores protested.

“What the hell, kid?” he growled. “He won’t be the first dick I’ve put away. You guess too good, feller. Yeah, Mangasarius was in college with me— Quentin. He read some books up there an’ doped out this racket. When he got out, I told him to look up the kid, give her a boost. He was goin’ to marry her until this rich dame—”

“Daddy Jack! Don’t talk!”

“Okay! Come on, cop. We go downstairs.”

There was satisfaction in knowing I was good at guessing games, but I was heading for the door and the cellar, with Jack’s gat pushing me along.

“Rufus is only paying me five grand for clearing Ronald,” I said. “Why don’t we make a deal?”

“No deals with cops,” Jack muttered.

But Dolores checked him. “If you took him for a trip, Jack, you know where, until this blows over, that might be the best. You have to duck anyway. I have proof. They won’t question that I was his niece. His will still stands. Whether they hang Ronald or let him off, we’ll be on top.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll take him up to the mine, then.”

“I worked in a mine once,” I cracked. “I don’t like ’em. I won’t go.”

That made Jack mad. I hoped it would. He shifted his gat to his left hand and swung with his right. During the shift, I ducked and socked. He tried to swing with the gun, but I had him winded and half down. I butted him with my head and sent him to the floor. The gun popped and Dolores yelled for help.

I got him by the wrist as he was twisting the gun around. But he was strong, too strong. The gun barrel moved steadily toward my ribs, and in another minute I’d have been out.

I was half-dazed, but I heard a sweet voice. “As you were!” Rose said, and hit Jack over the head with the stubby barrel of an automatic.

He slumped under me like a dead man, I grabbed his gun and got up.

The taxi driver had come in with Rose— he was armed with a monkey wrench— and Dolores and the servants were lined up against the wall.

“I told you to wear your galoshes,” Rose told me.

“And I told you to stay put!” I growled.

Dolores went all to pieces and cried hysterically. I phoned* Kelly and told him to come and get ’em. He was there within fifteen minutes, and he started cussing me for holding out on him. I laughed at him and we went away, Rose and I and the taxi driver.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Just keep drivin’,” I said. “Anywhere.”

It was tough making Rufus pay up. He was one of those guys who wants to settle ten cents on the dollar. But when I got his check, I said to Rose, “Kid, you and I ought to be partners. Let’s start with this.”

“Why, Mister Burke!” she said. “I am blushing in confusion.”

Jack went back to college— Folsom, this time— for life. He took it on the chin, covered up Dolores, and she got off. You couldn’t expect a male jury to send her up. The last I heard of her, she was in Frisco town, selling the Miracle Way.

And Mrs. Rufus still contributes to the cause!

_________________

3: Stool Pigeon

Frederick C Painton

1896-1945

Detective Fiction Weekly 12 Dec 1936

1: Lady Afraid

IT’S my business to know everybody on Broadway by sight because nowadays the crooks gather there like the brokers go to their Stock Exchange.

It’s my business to remember who meets who at what bar because later something breaks, two guys or a doll meeting may give me the hunch where to look for information when Detective Pete Laird comes around asking for it. Pete is the dick I work for, and nobody but he and I know this, so we meet in out-of-the-way places, he with a pocketful of sawbucks and me, usually, with dope that helps him break a case. He’s a good guy and we’re friends.

It is also my business to have a quick scram-chute in. case I get tagged as a  stoolie and somebody comes gunning for me. So I live on the. East Side-on the third floor of a walk-up that has a fire escape that passes within two feet of my window. This back-yard ladder lets me come and go without the landlady asking questions. She thinks I’m a steelworker. Well, I was once.

Anyway this night I was in hay early because I’d  picked a long shot at Narragansett and got eighty-bucks for four and I’d celebrated early and hard at Johnny’s bar. But I sleep light, so I heard the sound in the darkness and woke up silently and soberly. I reached for my gun which is not under any pillow but holstered under my pajamas. I breathed long and steady, then grunted, made mushy sounds with my mouth and rolled over.

A body was silhouetted between me and the lighter darkness of the window. If I could have seen that same lighter darkness between the silhouette’s legs I’d have shot instantly. But I didn’t. I jerked the bed light, leveled the gun and said, “ Okay, sweetheart, keep your hands— for cat’s sake, Helen, what are you doing here?”

She came closer.

“Don’t point that thing at me, Chick,” she whispered nervously, “and turn off the light— quick!”

I gave her a long gander. Helen Dunn never hurt anybody’s eyes. There was a time when Flo Ziegfeld was alive when she took big and little casino for beauty. And she was a honey now. Her straw-colored hair was wavy with a girlish blue bow in it; and the front teeth she lost that time when Si Martin took a swing at her in the Parrot Club had been replaced so you’d hardly know it was a plate. She was slim and she still had that hot personality that made her aces as a hostess in the Parrot Club. Maybe you think I liked her. I did. Once we were more than friends and that makes a big difference.

A lot of people called her names I can’t repeat-here, and said she was up to her tonsils in the vice racket. The last was a lie. Maybe she took the come-on Charleys but that was her business. I knew she was warm-hearted, honest in her way, and many a girl owed her plenty when the going was tough.

“Turn put the light. Chick,” she repeated. Her slim body was trembling, though it wasn’t cold, and her eyes were almost glassy, with terror.

I turned out the bed light, and climbed out of the sheets. I said, “Sit down here, kid, and tell me what you’re scared of.”

She sat down next to me and I swear her teeth sounded like the clicking of a pair of dice. I put my arm around her and she was cold as ice.

“Come on, kid,” I said gently. “There isn’t anything in the world to be that afraid of."

“Matt Prance has got me fingered,” she whispered. “They’re going to kill me.

“What for?”

“I spoke out of turn— about Sheila Rourke.” Then her tongue began to spill words, and it was a dirty story. Sheila Rourke was a young girl who came off a radio amateur hour to fill a fifteen-minute spot at the Parrot doing grand imitations. I had seen her and I mean she was the real McCoy. She had a bright lovable personality, a real Irish wit that made her quick on the trigger with come-backs, and besides that she was-pretty. Only nineteen, and trying to go places with a hot voice.

As Helen spewed words rapidly, I learned that Matt Prance had been giving the girl a play. But she wanted no part of him.

“So day before yesterday,” Helen half-sobbed, “he grabbed her. She’s gone. I knew he snatched her. I put it to him. He told me to mind my own business. I said if he didn’t turn her loose I’d tell everything I knew about

Her long cold fingers tightened crushingly on me. “Maybe I was a fool, Chick, but I’m crazy about Sheila. She’s decent like I was once, and she’s got a boy friend she’s carrying the torch for. They’re going to be married when she goes back to the sticks where he’s working now.

“When I told Matt I’d beef he just looked at me and said, ‘You’d better do it right now, Helen. You won’t get another chance.’

“And I saw his torpedoes hanging around. I went out through the back alley and I’ve walked miles— miles to get here.”

A lot of things clicked in my mind. Last year, my dick was working on the vice racket and a lot of dope pointed at Matt Prance. But we didn’t get to the point of a pinch. But I knew we could now. Helen Dunn knew all the answers.

“So you came to me,’’ I said, “for help?”

“Yeah, listen, Chick, I know you’re stooling. You get a cop here and get me safe away and what I’ll tell them about the vice racket will fill a book.”

I got sore. “What makes you think I’m a stoolie ?”

“Don’t be a zany. When the vice investigation was on last year, you were around with dough, spending it, and two guys, Chapella and Tredway took the collar and went to stir. You fingered them.”

She raised her hand. “But I didn’t beef, Chick. I liked you. You knew it when we played around together. And I was sick of the racket and was going to pull out. I’d have been long gone but for Sheila. I wanted her to go places.”

I took that silently. “You think Sheila’s been bumped?”

It gave me a funny feeling.

She shuddered. “No. He’s got her in a hideaway— for himself,” she swore like a man, and then relapsed into terror. “Can’t the cops get her before it’s too late?”

I MOVED over in the darkness and began getting dressed. Here was a break I had been waiting for a long time. If I could cut in on the bust-up of the vice racket that paid a sugar of five million a year, they said, to those in it, Pete Laird would see that I got plenty. Maybe enough to take a powder out of New York and start up new in Arizona like I wanted to.

“Is Matt Prance the big shot in the girl-business?” I asked, lacing my slippers.

“He’s only one,” she said, “there’s one higher than him.” She gave an exclamation: “If I thought—”

“If you thought what?”

“Nothing. I’m selling this to the cops for a getaway.”

I eased by the window and gave the alley a gander. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t afford to take a chance on the darkness. I locked the window and went to the door.

“Hop into the bed and pretend to be me,” I said. “ I’ll get back as soon as I can. Maybe a half hour.” I fished in the darkness and found a flask.

“Here’s some good Scotch. Blow yourself to a skinful. You’ll feel better.”

“You’re swell, Chick.” She took the flask, then, my hand and pressed it against her cold cheek. “ I’m scared,” she went on, “ but I’m glad. I wanted to make the break to getaway. And now I have. And if we can pull Sheila off the spot—”

“We will," I said.

I locked the door after me and pocketed the key. It was two o’clock. I didn’t see anybody lamping my joint but I took no chances and walked cross-town to Union Square and dived into an all-night drugstore. I had Detective Laird’s house number and I hung on while it rang.

He was sleepy enough when he responded, but he woke up when I told him

"Okay, Chick, let’s have it.”

I told him the lay, and when he got it he was boiling with excitement.

“I've been wanting to hose that Prance for years,” he said. “Go right back to your room and stay there. I'll have the blast put out for you in a burglary rap and the prowl cars can pick you both up."

That suited me. The charge against me would be dropped for lack of evidence, and they’d have Helen without me appearing in the case. I went back to the house and cased the front, but the street was quiet. I went up softly and in the dark. I unlocked the door and went in. I could see Helen lying on the bed. Just her silhouette.

“Okay, kid,” I said softly, “you’re in.”

She didn’t answer and I wondered if she was asleep. I went to her and shook her. But I didn’t call her name again.

My hand came away all sticky. Then I noticed the curtains blowing lightly in the draft from the window. I took a  gander out of the window before I turned my back to it. But I couldn’t see a thing until I closed the window.  Then I saw a hole through the glass, and it was frosted all around with cracks. The hole was as big as my head and a guy could just about through and turn the fastener.

“But that wasn’t how it was done,” I muttered, “somebody made a noise and got her up. They plugged her with a silenced gun.”

A gun with a Maxim silencer can only fire one shot, and it has to be good. This one was perfect. Right through the pump. But then they’d come in to frisk her and make sure she was dead. But they were gone now.

I switched on the bed light and looked at her. Her eyes were open, but the fear was gone. Her face,-taut from her life and her years, had softened so that she looked almost girlish. I heard my teeth grinding.

The poor kid! Trying to do a decent thing, and they murdered her for doing it.

Down the street I heard the moan of a police siren. The prowl cars had come. I silently scrammed out of the window.

2: Suspicion

I MET Pete Laird just before daylight on the Forty-second Street cross-town car. You can talk better on a trolley and it’s safer than a taxi.

"They got the blast on you for murder, Chick,” he told me, “and I’m letting it ride rather than give you away. But we’ll have to bear down.”

“What did you find on Helen?” I asked.

“A picture of Sheila Rourke with some mugg we haven’t identified. And a pearl— a black one.”

“A pearl,” I repeated. “Hers?”

Laird shook his head. "Search me. It was in her mouth. The medical examiner found it. Under her tongue.”

Woman’s vanity is funny. At the last minute she probably popped it in there, her best possession, to take it with her wherever she was going. I thought about this and her, and what a good skate she had been.

Then Laird snapped me out of it.

“Matt Prance’s guns did it ?”

"He had her fingered,” I said. “It’ll be tough to crack.”

“Sure,” said Laird, "but we’ll crack it. How do you stand with this mob ?”

“Jake, as far as I know. I’m supposed to be a burglar, not a girl-punk.”

“Well, stick around them for a while. We'll pinch Prance on another charge and give him a working. If you get a lead on what torpedo blew her off, we can hose it out of him.”

It was the usual procedure, and an old one; and it usually worked. But it didn't seem so hot in this case. There was big dough involved with plenty going to mouthpieces and politicians. But it was twenty bucks a day for me while I was prowling around, so I said okay. Tomorrow when the newspapers gave the murder a play the underworld would talk about it as much as Riverside Drive, and drifting around probably I’d hear things.

I left Laird at Fifth Avenue and took an East Side subway downtown. He told me he’d pulled the cops out of my joint, so I could get some clothes. The house was all lit up and I knew the other roomers and the landlady were excited and saying, “I always knew there was something queer about that Chick Maney."

So I cased the alley and went up the fire escape. The window was still open. The body was gone but there was another person in the room.

No light, see, except a tiny torch that was throwing a thin yellow beam under the bed. All I could see was the back of a skirt, two high-heeled slippers and some- silk leg. I came into the room noiselessly and stood there for a second.

A woman’s voice said, “Damn!” softly.

I waited a bit and then said, “If anybody else comes in here I’m going to charge admission.”

She backed her head out from under the bed like a crab. She got to her feet gibbering with terror.

“Well, well,” I said, “if it isn’t Big Adele Riggs. Now, what would you be doing here?”

You don’t know Adele Riggs unless you read crime-vice news, and you wouldn’t want to. What it took to be bad and vicious she had in clusters. She was the big mama of the vice ring, and nothing could be lower.

She saw my hand in my pocket, but her nerve came back.

“Honest to Gosh, Chick,” she panted, “I was just looking for something. Something that poor Helen might have dropped.”

“Poor Helen!” I mimicked. “You hated the ground she walked on. You—” I broke off all in a sweat. I remembered what Laird had said about the pearl. I hunched right then that it hadn’t been Helen’s. It.

“Were you looking for a black pearl?" I inquired.

She started to tremble again. “I didn’t kill her. Chick. Honest to Gosh. I didn’t even know you two was sweethearts."

“Then what did you come barging in here for?”

“What right you got to ask?” her voice rose.

I stepped in close to her. “Because Helen Dunn was a swell friend, and a good guy, and whoever murdered her is going to burn— even if it’s you. They burn women in this state now.”

She reeled a little— she had high blood pressure— and said numbly, “Let me go!”

“Who tipped you that Helen was dead, if you didn’t do it?” I asked.

“I ain’t saying a word,” she cried desperately, “and lay off me less’n you want Matt Prance to take you!”

I SLAPPED her pink, powdered face, and when she bounced back from that one I slapped her again. She began to cry, but silently. She didn’t want people to hear. The door was police sealed, but people might come if they heard noises.

“I’m going to have Matt kill you, you rat,” she whined.

Well, I slapped her again, and I worked over her with threats. But I didn't get to first base. I couldn’t threaten her with a pinch. I was supposed to be a crook. So finally, as if I was disgusted, I said, "All right, scram out of here. And tell Matt Prance for me that Helen was my girl, and if you or he put the bump to her I’m coming around to know why.”

She grew vicious after she was through the window:

“You don’t have to come around, punk, Matt’ll come looking for you.”

I hastily packed a bag and went out the window after her. She had reached the corner, but there was no taxi around there at that time in the morning so she couldn’t duck me; I trailed her cross-town to the east end of Gramercy Park.

She climbed a taxi here and I picked another off Third Avenue.

“Tail that Blazer cab, and don’t let it get away.”

The driver looked at me. “Police?”

"Hell no! That's my wife, and I’m checking up.”

He bore down heavily on the accelerator..

“They beat hell now, don’t they?”

I had some time to think then. What if Matt Prance’s apes didn’t kill Helen, but Big Adele did? If Helen had been sitting into the vice racket farther than I thought, then that would account for Big Adele’s hatred. Anyway, it was a thought.

She took me two dollars on the meter to a side street called Furthing Lane under the shadow of Brooklyn bridge. It is a terrible neighborhood. I saw her go into an old brownstone front, and then scrooged down in the seat and had the driver go on by. The number was three forty-seven.

I couldn’t do any more there. It was up to Laird to take a lead on that dump. So I drove uptown to the Nautilus Hotel on Forty-third Street and registered in.

I called. Laird, and told him about Big Adele. It had him about as puzzled as it had me.

“I don’t see where she fits in, but I’ll put a tail on her and watch the Furthing Lane dump. Anything else?”

“No, only it’s going to be tough trying to move around with the blast on me."

“You’ll have to chance it."

I stayed in all day, snoozing, eating, reading the papers. The P.M. sheets gave the story, quite a ride, and it was wonderful to me how so much misinformation got into one place. Helen was my sweetheart, the story said, and she had been two-timing me and I slipped her the works. All terminals and exits from New York were being watched and an arrest was being expected momentarily. It was good for a chuckle and after a thick steak for dinner I ambled out and over toward Broadway.

I never really got there. Now, it wasn’t anywhere near my regular poolroom, or my favorite bar. But after all I play all Broadway and Matt must have had plenty of guys on the watch-out. Anyway as I stood near the stage exit of the Paramount, two; guys crowded me, one on either side.

Curly Slade said, "Hows about coming along nice, Chick?”

They didn’t bump me with their rods, but they were plenty close. I figured my chances and grinned.

“One-way ride or do I come back in one piece?”

“Oh, nothing rough. Matt wants to talk, to you.”

Curly could be lying, or telling the truth. I figured my chances again and decided it was no dice.

"Sure,” I said, “where's the car?”

3: Prisoner

YOU’VE got to hand it to Matt Prance, bum that he is. He always wanted a penthouse and now that he was in the bucks he had a honey. It was on top of the twenty-four story Lathrop House and the rent he paid wasn’t hay, even for him. He had an interior decorator do the fourteen rooms, and they were full of swell gadgets that even Prance couldn’t name off-hand.

He was in the studio-living room that gave off onto an honest-to-goodness lawn. He was wearing dinner clothes, with a white cummerbund and a mess jacket. A lot of gals went overboard for his swarthy lean face, his polished black hair, his slim tall figure. But one look at his gimlet eyes and his wet red mouth crossed him off my books. Any guy that would take not one dollar but maybe a million bucks cut off women don’t rate with me. I had never liked him and I hated him now as he stood there. I knew he had killed Helen Dunn.

So I walked across the room, smiling broad and toothy, and stuck out my hand and said, "Well, Matt, how long since you got to send for a cheap-shot like me?”

His hand was flabby, soft, and he just placed it in mine and didn't even bother to grip. He took it away before I could bear down.

“Sit down, Chick,” he said, “Curly, get him a drink and a cigar.” He had a soft black voice, like oil on a macadam road.

“Make it Scotch,” I said, “Bourbon makes me sick— rye, too.”

He lit a cigarette. I lit the cigar. You’d have thought we were old friends until you saw our eyes.

“You said something to Big Adele about me bumping Helen Dunn,” he remarked casually.

I pretended to cringe, to be scared.

"Oh, you know how it is. Matt,” I answered. “I was torch-hot over her, and to find her murdered— and in my room— and me taking the rap if the cops catch me,” I shrugged. “ A guy loses his temper. Even me. And that fat madam casing my room didn't help either.”

He passed over it, expressionless. " What made you think I bumped her, Chick?”

I shrugged again and fidgeted nervously. I hadn’t been frisked yet but I knew one word from those wet red lips and I’d feed the crabs in the East River.

“She came to me all in a sweat,” I told him, “and said she’s spoken out of turn about a doll, Sheila Rourke, and wanted me to get her out of town.”

“Yeah, and what did you do?”

“Why, she was my gal, wasn’t she? I went out to get a telephone and find out the next train to Canada. When I came back she was dead, so I lammed out the window.”

“What did she tell you about Sheila?”

"Nothing, only you were carrying the torch for the kid and she didn’t like it.”

It seemed awfully quiet in the room after that. Matt’s cigarette smoke curled up his face and he half-closed one eye to keep it out. I could feel those two rod men behind me.

“And you’d rat to the police if you were picked up?”

“Hell, no! You know me, Matt, I’d keep quiet. They ain’t got anything on me."

“They’d burn you,” he said, “and a hell of a lot I’d care, only you are a liar—you would beef. And Adele says she thinks you’re a stoolie.”

“That, big, lousy—” I began.

“Shut up and sit down,” he, growled. His eyebrows went up at Curly. “Frisk him, Curly, we’ll keep him around for a while."

“What's the idea?” I demanded. I took the frisking, limply.

Matt smiled. “ You’re going out to the country for a rest,” he said. “I don’t want you picked up, and you’re too dumb to dodge the dicks long.”

“Are you leveling? This ain't a ride?”

“ No, no,” he shrugged impatiently, but his eyes, made a liar out of him. I was thinking, fast. There was more, to this than just Helen’s murder. She was important, to me because I had liked her; she was important to Laird, because she could talk about the vice ring.

But if I was to be knocked off, then bigger things than dodging the rap for her kill were in the air. Getting this, I grinned a big grin of relief.

“I couldn’t figure,” I said, “why I should be important to you. I don’t know nothing, and I don’t want to know nothing.” “Rat!” he couldn’t stop the sneer.

“Get him out of here, Curly. He makes me sick. Take him up to Green Lodge in Westport.”

Curly said, “You heard— come on.”

We went down the stairs to the elevator, me figuring just how far I’d let this  go. A hide-out in the sticks didn't sound so good, and maybe I wouldn’t even get  that far. I didn’t know what signal Matt had given Curly. It was a spot and I was beginning to sweat. I thought about Sheila Rourke. Maybe she was in this Green Lodge, too, and I should let this hand play itself to get to her. But Curly was a tough killer; gunning a guy was all business with him. I couldn’t take the chance. And I had to make the break before we got into the car.

We came out into the lobby. It was a big joint with two exits. And as he started for the Park Avenue outlet two guys came in.

“Hey!” I squawked, and whirled and started to run. “They’re two headquarters dicks. It’s a pinch.”

EVEN a gun like Curly wouldn’t heist a guy with two bulls watching. Yet I had a funny feeling in the small of my back as I tore for the Sixty-first Street entrance.

“Hey,” came Curly’s voice, “ they ain'tꟷ"

I was out the door. I took one glimpse as I ran east. Curly and his pal were horsing right along after me and I put my elbows to my sides and threw my chest out and, covered six feet a stride.

I made Lexington Avenue and got a break when a cab turned into a west-bound street just  as I ran north. I grabbed the door and leaped in with speed if not grace.

“Make the Grand-Central in nothing flat— a train," I gasped.

In the Grand Central I got into a shuttle-subway car, went south on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue line, twisted in the Pennsylvania Station and headed back north. I don’t think my color was proper again until I turned the key in my hotel room.

I packed my bag, checked out and moved to the Admiral three blocks northeast of Broadway. Then I sat down, lit a cigarette and gave the situation a gander.

All I had gotten out of this meeting was the knowledge that I was inked in for a kill as soon as Matt could locate me. Also the doubtful lead on this Green Lodge in Westport. I already knew Matt was in to his tonsils in this hurdy-gurdy so his actions told me nothing new.

I called Laird and told him the situation. "I think,” I concluded, “that I’ll have to powder for a few days. Between the cops and Matt, a little trip to Westport might give us a lead and keep me from a nervous breakdown.”

He said, “I’m glad you called. I’ve been trying to reach you. Yes, I know. The thing is tight. But you’ve got to crack a safe.”

“Whose?” I asked.

“Big Adele’s in that three-forty-seven joint on Furthing Lane. We got her out and cased the point, but we can’t get the safe open. And it’s a brand new safe— a Wrigley— and she didn’t have it put in to keep cheese in.”

“How about a search warrant?” I asked. I didn’t like macing that safe. I was too damned hot.

“By the time we got there it would be empty. She’s in with the pols— and how. Listen, could you work it tonight?”

I happen to be good on safes; some I can handle with my fingers— I worked for the Acme Safe Company a year once to learn how— and others I soup. This Wrigley looks solid but I could bust it with a can opener.

“What about her?" I asked.

“Tell me what time you can make it and I’ll have her picked up on a disorderly conduct charge. She won’t be sprung for three hours because I'll have her shifted from station house to station house and her lawyer won’t catch up. I’ll have a man across the street to grab anybody who looks suspicious and is going in.”

It was the best he could do— and a lot, showing how much he wanted to break the case.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten-thirty. “ Okay,” I told him. “ I can be there in about an hour. I can’t come back uptown because Matt will be turning stones to find me. So pick up my baggage and pay my bill at the Admiral. Meet me at two in the Grand Central Station. I’ll have everything in the safe on me."

He thought a minute, said, “Swell. Incidentally, the Missing Persons Bureau has a beef about Sheila Rourke. It seems her boy friend has some dough. There’s five grand posted for finding her.”

"G-men in?” I growled.

“Not yet. Nobody but you and me knows it was a grab.”

I hung up, lit a cigarette and emptied my baggage. I put on a rather heavy tweed suit because the shoulders were boxed and the suit made me look bigger than I was. I put on a different hat, and a pair of shoes with lifts in the heels. I found a short, stubby pipe whose stem, if you get it behind your incisors and clamp down change your mouth and face a lot. I got out the Police Regulation .38 that Pete Laird had given me.

I saw that it was loaded, put a dozen loose slugs in my side pocket. I took the brief case that had my acetylene torch, soap and nitroglycerin. With the gun in a spring shoulder holster, I was all set.

The doorman said, “Cab will be here when you get down, sir.”

It had to be. I couldn’t walk a block now safely. I came out of the elevator into the lobby and headed straight for the door. On my left was the entrance to the Admiral’s South Sea Room, a place where you drank and sat and danced and listened to Phil Rogers’ swing music. Out of it came a man in tails. I saw him with one eye. Saw him start, and I swore inwardly. He kept on coming and took me by the shoulder.

"Duck inside, Chick,” he said, “I hear you’re spotted and I’d certainly like to help!”

4: Safebreaker

WE went into the men’s washroom, and Tony Sloan said, “I know you didn’t kill Helen Dunn, and. I want to help you.”

Well, maybe he did. Anthony Sloan was a tough one to make book on- His old man made fifty millions in the Great Madness and lost sixty in the Big Wind of 1929, and shot himself out of sheer disgust. The kid had been a wild one before that: a gambler— one hundred and eighty thousand bucks in one poker game is not spinach— a Broadway playboy with a yen for red-heads. He disappeared  for a time, came back and with a stake caught the rising market and somebody said he had five million, now.

I wouldn't know about that except he liked Broadway still, played it four ways from the jack, and I had met him maybe a dozen times.

Right now he said, “Need any money?”

His eyes, inside their rubber tires of dissipation, were kind and sympathetic.

“No,” I said.

“What about a hide-out?”

“What can you offer?”

He glanced at the brief case. "Leaving town now?”

“If they’ll let me.”

“How about Westport? I’ve opened the old governor’s place on Cavalry Road. Nobody would give you a tumble up there.”

It was a queer coincidence that I should run into him, and he mention Westport. I kept thinking of the five grand nick for Sheila Rourke’s recovery. I gave him a long look. His pale brown hair was thinning, his face was grayish from too many highballs, but he looked on the level.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

He got out a gold, pencil and scribbled a note. “This is to the caretaker, a German named Schultz.” He grinned. “You’re safe as in a cellar up there. And I'll be up in a few days to hear the details.” He scowled; I’d like to know who killed poor Helen.”

“So would a lot of people,” I tossed over my shoulder.

I got rid of the taxicab at Brooklyn Bridge entrance and: walked: the rest of the way. When I reached the stone steps to- three forty-seven, a figure came out from behind a caged tree.

“Maney?” he whispered.

“Yeah.” I took my hand off my gun;

“It’s the third: door on the left after you get up the stairs. Here’s a key that’ll fit. She is in the 12th Street station now and due for a move.”

I recognized him as Dave Miller, a second-grade dick who was a great friend of Pete’s.

“I’ll fade when you come out,” he said, “if anything looks bad I’ll blow a whistle.”

“What could happen?" I asked.

He shrugged. “Search me. But Pete says if we miss a trick on this we’ll all go to the can. There’s a lot of big dough involved."

He drifted Back to his tree and I went inside. The place smelled of old meals, mostly ham and cabbage by the odor, and sour soup, and I wondered why a gal like-Big Adele, mostly always in the bucks, should have a hide-out here. Well, in her own quarters she did herself well. It was a gaudy but expensive apartment, with silk hangings on the walls, and a canopied bed— why you need a canopied bed unless the. roof leaks is beyond me— and thick Oriental rugs all over the floor. The safe was behind a silk tapestry on the east wall over an imitation gas fireplace.

I got a break right away; the safe was not a new one. It looked sturdy and stout to Adele, but as soon as I gave the dial a couple of twists I could hear the tumblers making odd sounds, and I knew I wouldn’t need any soup. With paraffin on my fingers I began to spin it around. Two letters, three numbers, four right, one and a half left— man, that safe was just telling me how to go so I wouldn’t make a mistake. I wish you could crack life and happiness as easily as I cracked that safe. By the clock I wasn’t over twenty minutes— and that’s good time.

The bull’s-eye door swung open. There were bank books, safety deposit keys in little red cardboard holders, some assorted papers. I swept all this into my various pockets.

And then I saw something that sent a thrill through me so that I got the shakes.

In a little white jeweler’s box— without a name on it— resting in white cotton were two black pearls.

Not really black, but a sort of bluish green. I took them in my hand and saw that about a quarter of their surface was covered with-a whitish substance that might be powder or cement. Jeweler’s cement.

A black pearl was found in Helen Dunn’s mouth. Big Adele had been on her fat knees searching under my bed for something. I find two black pearls in her safe. Here was a clue of prime importance, and I saw a hundred buck bonus just around the corner.

But if Big Adele had killed Helen Dunn, and dropped a pearl in the doing, just what was her motive? If Helen had been murdered, as I suspected, to shut her mouth, then Matt Prance had plenty of torpedoes to do it. And Big Adele was not one to take a chance on going into that room at Sing-Sing where there is only one unoccupied chair, unless she was driven by desperation or emotion. Here was something that needed a lot of investigation, and that was Pete Laird’s job. I pocketed the pearls, closed the safe and prepared to go. I stood there for a second in utter darkness, getting myself together.

Then I heard the door creak slightly, and felt rather than saw it open!

I stood rigid; the sweat pouring put of me. If it was Big Adele or her friends and I was trapped I’d have to take a rap in stir to protect myself. And while a word to the governor would get me out after five months or so— who wants five months in stir? If it wasn’t Big Adele, then—

Two shadows slid into the room. And slid is the word. They were low— and I knew that they knew I was there. Inwardly I cursed Dave Miller. Where was his whistle of warning? I couldn’t reach the window. I couldn’t even xxx

I heard the door lock with a click. Still no sound, and with a blank wall behind them, I could no longer make out their shadows. I didn’t know where they

I got out my gun and went to my knees. Tendons cracked as I did so and in that silence they sounded like shotgun fire. And they heard. One of them must have pressed the electric light switch near the door. Two floor lamps and a side-wall fixture blazed— and there I was, looking at Curly Slade and his torpedo friend. His friend was in front, and he had his gun partly extended, elbow crooked. His arm began to straighten and I could see in his eyes that he intended to shoot.

Curly said, “Give it to the rat, Jerry.”

HE was about half-way in that sentence when I pulled the trigger. Jerry had pulled his trigger, too, but I must have been four heart-beats ahead. For as my gun roared he gave a jump, clapped a hand to his throat and tried to scream. The gush of blood made it sound like a gargle. The bullet from his gun fanned my right ear. In that instant I remember wondering how I could hit a man in the neck when I had been aiming for a button on his vest.

What happened afterward happened fast. As he went down, still gargling, Curly snapped the light button. I heard him move but because of the noise the dying Jerry was making I couldn’t tell which way. And before I could figure out his move he was on me.

He hadn’t tried to use his gun for fear the flash would give him away. So we met chest to chest with a shock that knocked me kicking. But as I fell I had sense enough to roll and duck forward. And a good thing I did. He had me located by the collision and as I went down, he fired three quick shots right at the spot where I should have lit. I fired up at him, a streaking flame that lit him perfectly.

And I missed! The collision had upset me, and I missed him at six feet, and him a yard broad. Before I could shoot again he literally jumped on me. Hit with one hundred and sixty-odd pounds with the intent of stunning me and then putting the muzzle of his rod to my ears. If he’d lit on my stomach that would have been the curtains. But I was on my side and took most of the weight-on my shoulders. And as he lit I rolled frantically.

What happened immediately thereafter I can’t tell in detail. When a man knows he’s fighting for his life, he doesn’t stop to ponder about it. He just explodes in frantic, instinctive resistance which doesn’t leave a clear record on the memory. My gun went off, and then he had my wrist. His gun exploded and I got the arm between my ankles and rolled in a sort of scissors grip that kept the gun muzzle away from me and kept him twisted in a split. After that it was a tussle between him and me for possession of my gun.

Mind you, there was hell to pay outside. Screams and yells, and people’s feet thudding, and we in there fighting without saying a word.

I got the gun loose with him still held by my scissors grip. So I didn’t shoot. I banged that gun muzzle against his head with all the force a half-swing would provide. He went soft and rubbery, and I tore loose from him and raced to the window. Not a chance that way!

I ran to the door, unlocked it and slid into the hall. As I came out I saw the ceiling light and I shot it out. Not on the first shot. It took three to hit that bulb at fifteen feet. Yeah, I got nerves just like anybody else. But in the darkness— my back to anyone down the hall— I dashed for the stairs. A man came rushing up.

Behind him were women making more noise than chickens in the produce   market.

“What happened?” he gasped.

“Search, me,” I gasped. “I heard shooting. By Golly, somebody’s been hurt. I’m going for the cops.”

With that, without waiting for him to ask questions I tore through the people on the stairway. Watch out,” I yelled back. “ If it’s a murderer he’ll shoot!”

I tore-out into the night and ran all the way to Nassau Street. In front of the old World Building I grabbed a taxicab and snaked uptown to Grand Central.

I had time to think now and all I saw was trouble. I had killed a guy by the name of Jerry. Stool pigeons haven’t any license to kill even in self-defense. Worse yet, I had not killed Curly Slade. If he got out of this— as he could easily with a clever mouthpiece— he’d tell Matt Prance that I had gunned Jerry. He’d tell him I had cracked Big Adele’s safe. He’d tell him I was a stoolie as could be deduced from what had happened. I had two black pearls but it looked as if I had swapped a harp and halo for them. I had the jitters by the time I saw Pete Laird in the Grand Central. We met by the telephone booths on the upper level, and my face must have told him what he had not already known.

And he knew this: “Dave Miller’s in Bellevue with a fractured skull," he rapped. “Somebody skulled him from behind. What happened ?”

I told him where I stood and began emptying my pockets. “I had to kill this Jerry," I finished. “He had his shot.”

“I know,” Laird replied. “He’s got a record as long as an old man’s beard. The hell of it is I can’t square this without tipping our hand. And if we go off half-cocked on this vice business, we muff the whole play."

He pocketed what I had given him.

“You'll have to scram,” he decided. “You’d better hop to California for a month or so. Your usefulness to me is finished.”

I didn’t like that. I was in this up to my tonsils and I wanted to see the end. Helen Dunn had been something more than a friend. I said so.

Laird shook his head.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said savagely, "we’re fighting everybody in this— everybody, do you hear ? Somebody tipped Prance’s lawyer off where Big Adele was— and she’s sprung. Somebody tipped Matt Prance the blast was out— and he’s disappeared. Money is being spent plenty. If it wasn’t for the black pearls that make the tie-up—” He stopped.

He stared at me, his thin kindly face suddenly taut.

“Where are the black pearls?"

“I gave them to you.”

He went through the stuff. But he didn’t have them. I had taken them out of the little box and put them loose in the small change pocket inside the big pocket of my coat. I searched there. I didn’t find them. I searched my other pockets. They weren’t there either.

I groaned. “ They must have fallen out of my pocket when I was scrambling with Curly Slade.” I swore viciously. “They’re on the floor of Big Adele’s living room.

Pete Laird jerked into action.

“Then I’m on my way. She’s sprung and she’ll hi-tail it there to find out what’s missing. If the prowl car guys got there in time, we’re okay. But we’ve got to have them. The black pearls are the only chance of a conviction.”

I followed him to the subway. He gave me two hundred dollars. “Telegraph your address and I’ll wire you when to come back.”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing I couldn’t argue with him.

When the subway doors closed on him I went back into Grand Central and bought a ticket to Westport. He hadn’t seemed to understand that Helen Dunn and I had been more than friends once.

5: Green Lodge

TONY SLOAN had himself a place in Westport. Quarry Acres, he called it, and it spread over eighty-six acres, mostly landscaped. The house was a rambling log cabin of a mere twenty-eight rooms, with a big marble swimming pool, tennis courts, shooting ranges, bridle paths, stables and horses.

I could have lived swell at the Ritz for a dump for a month. Adolph Schultz was the superintendent and he was a card.

“Vere do you sing or do you play der horses?” he asked at once.

I said I did neither except when shaving in the bathroom or when I got a tip on a hot one straight from the feed box.

“ All ve get here is crooners or men that bet,” he said. “ Veil, you sleep in der blue room.”

We looked over the blue room which was a honey, and as we came in the housekeeper was fixing it up. Taking out a woman’s negligee, powder, hairpins.

I said, “Have you had company ?”

“No,” she said, “but the last guest here was a girl. A red head.” She said it with a finality that was supposed to be self-revelatory. I shrugged. What Tony Sloan did was his business, and after all the guy was doing me a favor.

Schultz brought the New York newspapers every morning so I followed the progress of the hunt for me. And following it I saw the terrific influence exerted by the higher-ups in this vice-ring. For instance, the district attorney was preparing evidence to indict me before a grand jury on the charge of murdering Jerry Morani. How did he know it? The only man in that room was Curly Slade, a professional killer.

And yet this is what I found my finger prints were on the wall safe. That was a lie. I had paraffined my fingers. But Curly had told Matt Prance it was me; Matt had told the proper guy, and the evidence was being framed. An envelope addressed to me was found. I had no envelope and if I had had it, I wouldn’t had dropped it. Three witnesses were found who had seen me flee downstairs with the gun in my hand, shouting, “I got him!”

Pretty bald, eh? Well, when big bucks are involved, anything goes. I began to see that when Sheila Rourke was grabbed, it started the single thread which was going to unball a ball of rottenness. Helen Dunn was killed. Then I killed Jerry Morani, and the end was not in sight.

Meantime, after loafing around three days, passing cops in downtown Westport, I began to make inquiries about Green Lodge. I pretended to go for long walks, and found native New England farmers who couldn’t be in on this racket who could tell me where it was.

Good Hill Road, they said, about four miles cross-country. I walked that, and gave the place a gander. It was a big sprawling New England farmhouse hanging to the edge of a pond, hidden by a high hedge and great beautiful maple trees. It had apple green shutters, but the blinds were mostly pulled, and a farmer farther down the road told me it belonged to some artist, now in California, and was closed except for the caretaker. He added, however, that New York friends occasionally opened the guest house in back."

That night at dinner, Schultz told me Tony Sloan had telephoned he was coming up on a late train in the morning. So I knew if I was going to look over this Green Lodge tonight was the night.

I sat upstairs putting on a pair of rubber soled sneaks and thinking that I must be getting sappy in my old age, running a risk like this. Put me down for a fool, and an egotistic fool if you like, but I had a hunch then that if I foozled this play Helen Dunn’s murder would go forever unsolved. Why? Well, Pete Laird is a honey of a dick; but after all a detective can be headed off, shunted to one side by politics. But I couldn’t. The only thing that could shunt me was fear.

Did I have it ? Sure: but I kept on dressing in dark clothes, looking to my .38. Any time a guy tells you he walks smiling into danger put him down for a liar. It’s the guy who has cold sweats but keeps on taking the risk that is dangerous.

I told Schultz I was going to the movies.

"Vell,” he said, “ you don’t get into any trouble there.”

"I’ll take your little Ford.”

"All right, only don’t stay der tap-room drinking peer. Herr Sloan comes he just now calls and says, at half past der twelve. I go to meet him.”

For a moment I was tempted to wait and take Sloan with me. But the idea passed. He was soft and pasty and no guy to have at your back. And, anyway, he might not like me getting myself shot all over the countryside. I drove the car around by the main macadam and parked a quarter of a mile from Green Lodge. I walked across hayfields to come at the house from behind. There were no lights in the main house, but the guest house glowed with three yellow windows. Thank the Lord, there were no dogs.

THE one window was opened and screened about waist high up, and I sneaked up on this and peered in. I felt my skin go goose pimples! Not five feet away from me, his back half-turned, was Curly Slade. And mixing himself a highball in front of the fire place was Matt Prance.

Curly Slade’s voice broke the stillness. “I’m tellin’ you, Matt, the dicks ain't got the pearls. And they wasn’t in the room. That rat, Maney, got away with them.”

“But if you say he's a stool why didn’t he turn them in?”

“Use your head,” growled Slade, "them two things is worth a grand each, according to you. Can you see that guy turning in two grand worth of pearls? I can’t. Anyway, he don’t know how important they are.”

Matt Prance laughed coldly. “He won’t either. We put the blocks to him tomorrow.”

“Leave the job to me,” urged Slade. “I owe him a couple I’d be glad to pay off.”

Matt Prance nodded. “Did Adele say she was coming out?"

“Yeah. She’s driving. Ought to be here about eleven.”

They paused to drink. I crouched there thinking harder than I ever had in my life. How could they knock me off if they didn’t know where I was? And if they did know, how did they find out? For an instant of horror I thought they might know I was outside, were talking for my benefit to hold me there until somebody surprised me.

I sneaked away from there fast toward a sunken garden. I went around this and toward the graveled driveway that led from the road to the main house. I knew, as surely as I knew anything, that Sheila Rourke was captive somewhere close. I started toward the main house.

And a guy came out of the bushes that lined the driveway and hit me like a ton of brick. My hand streaked to my gun, but a lot of good that did. His right arm went around my neck and crooked down on my windpipe. His left seized my right wrist and bent it back in a hammer-lock until his knee took me in the middle of the back and almost paralyzed me. I haven’t been so efficiently handled in years.

“What you doin’ here?”

A strange voice. I yielded limply to relieve the pressure of his arm against my throat.

“Have a-heart,” I gasped. “I ran out of gas down the road, and I was just coming to see if I could borrow a gallon to get into town.”

The pressure didn’t relax. “I didn’t hear you come up the driveway.”

“Well,” I said, “ it’s late, and I didn’t see any lights except in the caretaker’s house ”— I nodded to the guest house— “and I wanted to see him and not wake people up.”

“It sounds screwy,” he said, and I knew then he was one of Matt Prance’s guns. But the pressure did relax somewhat. “I think I’ll run you around to the house and let them give you a gander.”

I went cold all over, and chuckled hard like a man who takes no offense.

“Take me anywhere, mister, where I can get gas. I don’t want to sleep in the old bus tonight.”

He had a small flashlight, and he tried to hold me with one hand while he flicked it on to look me over. He didn’t know me, thank goodness, and he sort of went for my yarn. As he was pocketing the flashlight, I let him have it.

I hooked with my right, and whirling with the punch I kicked him in the groin hard enough to split him in two. As he went down I leaped on him, drawing my gun and slashed him across the temple with the muzzle and barrel. He croaked, sprawled all soft. Quickly now I dragged him into the bushy hedge and frisked him. I took the flashlight and a short-nosed automatic, a long-bladed knife and a sling- shot off him. He was loaded for bear.

I tied him with his own necktie and mine and stuffed his mouth with his and my handkerchief and bound it there with a piece off my shirt tail. But I knew, even as I did this, that he’d hear the birdies pipe a long time before he knew what hit him.

He had a set of keys, about eight of them. I grabbed these and started for the main house. Two dollars would get you fifty that Sheila Rourke was in there somewhere. As I tested out the keys on the side door I had a hunch. I figured Helen Dunn was wrong: Sheila Rourke wasn’t grabbed because Matt Prance was soft on her. He liked dough too much to take a risk like that.

She had been grabbed because she knew too much,, and Prance or somebody else was too soft on her to have her killed.

Don’t ask me how I hunched this. It was the one pattern that made sense.

The door opened and I went into the house. It didn’t smell musty with old air as if it had been long closed. There was the perfume of fresh flowers in it. Only it wasn’t from flowers. It was from a woman. I traced it to the next room, turned left, missed it and came back. It led to the south end of the house where an addition had been put on. The door here was locked.

I rapped, heard nothing, and went to ’work with my bunch of keys. The fifth one fitted. The door opened under my pressure and a blaze of light came out. I stared into a brightly lit room, magnificently furnished. And standing in the middle of it, holding onto a chair was Sheila Rourke!

6: Escape!

I SHUT the door to keep the light from showing outside. The air inside was moist and cool, air-conditioned; there weren’t any windows and the door slam sounded flat and distant—the way sounds sound when you’re in a sound-proof box. I turned back to her.

She recognized me all right, and her nose was up and her mouth pinched.

“So you're in on it, too,” she said.

“In on what?”

“You know,” she blazed, “and Helen used to say you were pretty decent."

“Maybe I am," I told her, “ I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, kid, got anything here to take along? We’re scramming."

She laughed. “I’m not going!" She didn’t have hustler’s eyes; they were violet and big and full of hatred and contempt, and old-fashioned Irish

“Listen,” I said carefully, “Helen Dunn is dead. Matt Prance had her knocked off. You're going to get it, too, and so am I if I’m caught around here. I’ve got a place to take you— over to Green Lodge. Then you can talk.”

“I’m not going,” her voice rang out, “and I wouldn’t tell you anything. Nor them either. You’re in just as deep as the others and they sent you to find out what I know. But I won’t tell you.”

I went straight over to her and she lifted the chair and tried to swing it at my head. I caught the swing and jerked it away.

“Get onto yourself,” I growled, “I’m here trying to help you because you were a friend of Helen’s— because I want to know what you know.”

Silently she tried to scratch my eyes out. No fooling, she was just a filly, one hundred and eight pounds maybe, but she pulled and hauled and struck at me, her voice sobbing. I finally got an arm around her, and slapped her across the face.

“Stop being hysterical, for cat’s sake,” I said. As quickly as she had fought she went limp on me, not senseless, just a dead load that defied me getting her out. I was sore all the way through by this time, and I slapped her again.

“I can’t get you out without Matt Prance seeing and hearing, if you're going to be like this.”

“You get me outside,” she cried fiercely, “ and I’ll tell the world what you all did with poor little Ethel Morey.”

This didn’t mean a thing to me except that she knew all about the inside chute of the girl-racket.

“When we get outside you can unload about Ethel Morey,” I told her, “now come on, and if you peep loud it’s curtains for both of us.”

She was limp in my arms. But I managed to cut the switch and get the door open, and get her into the dark part of the house. When we reached the door through which I entered a pair of headlights blazed up the driveway. That would be Big Adele, and damned if they didn’t stop by the side door. I was trapped.

“Now, you fool,” I whispered, “just beef and see where we land. That’s Big Adele, and Prance and Curly Slade are out there, and one of Matt’s men is tied up in the bushes. I think they’re coming in here.”

They were. But before they reached the door, a funny sort of shout came from down the road. I prayed in an unprayerful voice. That would be the guy I gagged up. He had rid himself of the gag. Before somebody cut the headlights, I saw Curly Slade, gun out, run in that direction. What did I do now?

I didn’t know the house, but I figured there must be a front entrance somewhere and I dragged Sheila in that direction. We bumped into furniture and groped for doors, and by the time I reached a musty front room I heard voices outside.

Then Matt Prance said, “He’s inside. Watch out. He’s got Tim’s rod.”

“It’s Maney,” came Curly’s voice. “Let me get the heel!”

I was fumbling with the keys, trying to find one to fit a lock I couldn’t see.

Seconds seemed centuries and I was steeling my will not to shiver and not to get so anxious that I wasted time. Yet as I worked I thought about one thing: how did they know I was there? I mean, that it was me who had bagged this guy called Tim?

Meantime, the conversation had one good effect. Sheila finally got it through her stubborn red head that I was leveling. After I got the door unlocked I handed her Tim’s gun.

“ Whatever you see,” I whispered, “shoot at the biggest part and knock it over. They ain’t going to kiss us if they catch us.”

“I’m not afraid,” she whispered, “and I’m sorry. Before we go I’d better tell you that—”

I clapped a hand over her mouth. Something moved out there in the darkness. I didn’t see it.

I heard it.

There was star shine and the funny sort of light you get on a clear night.

I could make out trees, and the sheen of the pond to the right, and a piled stone wall. Beyond the wall— about six feet high— was the road. And the noise came from between me and the stone wall.

We went down the steps in a crouch. It’s funny how your mind works at such times. I should have been tense, quivering, straining in the darkness to see a movement to shoot at. Maybe I was, yet my mind was asking me just what the legal way was of getting Pete Laird up here to round this gang of rats up. I was wondering what he’d say over the telephone as soon as I called him from Tony Sloan’s.

And all the time the prickly heat was coming out on my skin and my hand on my gun was cold and damp. We were nearly to the fence when the shot blasted. The slug went through my pants, guttered along my thigh, nicked the edge of the bone and tore on out. The impact turned me part way around, just as I fired at the flash. Sheila’s gun smashed in my ear.

And I cursed because the flash of her gun lit my retina, blotting out the other, and so bright was the flash that the darkness was darker and I could only see the memory of her gun’s flash and nothing else. I gave her a push toward the wall, and went to my knees.

“Go on,” I groaned, “they got me. Run.”

AS I moaned I moved to the right, and a shot roared. I fired at the flash this time, about a foot below it, and I fired twice, squeezing off carefully. I don’t know if I hit. Then from the right feet were thumping on the ground and I had to turn.

My thigh was numb now and I stood up to find Sheila half-way to the wall.  She stopped, her gun lifted. She fired three times toward the thumping feet. Well, it was a break for me all right because she drew their fire and I got over the intervening ground while the guns roared. I got to her just as she staggered, half-whirled and went rubber.

I caught her, practically threw her over the fence. My hand was sticky and I cursed. She was hit, and dead, and what she knew she couldn't say. I started over the fence myself. As I said, the flashes blinded me, and I never saw anybody on my right until a hand clawed at me and a gun appeared almost in my face. I don’t, know how I knocked it up, but I must have, for when the sheet of flame came out of it, my hat went flooey as the slug hit it and I had a streak of blistered flesh above my right eye where the flames burned.

I saw by the flash who held the gun. Curly Slade. He tried to pivot on his hold on me to fire again. But I was pivoting too. And my gun muzzle hit him square in the mouth just as I squeezed off the trigger.

All I could see was an opened mouth, lit as if an electric light were inside of it. I could see his tongue and a little thing—the palate—hanging down, and the light of the blaze coming through the transparency of his cheeks. Then he was gone backward, and the odd position I had, pivoted into to get the shot off, plus his letting go of me cost me my balance and I went head over heels over the wall. My outstretched hands rubbed against the silk of Sheila’s legs. I got her around the waist, and did the only thing possible, moved along the protection of the wall in the direction my car was.

There were at least four shots that blasted behind me but none of them came close. They were shooting at shadows. The goldenrod and weeds were high along the wall, and I must have made noise. Yet they didn’t find me.

All during that retreat, my brain was keeping up two lines of thought as if I were two different guys : one watching what the other did. Sheila was limp in my arms, my leg was numb except for hot .blood running down and filling my loose sock. I got her in the car and found a slug-had given her a permanent part right up the middle of her red hair.

I started to laugh, high-pitched in relief and batted myself across the cheek.

Then I drove down the highway and stopped at a farmhouse this side of the Weston road. A farmer named Blanchard let me in, looking queer and perplexed as he saw the bloody marks my right hoof left.

I said, “ Motor accident. Got to use your telephone.”

He took the explanation and led me into the kitchen where the telephone was, but I could see .he thought I was a liar after Pete Laird was on the wire.

“Listen,” I said, "I know the whole set-up. I got Sheila. She’s got a skull groove from a slug. Curly Slade met with an accident and hasn’t got any head. Big Adele is up here, so is Matt Prance. And that isn’t all. You can break this case tonight if you can scram up here in a run.”

I knew it -wasn’t legal for a New York dick to go pinching people in Connecticut. So did he. But say this for him, he never hesitated.

"I’m coming as fast as a prowl car can bring me. Say an hour and ten minutes. Maybe less. We'll fix it with the Connecticut cops later. Where’ll I find you?”

“At Tony Sloan’s— and hurry!”

I had most of the two hundred bucks that Pete had given me still in my pocket. I peeled off fifty and gave them to the farmer.

“Listen,” I said, "my sister is outside, badly hurt in the accident. I want a doctor for her. I want you to keep her here while I go see how the other people are doing.”

He looked at the money and said, “ I don’t like this for a cent."

But I was out bringing Sheila in. By this time his wife and grown up daughter’ were down nosing around, and when they saw Sheila all bloody and pretty at that, they cried out and got her to bed, and started up the fire to heat hot water.

I gave the farmer a stare.

“This is on the up-and-up,” I said, “ and there’ll be fifty more where this one came from if you take good care of her and get a doctor.”

Before he could refuse or ask questions I limped out to the car and bore down on the accelerator. I drove straight to Tony’s. Schultz lived over the garage and heard me come in and stuck his head out of the window.

“That movie was out hours ago,” he said, “ vere you been?”

“Picking daisies,” I said. “Did Tony come?”

“Yah. He is in house askin’ fer you."

I walked down the driveway, past the swimming pool to the main lodge which was all lit up. I went in. Tony, still in dinner clothes, was downing a tall cold drink.

His hand was shaking and he dropped the drink as I came in. As he bent over to pick up the glass— it fell on a rug and didn’t break— a button on his shirt popped.

He said, “For Pete’s sake, man. look at your foot. It’s all blood.”

I put my back to the fireplace, facing him. Took out my gun carelessly and  then on a sudden leveled it at his fatty middle.

“Yeah,” I said, “so was Helen Dunn all bloody, Sloan. Get them up.”

That’s all I remember except a violent blow that hit me in the mouth and the lights went out and the floor came up and socked me in the mush.

7: Racket’s End

I FOUND out what had happened when I woke up. I had twenty different toothaches and a little exploration by my tongue explained the reason. A slug had been fired at my head and it hadn't missed. It had struck one side of my mouth— the left first, I think— and gone through taking gum and two back molars with it. Going out it had done just about as badly, taking a new gold inlay and a wisdom tooth and a quarter of an inch of the gum. The shock must have put me out before I heard the report of the gun which shows you just how quick you fold up when hit, because the bullet only beats the sound at such short range by a fraction of a second.

Anyway, I had a honey of a headache, and I found myself trussed up like a mummy in ropes and reposing in a couch swing on the screened-in terrace of Tony Sloan’s place. Right across from me was Tony Sloan and Matt Prance.

I spat out a mouthful of blood and some fragments of my lost teeth.

Tony Sloan was on me like a flash. “All right, you rat,” he growled, “where is she?”

I wondered how long I had been out. There was no mercy in his face, nor in Prance’s either. They were keeping me alive hoping to recapture Sheila. After that— curtains. So I was bold.

“What do you want to do?” I said. “ Murder her the way you murdered Helen Dunn? The next time you bump somebody don’t bent over in front of them to see if they’re dead, Sloan. Then one of your pearl studs won’t pop and land in a dead mouth.”

Prance said, “So that’s where it landed?”

Sloan struck me across my wounded face and the pain almost made me sick.

"Where is she?” he demanded.

Before I could say anything, Big Adele came in with a rush like a freight train making up ten minutes schedule.

“Darling,” she cried to Sloan, "don't stick around. Let’s go. We can—”

She had her hands on him caressing him, her face not vicious any more, but tender and soft. Funny what love can do to a woman. She was as bad as they come, but she adored this fat chump who had gone into the girl-jacket to stage a money come-back.

Sloan thrust her aside. His face was white with pink spots, his eyes blazed and he was tense enough to explode.

"Where is she?” he said thickly.

“She ought to be in New York by now,” I said.

He hit me again and I gagged with the pain. Adele kept tugging at him.

“Please, Tony, if you stay here, we’re all caught.”

“Get away from me,” he snarled, whirling on her. “I gave you those studs to get rid of. And you, you cheap rat, you kept them in your safe because they were worth a couple of grand.”

“No, no, honest, I didn’t, Tony, darling,” she cried. “I kept them because they were yours. I wanted to throw them away. But I couldn’t. Tony— Tony—”

He walloped her, but she didn’t make any come-back. She just started to cry and Prance edged her aside. He was cold, but scared, and very dangerous.

“Let me go to work on him, Tony,” he said, “Sheila was wounded and she didn’t go far.”

Prance went to work. He put cigarette coals against the bullet holes in my cheeks. He shoved pins under my fingernails. I couldn’t take it. If I could have fainted I’d have been all right. But the pain got so awful I had to do something.

“She’s at a farmhouse,” I yelled. “I don’t know the name. Not far from the Green Lodge. I could take you there."

Again the pin under my forefinger and I began to vomit.

Sloan yelled, “Take a chance he’s leveling. Get some of those ropes off him and let’s go.”

Well, I got a break then. I was dizzy with pain, and so weak from it I could hardly stand. So when they unbound me all except my hands they did the job hastily. I could, feel plenty of slack on my wrists. But it didn’t do me any good because I was then too weak to make a fight if I freed myself.

Prance got his right arm under my shoulders and started to drag me to the door. I was leaning heavily on him. Adele was ahead and Tony Sloan was using his left hand to help drag me on my right.

Adele reached the door to hold it open, and she gave a quick, smothered scream.

“Somebody’s coming— dicks— he’s tricked you, Tony!”

Headlights came up the bend in the driveway. Well, you couldn’t blame poor Pete Laird for that. I hadn’t told him that Tony was the king-pin in the vice ring because I wasn't sure when I called. So he figured this only for my hide-out and came steaming in with all lights blazing.

But coming the way he did, he trapped Tony Sloan and Matt Prance and Big Adele. And practically signed my death warrant.

I told you I was weak. I was. A second before I could scarcely bear my weight on my feet. But the instant she screamed I knew my number was up. They’d kill me, shoot it out and make a getaway. But killing me would be first.

From some place— fear of death, of course— I got a surge of strength. I jerked my right hand loose from Sloan’s grip and it streaked across and inside Matt Prance’s coat and came out with his automatic. Don’t ask me to tell you how that hand got out of the loosened cord on my wrist. Maybe I wished it out.

ANYWAY, I had a gun. I was loose and I hurled myself backward just as Tony Sloan took a slug at me with a gun muzzle. He missed and followed up with a swinging arc to mow me down. Prance was leaping at me like a tiger. Big Adele was fishing in a purse, fumbling hysterically with a pearl-handled rod of some kind.

I went on down flat on my back, and I knew by the way I hit that I wasn’t going to get up. All the strength I had had been spent in one effort. But the gun, heavy as it was in my hand, was swinging and I pulled the trigger and held it down.

The slugs played a tap dance on Tony Sloan’s carcass and as each one hit him he jerked backward like a marionette on strings. He faded out of my sight just as Prance lit on me grabbing for my gun wrist. How he missed I don't know. But the rest of him hit me.

His wolfish face was in mine, his stinking breath hot on my face, his body pinning me. I did the only thing I could with his fingers tearing the flesh of my neck. I rammed the gun around somehow to bring it into his body and I pulled the trigger.

I don’t remember hearing the explosion. But I smelled burning flesh and cloth and he wasn’t trying to claw me any more. And he wasn’t dead either. He just rolled over with a surprised look on his face and said jerkily,

“I'm hit!”

Well, I was done. Adele would have killed me only Pete nailed her with a right cross that knocked her kicking against the fireplace screen, and a couple of uniformed cops took a knife away from Matt Prance— a knife I hadn’t even seen him draw.

Pete gave me a shot of Bourbon that was four fingers tall. I hate Bourbon but that tasted like nectar and it hit me like a dose of cocaine. I snapped out of it and took an interest.

Pete listened while I belched.

“Sheila’s got all the facts. She got wise to Tony Sloan when a gal named Ethel Morey was grabbed. I don’t know what happened to Ethel, but Sheila can tell you. Tony was nuts about Sheila. He didn’t kill her, but held her prisoner in a sound-proof room in a joint he owns on Good Hill Road. Tony personally killed Helen— it was his black pearl stud that popped into Helen’s mouth. I have a hunch he killed her because he was holding out on Matt Prance in the vice-ring take and was afraid she’d beef to Matt, not to the cops.

“He told Matt he had plugged her to keep her from ratting to the cops. You can check this with Matt’s story— and Sheila’s.

"The reason I think this is that he  was trying to capture me without Matt Prance knowing he had me. I’d slid away from Prance, changed my hotel, and ran into Sloan. He played me for a sucker and sent me up here— maybe to finish me off in his own way.

“I never suspected this until Prance told Sloan about me cracking Big Adele’s safe and getting the pearls, and then. Sloan must have broken down and said he had me at his place in Westport. That was the only way I could account for Prance knowing where I was, which he did. Also it was the fact that made me decide Sloan was the guy behind the throne.”

My mouth hurt like hell. But I said, " I think Sheila knows where Sloan’s real books are which is why he grabbed her. Anyway, she's witness enough to convict them all.”

Well, that was about all except for two things. First, was the two black pearls. Adele didn’t have them; they hadn’t been found on the floor. So Laird went through my coat and found they’d gone through the lining and were down in the coat skirt.

Second, something had to be done about Sloan’s kill. I had shot him, and stool pigeons have no right to shoot anybody, crooks or otherwise. Also, if I had to stand a trial for homicide— even if self-defense worked— I’d appear as a stoolie. And I just couldn’t go for that.

But Pete said, “ I can fix it so you don't have to appear at all. Prance and Adele won’t beef at their trials, and later they’ll burn for murder, so that shuts their mouth. Sheila’s testimony and the black pearl are all we need for conviction. So you can scram to Canada and take a rest.”

“They’re going to ask,” I said, pointing to Sloan’s corpse, “who fired the slugs into that mouse.”

“I’ll fix it,” said Pete.

He got out his gun, put two handkerchiefs over the muzzle and bent over Sloan's body. I'd hit Sloan four times in the chest and the stomach— not bad shooting for a guy out on his feet. Swiftly Pete held the muzzle of the gun to each wound on the angle my slugs had penetrated, and pulled the trigger. His bigger slugs grooved out the holes my bullets had first made and thus put me in the clear.

“Sloan was resisting arrest and I killed him, as ballistics can prove,” he said. “Curly Slade and that other punk you killed will go down as gang murders— "unsolved.”

“ Suits me,” I said.

I went to the Norwalk Hospital as a motor accident case and loafed three weeks. By that time, Pete had sent me twenty-five hundred bucks which Sheila’s boy friend paid for finding her. Sheila went back home and-married the guy. I took off for Montreal where a check for my expenses and twenty bucks a day pay reached me.

I looked that pay check over plenty, and thought what I had done to earn it, and what it represented. Believe it or not, I cashed the check and put the money in the cash box at the Church of St. Anthony.

Helen Dunn had been more than a friend to me once.

P.S. Matt Prance and Adele Riggs burned.

___________________

4: The Dead Speak Once

Frederick C Painton

Thrilling Detective, Oct 1936

1: Necklace of Death

AT quarter past ten, the little black coupe turned off Highway 57, followed a graveled road for perhaps a quarter of a mile. A gradual easing of the accelerator and a sharp jerk at the wheel sent the car off the edge of the road into the brush. Leaves and bushes whispered against the shiny black metal. A brake squeaked. Cautiously the door opened and Nick Preston— Nicolai Prestino, world-famed magician— climbed out, cursed softly as a briar made a tearing grab at the trouser-leg of his blue serge suit, and turned down the road.

He came to the stone portals of the Anton Mayville estate. Through a screen of mathematically trimmed shrubs, he could see the massive outlines of the staid old house. There were lights in the lower windows, and in some of the upstairs rooms.

Nick stopped, a slim, strong shadow pressed against the black bulk of one of the high stone posts to which was swung the iron gate. With those strong, slender fingers that never failed to attract attention, he carefully tore at his clothing— ripped the white linen shirt, yanked buttons from his vest and jacket, enlarged the briar tear in his trouser-leg. Then he smeared dirt into his face, gave his tie a yank, tousled his sleek, dark hair, and, taking a deep breath, started up the driveway.

Nick looked down at his strong, white hands, grimy now, and grinned. His fingers were famous; so were his theories about them. There were muscles in them, he said, that the average man never, used. He could stand a dime on end on the ball of any finger and make a complete turn of his hand with the dime still in place. They were strong and supple and graceful, those fingers, as sensitive as any safe-cracker’s, as powerful and intuitive as any pianist’s.

As he walked up the driveway to the house, his quick thoughts were obsessed with a half-million dollar string of blue diamonds that the Federal customs authorities were convinced was in Mayville’s possession. Spotting that necklace in Mayville’s house meant two thousand dollars to Nick Preston. A matter of a wager.

THE Peterhoff diamonds— scintillant, wickedly flashing, the eyes of a hundred serpents sparkled venomously in their blue fire, eyes of evil and murder. For years, a trail of blood had dripped in their wake. A smuggler died in the arms of Inspector Dave Dunning of the Treasury squad— died, babbling a story of murder and swearing that he had sold the stones to Anton Mayville. Dunning believed him— but Mayville’s tremendous fortune, his unassailable position made the actual proof of the dead smuggler’s story a matter of vicious complexity.

“Hell, Nick,” Dunning had said, “we can’t third degree the old boy much as I, personally, would enjoy it. And even our cleverest men can’t worm into the house under cover. But, man, how I’d love to nail that old pirate. It’s the first case I ever flopped on.”

Nick had smiled. “As an amateur magician, you should be able to locate those stones. He must have a vault in his house somewhere and if he does, I—”

He hesitated.

“You could what?” Dunning challenged.

“I think I could spot it,” the magician answered softly, his eyes lighting the way a fisherman’s will when one of his cronies is describing the big trout that can’t be caught. Dunning exploded. After all, his best men had been laboring on the case for months and now this— this magician—

“I’ll bet you a thousand,” he exploded, “you can’t find the vault— let alone the necklace. You couldn’t even get into the house to search for it. And forget about hiring out as a third footman. Mayville’s had two servants— has had ’em for years, and he’s too stingy or too scared to take on any more— even to keep that old mausoleum of his in order.”

“You’re sure it’s there—in the Westchester place?”

“A thousand says it is and says you can’t get your hands on it. I’ll give you a month. And bet you another thousand you made a bad bet.”

Nick grinned openly. “I’ll take that too. I’ve got twenty-nine days before I sail to fill that engagement at the London Palladium. Should be plenty of time.”

“No help, mind you. This is to be a Prestino solo.”

“Tonna?” Tonna was his assistant.

“All right. Tonna.”

That had been a week ago. For seven days Nick had been doing a little intensive research on Mayville, his habits, disposition, and family. Now he was ready to go into action— or try to.

His finger pressed the bell. He waited. There were footsteps, hurried ones, female, high-heeled ones. Nick brightened. The door was flung open. A tall slender girl stared, wide-eyed at him. She wore a grey traveling suit, and blonde hair glistened under a dark hat. Nick pushed through the door, fell back against it, breathing hard. The girl put her fingers against her mouth.

“You’re— what happened?”

“My car— crashed— down the road—”

The hall was dimly lighted, and in the half-shadows Nick noticed two light traveling cases by the door, where the girl must have put them down. Before he could ask about them, somewhere from off to Nick’s right, came a shrill, terrible cry, husky, wordless, and agonized.

The girl stiffened. Nick brushed by her, his curiosity acting like a motor inside his body, mechanically driving him.

He passed through a large, vault-like room, not too blindly to note the dusty, ramshackle furniture, the moldy disorder, the room’s figurative resemblance to the skeleton of something long dead. Then he was through that one, and into a library.

The body of a man lay, face down, arms outspread, on the floor by the fireplace. The corpse of a man, Nick thought, as he saw, sticking out from the middle of the back, part of a feathered shaft, saw the wide-staring eyes of the side turned face— recognized Anton Mayville.

2: Murder

EVEN if Nick hadn’t recognized the millionaire, the full-length portrait hanging above the mantel would have told him who it was. Nick looked from the picture on the wall to the dead face, and then to the scared, staring one of the third figure in the room, a young man, who bore a vague resemblance both to Mayville and to the girl, kneeling beside the body. He looked up at Nick, questioningly, then nodded, as if to himself.

“You’re Swenson,” he said in a half-whisper. “You’re Swenson but you’ve come too late.”

So I’m Swenson, am I, Nick thought. He was conscious of soft movement behind him. The girl. She gave a little cry, not exactly of surprise, certainly not of grief, perhaps of horror or bewilderment.

“They’ve killed him,” she said. “Just as they said they would.”

Nick didn’t want to look at her yet. He was still studying the face of the young man kneeling. Then he decided. The young man wasn’t pretending— he was genuinely surprised, horrified. The thing that confronted him was something he couldn’t believe. Nick had an idea that first reactions were important in helping to place guilt. The boy was surprised. The girl was— bewildered? Very well. He could go on from there.

The girl was speaking again.

“You’re Swenson— my uncle sent for you. You came too late.” She sounded almost glad of that. Then hastily she went on. “I’m Martha Mayville and that’s Amory Blair, my cousin. Anton Mayville was our uncle. Amory, get off the floor. Get away from— him.”

She shuddered. Then there was more movement by the door.

Two men came in. One was short, rolypoly, with a terrace of chins banking down over a dinner jacket collar. The other was tall and swarthy. His face was hawklike. His eyes were dark, clear, direct. The roly-poly one, according to Martha Mayville’s introductions, was Mark Wyndry— “he sells my uncle smuggled stones,” Martha said bluntly— and the other was Ali ibn Ben Sakr— “he came to sell my uncle a jewel.”

Nick looked at the four of them.

“Somebody bumped this guy,” he said, trying to sound like Dunning in one of his tougher moods. “You’re all under suspicion.”

Sullen silence greeted his words. Nick thought fast. Since a detective had been sent for, he would arrive. Until he did, the assumption that he, Nick, was Swenson, would prove unlimited opportunities for helpful prowling.

Nick didn’t care much about the murder. That would keep for the police. He had a bet to win and a challenge to meet. He must hurry. He kneeled beside the corpse and touched the feathered shaft.

“An arrow. Which of you is an archer?”

They were silent. The arrow was buried in the body up to its feathered end, but the tip had not come through. This was odd. A regulation twenty-four inch arrow should have stuck out through the chest.

Behind a chair to the left of the body, he found a crossbow, its winding screw of ancient, blackened, oiled iron. The thing sticking hastily out of Mayville’s back was no arrow but a crossbow bolt. Nick glanced around the walls where hung antique weapons of all descriptions. It didn’t take him long to spot the place where the crossbow had hung.

“This,” he muttered, “is going to be a honey.”

He touched the face and ankles and found them cooled but not yet clammy. One arm was stiffening in rigor mortis. Then Nick began asking questions, asking them fast, in a clipped compelling staccato of fire that brought— or seemed to—  surprisingly frank answers.

He found out that Mayville was jewel-mad. Not just fond of jewels— but insane about them. He loved them, loved to fondle and finger and gloat over them, to stroke their smooth, cool surfaces as another man might have caressed a woman. With the possible exception of Martha, he had loved no one— and even to Martha he was sullen, mean, bitter. Even the girl admitted that. They all admitted, too, probably because it would have been of no purpose to deny it, that each of them had quarreled with the old man that night.

AMORY had been refused a request for part of his inheritance which he needed to start in business. Wyndry was after twenty thousand dollars that he claimed was due him on a jewel deal. Ali ibn Ben Sakr had demanded fifteen thousand dollars more in payment for a rose diamond— or the return of the stone. Martha had wished her independence— she wanted to go to New York to dramatic school. To all of them, Mayville had dealt out a ferocious, stubborn “No!”

“He said he’d cut me out of his will,” Martha said, concluding her account. “Said he was going to change it so that neither Amory or I would get a penny. He screamed that at me as I came out of the door. I could hear him still yelling it as I went upstairs to pack. That was at nine o’clock.”

“Who saw him after that?” Nick demanded.

No one answered.

“Who saw Miss Mayville leave the study then?”

Young Amory stepped forward, eyes blazing. “You can drop that, Swenson,” he said. “I was passing upstairs when Martha left uncle’s study. I heard him yelling at her— yelling at her even after the door of her bedroom slammed.”

“All right,” Nick said, placatingly. “Let’s go see the jewels. And who did you mean when you said ‘they’ killed him, Miss Mayville?”

The girl shrugged.

“Uncle was always fighting with the jewel smugglers and thieves from whom he bought most of the stones in his collection. He never paid the prices he agreed to. They were always threatening him. It was the receipt of just such a threatening letter that made him send for you. I thought at first that they had— but how could they have gotten in and gotten away again without being seen? You were coming up the driveway just before the body was found.”

“Mr. Swenson, the jewels can wait. Why don’t you ask these people where they were after I left uncle— what they were doing?”

Nick fumed, inside. He didn’t care who was where nor why. He wanted to get at the jewel collection. His fingers fairly itched.

“All right,” he said, patiently. “Where were you?”

“Ali ibn Ben Sakr was in his room. So was Wyndry. Blair was in the garden. Nick didn’t care.”

“No alibis,” he growled. He turned to Martha. “Show me where the jewels are. Maybe the murderer stole—”

The girl had a square sheet of typewritten paper in her hand.

“Here’s the note I told you about. The threatening letter. I thought you ought to see it.”

Nick glared at her. Was she deliberately trying to—

Her eyes, which were bright and luminously blue, looked into his with trustful candor. But were there mocking devils behind them? He frowned.

He glanced at the unsigned note that said, “if the sixty grand isn’t in a package at Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday, it means your neck. We’re sick of fooling around. The dough or else.”

Nick put the note down.

“The main thing,” he said, “is to discover if anything has been stolen from the collection.”

“You’re very persistent,” she said.

“Motives supply murderers.”

By a rear staircase she led him down into the cellar. She switched on lights, led him by a huge furnace to a rear cellar wall made of apparently impregnable concrete blocks. She pressed something Nick did not see, and there was a click and part of the wall moved forward about an inch. Martha hooked her fingers back of the crevice and swung wide a door six feet high by four in breadth, exposing the face of a modern, burglar-proof safe.

Nick moved forward to give her a hand with the heavy, pivoting masonry.

“Never mind,” she said. Her arms moved easily.

“You must be husky,” he told her.

“I manage,” was all she said. “I found the combination in Uncle Anton’s desk. The new one. He’d just had it changed last week.”

Her fingers twirled the dials expertly. There were whirrs and clicks, “There you are,” she said, smiling.

The door swung open. From a little tray she took a small bunch of keys which were to unlock the various compartments.

“There’s an inventory somewhere,” she explained. “I’ll have to look for it if any jewels are missing. I only know the best of his pieces.”

She paused, put down the keys, then added. “He never showed them to anyone else except once to Amory.” She shuddered slightly. “The look in his eyes when he held them up to the light.”

As she said that she turned a switch and an electric light bulb of a peculiar type, called sunlight rays, threw a bluish-grey incandescence over the scene.

“What would be the most valuable thing he had?” Nick asked carelessly.

“A string of matched diamonds. In this drawer here— that plush case.”

Nick’s left hand went toward the drawer in question, opened the black velvet box. He stared.

“Hell!” he exclaimed bitterly. She came forward, peered inside and gasped. “Why, they’re gone!”

“Exactly!” growled Nick.

This damned murder and theft had cost him two thousand dollars!

3: On The Trail

HE felt the girl’s eyes on him. “The necklace is gone— and so is a rose diamond.”

Their glances met.

“Ali ibn Ben Sakr!” she exclaimed.

“Maybe,” shrugged Nick. “But a missing diamond is not proof of murder.”

“No, but it’s your lead,” she cried eagerly— too eagerly, Nick thought.

“Who was interested in that necklace— Ali ibn Ben Sakr?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. They were blue diamonds, easily cut up for resale. Anybody interested in money would want them.”

Nick suppressed a sigh. He was getting nowhere fast. Should he summon the police and leave, kissing his two thousand dollars good-by? Or should he seize what time remained, find the killer and substitute the imitation necklace he’d brought along and vanish, leaving the rest to the police? Nick’s teeth clicked. He was stubborn and his decisions were made instantly.

Reaching the hallway that led to the front of the house, Martha said, “What next?”

“The servants,” rejoined Nick.

She went to the butler’s pantry and presently an old man, as lean and withered as a dried apple, came.

“This is Blake,” Martha said. “Blake, Mr. Swenson is a detective looking into Uncle Anton’s murder. Answer his questions.”

“I don’t know a thing,” whined the old man. “Margaret was sick all day and I ain’t never left her only at supper time when I served you.” He stared resentfully. “I ought to be with her now.”

“Did you hear or see anything unusual tonight?” Nick asked.

“Nothing, only about quarter after nine I took Mr. Mayville his milk and he asked if the detective had come yet and I said no. Right after that he went down to the safe. Leastwise, he started in that direction ’cause I heard him when I took Margaret her medicine.”

The girl’s eyes sought Nick’s. “Anything else?”

Nick shook his head. “That’s all.”

“Hadn’t you better summon the police?” she asked.

Nick swore. “I suppose so.”

He followed her back to the library, memorizing the facts that had come to him. They were all important now.

MARTHA indicated the telephone and he raised the receiver. He held it a space and put it down.

“The line’s been cut,” he said. At this Amory cried. “Have we got to stay in here all night with— with— with th-that? I tell you I can’t stand it. I’m going up to my room and to hell with you.”

He strode toward the door.

Ali ibn Ben Sakr stared after him. Wyndry glared at Nick.

“Dick or no dick, I’m getting out, too; you’ll know where to find me. In my room.”

Nick watched him go, made no attempt to stop him. They would not dare to run away. That would direct suspicion.

He turned to Ali ibn Ben Sakr. “You may retire too. And you, too, Miss Mayville.”

“And you?” she asked.

“I’m going for the police,” Nick said. Her face could grow no paler but her eyes reflected more fear. She went to the desk and returned with an automatic pistol.

“All right,” she said, “but please hurry. I am afraid.”

Her taking a gun disturbed him; what did she suspect and fear? Ali ibn Ben Sakr must have noticed his perturbation for he said, “I will look after the stiff, Sidi, go with Allah upon whom be peace.”

Nick found three cars in the garage and appropriated a small coupe. He backed into the turnaround and drove steadily until he reached the gate. Here he shut off the ignition and lights, let the car drift to the side of the road, and stole back to the house. He had palmed the front door key and had no difficulty in getting in.

The corpse was as he had last seen it, and now, with the house ghastly silent around him, he bent over it for a more thorough examination. He must have a definite clue. Who would it indicate? Wyndry, a crook? Amory Blair, a weakling and an obviously spoiled brat? Ali ibn Ben Sakr, a subtle, coolheaded Oriental? Or— he wondered— Martha Mayville? She had the cool assurance for this sort of job.

He moved the body carefully. His hand vanished inside the shirt front, and at once he made a discovery. The crossbow quarrel had gone through the body. The needle-like point had broken the skin and was now blunted and flattened as if it had struck against steel. Instantly Nick remembered what the butler had said about Mayville going to the safe.

“By George,” he thought, “the old man wasn’t killed here. He was killed in front of the safe— maybe while it was open. Then his body, was brought back here. Hitting the safe is what dulled the bolt and stopped it from going clear through.”

Excitement made his heart thud. He wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and picked up the crossbow. He could see marks in the bolt groove in the oil showing an arrow had recently been discharged. A man could wind a crossbow to that tension, but could a woman?

While he stood debating his next move there rang out from above a sharp feminine scream. Almost instantly came the reverberating concussion of a fired gun.

NICK was halfway up the stairs before the rumbling echo of the shot had died away. Racing along the hallway he heard sobs from the third door on the left. A light glowed brightly. Martha Mayville was sitting up in bed, the gun still clinched in her hands. She aimed it at him, her eyes dangerous. Then the muzzle dropped.

“Oh, it’s you,” she gasped. “I thought he had come back.”

“Who had come back?” rapped Nick. “The man who— There was someone here a few moments ago. I woke up suddenly, made a noise. I shot at him and he went away. I thought he might be looking for—”

Her hand pointed in a direction, stopped suddenly and shifted to a vanity table exactly opposite. “My purse. Over there,” she concluded. “What could he be wanting?”

“I don’t know,” Nick nodded. “Just stumbled in the wrong room, or was looking for the kitchen,” he jeered. And then, suddenly, in a hard voice. “Stop stalling. The man was looking for something.”

Nick did not like the way she held the gun.

“I don’t know what,” her voice was weak.

“Who was it?” Nick’s eyes were on the small antique table, called a water stand by those familiar with old New England furniture, He strolled carelessly toward it.

“I couldn’t say definitely,” she told him, “but it looked like Wyndry.”

He was a step or so short of the table when she said in a hard, tense voice, “Turn around and get out. I’m all right.”

“Of course,” agreed Nick easily, he passed close to the bed, and jerked suddenly, “Is that the mail?”

He pointed toward the door. Startled, she twisted her body, and in that second Nick leaped to the bedside, his fingers closed on the gun and with a wrench tore it from her grasp.

“Little girls shouldn’t play with such toys,” he growled, his eyes hot. He pocketed the weapon and turned back to the cabinet she had involuntarily indicated. Instantly she sprang out of bed and clawed at him.

“You can’t, it’s mine,” she cried fiercely.

Roughly he thrust her from him.

“Lay off,” he warned. There was a large antique flower jar on one corner of the cabinet. His fingers seized this, tipped it up. Out slid a chamois roll.

The girl moaned. “It’s mine, I tell you.”

Nick unrolled the chamois. The Peterhoff diamonds, twinkling with bluish green fire, glittered malevolently. Nick rewrapped them, dropped them into his side pocket.

“You stole the diamonds from the safe,” he stated flatly.

“What if I did?” she admitted sullenly. “They were to be mine. And the old devil refused me a penny, said he would change his will and leave me with nothing. After the years he’s taken from me, keeping me here— almost a prisoner— I had a right— oh, what’s the use.”

“You could have shot that crossbow bolt,” Nick said quietly.

Her eyes grew wide.

“I didn’t,” she cried. “I have had that necklace for two days. I stole it and intended to be out of the house tonight when he went to the safe to crow over his jewels. I was on my way out for good when— you come.”

Nick thought about this. Then: “Someone else knew you had the diamonds,” he said.

“I don’t know. Who could know such a thing? Uncle, perhaps, but he—”

“Take your choice,” said Nick. “Maybe you’d rather believe your visitor was after— you!”

The girl shivered. Then pulled herself together. “I have no enemies,” she said, firmly.

“Sure,” said Nick.

He had the necklace. The thing to do now was to scram and telephone the police on the way to town. Yet he hesitated and he finally knew why. An insatiable curiosity gripped him. Who had killed Anton Mayville? On a sudden hunch he strode into the hallway and so to the next bedroom. He entered suddenly without knocking.

4: The Other Swenson

A SINGLE night lamp glowed. The bed was untouched; and in the corner Ali ibn Ben Sakr knelt on a pillow, arms folded, eyes closed. Nick smelled hashish fumes. The Moroccan looked at Nick with lackluster, dulled eyes.

“I seek communion with the spirits of the dead,” he spoke. “Only a fool could doubt that the dead live on.”

Suddenly Nick sprang at the Berber, gripped him, jerked him upright. If he had believed that Ali ibn Ben Sakr’s hashish drunk would make him easy to handle, he was instantly disillusioned. The man exploded in a fury of fight. He snarled, struck with feet and hands, smashed Nick backwards and on a sudden drew a curved knife. Murder lust blazed in his eyes.

Swiftly Nick stepped under the upraised blade. His amazing hands worked like lightning. Ali ibn Ben Sakr writhed in agony as Nick’s fingers found nerve centers. He groaned, let go the knife as he half-dropped under a jolting right hook.

“In Allah’s name, stop!” he cried.

“Good enough,” nodded Nick. His hands frisked the Moroccan. Came to the curly oiled hair. The Berber flinched back but Nick’s hand came away with a ball of hair. He opened it, “

The rose diamond!” he murmured. “Ali, you took that out of the safe. You killed Anton Mayville.”

Ali ibn Ben Sakr had recovered his Oriental phlegm.

“I did not,” he said calmly. “I intended to but I would have used my knife. I followed him to recover the rose diamond. I went to the cellar. Anton Mayville was dead. The safe was open. I took the rose diamond. I closed the safe. I carried the body to the living room.”

“Why?”

“Amory Blair saw me go down. He would have charged me with murder if Mayville’s body had been found down there. That, as Allah is my judge, is the truth."

Nick paused near the door. After all, it was up to the police to investigate this man. It was time now to get along. He felt fairly sure who had killed Anton Maven. Without speaking he went out.

He found Amory Blair sitting up in bed, in pajamas, a book in his lap. A tray was full of short cigarette stubs. “Still nosing around?” he sneered.

“Yes,” said Nick. “You must have got undressed quickly.”

“If you mean since the shot was fired,” said Blair, “I could have fired it, got back here and got to sleep before you arrived. I thought a dick moved faster. He folded the book and put it on the stand. Nick saw that it was by A. Conan Doyle and dealt with spiritualism and life after death.

“You believe in ghosts,” he said.

“Why not?” rejoined the youth. “Life would be futile if there was nothing beyond the grave.”

“You would deny having left this room,” Nick said.

“Of course,” said Blair calmly, “only it happens to be the truth.”

“It always is,” said Nick. “How much do you inherit by your uncle’s will?”

“A third of the estate,” rejoined Blair. “And I need it.”

Nick opened his mouth to speak— snapped it shut with a start. From downstairs a hoarse, belligerent voice bellowed like a foghorn. “An’ this guy is still here? Lead me to him.”

“That,” murmured Nick, “would be Mr. Otto Swenson. I think it’s time for me to fade.”

But before he could get downstairs the Swede detective loomed menacingly over him. A brawny man, with red angry eyes.

“So this is the guy who said he was me,” he growled. With deceptive speed his hand came up holding a big six-gun.

“Raise ’em,” he yelled. “I arrest you for the murder of Anton Mayville.”

Nick blinked, then burst into laughter.

“You think it’s funny, eh,” said the Swede. “Well, wait until we sweat you with a hose. Then you see. Keep your hands up. Frisk him, Miss Mayville.”

Nick sprang into the gun and knocked it up. But as he started a right hook for the jaw, Martha Mayville grabbed him. He realized instantly he would be too late. He lurched into Swenson, hands moving with lightning speed. The Swede jumped back, thumbing the trigger.

“One more like that and I let you have it,” he yelled. Then, as Martha Mayville regained her gun, the Swede lowered his.

The Swede swiftly grasped Nick’s arm, jerked it with a wrenching movement that made Nick turn to avoid having the arm dislocated in the socket. His other arm was grasped. A double click followed the touch of cold steel to his wrists.

Handcuffs!

“Let me get the necklace,” Martha cried.

“Sure, go ahead. He’s harmless now.” Her hands worked through Nick’s pockets. Suddenly she gasped in triumph.

“Here’s the necklace.”

“Good,” said the Swede.

“Now I work this lug over and make him tell plenty.”

Fists doubled, eyes menacing and red, the brawny detective advanced to beat his helpless victim to a pulp. Nick sighed. Swenson took a swing that would have smashed Nick’s fine aquiline nose flat to his face. But Nick ducked and in ducking shucked off the handcuffs.

He had unlocked hundreds of the same pattern in his acts; rid himself of them head down in the Chinese water torture jar which he had learned under the famous Houdini; unlocked them while roped in a trunk, in a box, in a sealed paper bag. In certain types of handcuffs, the Chinese for example, Nick required the services of an assistant inside his cabinet. But these regulation Little Bobby handcuffs with which he had long been familiar he sprang without a key. It was a peculiar confirmation of his hands that made the trick possible— wide, flat backs, unusually flexible and supple, no broader than the flat wristbones.

All Nick did was to perform an almost invisible series of swift, smooth motions that slid the cuffs down and then safely over the contracted in-bent hands. Simple really— but you had to be born like that.

So when Swenson, snarling at his miss, waded close with his left drawn back for a blow, Nick ducked, brought up his hands and when Swenson left himself open, Nick swung to the jaw. A neat target and a clicking well-placed blow. Swenson staggered back, reeling against the wall.

5: Magic Plot

NICK was amazed; he had dropped bigger men with the same kind of blow. But Swenson returned, groggy, to the charge. Nick measured Swenson with a left jab, brought around the right from somewhere in the vicinity of his ankles. The blow was solid, satisfying and complete. Swenson crashed to the floor, and this time he did not move.

Dumbfounded, Martha Mayville still held the gun.

Swiftly Nick reclaimed it.

“That man is a fool,” he said. “You’d better notify the police.” She stared at Nick, speechless. He bent to frisk Swenson, reclaimed the real necklace which he had palmed there in the first brush and slid it into his pocket.

Then without another word, he raced downstairs and out of the house. He got in the coupe and drove it swiftly to the side road where he’d left his own car, switched over and sped back to the four-width Sawmill Parkway.

Here he found a car parked, a cigarette glowing in the driver’s mouth. He parked his car behind it, locked it, put the key under the floor mat and went to the waiting vehicle.

The girl in the waiting car turned on the lights, and from the dash illumination she was revealed as a tall, slim, perfectly proportioned blonde who would attract a second glance from any man.

“I thought you were never coming,” she said.

“So did I, Tonna.” Nick climbed in behind the wheel and bore down on the starter. “I’m up to my ears in murder and unless I prove who did it, you’ll see me in the Tombs and on page one.”

AS he drove down the highway toward New York he told her all that had happened.

“You’re in a spot Nick,” she said. “The police probably can’t hang murder on you. But they can convict you of obstructing justice, impersonating a police officer, and illegal entry and robbery. If you don’t find the killer, you’ll perform your magic in Sing Sing until your beard is in a braid.”

“I know who the killer is,” said Nick, “but I couldn’t prove it. It’s damned near a perfect crime.”

“Who is the murderer?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you later, after I think out a way of getting proof.”

They drove on in silence. Then, passing through the Bronx, Nick said, “How is your ventriloquism getting on?”

From apparently outside the car a cooing voice said, “Oh, Professor Prestino, those marvelous hands. However do you do it?”

Nick grinned. “Good! Could you imitate a man?”

She slid something into her mouth from her bag and a hoarse voice, still seemingly outside the car, said, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Darling, you’re good,” Nick laughed. “Now, in the morning go to the Mammoth Recording Company and beg, borrow or steal some of Mayville’s dictaphone records. And put in some practice on that voice. Understand?”

She smiled. “I’m way ahead of you!”

At nine o’clock next morning Nick Preston, gardenia in his buttonhole, strolled into the Treasury Department’s New York office in Park Place.

“Good morning, Inspector,” he grinned. “You owe me two thousand dollars.”

He threw the Peterhoff diamond necklace on the table. Inspector Dunning looked up from the morning newspaper, his eyes piercing Nick.

“An amazingly accurate description,” he said. “Listen to this: the murderer who stole the necklace is described by the police as six feet one inch tall, broad-shouldered, reddish brown hair, dark, piercing eyes and a low, commanding voice. What puzzles the police is how he escaped from Private Detective Swenson’s handcuffs.”

Nick grinned. “It doesn’t say how handsome I am.”

“You’re in this up to your eyes, fellah,” Dunning said. “You’re the only man since Houdini who could have slipped those come-alongs. Start at the beginning.”

Nick did, omitting nothing.

“I’ve won the bet,” he concluded.

“Okay. But, Nick, you certainly have gummed up this case. You handled the body, the crossbow: you delayed calling the police until the phone wires had been cut. You impersonated a licensed dick. You are a key witness that will have to be called.” He paused. Then: “I’ll have to tell the detectives on this case what I know. I’m an officer of the law, sworn to do my duty. If I cover you up, this case will never be broken— Mayville’s murderer will never be found.”

“I think differently,” argued Nick. “I know who killed Mayville. I’ve got an idea, a plan, how to prove it. But I’ve got to have your help.”

“How?”

“Keep my name out of the case and get those four suspects out of the Mayville house while I arrange some apparatus.”

DUNNING studied him keenly. “How can you get evidence to convict when there isn’t any?”

“What I’ve got on this killer is absolute certainty— elimination of all other suspects by deductive reasoning— and not one shred of evidence that would stand up in court. I’ve got to get a confession. And I’m sure I can.”

“And if you don’t get it?”

Nick grinned. “I think I will. But if I don’t, then you can take it from me Mayville’s murderer will never be caught.”

“And if you fail, do you release me from my promise not to tell the local police about you?” Nick took a deep breath.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s a go.” Dunning picked up a telephone and called the Beverly chief of police who would be in charge of the investigation. Swiftly he explained that through circumstances which he could not reveal the Peterhoff necklace had come into his possession. Since it was a smuggled article the Federal authorities intended to co-operate in the investigation. He had certain clues that later he could reveal. Meantime, would the chief of police arrest all four inmates of the house as material witnesses and hold them in bail for the afternoon? Dunning carried weight; the whole government behind him. And being stubborn and hard he had his way. Finally he hung up.

“The house will be cleared of everybody in an hour,” he said. “So what?”

“I want them released and brought back to the house at eight o’clock,” said Nick. “I want this chief of police— what’s his name— Margrave— there, and I want you there and two of your operatives. I want you in the ballroom. It has a small stage— Martha evidently used it to develop her stage yen— and it will serve my purpose.”

“A magic trick?”

“You might call it that,” grinned Nick.

He had a tremendous amount to do upon leaving Dunning’s office. It took a five ton truck to transport the material he needed for his experiment. It took two experienced stage hands the better part of four hours to set the stuff in place. After this was done he had to have a rehearsal with Tonna.

“You got the dictaphone records?” he asked.

“Of course,” she replied in a strange, harsh voice.

Nick grinned. “Is that it?”

“That’s it,” she told him. “Wait and see.”

Nick chuckled. “Okay, darling; this has got to be a honey.”

At seven o’clock he was at the Mayville house and checked his lighting, his fixtures and had Tonna read her lines. There was nothing now to do but wager everything on the experiment.

“You sit out here in front, right in this chair,” Nick indicated. “You must be seen. There can be no idea in any one’s mind that any other person is on the stage except myself.”

He looked down at the hole in the stage floor which the workers had sawed out according to his specifications.

“Nick,” Tonna whispered, “whom do you suspect? Whom do you think is the guilty person? They all seem guilty to me.”

“If you’d listened carefully to my story,” he chided, “you’d know who. The one with the greatest motive and the greatest fear!”

6: Nick Conjures

IT was nearing eight o’clock when the prisoners were brought in by Chief James Margrave. Nick was made up for his part. A Mephistophelean black mustache and beard, a black wig and a padded hump in his shoulders altered his appearance so that he passed unrecognized. A small group of chairs were pushed close to the stage and the prisoners seated. Dunning sat near them, hand on gun. Two more Federal agents with drawn weapons stood near the two exits. Besides this, Chief Margrave had two constables.

When the lights in the ballroom were dimmed, only a faint greenish floodlight illumined Nick who was standing in the center of the stage. The greenish radiance and the serious silence of those present charged the room with suspense and unholy fear.

Keeping his stare fixed on Tonna who sat in the front, ravishing in a lovely evening-gown, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you do not know me, so I take the time to introduce myself. I am Professor Nicolai Prestino of whom you may have heard, particularly recently when my experiments in spiritual communication attracted attention in England.”

He paused to let this sink in. “The police have been kind enough to summon me in the case of the murder of Anton Mayville. Certain evidence they possess tends to incriminate two persons. One or the other is innocent. Rather than force the innocent person to languish months in jail while a trial proved the guilt of one, the police have asked me to attempt here tonight to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who the guilty person is.” After a cloistral pause: “I am prepared to do this.”

“How?” asked Dunning. In the utter silence his voice startled.

“By summoning from the other world the man who has been killed— Anton Mayville himself. From his dead lips we shall have the truth.”

Ali ibn Ben Sakr sat with folded arms and bowed head and said nothing. Wyndry sniffed and cursed under his breath.

“It is a truth well known to researchers in psychic phenomena that a released soul does not at once leave the vicinity of its habitat,” said Nick. “It is particularly true in case of men who, in their lives, were cursed with the acquisitive instinct and became what we call misers. A miser squatting over buried bags of gold is no different from a man who collects paintings, postage stamps— or jewels. As we all know, Anton Mayville was particularly so afflicted. He is here tonight—in this room— and I propose to materialize him, and have him name his murderer.”

A sort of chill swept the room as if bat wings had fanned the air into motion.

“I want you all to approach this experiment in deepest humility,” continued Nick gravely. “With your minds opened to the fact that we know not what goes on beyond death save as these rare spirits and those gifted to receive their messages may tell us. It is said that though murder hath no tongue, yet shall it talk. It is also said that the dead may all speak once.”

More and more his impressive voice added to the tomblike quality of the silent room. Charged it with electricity so that men squirmed, and breath came quickly in their throats, and they felt the touch of unseen things and the mystery of death. Even those in the secret felt the awe of the unknown. “

I ask you all now to join me in a simple prayer,” said Nick, “one that we all know. Our Father—”

Carefully he led the prayer and the other voices chimed in. The lights went down now until only the green floodlight softly lit the stage.

“Now, you will all join hands and concentrate on summoning Anton Mayville,” Nick said. The rustle of movement was like the rustling wings of death. Tonna saw Nick, who had stood at the left side, now retreat to the center of the stage. Even here he was not twelve feet from his audience. The green light from the footlights against his red-lined cloak, his white tie made a hellish picture.

Nick stood utterly silent. Slowly he raised his hands, clasped them above his head. He seemed to quiver. “Anton Mayville,” his voice came low, haunting, spectral. “Anton Mayville!”

SILENCE! Nick’s arms remained above his head; only his silhouette showed to his audience. Again he intoned the dead man’s name. And now those watching saw a sort of bubbly stuff flow from Nick’s mouth. Thicker and thicker the volume grew, fell to the floor, piled up. And as it did a sort of smoke fogged the stage for a brief second so that Nick was scarcely visible.

“Who summons me?” said a deep, harsh, angry voice. Out in front four people sat up as if shocked with an electric bolt. Now the smoke vanished and the soapy sort of stuff that had bubbled from Nick’s lips also vanished as swiftly as soap bubbles will. But beyond Nick, to his right, a figure was materializing in air.

A pale milky figure strongly accented by the greenish incandescence of the footlights. At first there was no more than a white shadow there without shape. Then the head took on proportion, even features began to become distinct until at last it was an old man’s head, without hair, without eyebrows, thin and hawk-like and as true as life to see. Martha Mayville moaned. Then, more swiftly now, the body added itself to the head.

The shoulders, then the arms, hands locked behind in what must have been a characteristic attitude, for Wyndry cried, “Oh, my God!”

Ali ibn Ben Sakr broke his silence. “Allah Akbar!” he thundered. “Allah il Allah Mohammed rassoul Allah.”

“Silence in the name of those who are invisibly around you,” cried the specter. It did seem as if his head turned and burning eyes frowned at the Moslem. Tensely the watchers sat on the edge of their seats.

The ghost of Anton Mayville was all visible now to the polish of his old-fashioned patent leather shoes. Nick brought his hands down and now stood face to face with the specter, not a foot separating them. Nick made a genuflection.

“Spirit of him who is dead, we greet thee with the humility of the ignorant.”

“Why have you summoned me?” demanded the irascible voice. “Am I not tormented enough by the knowledge that I am tied, earth-bound, by the wealth that I accumulated, that I hate to leave?”

“We summon you, Anton Mayville, because in this room is the person who killed you.”

A breathless hush. Then a gasp, the whistling of breath in nostrils as the figure turned slightly. It seemed to stare.

“Yes, that person is here.”

“Would you tell us how you were killed?”

“You make my wound hurt with your words,” cried the specter. “Can you not see me before the safe wherein I accumulated those baubles that hold me enchained now? Behind me there is a slight noise. I start to turn. In my back I feel a terrific shock, the blinding sudden pain that is succeeded instantly by the death of my body. In falling I turn so that my glazing eyes take into eternity the vision of that one who had fired the arrow that killed me.”

A brief second of silence that was surcharged with fear, dread, suspense.

“And that person is?” asked Nick.

“That person is—” began the specter.

Whatever else was said was drowned by a sudden, terrible yell of unendurable fear and the roar of a pistol shot. The pistol shot was followed by a terrific cracking and crashing and a thunderous roar. And suddenly the stage rained thousands of splinters of glass. Nick hurled himself back to escape the deluge of needle-pointed fragments. Tonna leaped up and fled to the rear of the room.

The specter vanished instantly and the lights came on. There stood Amory Blair struggling frantically in the grasp of the two constables.

“He can’t come back,” he shrieked. “I killed him once and I’ll kill him again.”

It bespeaks the almost superhuman power of an insanely frightened man that he smashed one constable to the floor, tore away from the other and with three bounds reached the stage, slithering and slipping over the debris of the thick plate glass. He tore straight for Nick.

“In you he came back, you’re hiding him,” he screamed. He reached down, seized a jagged splinter of glass and stabbed furiously at Nick. He was utterly stark mad and despite Nick’s trained quickness the stabbing point of glass hooked his sleeve and left a nasty gash from the shoulder to the elbow. Then they were locked chest to chest and no guns could be fired for fear of hitting Nick. Men wore crawling over the glass debris but in the space of time that they took, Nick fought for his life.

One arm was helpless, but the other smashed a fist into Blair’s face, and then his fist thudded into Blair’s stomach.

This blow had such jolting effect that Amory Blair was driven backward. He tripped over the glass debris and fell down, cutting his face and neck. As Nick towered over him the man turned, saw the police rushing at him. One maniacal peal of laughter tore from his lips.

“Not alive,” he yelled. “If I can’t kill the damned old rat in this world I’ll do it in the next.”

His hand, still holding the sliver of glass, made a quick flashing movement to his neck. There was a spout of blood from the severed jugular vein, and Amory Blair sank down to die in less than minutes.

IT WAS at least an hour later, after Nick’s cut had been bandaged, and the ballroom cleared except for him, Tonna and Dunning, that the T-man said, “Nick, I know it was a magic trick— a beautiful one— but I haven’t yet been able to figure out how you did it.”

Nick grinned. “The beginning of that trick dates back to 1204, old Sir Roger Bacon, no less, and I believe it must have been known even before that by the old Druids and priests of Ra.

“It is based upon a simple principle. For example, if you are in a room peering out through a clear glass window into darkness, holding a candle in your hand, you will see reflected in the glass, not only the candle flame but as much of your person as the candle lights.”

“Ah,” said Dunning, “I begin to see.”

“Exactly. Now, what I did was this. I erected here on the stage a piece of clear, polished glass about twelve feet square. Down here”—he pointed to the hole in the stage floor— “I had a mirror. Before the mirror I erected the very fine painting of Anton Mayville that reposed until recently over the fireplace. Now, before the painting I have a battery of powerful lights which have dimmers on them that I operated from a switch in my hand connected with invisible wires. After using soap and smoke as a buildup, I turned the dimmers so that the light grew stronger on the picture. This picture was in turn reflected by the mirror to the sheet of glass which was here on the stage but which could not be seen due to my lighting arrangements. I am behind and to the side of the mirror. I can see nothing. But all you out front see reflected in that sheet of clear glass the image of Anton Mayville’s picture, projected from below. As I increase the light the vision grows clearer. Hence you see a shadow that seems to be a ghost.”

“Remarkable,” said Dunning. “I was awed myself. And, Tonna, your voice imitation was superb.”

SHE smiled but looked at Nick and flushed as he said, “Swell.”

“But how did you know enough to use this trick?” Dunning demanded. “How did you know it would work?”

“Well, I didn’t know it would work,” Nick admitted. “I knew Blair believed in ghosts. So I took a chance.”

“All right, Professor,” Tonna lilted mockingly, “why did you suspect Blair?”

“Well, in the first place,” Nick said, “the stones in this case were like a red herring drawn across the trail of the crime. It was only when I began to realize that the stones had nothing to do with the actual murder that the truth dawned on me.

“Another factor that confused the issue was the body being found where it was. You see, Amory Blair discovered the corpse upstairs. He’d murdered his uncle downstairs. What I glimpsed on his face when I saw him bent over the body was honest surprise and horror. I thought it was caused by his finding his uncle dead. So I ruled him out. But when I discovered that the murder had taken place in the cellar, I knew that the surprise and horror were due to finding the body upstairs.

“He was superstitious; maybe he thought the body’d walked. Anyway he was really rattled— and that threw me off.

“Then the jewels. If the murder was committed before the safe— why was nothing stolen? The rose diamond was gone. But I couldn’t believe Sakr would be so insane as to admit that he’d carried the body upstairs, and taken the diamond, if he’d actually murdered Mayville.

“No one knew that Martha had the necklace. Yet someone entered her room. She thought, to steal the diamond. I thought then, and I think now, that Amory Blair went to his cousin’s room for the purpose of killing her.

“Ruling out Wyndry and Sakr— since they were concerned only with the jewels— left Martha and Amory. I began looking for another motive, and found it when she told me of Mayville’s threat to change the will. And Amory admitted having heard that. “And if he could kill Martha, who had no other relatives and had left no will, then he would inherit her third of their uncle’s estate as well as his own.

“The jewels weren’t the motive. The murderer took no jewels. It was just plain, ordinary gold he was after. Amory needed money.”

He spread his hands. “Just intelligent suspicion, really. But I was right, and I proved it!”

Dunning had taken out a checkbook. “Here’s your two thousand— but I’ll get five thousand reward for recovering the necklace.”

“Better have the necklace, then,” Nick said with a grin, and drew the glittering diamond coil out of his pocket.

“Not bad, eh?”

____________________

5: Murder Suspect

Frederick C Painton

5 Detective Novels, Winter 1950

ABOARD the forty-two-foot motor cruiser Mystic, anchored three hundred yards off the Beachmont Yacht Club’s dock on Long Island Sound, a desperate girl strove frantically to unlock a cabin door with a small nail file. The bunk light threw a yellow radiance on her wavy yellow-gold hair and revealed her as being tall, boyishly slim, with the shapely figure of one who knows how to dress. Her blue eyes were dark, not so much from fear as from smoldering anger.

It was nearly midnight. Outside it was  bitterly cold, with a December gale blowing forty miles an hour out of the north. The moan of the wind in the rigging and the slapping thud of a sizable sea made noise enough to cover her labors.

She was not making much headway. Wedging the file point between the brass key and the lock in an attempt to turn it, the point slipped, the file bent and she bruised her fingers enough to bring blood.

“Darn!” she muttered furiously.

She stepped back, light falling on her oval face, her high cheek bones outlined under a clear ivory skin. The face wasn’t just pretty. It held an inner, resolute expression that made it beautiful.

While she was straightening the file, preparatory to attacking the door again, she suddenly heard the irregular explosions of an unmuffled motor. The engine drone grew to a roar close by, and then, suddenly, was silent. She stood tense in wonder.

“That’s an airplane,” she thought. “What is it doing here?”

Presently she heard the splash of oars on the lee of the Mystic, and then the bumping of a small boat against the yacht’s port side. A moment or so later she heard voices in the main cabin above. This puzzled and mystified her, and she strained to listen.

The voices, however, were only indistinct murmurs for five minutes, perhaps. But suddenly they rose in furious argument. She heard, almost instantly, a hoarse voice charged with venom and hatred.

“All right, then, you dirty double-crosser, here’s where you get off!”

“No, no, don’t!" That would be Maurice Tekele’s voice. There were sounds of a struggle. Blows. "Don’t!” Tekele screamed again. The explosion of a gun was a sharp, deadly roar.

Silence, for perhaps five minutes. Then tame the splash of oars, a retreating sound that was soon lost in the gale. This was followed by the roar of the airplane motor. The drone rapidly faded, and died away in the distance.

FOR THE first time, now, the girl moved. Her heart pounded, her breath came in excited gasps. But she didn’t lose her head. Instead, she suddenly attacked the door with frenzied strength. And this time, she wedged the file properly and the key turned.

She thrust open the door and raced up the companionway steps to the main cabin. She stopped, stared.

“Dear Lord!” she gasped.

Maurice Tekele was sprawled on an easy-chair, just where the bullet had knocked him. His head lay back and was slightly twisted. She could see the blue hole in the forehead just where the iron-gray hair began. A small hole there, but the back of the head bulged out like a disarranged toupee, and the chair back was a crimson mess that made her stomach jump.

His outstretched hands seemed to grope for a snub-nosed .38 revolver that lay just beyond his feet. She began to realize he was dead. Hers was the only breathing in the cabin.

Unthinking, gripped by her horror, she stooped and picked up the gun, held it at arm’s length as if it were a venomous snake. She read the name on the gold plate, “Maurice Tekele.” He had been shot with his own gun.

Silence, death, aloneness broke her now. With a sudden sob, she flung down the gun and buried her face in her slender hands, gave way to the turmoil in her heart. Then she lifted her head, dashed away her tears. Her red lips tightened with a new fear. What did this mean to her?

Instantly, she knew the dreadful truth— she would be accused of killing Tekele. Many people knew he had loved her. She had quarreled with him She was alone on his yacht. Who would believe her story of an airplane roaring out of the night, bringing a murderer and sudden death?

At this realization, the impulse of panic made her race to the yacht’s stern. But the Mystic’s dinghy was not trailing astern. She remembered now, that it was ashore having a small leak repaired. There was no way to get ashore save by the Beachmont Yacht Club’s tender which had brought her out. But if she summoned the tender, the murder would be discovered and she would be arrested at once. She was trapped here with the dead.

She began to tremble, pale as old ivory.

After a moment, she lifted her head, thrust out her chin and battle lights gleamed in her eyes.

“Get hold of yourself, you silly!” she muttered. “There’s a way out of this.”

She began to think hard. And as her head cleared, she saw clearly how the murder had been accomplished. In fact, she believed she knew who had fired the shot. As she reflected, she knew that the airplane had come from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and was doubtless winging back there now.

At this minute, also, in Fort Lauderdale, was the one man who could solve this case and clear her without the ignominy of arrest. Instantly, her mind was made up. At all costs, she must get to Fort Lauderdale and see Roderick Fanton.

She hurried back to the cabin where the dead man lay. Then she gasped in dismay. How could she get ashore without a boat?

Her eyes looked out at the ugly black waters and she shuddered at the implacable coldness of it. Yet, it was the only way, and with steady fingers she stripped clothing from her slim, white body. Nude, she ran like a sprite, brought back an oilskin slicker and carefully wrapped her clothes in it. She got a life-jacket and fastened it across her slender shoulders.

Then, deliberately, she opened the cabin door and stepped out on deck. The icy fingers of the wind assaulted her. Her skin tightened. The cold seemed to be seeping into her very soul. But she endured it. She knew she must become thoroughly chilled before she leaped into that icy water, else the shock would stun her. In less than a minute, it seemed, she must freeze.

But she closed her mind to fear and thought only of the shore off there, a few feeble lights marking its blackness. She flung back her head in determination.

“I can make it,” she whispered. "I've got to!”

Clasping the bundle of clothes tightly, she dropped over the side. She struck the water with a splash, came up gasping, numbed, her heart pounding, the horrible cold closing on her soft flesh like a steel vise. She swam fast and hard to fight off the deadly peril.

AT HALF PAST SIX in the morning, in a room overlooking Beachmont Harbor, a red-haired, pleasant-faced young man of twenty-five or so lay sleeping with his mouth open. From him exuded the aroma of stale whisky.

Until five days ago, Hugh Jeffrey had been an ambitious feature writer on the New York Sphere. A blonde young radio singer, named Madge, had separated him from his job and his illusions in one swift sock to his soul. After telling Hugh she would marry him, she had up and eloped with a young playboy whose only attribute was a two-million-dollar bank account.

“After all, Hugh darling,” she said when she came back, “I have to be practical, and you know you’re getting nowhere rapidly.”

Jeffrey got somewhere rapidly after that. He got tighter than a goat. It was the All-American jag.

“Drinking to drown lost love is old-fashioned,” McClean, his city editor, said. “Sober up— or you’re fired.”

The next day McClean saw Jeffrey sitting on the curb outside the Sphere building, singing, “O Sole Mio,” in a sad baritone.

“Okay, monkey,” said McClean, “you asked for it. You’re fired!”

Just when Jeffrey was seeing pink dragons and yellow elephants, Pete Hendricks, retired homicide dick and a warm friend, brought him to Beachmont to sober up. That process had been going on, now, for two days.

And it was now that Pete Hendricks, gray-haired man of forty or so, clattered noisily into the room and yelling excitedly.

“Hugh, get out of those feathers!” he shouted.

Hugh Jeffrey stirred, swallowed and moaned. “Can’t you see I’m dead? Don’t disturb the corpse.”

“Crawl out,” repeated Hendricks. “Here’s your chance to get back your job and a brass medal, too. I’ve got a murder, and it’s ‘page one’ from here to Shanghai!”

“Go ’way,” cried Jeffrey crossly.

Pete Hendricks grinned, and with one quick jerk he stripped back the bed clothing and left Jeffrey’s six feet and one hundred and eighty pounds exposed to the wintry blasts that boiled through the open window.

“It’s Maurice Tekele, the jeweler,” said Hendricks. “Snap it up. As elected chief of police of this fair village of Beachmont, I’m overdue now.”

Jeffrey moaned. “It’s below zero—” He broke off. “Did you say Maurice Tekele?” he yelled. “Good Heaven, not the noted Fifth Avenue jeweler?”

“I don’t mean Santa Claus,” said Pete Hendricks, turning on the shower ice-cold. “And you get it exclusive, if you hurry.”

Jeffrey knew what that meant— a chance to regain his newspaper job in New York. He leaped for the shower, howled in agony as the needles of ice beat on his skin. But by the time he was shaved, dressed, and had a cigarette going, he was something like the normal, charming, wise-cracking Hugh Jeffrey.

As they raced to the yacht club in Jeffrey’s convertible coupe, Hendricks gave him what information he had.

“Tekele’s Jap valet, Nichi, was rowed out to the Mystic at five this morning and found the body, a bullet hole in the skull. He says Tekele sent him ashore last night so the old boy could be alone with Pamela Wayne, his secretary. And beautiful, from all I hear.”

“She went aboard about ten-thirty, according to the kid who runs the yacht-club tender,” he continued. “She isn’t there now. It looks open and shut, and I’ll give you an hour’s leeway before I call New York and put in a five-state teletype alarm for her.”

“Boy!” breathed Jeffrey. “For a tabloid like the Sphere, ‘Girl Murders Man’ is sensational stuff!”

Maurice Tekele, as Jeffrey knew, was no ordinary jeweler. He was an institution with branches in London, Paris and other international centers. Reputed a millionaire, he was such an authority on gems of all kinds that on the witness stand in court his word was final.

As they rowed out to the cruiser, Jeffrey huddled down in his overcoat. “Why should a guy want to be on a yacht in December?” he muttered, his teeth chattering.

“Tekele liked to be alone,” Hendricks replied, “and kept the yacht in commission the year around.”

ii

IN THE cabin, around the dead man, the machinery of the law was already grinding. There was a district attorney taking copious notes, sensing the publicity break for him. Pete Hendricks’ single detective was dusting this and that for fingerprints.

A cop picked up a piece of flattened gum.

“She chewed gum. Chief,” he said.

It was old stuff to Jeffrey and he listened for a while, making notes. Then he drifted aft in the yacht, looking for local color.

It was then he found the bent nail file in the owner’s cabin. It smelled vaguely of perfume. It had face powder in the grooves as if carried in a woman’s handbag. He stared at it wonderingly, and then stooped to the door. There were fresh scratches on the brass of the lock.

“Old Tekele locks girl in cabin,” he muttered, “and she busts out and takes a gun to him.”

He grinned. A girl gunning her man for her honor would sell hundreds of thousands of Spheres.

Suddenly, Pete Hendricks burst in on him. “Is she here? Did you see her?”

Jeffrey looked shocked. “Pete, and you an ex-New York dick! Why, that gal is long gone from these parts.”

“Yeah?” said Hendricks dryly. “Well, there was no dinghy on this tub, and the yacht-basin tender says he brought her out but he didn’t take her back.”

And thereupon he subjected the yacht to a futile search. He swore softly.

“Somebody helped her then,” he said finally. “That yacht-basin tender said he heard the sounds of a motor last night around midnight, and the coroner figures that’s when Tekele was shot.”

“It fits,” said Jeffrey, and showed him the nail file. “But maybe the boy friend who came to help her gunned Tekele.”

“No, it's her fingerprints on the gun,” said Pete. “We made a quick comparison with those found in the cabin. The guy helped the getaway.” He paused, grinned. “Don’t say I never did you a favor.” With that, he pulled out of his coat two photographs mounted on black leather and handed one to Jeffrey. "Found them in the drawer of Tekele's apartment study. Isn’t she a honey?”

Hugh Jeffrey looked at the clear-eyed girl with level brows and sweet lips that stared so steadily out at him. It was an arresting, lovely face, no doubt of it, and Jeffrey felt the impact of a personality.

“She has what it takes,” he said, “but she doesn’t look like a killer to me.” He frowned. “Still, Madge didn’t seem to be a chiseler to me, either.”

He stuffed the picture in his pocket. It would cover all the front page of the Sphere.

“Pete, I’ll never forget this,” he said.

"Then,” said Hendricks, “scram out of here and phone in your story, because you’ve got just forty-five minutes to beat the town before I get out a fast alarm.”

They went forward to the tender and Hendricks helped him in.

“I like fifty-cent cigars for Christmas,” he grinned.

Ten minutes later, Jeffrey was ashore looking for a telephone. There was a service station open on the left and he barged inside. The attendant pointed out the public pay station.

“What goes on?” he asked.

Jeffrey told him, while he got a handful of nickels and dimes and quarters for a dollar bill.

“Say,” said the attendant, surprised, “is there a girl mixed up in this ?”

Jeffrey was instantly alert. “Yes, why?”

“Well,” said the man, “Tekele leaves his car parked behind that wash rack when he comes here. And about one o’clock this morning, a blonde dame comes in with the keys and says Tekele told her to take it back to town.”

“Well, well,” murmured Jeffrey, “isn’t that ducky! What’d she look like?”

“A honey, mister! Only, she was pale like she was cold and afraid, and her hair was wet like she had been swimming.”

“Swimming?” Jeffrey whirled and looked at the black, angry water and shivered at the mere thought of it. “No, it’s impossible.”

And yet she must have swam. This ditched the idea of a confederate in a motorboat, but that was all right, too. And then, suddenly, Hugh Jeffrey got a colossal idea, the idea of the century.

“What kind of a car was it ?” he jerked out.

“A Fiat, built like a black submarine.”

"Did she say where she was going.”

The attendant shook his head. “Only, while I was getting the car backed out, she monkeyed with those roadmap folders. And when I came in, she was awfully sweet and nice. Said maybe she’d go up to the Adirondacks and ski. She said she loved winter sports.” The attendant frowned. “She was awfully swell. Think she did it?”

Hugh did not reply. He was looking at the piles of road maps, and saw that there was only one of upper New York state that included the Adirondacks.

“How many of these did you have?” he asked.

The attendant stared. “By golly, I only had one. Those particular ones go fast this time of the year. I thought she took it.”

Jeffrey saw that the pile of Eastern seaboard maps was disarranged. This one showed Route One in big red lines, and on the cover had the slogan, “To Florida. Quickest route from Pines to Palms.” He burned with excitement and his idea.

JEFFREY dove into the telephone booth and raised a sleepy, angry McClean at his home.

“No, no, no!” howled the irate city editor. “You’re finished— and I mean washed up!”

“Listen, you thick-headed Scot backscratcher,” said Jeffrey sweetly. “I’ve got a murder by the tail—the killing of Maurice Tekele, no less— and if you don’t hire me back, I’ll peddle it and my story of the century to some other sheet.”

“Tekele?” cried McClean, and all the sleep and anger was suddenly gone from his voice.

Rapidly, Jeffrey sketched the story. McClean’s voice was quivering over the phone.

“Jumping Judas! That’s worth an extra!” he yelled.

“I thought so,” grinned Jeffrey, “and that’s not all. I know where the little girl is, and I can find her before anybody else does. And it’s my own thought, you sanctimonious Highlander, that I chase this dame down, hide her out where it would take a crystal-gazer to find her, and there get the story of her life. We could run it under some such title as ‘Why I Killed Maurice Tekele, Pamela Wayne’s own story, written by herself'. I could really go to town on that idea, Mac.”

He heard McClean grunt in excitement.

“I’ll give you a thousand to buy her story,” he yelled finally, “and you can have five hundred bucks expense money, and a twenty-buck raise, and a job to your next drunk, if you bring that back!”

“Sold,” said Jeffrey, “and it’ll be a lifetime job. I drive the wagon from now on."

“But pull a double-cross on me,” warned McClean, “and you go right out the same window you came in!”

“I can’t miss,” said Jeffrey confidently. “She’s traveling south along Route One in an imported Fiat, and I hope to catch her somewhere along the way.”

After McClean had the murder details and promised to meet him at the Holland Tunnel entrance with money, Hugh Jeffrey strode out to bribe the gas-station attendant to silence. If the man told the cops about the Fiat, a nation-wide radio alarm would pick up the girl before she reached Baltimore. Then all the papers would have her story. What Jeffrey earnestly needed was twenty-four hours to sew up the yarn. He fished out his roll, some sixty dollars.

“Look!” he said, holding it out. I'm a special detective, and in the interests of justice we want to keep this girl and her car a secret for twenty-four hours, so she won’t know she’s being hunted. Could you lose your memory for sixty bucks?”

“For sixty bucks, beamed the gas-station man, “I could lose my mind!"

Jeffrey hurried out to his convertible. Here he suddenly stopped, a deep sense of guilt crossing his mind. .

Was it fair to Pete Hendricks to hide out a murderess that would get Hendricks plenty of favorable publicity for a quick capture? This was a dirty trick to play, any way you looked at it. But Pamela Wayne’s story was a national sensation— and meant Jeffrey's job lost again if he failed to get her. And the story came first.

He still felt guilty, until the thought came that as soon as he’d written her life story, he would telephone Pete and let him make the pinch.

He felt better then. But to square his conscience he ducked back to the booth and called Marge, Hendricks’ red-headed wife.

“Tell Pete I’m scramming in to write my story,” he said, “and I may have something later. If I do, I’ll call.”

“Do,” said Marge. “Pete comes up for reelection next month, and the arrest of a nice front-page murderess would silence a lot of these public enemies who’d like to get him out.”

“Yes,” said Jeffrey guiltily and a twinge crossed his mind. Hastily he hung up and dove into his car to head south.

OUTSIDE a little town in Georgia, when Jeffrey was making a good eighty miles an hour, a girl stepped into the headlight radiance and frantically waved her arms. She was tall, she was slim, and she was blonde. And Jeffrey could have shouted at his luck.

It was Pamela Wayne, he was certain!

He put the brakes hard to his convertible, which promptly broadsided and skated around on the highway like a skittish colt. But finally, just as the girl leaped to safety, Jeffrey pulled the car onto the shoulder and jumped out. He walked back to her, aware that she was a darned sight prettier than her picture, and pretty calm and cool about the whole thing.

"Trouble?” he grinned.

She returned his smile bravely. “Cow trouble,” she said ruefully. “The darned thing came out of the darkness and my car did nip-ups. Look!”

She pointed to a huge black gap in the white guard railing that paralleled this section of the road. Jeffrey got out his flashlight and walked up to the broken space.

Beyond, surrounded by vast oaks dripping with gray Spanish moss, was a black swamp. Brown dirty water, out of which black stumps stood like decayed teeth, stretched away as far as his light illumined it. Out of the water came a few tired bubbles.

Jeffrey grunted. “Your car is buried in about ten feet of black muck and dropping through to China!”

“I’m afraid it is,” she sighed, “and I'm due in Fort Lauderdale at noon tomorrow.”

Jeffrey turned the flash onto the road shoulder. Plainly, on the grass, he could see the marks where her car had wheeled off. But he could not see any wedge-shaped prints such as a cloven-hoofed cow makes when it grazes.

He whistled softly, and knew the truth, then.

Evidently, that gas-station attendant hadn’t kept quiet. The police had radioed a description of the car and she had heard the broadcast. Deliberately, she must have poised on the running board, steered the car toward the guard rail and jumped off at the last minute. He thought then of the black waters of Long Island Sound, and his admiration
for her grew.

“She’s got what it takes,” he thought.

But outwardly, he accepted her story and invited her to ride with him. She accepted gratefully.

“If you could only get me to a railroad station,” she said, and smiled warmly.

For some queer reason, Hugh felt suddenly sorry for her and he drove some time in silence. To cover this, he said:

“Turn on the radio, will you, please?”

She leaned forward and clicked the button. When the set had warmed up, a voice charged with artificial excitement came through:

“Latest front page news from the Newspaper Radio Bureau, New York! Police tonight were still waging a nation-wide search for Pamela Wayne, missing girl suspect in the sensational shooting of Maurice Tekele, noted jeweler.

“With her, police say, are the internationally famous Marechal diamonds. The four magnificent gems are said to have been given to Marshal Ney by Napoleon Bonaparte, and are valued at half a million dollars. A reward of ten thousand dollars is offered for her capture.

“Police declared the theft of the diamonds is the motive behind the crime that has shocked the world. Miss Wayne is believed to be fleeing in a Fiat car which belonged to the murdered man, and is described as....”

With a click, the radio was suddenly silent. In the dash light, the girl’s face was pale and taut.

“Nice going, Miss Wayne," Jeffrey said softly. "If you’d stayed in the car, even these cops down here would have picked you up.”

She gasped. “I— I don’t understand,” she faltered.

“I think you do,” replied Jeffrey gently. “You’re Pamela Wayne and you killed Tekele and you’re running for it.”

“Who are you?” she cried sharply, alarm in her eyes.

“The name is Hugh Jeffrey, and most of the time I’m a reporter for the New York Sphere!"

Pamela Wayne leaned back, fighting for her self-control. All the indifference had fled from her face now. A reporter!

She was stunned. During all those lonely hours, as she tore south, her hopes had gained, her belief that she could clear herself had strengthened. But now she was trapped, caught! Yet she must get to Fort Lauderdale.

Swiftly, she studied Jeffrey’s pleasant, good-looking face. Maybe if she was feminine, clinging, he would have pity. She began to weep softly.

“Are you going to turn me over to the —the police ?”

Jeffrey’s pity grew. Being a reporter was rough business sometimes.

“No,” he replied gently. “That is, not right away. Listen, Miss Wayne, you’ll need money for a good lawyer. The Sphere wants to print your story. They’ll pay a thousand dollars for it.”

iii

PAMELA, obsessed with her problem, scarcely heard the offer. And hearing, she did not understand the notoriety implied—that she would be surrendered to the police with cameras clicking and banner headlines screaming. All she realized was that here was compromise, here was a chance to reach her goal.

“What if I refuse?” she asked.

“I’ll have to surrender you,” Jeffrey said quietly. “I’d be an accessory after the fact of murder, if I didn’t.”

“I’ve got to get to Fort Lauderdale,” she said tensely.

“Boy friend ?” Hugh asked.

“He means everything to me now!” she cried fiercely. “Everything!"

Jeffrey felt sad. She would be the kind of girl to fall madly in love with some heel and steal a handful of diamonds for him. She edged close to him, deliberately using her feminine allure to help her, now.

“Suppose I agree to let you write my life story,” she said quietly. “In exchange, would you let me go to Fort Lauderdale, as fast as you can drive there?”

Jeffrey reflected. As long as he hid her well from the police and rival reporters, it didn’t matter much which town he chose.

“If I hid you out for a week there,” he said grimly, “I’d expect your word not to try to escape— and give me all the story.”

She never knew until then how taut, how close to breaking she had been. She suddenly leaned her head against his shoulder and wept.

“You’re wonderful, Hugh Jeffrey, just wonderful,” she whispered.

Jeffrey shifted uncomfortably. He hated women’s tears. They did things to him. At his movement, she lifted her head for an instant, as the car raced through the night, their eyes met. And Jeffrey felt the womanliness of her and knew he wanted to kiss her, and knew he wouldn’t.

“What the devil!” he thought. “I loved Madge last week!” Then: “That won’t get us anywhere,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?” She was startled.

“I chase my own girls,” he said grimly, “and usually don’t get ’em.”

Miles went by in silence.

“This doesn’t have to be a funeral,” Jeffrey said finally, smiling. “Let’s pretend we’re happy.”

She looked at him, her eyes thoughtful. Then she, too, smiled.

“Let’s,” she murmured, and leaned against him.

Hugh Jeffrey faced his first problem that afternoon. Where was he going to hide Pamela Wayne? The newspapers were shrieking her name and picture. One even hinted she had fled to Florida. So, to take her to a hotel was to invite disaster. He bought her some black hair dye, and while this was drying as they sat on the sand of a lonely beach, he debated.

Finally, beyond Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, he found an old boxlike garage apartment, painted a sickly green. It was hidden from the shore road by a screen of waving Australian pines. A perfect hide-out, but apparently the Mrs. Martin who owned it had a Puritan-like conscience and morality.

“Listen,” he said at length to Pamela. “If I tell her that you and I are a honeymoon couple, she’ll rent.” He paused, and then added steadily. “You won’t have to worry about me.”

As he spoke, he was so like a little boy that at another time she could have been amused and tender. She nodded agreement.

“I’m sure of that,” she said simply.

Jeffrey took off a gold ring. “It's the International Order of Barflies,” he grinned, breaking the spell. “Turn it upside down.”

She put it on her ringlets hand, and at dusk they moved in.

“I know you’ll be happy here,” Mrs. Martin cooed archly. “Newlyweds do like to be secluded.”

Pamela needed desperately to get downtown, so she seized their first moment alone in the two upstairs rooms, separated by the kitchen, to speak to him.

“I can cook, and it’s better than chancing a restaurant. But I’ll have to market for groceries.” She paused, “I won’t hurt your car.”

“Probably not,” grinned Jeffrey, “but I’ll drive you.”

She winced but surrendered, and Jeffrey drove her to Las Olas Beach. Here, she entered the fish store conducted by a Captain John Angus. Jeffrey didn’t go in because he could see her plainly through the big plate-glass windows.

Pamela bought a fish, all right, but she did more than that. She entered into a ten-minute discussion with the white- bearded Captain Angus which was punctuated with the old boat captain waving his arms and pointing. Then she used the telephone for five minutes and came out with a smile almost of happiness.

“Boy friend here?” Jeffrey asked.

“Yes,” she said, with no further explanation.

While she did the rest of the marketing, Jeffrey thought about that motor sound the night of the murder. The man could have gotten down here by train, and if he knew Pamela Wayne she wouldn’t implicate him. Jeffrey told himself he would have to do some digging before he got all of her story.

SHE was a good cook. The diced potatoes were just right. The pompano melted in your mouth, and the canned tomatoes didn’t taste like canned tomatoes and he had never known a lettuce salad could be so tasty. The coffee, too, was just right. He leaned back, inhaled his cigarette luxuriously.

“Lady, you swing a mean frying pan. I’m grateful. I’ll even wipe the dishes.”

He did, too, and found that he was feeling pretty good. When the dishes were put away he got out his portable typewriter, wrote a heading: Why I Killed Maurice Tekele, by Pamela Wayne, As Printed Exclusively in the

New York Sphere.

“Now, lady, give,” he said.

She talked readily but he was dismayed at the yield. Subway readers don’t care largely about the details of a convent education in France, followed by an A.B. at Vassar. They wouldn’t read avidly about a poverty-stricken winter in New York with no job until finally, just as she was desperate, Maurice Tekele hired her.

“Hey,” he protested, “that’s spinach! I want your love life. The boys who have pursued you madly, the passionate moments of caresses. That’s the fodder for the readers.”

“But I never loved anybody,” she said. “I’ve been too much bent on a career.”

Jeffrey looked skeptical. “Nobody ever kissed you ?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “Of course. But those were just— er— moments without significance.”

Jeffrey sighed. “You’re either a sweet and lovely liar, or you’ve been raised in cellophane. What about you and Tekele?”

She did not reply at once. Then, suddenly, she leaned toward him, put her cool, lovely hands on his.

“Hugh,” she said earnestly, “if I swear to come back, will you let me go out now, alone, for an hour?”

Jeffrey glanced at his wrist watch. It was nearly eleven. He reflected that, after all, she was a murderess, and if she tricked him and fled for her life she’d be only doing the natural thing. He felt sorry for her, but this was no dice. He tried to make his voice gentle.

“I can’t, Pam. Honestly. This story means my job and I’ve got to deliver. I can’t take chances.”

“But I must!” she wailed.

She was thinking with clarity, however. He had softened before when she used her feminine allure; perhaps he would again. She placed her hands on his shoulders, her face inches from his.

“Hugh,” she whispered, "you’ve got to let me go, and alone.”

Once again his pulses hammered, and he knew he wanted to kiss her, and this time he knew he could. But that made no difference. Gently, he removed her hands.

“Scram to bed.” He forced a smile. “I’ll take you to see him some time tomorrow.”

She knew, despite his gentle manner, that this was final.

“If you’ll give me a chance to photograph the Marechal diamonds,” he was adding.

Angrily, she shrank back. “Yourself and your job and pictures!” she blazed. “Did it never enter your thick skull that maybe I didn’t kill Tekele?”

She flung herself into her own room and slammed the door. As soon as it was shut, her anger melted. She’d go despite him. She pretended to undress and made the bed squeak beneath her weight. Then she lay there, tense, waiting, listening.

Outside, Jeffrey moodily consumed a cigarette. “I’m a hell of a reporter,” he thought. “I ought to be tougher-minded.”

He went into his own room and began to wonder Why the devil she had killed Tekele anyway.

At midnight, Pamela silently rose and tiptoed to the window. All of them were open and screened, and she could hear plainly in the night Hugh’s steady, quiet breathing.

She nodded, tightened her lips and removed the screen. The extension of the garage roof was just below. She lowered herself to it, and as quietly dropped to the ground. To start the car would be to awaken him, so she set out resolutely to walk to the beach, where she could get a cab.

AT THE Oceanside Hotel, Roderick Fanton paced thoughtfully up and down his room. He was a tall, slender man of about thirty-five, with a great shock of premature white hair and a handsome sun-tanned face. He had a thin, resolute mouth and sharply alert dark eyes.

Every so often, these eyes would swivel to a copy of a Fort Lauderdale paper, which lay spread on the bed open to the screaming black headlines:

TEKELE MURDER SUSPECT

BELIEVED IN FLORIDA

Below was a paragraph that he had read thoroughly many times. A reward of fifty thousand dollars was offered for the return of the Marechal diamonds, and an additional reward of ten thousand dollars had been offered by the Jewelers’ Protective Association for the capture of Pamela Wayne.

He smiled once, grimly. Then, as he turned, there was a knock at the door. He hurried to open it. Pamela Wayne burst in, seized his shoulders breathlessly.

“Oh, Rod, I had such a time getting here!” she cried.

With his hands holding her, she felt safe now. She knew Rod Fanton as a private detective who had recovered many stolen, insured jewels for his clients. She knew him as a man who had paid her some attention. She had gone out with him. She didn’t love him but she respected him. She trusted him now.

“You poor kid,” Roderick Fanton was saying. “What a spot to be in! Tell me everything.”

As quickly as possible, she told him of the details on the yacht.

“He didn’t entice me on the yacht in the manner they say,” she said. “I went of my own accord.” She paused, then went on excitedly, “Rod, Tekele was a crook, a fence to receive stolen jewels! The Marechal diamonds were stolen and he was going to cut them up and resell them.”

Fanton’s face expressed his amazement. “Are you sure ? How do you know this?”

Breathlessly, she told him. “I found a secret drawer in his apartment desk, and in it I found this.” She reached into a slim stockinged leg and pulled out a green notebook. “It’s a diary, or record, in code. I’ve deciphered some of it but not all. I went to him on the yacht and told him what I knew. He got scared and locked me in his cabin. While I was trying to get out, somebody came in an airplane and shot him.”

“You’re certain it was an airplane?” Fanton queried.

“I ought to know the sound,” she answered. “I’ve been up with you in your plane. And with the heavy tail wind that night, a plane could easily be back here in five or six hours. I remembered that you were down here trailing “Smooth” Blake, the jewel thief. You told me Smooth was an old pilot. And I saw Smooth’s name in the green book. I think he killed Tekele and, flying with a tail wind, got back here in time to set up an alibi.”

She paused, and then added resolutely, “They’ve got a case against me, Rod. Smooth’s alibi has to be broken— and all the rest of this won’t do me any good unless it is.”

He nodded. “Why do you think Smooth killed him?”

“Smooth Blake stole the Marechal diamonds and gave them to Tekele to sell or cut. Maybe Tekele was trying to double-cross him. You could prove that, couldn’t you, with these leads?”

Fanton frowned. “Where did Smooth get the airplane?”

She shrugged. “I'm depending on you, Rod.” Rapidly, she explained about Hugh Jeffrey. “He watches me like a hawk.”

Fanton restlessly paced the length of the room while she watched him.

“Rod,” she said, “can you help me? Can you clear me?”

He turned and smiled. “Sure I can help you, honey, but it will take time. That’s a tough alibi. And, meantime, you’re liable to be arrested any moment.”

“No,” she shook her head, “my hair’s dyed, and Hugh has us hidden up the beach.”

She explained about the garage apartment.

“But I’d feel better,” said Fanton, “if you were in Nassau. Unless I can trace the diamonds to Smooth Blake—”

“But he hasn’t got them,” she said. “I have.” Again she reached into her sheer stocking and brought out a chamois case.

Opening it, steel-blue fire glittered. Fanton’s eyes widened.

“They were in the secret drawer along with the notebook,” she explained tensely.

Fanton’s fingers drummed nervously on a table while he thought. “Honey, this makes it tougher,” he said. “But there is a way. Perhaps I could trap Smooth into a confession by using the diamonds and the notebook.”

“Why, yes!” she cried eagerly.

“But,” he went on, “I want you to go to Nassau. I can arrange it.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. Rod. I promised Hugh I'd not run away.”

“Just a cheap reporter after a story,” he said harshly. “In Nassau you’ll be comfortable, and I won’t have to worry about you.”

“I’ll do the worrying from now on,” said Hugh Jeffrey from the door. He came into the room, pushing a snub-nosed .38 in front of him.

iv

Roderick fanton swore and his hand, which had gone to a shoulder holster, dropped heavily to his side. Pamela gasped, turned.

“Hugh!’’ she exclaimed.

Jeffrey favored her with a grim glance. “Nassau!” he muttered. ‘That’s how much your word is worth.”

As she started to protest, he waved his left hand.

“Save it, lady. Did you think you fooled me tonight? I made it easy for you because I knew you’d lead me to the lad that helped you kill Tekele.”

“You’re crazy,” growled Fanton. “I’m a private detective and I’ve got a reputation.”

“Hugh, you’re wrong,” cried Pamela. “Rod is going to help me. I didn’t kill Tekele, and if you had any sense you’d know it!”

“I’m not arguing,” said Jeffrey quietly. “Only we’re going home— now.” He gestured toward the door.

She looked helplessly at Roderick Fanton and the latter shrugged.

“He’s got a gun, honey,” he said. “As long as he’s promised to hide you out for a week, go with him and I'll get busy at once.”

Relief came to her face and she turned to go. But Fanton’s voice swung her back.

"I’ll need the package,” and he gestured to the chamois bag and the green notebook.

“Of course,” she said and started to hand them to him. But Hugh Jeffrey jumped forward and took them from her.

"She gives away nothing until I get the story,” he said grimly.

Fanton swore again. Pamela leaped at Jeffrey.

“Do you want me to lose my last chance of clearing myself?” she blazed.

“That'll keep,” said Jeffrey, and gestured. “Let’s go.”

He forced her from the room, still protesting.

Long after the door had closed, Roderick Fanton heard them arguing in the hall. Fanton’s fingers dipped absent-mindedly into his right-hand pocket, but he caught himself and swore heartily. Suddenly, he hurried to the elevator and downstairs. His car was parked outside.

He got in and drove at high speed to the Royal Palm Apartments, which fronted on New River in Rio Vista. After looking cautiously around the soft, purple Florida night, he entered the building and rapped at a door. It was a singular rap— two short thuds, then a drumming sound.

The door opened and a short, thin man with chilled-steel eyes stood there. His right hand was concealed but Fanton knew he held a gun. Fanton forced a laugh.

“Take it easy with the gun, Smooth. I'm friends.”

“You’re a dirty crooked double-crosser,” said Smooth Blake in a soft, almost feminine voice, “and I don’t want any part of you.”

“Lay off,” growled Fanton. “You would like the Marechal diamonds, wouldn’t you ? Well, I know where they are.”

This left Smooth unmoved.

“I don’t believe it. You’re a crooked dick. You promised me twelve G’s for the Markoff emeralds and clipped me out of six of it!”

“Listen,” said Fanton, “and get it straight. Pamela Wayne has not got only the Marechal diamonds, she’s also got Tekele’s notebook that will send you to stir."

For a moment, Smooth Blake looked incredulous. Then he stepped back, his face suddenly deadly.

“Come in, and talk fast,” he said. “And Fanton, if this is another runaround, I’ll put the slug to you right!”

“I want my cut,” said Fanton, “and I'll tell you where she’s stashed.” He went inside and Smooth Blake closed the door.

HUGH JEFFREY looked moodily over at Pamela. She was bent over the little green notebook, which, together with the diamonds, she had persuaded Jeffrey to return to her.

"They’re mine,” she had said angrily, “and no part of your story.”

The story! Jeffrey sighed. An hour previously he had talked with McClean long distance. McClean had shouted at him furiously.

“Listen, I don’t want the life of Joan of Arc,” he had said. “I want some hot stuff, and this first installment reads like the story of a backward child!”

Jeffrey had promised to pep it up even if he had to draw on his imagination, but Pamela was proving perverse.

“You let me go out in a glass-bottomed boat with Captain Angus,” she repeated a dozen times, “and I’ll brighten up the account. Otherwise, no.”

For the two days since he had taken her away from Fanton’s hotel room, she had been reasonably tractable. But, this business of riding in a glass-bottomed boat!

“For Pete’s sake, why?” he growled.

She shrugged. “Not to escape, surely.”

He glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock. She’d be howling she was tired and wanted to go to bed in another hour. He shrugged and surrendered.

“Okay! Only, give me something a warm-blooded subway reader can get a spinal thrill out of.”

She smiled, and he thought moodily that she was certainly a brighter girl since she had met her boy friend. He wondered about that, too. Was she really innocent, and was Fanton trying to prove her innocent? She interrupted his thoughts by sitting down close to him. She was warm and gracious.

“Well, let’s start with my first crush,” she began, and he felt her close to him.

“Hold it!” he said. “Your first crush, not the last. I chase my own women.”

She ignored this and began talking and it was pretty good stuff, so neither of them heard a soft footstep on the stairway until suddenly somebody stood on the threshold. He was a deathly-looking man, with a thin, pale face.

“Put up your hands, both of you!” he growled. “I haven’t got all night.”

Hugh Jeffrey had been in the act of lighting a cigarette. He still held the matches as he raised his hands.

“So that’s the way your boy friend works,” he said bitterly. “Hiring gunsels to rescue you.”

Pamela was pale, her red lips quivering.

“I— you must be Smooth Blake,” she faltered.

“Right,” said the deadly little man. “Hand me the rocks, and also that little green notebook.”

“Oh!” she cried and embraced Jeffrey. “Don’t let him, Hugh. Please!”

Jeffrey had heard a lot about Smooth Blake, the famous jewel thief, and suddenly things were getting clearer, making sense. He gave Pamela a queer look.

“You can’t argue with a gun, beautiful,” he said.

However, as he pushed her back away from him, a way to beat this situation came to him. Desperate, but it might work. He waited, watching his opportunity.

“Gimme them rocks and notebook,” Smooth was repeating.

His eyes were watching Pamela, so Jeffrey acted. He sighed, pretended to stumble as he took a step forward. His fingers scratched the match on the book, and the whole pack instantly flared into a quick blaze as he shoved the lit match in with the others.

He cursed, and dropped the flaming mass. He was closer to death than he knew, for Smooth Blake’s face got that tight, white look that it had when he killed a man. But, as he saw Jeffrey standing there, arms still raised, though wringing his one hand, he relaxed.

“Come on, sister,” he said. “Quick!”

“Th-they’re in my room,” she said, and turned to go.

“Okay, Luke, go with her,” Smooth Blake called.

He stepped aside and a big scar-faced man, also with a drawn weapon, appeared from outside the door and thumped across the room.

“Say, Smooth,” he cried, “this joint’s on fire! Look!”

SMOOTH looked. The straw matting had spread the flames from the matches to the kerosene stove, which now erupted with a whoof and made a curtain of flame.

“Hey,” cried Jeffrey, “let's get out of here!”

But as he spoke, he watched Smooth Blake narrowly. However, the man was not to be caught off guard.

“Bring the girl, Luke,” he said. He turned to Hugh. “Get down the stairs.”

Pamela came out, shoved by the hairy arm of Luke. Jeffrey was just going down the stairs when he turned deliberately.

“You’ll burn in the chair, Smooth, for killing Tekele,” he said.

“Shut up!” Smooth snarled, and gave Jeffrey a thrust.

Jeffrey was waiting for just that. He pretended to be off balance and stumbled backward, trying, apparently, to recover it. He grabbed at Smooth’s legs and jerked. With a snarled oath, the man fell. It was a fool play against such a deadly killer, but it worked and Jeffrey plunged down the steps headlong.

A gun blasted out and the slug burrowed into the wall ahead of him. There was no time for a second bullet. He was out the door in a flash and running across the lawn. His own gun was in the glove compartment of his convertible, where he had carelessly left it. Jeffrey tried to get it now, but failed.

As he twisted toward it, flames broke out the apartment window and lighted him like a spotlight. A bullet nicked the sleeve of his coat. He dove into the pines, aware that somebody was thudding after him. He didn’t stop running until he had crossed the beach road and was down in the protection of the sand dunes. Here he crouched, sucking air into his panting lungs.

He knew he had to go back. They had Pamela, and now he knew that she was innocent. He crawled along the dune toward the road that curved off the beach highway to the garage apartment. It was reddened now by the flare of the fire. But he was too late!

As he circled toward his car, another car boiled out of the entrance. It was driven by Luke, and in the rear Jeffrey saw Smooth Blake and Pamela. He turned, ran after them.

But the car was making fifty miles an hour within half a block. He finally halted, watched the twin tail-lights get smaller and then vanish as the car turned into one of the side streets of Las Olas Beach.

They had her and the diamonds and the notebook. Had captured her, so that Jeffrey was not only without a story but without clues as to who had killed Tekele. And what would happen to her now?

Suppose, in being aboard the yacht, Pamela had seen Smooth Blake kill Tekele? He went sick inside. If Smooth Blake was the murderer and Pamela had seen him, then she’d never come out of that mess alive.

“I'm a sap,” he groaned, “the all-time, all-American one at that!”

Jeffrey ran to his car before a crowd gathered. Forgotten now were his story and his job. He was thinking only of Pamela.

He was parked on Andrews Avenue, a short time later, trying to make up his mind whether the police could help, when a steely hand grabbed his shoulder through the lowered car window and a harsh voice grated from behind him.

“Okay, double-crosser, where have you got her hidden?”

Jeffrey looked up, stunned, into Pete Hendricks’ angry face.

“Pete!” he gasped weakly. “How the devil did you find me?”

“You apparently forgot,” growled Beachmont’s chief of police, “that my sister-in-law is on the Sphere’s switchboard. She took your long-distance calls.” He suddenly exploded. “You ungrateful lush! Pulling a trick like that on me when—”

“I know, Pete,” said Jeffrey dully. “I’m all you call me, and more. Only the point is, I haven’t got her any more.

She’s been snatched.”

"Quit the lying—” began Pete.

“I tell you it’s true,” Jeffrey cried desperately. Swiftly, he told Hendricks everything that had happened. “Don’t you see?” he concluded. “The kid’s innocent, She’s been trying to clear herself. I’ve got to get her back safely, but I can’t find Fanton. You’ll have to help me.”

“Like hell,” said Hendricks, but he was no longer angry. “We’ll call in the local law and comb the town.”

“Not the police,” protested Jeffrey.

“Why ?” Hendricks wanted to know.

Jeffrey fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette. “Because, if you want to know, I like the girl.”

Hendricks grinned sarcastically. “Yeah? You just fell out of love with one blonde.”

“Listen,” said Jeffrey earnestly. “Help me find Pamela. Smooth Blake is probably the killer, and she’s in danger. And I swear, Pete, that if we break the case I’ll give you the pinch, just as I was going to let you pinch Pamela after I got my story.”

He finally pulled out of his pocket what he thought was cigarettes, and his jaw dropped agape.

“Good grief!” he gasped.

He was holding the little green notebook and the Marechal diamonds. When Pamela had embraced him, supposedly of fright, she had cleverly slid them into his pocket.

v

WITH SET LIPS, Hugh Jeffrey walked into Captain Angus’ fish store. “I want to hire your glass-bottomed boat and I want to start right now,” he said.

It was early afternoon of the next day. He had gotten no clue to Pamela’s whereabouts. He had ducked Pete Hendricks, who had gone off trying to find Roderick Fanton. And Jeffrey, progressing on the theory that if Pamela had wanted to ride in a glass-bottomed boat, it must have something to do with Tekele’s murder. He was going to follow this slim lead.

In his pocket he had the diamonds and the notebook. Four hours of study had yielded nothing from the notebook. But it was vital to the case. Of that, he was certain.

Captain Angus was proud of his thirty-eight-foot glass-bottomed boat.

“The strangest vegetation the world has ever seen, sir,” he informed.

“So I expect,” said Jeffrey, as the boat took a course out of Port Everglades. “What I’m more interested in what Miss Pamela Wayne wanted of you the other day. What did she talk about?”

“Why, sir,” replied the skipper, “she wanted to know, was the wind blowin’ hard down here the night of the eighth, and I said it was. An’ she asked if I heard any plane late that night, and I said I did.”

“A plane?” repeated Jeffrey interestedly. “What did she mean?”

“Well, sir, that’s ha’d to tell, it is. She asked if it crashed out here in the ocean, and I said it did. And it shore did! It cracked up out by the third reef, an’ I been expectin’ to read about men lost in the papers, but I ain’t.”

It all come together in Jeffrey’s mind, then. The motor sound, the stiff wind. Pamela wanting to come here. Why, the killer had flown in a fast seaplane from here to Long Island Sound, landed there, an alibi. And what she wanted was to locate the sunken plane and haul it out as proof of the theory.

“Man!” he muttered. “Skipper, take me to where you heard that plane fall.”

“Won’t see nothin’,” said Captain Angus cheerfully. “Beyond that third reef the water shelves off rapidlike, and I expect it’s in five hundred feet of water now.”

But none the less, he took the boat over the second and third reefs, and Jeffrey spent the afternoon gazing through the glass floor of the boat. But there was no sign of a plane. It was a bitter blow.

“Poor kid,” he muttered, “Without that plane it’ll be hard to prove her story.”

It was now dusk, and the night was descending with tropic swiftness. He turned to tell Captain Angus to make one more swing before giving up. Captain Angus didn’t reply. He was looking off to port and listening to a purr of sound.

“Where in tarnation does that feller think he’s going?” he roared in sudden anger.

Jeffrey whirled. The ocean was smooth, save for a rolling ground swell, and across it was zooming the knifelike prow of a speedboat, riding two huge wings of white spray. It was headed right toward them. Angus was shouting for them to sheer off, but in sudden realization Jeffrey knew they would not.

Smooth Blake was coming for the diamonds and the notebook.

“Open her up, Cap’n,” Jeffrey yelled.

“Open, the devil!” shouted the captain. “I can’t outrun her and, anyways, the darned fool knows I got the right of way.”

The boat was coming fast, like an express train. Jeffrey knew that if he was going to do anything he must do it quick. Swiftly he looked around. There was a big lead weight for a fishing hand-line lying on the trunk locker. He picked it up, jerked out his oil-skinned tobacco pouch and rolled diamonds, notebook and lead into the waterproof covering.

He glanced downward. The glass-bottomed boat was inside the second reef now. The water was about thirty or forty feet deep and the sandy bottom was evenly ridged by the last storm. Jeffrey glanced at the speedboat, now not fifty yards away, and made his decision.

"I hope I can get it again,” he muttered, and dropped the package over the side.

THROUGH the glass bottom he could see the dark object whirl downward, saw it come to rest on the ocean floor. For an instant it was black and plainly seen, then the speed of the glass-bottomed boat whisked it from sight Anxiously, he studied the shore and used a mariner’s old trick of locating himself by three points. There was the Las Olas Casino tower to the south, the Lauderdale water tower, already red-lighted as a warning to airplanes, to the north, and directly off the bow were the stakes and ropes for the protected bathing beach.

Where invisible lines from these points intersected, lay the package. Unless a storm or currents swept it away, there was a chance of recovery.

Then the speedboat was alongside. In the bow seat, Smooth Blake leveled an automatic pistol.

“Stop that scow,” he called. “And Jeffrey, put your thumbs in your ears and look like an elk!”

“Sure!” And he obeyed. If his hunch was right, they'd take him to Pamela, and after that he could think of other things.

But Captain Angus did not stop. He kept headed wide open for shore.

“You go plumb t’hell!” he roared indomitably. “You ain’t got no right to stop a vessel on the high seas. I’ll Report you—”

The crack of the automatic was swept seaward by the wind. Jeffrey saw the flame of the gun, turned his head, and saw old Angus totter from the wheel, clutch at his chest and then slowly crumple up like a folding seat.

Jeffrey, who had seen death too often, knew from the flat, weary posture that the old man was dead. A wave of uncontrolled rage rose in him.

“You dirty murderer,” he yelled furiously, “do you kill just for fun?”

“Keep your hands up,” said Smooth. “Luke, get aboard and shut off the motor, and knock a hole in the glass bottom.” He waved to Jeffrey. “Come aboard here, and be mighty careful how you do it.”

Jeffrey looked again at the captain’s body.

“I swear, I'll see you burned for it,” he muttered thickly. But he had to obey.

“Listen, I’d shoot him and a dozen like him for what’s in this,” said Blake.

He gave Jeffrey a shove that tumbled the reporter into the leather cushions. Luke Rensome, Blake’s gunman, leaped aboard and shut off the motor. Jeffrey heard the sounds of a fire-ax, the smash of glass. The boat began to settle by the stern. Luke leaped back to the speedboat, grinning.

“I touched off her engine room, too,” he said. “They’ll play the devil figuring out what happened.”

Under cover of the darkness, which hid them from shore, Blake whirled the speedboat and headed south and to sea. He was making a wide swing which would bring him in at Port Everglades, where, by canals, he could reach the New River.

“Frisk him, Luke,” he ordered.

Luke did more than just frisk. He stripped Jeffrey to his tanned hide and searched even the seams of his underwear. Jeffrey bore this in silence.

“Smooth,” Luke finally growled, “he ain’t got ’em on him.”

“He’s got to have them,” snapped Smooth.

“Have I?” inquired Jeffrey savagely. “Well listen, killer. They’re at the bottom of the sea and you’ll have a fine time getting them!”

Luke Rensome swore, struck Jeffrey a blow in the face that tumbled the reporter on his back. Hugh came up, fighting mad, and waded in, fists swinging. Luke jammed the gun muzzle into Jeffrey’s stomach. His eyes and face were set to do the murder.

“Hold it, you fool!” ordered Smooth’s deadly voice. “He knows where they are, and he can get them.”

The gunsel relaxed, breathing hard through distended nostrils.

“Take the wheel,” Smooth told Luke. “And take it easy after you get in the river.”

The deadly little man moved over where Hugh was pulling on his clothes.

“You know what’s in that notebook?” he asked in his soft feminine voice.

Jeffrey didn’t, but this was no time to say so.

“Sure,” he said jeeringly, “why wouldn’t I?”

Smooth nodded. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

His hand flashed up and out so swiftly that Jeffrey had no time to duck. The heavy gun crashed against his skull. The world blanked out in a blaze of sparks. Smooth looked broodingly at the senseless figure.

“He thinks he isn’t going to tell where he dropped ’em,” he muttered. “But he is.”

“Yeah,” grinned Luke, “he will!”

DARKNESS was pitchblack and heavy with perfume. Jeffrey stifled a groan. His head was pounding like a Chinese drum. His hands were numb from cords cutting into his wrists and his feet felt like stumps from the ankles down. He muttered savagely.

“Hugh!” came Pamela’s voice across the darkness.

A glow of warmth swept over him. She was unhurt! He tried to make his voice cheerful.

“What’s left of me,” he answered. “What have they done to you?"

“Nothing—  yet,” she whispered. “But they’re not going to let us go.” Her voice grew angry. “And just when I’d solved Tekele’s code. Hugh, that notebook will clear the whole mystery!”

Jeffrey didn’t say anything. Why tell her the notebook was in forty feet of water and the next storm would bury it forever?

“I can’t understand,” she went on, “why Rod Fanton doesn’t do something.”

“That lug!” growled Jeffrey.

“Don’t talk like that,” she protested. “Rod is a brilliant detective!”

Jeffrey’s heart dropped. She loved the man. And he knew he, Jeffrey, loved this gallant, courageous girl.

“Okay, then, he’s a brilliant shamus,” said Jeffrey quietly. “But he’s not here now, and we are. I’m going to roll across the floor. When I back up to you, see what you can do with these knots. The way they feel, Houdini would be stymied.”

He rolled across the floor until he felt the warmth of her body. He felt her quick fingers at work on the knots.

“As long as we’re both playing the same side of the street, why don’t you quit being the female Lone Ranger and tell me everything?” he asked.

By some instinct, she accepted him now.

“I was a fool,” she said, “a scared fool.” And then, as she worked at the bonds, she told him everything. “The sunken plane and the notebook will clear me. Oh!” she gasped. “What did you do with it and the diamonds?”

Jeffrey told her. He heard her gasp again in dismay. “But Hugh, they’re lost for good!”

“No,” said Jeffrey grimly, “we’ll have to get them. Because we can’t locate the plane.”

She relapsed into discouraged silence. Jeffrey’s hands were now free. He rubbed some circulation into them. He untied his own feet and turned to work on her bonds.

He had just loosened her hands when a key rasped softly in the lock of the door. Jeffrey sprang up and groped for the wall. “Don’t move,” he whispered

“Oh, Hugh!” Fear gripped her throat, closed it.

Just as he reached the wall, the door opened in front of him. A man entered through a yellow rectangle of light Jeffrey hurtled forward, one arm hooking for the neck, the other reaching for a gun wrist. He respected Smooth’s deadly qualities with a gun.

But this was not Smooth Blake. Roderick Fanton’s voice whispered huskily:

“Hey, lay off!”

Jeffrey fell back, and within him an emotion welled up that he knew was jealousy. “So,” he said bitterly, “you arrive in the nick of time!”

“Take it easy,” snapped Fanton in a low tone. “I’m risking my life here. I came for Pamela and you.”

“Oh, Rod,” cried Pamela warmly, “I just knew you’d come!”

“Not so loud,” said Fanton. “Here, I’ll unfasten your ankles. We haven’t got much time. You’re in Blake’s apartment. I’ve got Blake and his gunsel, Rensome, off on a wild-goose chase after the diamonds. But they’re liable to return any minute.”

“Very daring and noble,” growled Jeffrey, “but what’s in it for you?”

“Fifty thousand for the return of the rocks,” Fanton told him coolly. “And I also happen to be fond of Pam.”

Jeffrey shrugged and was silenced. But his mind was working swiftly. There was a story here yet to get and without a story he was without a job. But for the moment he let Fanton take the lead.

vi

ONCE they were safely in Fanton’s car and speeding towards Andrews Avenue, the private detective began talking.

“Where are the rocks and the notebook?” he asked.

In a discouraged voice Pamela told him. Fanton swore softly.

“But can you get them, Hugh?” Pamela queried.

“I hope to,” Jeffrey rejoined quietly.

“Good,” said Fanton. “At dawn, we’ll hire a boat and—”

They had reached a dark, quiet section of Las Olas Boulevard. Jeffrey leaned forward from the back set.

“Stop the car, Fanton,” he ordered.

Fanton slowed down. “What’s the idea?” he growled. He brought the car to a stop.

“You’ve done your good deed for the day,” said Jeffrey. “Get out!”

“Why, you dirty—” began Fanton, and his hand streaked to his left shoulder.

Jeffrey swung with all he had and caught the private eye square on the jaw. The punch felt good all the way up Jeffrey’s arm.

Fanton’s head snapped back, his eyes rolled whitely and he slumped down, out cold.

“Hugh!” gasped Pamela. “Why did you do that?”

“Listen,” Jeffrey said, “I’m still after a story and this lug—”

He opened the car door and pushed the detective’s body out. Pamela grabbed for it.

“Is that all you think of— your story ?” she cried fiercely. “Rod was helping—”

“Let go,” warned Jeffrey grimly, “or I'll start on you.”

She shrank back and Jeffrey carried Fanton to a spot under a cocoanut palm and laid him out carefully, with his arms folded across his breast. Then he jumped into the car, threw it in gear and headed swiftly west on Broward Boulevard toward the Everglades.

Pamela spoke for the first time in minutes.

“Where are we going now?” she demanded.

“Hiding out from the police until daylight,” Jeffrey told her, and then explained about Pete Hendricks. “As soon as we get the notebook and diamonds, we’ll find him and stop being amateur sleuths,” he concluded.

She began to weep quietly, sobbed out, “Your silly mistakes have spoiled everything.”

This didn’t make Jeffrey feel any better. He drove glumly past the country club, through Dania, down the West Dixie Highway. It seemed dawn would never come. Pamela finally dozed in exhaustion.

But at length the sky in the east brightened and Jeffrey drove back to the Andrews Avenue Bridge over the New River, where the charter boats were moored. There was a heavy, white fog.

As he parked near the- boat rentals, he failed to notice a big, tall man give a start of surprise and move stealthily to the dock.

The night man was in the rental office and Jeffrey dickered with him for a thirty-two-foot cruiser, paying extra to operate it himself. After inspecting the boat, he and Pamela followed the rental man back to the office, where Hugh got change for a hundred-dollar bill.

It was then the big, tall man ducked aboard the cruiser.

“Watch the weather,” warned the rental man. “These fogs are followed lots of times by a good blow.”

Pamela looked at Jeffrey. He grinned.

“We’ll have time,” he said.

He asked for and got a glass-bottomed bucket, and then helped Pamela aboard. He started the motor, put the clutch in and the single propeller sent them cautiously downriver through masses of floating hyacinth and an opaque fog.

Jeffrey told her his plan. “After we get the notebook and the jewels, we’ll put in at Palm Beach and phone Pete Hendricks—”

“You won’t have to call me!” a voice cried.

Pete Hendricks was coming out of a forward locker. His face was grim and set.

“Good grief,” moaned Jeffrey, “where did you spring from?”

Hendricks ignored this. “You’re under arrest for murder,” he said sternly to Pamela.

She gasped and shrank back.

“You can’t do this, Pete,” Jeffrey said hotly. “She didn’t do it. Smooth Blake is the man!”

"Listen!” cut in Hendricks. “I followed that fairy-tale lead. Smooth Blake was in a poker session at the Plantation for forty-eight hours and Honest John Biggers vouches for him. Rod Fanton was talking to the chief of police of Lauderdale at six-thirty on the morning of the murder!... Turn this tub around!”

There was no mistaking his determination. Jeffrey sighed. If a storm followed this fog—

“Okay,” he muttered and turned from the wheel of the craft.

HENDRICKS was bringing out a set of handcuffs. Near the wheel, hanging by a thong, was a club for killing fish. In a swift movement Jeffrey seized it, swung it up.

“Hold it!” yelled Hendricks, trying to dodge.

He was too late. The club caught him alongside the skull and he dropped in a senseless heap.

“May I be forgiven for that,” Jeffrey said grimly. “My best friend, too.”

But he lifted the body under the arms and started to drag it to the forward locker. Pamela, pale and shaken, saw Pete Hendricks’ gray-ash face.

“Oh, Hugh, you’ve killed him!”

“It’ll take more than that to crack his skull,” Jeffrey grunted.

He got the locker door open and thrust the body inside. There was a crash of broken glass. Something had smashed, but Hugh didn’t wait to find out what it was. There was no lock on the door, only a hasp, with a thick copper nail to hold it In place. This he affixed and returned to the wheel, which Pamela had taken over.

They didn’t say anything for a long time. Then, suddenly, Hugh turned down the motor.

“More grief," he muttered.

“What now?” cried Pamela.

“This fog,” said Jeffrey. “I can’t see my landmarks until it lifts. And the gale may be on, then.”

The fog to landward lifted somewhat around eight o’clock, but by that time Jeffrey had been cruising futilely for hours and a moaning wind had sprung up. Pamela was hanging over the side, peering through the glass-bottomed bucket. There had been no noise from Pete Hendricks, but that didn’t worry Hugh. He kept glancing anxiously landward.

Pam continued peering through the glass.

“It’s crystal clear, but it’s only rocks and some marine growth, and a lot of parrot and angel fish,” she said.

“Never mind the fish,” said Jeffrey. “We must be close. Keep looking.”

Ten minutes later, he cried out in satisfaction. The inshore fog had lifted sufficiently now for him to make out the Lauderdale water tower and the thin spire of the Las Olas Casino. He found that he was slightly south. Quickly, he speeded up.

“Now Pam,” he cried excitedly, “it has got to be somewhere around here.”

She strained over the side. Minutes passed. The breeze increased. Cloud banks rolled up from the horizon. The sea began to roil. Jeffrey knew there was going to be a blow.

Then, suddenly, Pamela cried out: “Hugh! It’s there— a little package! It’s black.”

Jeffrey exclaimed in satisfaction and reversed the motor until she told him he was right over it. Then he broke out the anchor and dropped it over the side. The grapnel took forty-two feet of rope.

“That’s awful deep,” he observed soberly. But he forced a smile.

“Turn your back,” he said and stripped down to his shorts.

“Oh, Hugh,” she cried, “are you sure it’s safe with barracuda and sharks?”

Jeffrey looked through the glass-bottomed bucket, espied the black package, brought so close by water magnification that he could almost reach down and grab it. He didn’t reply but jumped to the rail, poised there an instant, and dove down cleanly. With all his strength he swam downward.

He fought the water, feeling the pressure close in on his lungs like a vise, trying to squeeze the air out of him. It seemed he would never get there. And when his hand finally did touch the sand of the bottom, his strength was gone and he popped up to the surface like a cork, his ears pounding, his eyes bulging.

“Pressure’s terrific,” he panted. “I can’t fight it!”

“Don’t try it again,” Pamela cried. “I’m— I’m afraid for you!”

“I’ve got to get it,” he said grimly.

He found a second anchor, a small one without chain or rope. He clutched it under his left arm, and this time took in only a half lungful of air. The wind was whistling, the waves rocking the boat violently.

“Please stop, Hugh,” cried Pamela. “You’ll—”

He didn’t hear any more. The green water closed over his head and he sank down, swiftly enough this time with the anchor dragging him. The water poured into the recesses of his ears. His lungs seemed on fire from the pressure. He wanted to go up so badly that he had to fight against the temptation to drop the anchor. The fear of unknown depths seized him. But he plunged on downward.

Then his knees hit the bottom. His eyes were agony from the pressure. But paddling with his right hand, he twisted and peered and groped. His lungs became a sheet of pure pain. His stomach was in a knot.

He felt he must go up or die. Yet he crawled another few feet. His lungs felt as if they would collapse. He was getting faint. His head roared. But this time he saw something black through his pressure-fogged eyes. His fingers closed on it, felt the smoothness of the oiled silk.

He dropped the anchor and fought his faintness. But dropping the anchor was a mistake. His body shot up like an arrow through the pellucid depths and he bobbed out into the air, his body seeming to explode, everything black before his eyes. His senses failed, he had no strength, and he rolled helplessly face down in the water.

There was a flash of a white body through the air, a splash, and Pamela had turned him, cupped his chin with her hand to hold his head out of water.

“I got it, Pam,” he whispered. “It’s all right, now.

SHE CLUNG there with him to the side of the boat until his strength in some measure returned. Then she aided him and he clambered over the rail and sprawled, panting, on the cockpit floor.

Disregarding the fact that she was clad only in brassiere, silk panties and sheer stockings, she knelt over him and worked his arms to help his laboring lungs.

Presently he felt better and Pamela went into the cabin to dress. Jeffrey put on his clothes and started forward to raise the anchor.

“Let Hendricks out,” he called. “We can explain now.”

He heard her assent, but that was all. As he clambered onto the cabin to go forward, he ran his stomach into the outstretched gun of Smooth Blake.

“Thanks,” said Smooth. “I'll take the jewels now.”

Jeffrey was stunned and too weak to resist. He realized then that while they had been too occupied to keep a lookout, Smooth Blake had let his speedboat drift downwind and was now grappled to the cruiser’s anchor rope.

But it was in Jeffrey to try one last trick.

“Jump, Pam!” he yelled. “Swim for it!”

Smooth Blake fell for it. He turned his gaze into the cockpit. Jeffrey swung from his toes and followed up the punch with a leap for the gun. It went off, seemingly in his hands, but the bullet didn’t touch him.

Blake went back and down from the punch, and as Jeffrey jumped after him he ground his foot on the gun wrist. Blake moaned in agony and his fingers loosened on the weapon. But before Jeffrey could seize it and jump to the cockpit, the man had grabbed him. They wrestled savagely.

“Rod, Luke! Quick, give me a hand!” Blake yelled at the speedboat.

“So it’s Rod, is it?” said Jeffrey. “I thought that lug was a monkey!”

He twisted in time to see Luke Rensome coming at him from the speedboat, his gun leveled, his eyes squinting behind it to get the aim. He held his fire until he could get close enough to make sure he hit Jeffrey and not Smooth.

But before he could shoot, another gun roared. Luke reached for the pit of his stomach, a look of complete astonishment on his ugly red face.

“The dame got me,” he groaned. “Can you tie that?” And he collapsed.

Jeffrey knew Pamela had gotten his gun from his coat.

“Good girl, darling,” he muttered, and redoubled his efforts to overcome Smooth Blake.

But something must have gone haywire after that. Jeffrey couldn’t see with Blake lying across his face. Suddenly Pamela whimpered in pain, and then Hugh was jerked backward by the heels and a slanting blow from a gun barrel half-stunned him.

When Jeffrey was aware of things again, he was on the cockpit floor. Blake was up, brushing off his clothes and panting curses, and Rod Fanton was standing there with a long-snouted Luger in his hand. Pamela was crouched by the rail, blood streaming from a cut on her forehead.

Jeffrey gritted his teeth.

“Nice going, Fanton,” he jeered. “You were working with these monkeys all the time. You only pretended to release Pam and me, so I’d get the diamonds and the notebook, thinking I was helping a dick.”

“It finally worked, anyway,” rejoined Fanton thinly.

His hand reached for a pocket and pulled out a stick of chewing gum. He rolled it up, thrust it into his mouth. Something clicked then in Hugh’s brain. That flattened cud of gum on the floor of Tekele’s yacht!

“You killed Tekele!” he cried. “You just pretended you were helping Pamela. You wanted that notebook because it showed you were a crook, that you stole the Marechal diamonds.”

“I didn’t steal them,” said Fanton coldly. “But since you’ll not be talking much after this, I don’t mind setting your mind straight. I was to do the dickering to get them back for my insurance client. Tekele held out and didn’t have them with him. How was I to know Pamela was down below all the time and did have them?” He turned to her. “Give me the package.”

When she failed to move, he seized her roughly, tearing her waist and getting the waterproof package. He took out the notebook and the diamonds.

“I take ’em back, Smooth,” he said, “and we’ll split the reward. As for this—” He gestured to the notebook.

“Burn it,” said Smooth, “before it burns us.”

“You flew up North in your plane,” Jeffrey accused Fanton, “knocked off Tekele and then flew back to talk to the chief of police and establish an alibi!”

“That’s it,” said Fanton, leering evilly.

“But they’ll burn you,” said Jeffrey softly. “You got socked on the jaw by Tekele and he knocked out a cud of gum you were chewing. The cops have it with your teeth marks in it, Fanton, and it's all they need.”

But his bluff failed.

“They’ll never take a cast of my mouth if you don’t squawk— and you won’t!” said Fanton calmly.

vii

PANTON looked around. “Cut that anchor rope, Smooth, and we’ll go out to sea and give ’em to the barracuda.”

“Okay,” said Smooth. “Only, how come you didn’t tell me you flew your plane up there and knocked off Tekele?”

Fanton gave him an icy look. “So you wouldn’t know something that might hurt you.”

And then, just as Jeffrey was losing hope, he remembered something.

Pete Hendricks! He was still in the forward locker. If Pete would only come out quietly and sock Fanton, the private detective could still be beaten.

But as the motor purred and the vessel headed seaward there was no sound, no movement from within the cabin. Jeffrey groaned. Had he, after all, killed Pete when he’d clubbed him.

“How’ll you explain this empty cruiser after what’s gone on before?” he asked Fanton.

“Easy,” grinned the private dick. “You rented this scow to help Pamela escape. You and she boarded a ship for Honduras, or some other place where they don’t have extradition, and you’re living happily ever after.”

“You think of everything,” muttered Jeffrey.

Where was Pete Hendricks?

The speedboat being towed astern slowed them up somewhat, but Fanton said finally, “Anywhere here is okay.”

Jeffrey looked at Pamela. Between the shock of discovering Rod a murderer and the crack on the head, she still seemed half stunned. Jeffrey told himself that he was not going to sit by and get killed without making a fight for it. He looked into the entrance of the cabin.

There was no sign of Pete Hendricks. He braced himself, and as Smooth Blake turned and came to him, Jeffrey stood up. “Let’s go!” he sang out, and raced squarely into the gun muzzle.

He should have died then and there, because Smooth Blake was willing and eager to give it to him. The man turned white and tense and his finger jerked at the trigger. But just as he would have fired, there was a gunshot from inside the cabin. And as Jeffrey charged in, he ran into the brains and blood of Smooth Blake spattering toward him. The spent bullet hit Jeffrey high on the chest.

He heard Smooth’s dying scream. But it all came from far away, because he had slammed into Smooth’s body as it was falling and it had fallen on him.

He heard Pamela cry out something. Then there was a shot, and another one. He scrambled up. Fanton was backing toward him. He saw Pete Hendricks wheeling dizzily from a wound and Fanton about to fire again.

Jeffrey rose up off the deck and hit Fanton hard. Fanton went down and in going down, he fired. As he slid across the deck on his side, Hendricks located him and stopped his staggering long enough to level his gun and loose a slug.

The slug slammed through Fanton’s shoulder and hurled him to the deck. He lay there without moving.

Jeffrey sat down and began to swear.

“A fine dick you are!” he yelled furiously at Pete Hendricks. “Where have you been all my life?”

“You silly idiot,” growled Hendricks, examining a bullet hole through his forearm, “in throwing me in that locker you knocked down a fire extinguisher. It’s a wonder I didn’t get killed!”

“After that sock I gave you,” said Jeffrey feelingly, “no fire extinguisher could even make a dent.”

“Yeah?” said Hendricks. “Well, this one was full of carbon dioxide for putting out fires. It broke in falling down, and damned near strangled me to death.” He coughed and sucked in deep breaths. “It’s the last time I want to tangle with a fire extinguisher. They’re dynamite!”

Jeffrey pointed to Fanton. “Did you hear what he said?”

“Plenty,” said Hendricks.

“Then,” said Jeffrey, “will you shake hands and forget?”

He handed Hendricks the diamonds and the notebook. Hendricks looked at him and then grinned. “Why not? You were right about the girl.”

Jeffrey cried out and jumped to Pamela’s side. She was trying to smile and she was going to have a black eye, but he felt all soft and tender toward her.

“Don’t ever try any silly business like this again,” he scolded.

“No,” she said. “I’ll be too busy hunting a new job.”

“New job ?” said Jeffrey. “Well, you’ve got one— taking care of a two-room kitchenette apartment for a rising young reporter.”

Despite her blackening eye she looked marvelous, and he leaned over now to take the kiss he had long wanted. But she drew back, rose and retreated toward the cabin. She was smiling, but her lips trembled.

“Didn’t you say you always chased your own women?” she asked demurely.

“Yes,” said Jeffrey. “It’s what makes the game of love—”

“Well,” she said from the cabin, “start chasing. I could be hard to catch!”

Jeffrey grinned and winked at Pete and strolled into the cabin. She was not so hard to catch after all.

_______________________

6: Chicken King

Perley Poore Sheehan

1875-1943

Thrilling Detective Aug 1933

INSPECTOR HAMMOND, head of what had come to be known in the New York Police Department as “The Racket Squad,” looked over the sheaf of reports on his desk. It was late afternoon for most people, but it was just the start of another day for him.

Flannigan, his doorman, came in— a smooth-faced and lean old-timer on the force.

“He’s here, Chief,” he announced.

“Send him in. And Flannigan!— if you see any snoopers around give ’em the boot. Get me?”

“Gotcha, Chief!”

It was getting so that you couldn’t be sure of your privacy any more even in your own office— not even here at Headquarters in Centre Street, what with the rackets boring in. Things were terrible.

The visitor entered. He might have been a lascar— an East Indian sailor just off a blue-water trader; something of a Malay, something of a Chink; powerful, lithe, well set-up. But certainly no white man— so Inspector Hammond judged.

At Flannigan’s announcement, the inspector had risen and come round from his desk as if to salute a visitor of importance. Now he went a little red— a danger signal. What ailed Flannigan? Was the old man going crazy? Hammond eyed his visitor.

“How’d you get in?” the inspector asked. "What do you want?”

The visitor let out the fragment of a cackling laugh. But his face and his manner were serious— a face that was strong and deeply lined, with something about it to suggest a skull; dark eyes deep-set and wide apart, quick as a monkey’s. For a moment longer he stood there slightly stooped and feet wide apart— he was roughly dressed— the typical sailor.

“It’s okay, Chief,” he said. “You wanted to see me in make-up.”

“For the love of Mike! Doctor Coffin !”

Doctor coffin and the head of New York’s Racket Squad shook hands.

“As Doctor Coffin”— the famous Hollywood amateur detective volunteered— “I had to disappear. I was being tailed, Chief.”

“By the cops?”

“Cops of the underworld. The rackets are running their own detective agencies now.”

“You’re telling me,” Inspector Hammond exploded softly. “Smoke?”

Doctor Coffin shook his head. He was the sailor again as he seated himself on the edge of the chair Hammond drew up for him. From his own chair, the New York detective shot his visitor a glance while he lit a cigar. Even now, Inspector Hammond had an uneasy feeling that this wasn’t Doctor Coffin at all, but someone else.

“The late Del Manning,” droned Inspector Hammond. “I begin to see now why Del Manning was the greatest actor Hollywood ever turned out. Too bad you had to let the World think Del Manning was dead.”

“That’s all right, as long as l’m alive.”

“That’s what’s worrying me.” He puffed at his cigar and shuffled a sheet from the pile of reports in front of him. He shoved this forward and Doctor Coffin picked it up.

“I’ll get you the original if you want it,” Hammond said.

Doctor Coffin smiled slightly and shook his head. The paper he held was the official photostat— white on black— of a printed message that had been delivered less than an hour ago. Doctor Coffin read it aloud :

INSPECTOR HAMMOND JUST A

FRIENDLY TIP TELL DOC COFFIN

TO LAM IF HE DON’T WANT TO

FREEZE YOU KNOW ME

THE CHICKEN KING

“Freeze— in the Morgue,” Hammond droned. “They’re wise to you, Doc. They want you out of this territory.”

From Doctor Coffin’s throat there carne a dry cackle. “Who is this guy?” he asked.

“The Chicken King?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the hell of it. We don’t know. A big shot— so big we can’t find anyone to put the finger on him.”

“Yet he gets his work done.”

“I'll say so. When he began to horn in Tony Aleppo was head of the poultry racket and sitting easy. The Chicken King killed him off and most of his gang. Big Jake Kirschbaum tried to take it over where Tony left off. He lasted a month.

“Since then, the Chicken King has been putting the screws to the trade in general so hard that some of them yipped. Two of the yippers got theirs— thrown into their own slush boats, over under the killing sheds on the Jersey shore. We brought in three others and tried to make them talk. They talked a little, but not enough.”

“Then what?”

“We’re still holding them—compounding a felony—just a stall.”

“Couldn’t they make bail?”

“That’s the funny part of it. A lawyer shows up soon as we make the pinch and offers bail for the three of them, but they wouldn’t accept it.”

“Why not?”

“Because they knew that, direct or indirect, that lawyer was acting for the Chicken King and that as soon as they were out the Chicken King would get them on the spot.”

Doctor Coffin remained in thought a moment, then asked; “Who is this lawyer, Chief?”

“One of the crookedest— and also one of the most dangerous— men in New York.” And the inspector mentioned a name. Udo was a part of it. “Why?”

“l’m going to see him.”

ii

UDO had his office in a brick antique not far from the Criminal Courts Building. It was an old building, but had been elaborately reconstructed. Doctor Coffin, still in his role of a lascar, climbed a flight of steps to the second floor and turned to the left. He entered a door and found himself in a large but dim reception room. In one Wall of the room was a small window— like the window of a box-office— and here a keen-eyed girl looked him over.

“Mr. Udo is occupied just now,” she said. “What name shall I give?”

“Me lite,” said Doctor Coffin. And on a paper the girl passed out he scrawled letters that might have meant a name.

“Charas,” the girl read.

“Charas” was a name, all right; but not the kind the girl thought it was. Would Udo know better? It looked as if he did. Almost instantly a suave but hard-faced young man came out to show the visitor in.

“This way, Mr. Charas,” but the young man himself had a veiled smile on his face. “Charas” was the name of a Hindu opium substitute made from hemp. The dope-trade was familiar with it.

The guide led Doctor Coffin through an inner doorway into a narrow hall, dark and crooked, then let him into a small room where he could wait in private. It was evident that Mr. Udo’s clients were strong for privacy.

“And bugged,” said Doctor Coffin under his breath.

The moment he was left alone he’d moved aside a framed diploma— the only ornament on the dusty wall. Back of the frame he’d seen the knob of a microphone. The room was wired. Conversations in this room wouldn’t be so private after all.

The door opened and a weasel of a man was standing there— small, thin-lipped, rat-eyed. There was no need of an introduction. This was Mr. Udo.

“You wished to see me, Mr.—?”

“Jimmy Das,” said Doctor Coffin.

“You gave the name of—”

“Charas. You savvy?”

The little lawyer entered and closed the door. He looked soft and deadly— like a weasel, like a furred snake.

“You may speak frankly,” he purred, as he toyed with a big fountain pen. Doctor Coffin spoke slowly, taking pains with his English.

“I got five hund’ed—six hund’ed pound charas,” he said. “I don’ know what to do with it.”

“Who gave you my name?”

Doctor Coffin smiled and shook his head.

“Where have you got the stuff?”

“You come. I show you.”

The instant he said this, Doctor Coffin saw that he would get nowhere along this line. He made a jump for the little lawyer and caught him by the wrist. The lawyer was even quicker. Doctor Coffin should have known it. Udo wasn’t the man to interview a strange client— man or woman— without being prepared.

The fountain pen had barked and spat fire. It was a small handgun of familiar design. In any case, the single shot that the thing contained went wild.

“You!”— Doctor Coffin grated, and he’d drawn his own gun. “If anything happens to me you croak. Wise your gang.”

“It’s all right boys,” Udo spoke up. He turned to Doctor Coffin who still held his wrist and spoke in a sort of hissing whisper, red showing in his little eyes: “And wise yourself up, Doctor Coffin.”

They stood there for a silent interval.

The lawyer spoke again: “I’ve got a report on everything that just passed between you and Hammond. Yes, and everything you got from those poultry rats. How’s that for you?”

“Go on,” said Doctor Coffin. “You haven’t finished your speech.”

“And l’m the only man in New York, Doctor Coffin, who can get you out of this man’s town alive.”

There was evidence of that to some extent almost before the little lawyer finished speaking. From just back of him, Doctor Coffin heard another voice carry on:

“Shall I drill him, boss?”

iii

IT WAS one of those mere atoms of time the misuse of which would have been fatal. But Doctor Coffin had known such moments of crisis before. At the first jar of that strange voice in the back of his brain, he’d thrust his gun against the lawyer’s stomach, then waited.

Just so much nitro-glycerine this was— ready to pop at the slightest jolt— and the little lawyer knew it.

“Hold it, Tommy,” he said.

Something strange about that voice; something strange about that name. “Tommy” wasn’t a popular nickname in gangland—for a reason. Doctor Coffin, by a sort of double pressure, with hand and gun, brought himself and the lawyer around on a pivot.

He’d somehow been expecting what he saw there— that keen-eyed girl who’d looked him over from the little window in the front office.

“So you’re the Tommy!” he said.

“Don’t get fresh,” she said— hard as agate.

She held a small automatic in her hand. It was steady.

“What are you going to do with your gat?” asked Doctor Coffin. “Drill your boss?”

Back of the girl was a false door, cleverly let into the wall. To one side of it was a window looking out on a narrow air-shaft— nothing but a dingy brick wall to be seen. The window, Doctor Coffin judged, wouldn’t be more than twenty feet above the ground. He could risk a jump, if it carne to that.

“You’re in a tough spot,” said the little lawyer, beginning to frame a case.

“So are you,” said Doctor Coffin.

“And l’m telling you again, Doctor Coffin, that I am the only one who can help you out of it. There are two other guns outside that door just back of you. If something— should happen to me, the best you could hope for with all these witnesses against you would be a hot seat up the river.”

Doctor coffin raised his voice enough to carry— carry far, since this room was wired.

“All those who want to had better scram. The Law’s outside.”

If his announcement did nothing else it served at least to distract attention. A second or two was long enough for what followed. Nothing that the late Del Manning had ever accomplished on the screen ever carne off with more telling drama.

He’d given the lawyer a jerk that sent him sprawling toward the girl with the gun. With the same movement Doctor Coffin had sprung and slapped the automatic from the girl’s hand.

She screamed a curse then backed. Almost before it had touched the floor, Doctor Coffin had retrieved the automatic.

“Don’t move— either of you,” he said.

He wasn’t even out of breath.

No man acts as swiftly as this without some element of automatic control— something over and beyond the will— making him as dangerous to fool with as a wildcat or a buzz-saw.

The girl knew this. She’d probably been brought up in a school where she’d learned such things. She’d started to say something about him— Doctor Coffin— not daring to shoot a girl. She was right to some extent. But even while she was making her spiel, Doctor Coffin had flipped a handcuff onto one of her wrists. Before she knew what it was all about, Doctor Coffin stooped and clicked the other steel noose on a wrist of the little lawyer.

He warned them: “Don’t jerk. They tighten when you do.”

Already the manacles were tight enough.

“l’m going to talk to you, counselor,” said Doctor Coffin. “I may even take you on as my lawyer. And I’d rather talk to you alone, at that. But I don’t trust this Tommy, see? If I sprung her now she’d probably be advertising this little affair of ours to every punk she knows.”

“I think not,” said Lawyer Udo, arguing the case as cool as if he’d been in court.

“Oh, you don’t!” said Doctor Coffin, helping the lawyer to his feet, but careful to keep the guns under his own control.

“I'll tell you why,” said the lawyer. “Tommy— her real name is Gertrude Jones— has only got one boy friend. He’s doing a stretch in Dannemora. And she’s been true to him. Which is lucky. For he’s just about ready for parole.”

Doctor Coffin swung up a warning hand. Swift as a cat, he had the girl and the lawyer in front of him as he held his own gun on the secret door.

“Come out of that and keep ’em high,” he said. “That wall won’t stop a bullet.”

A white-faced boy pushed in. His hands were up and empty. The girl let out a screech.

“Benny!”

Doctor Coffin didn’t have to be told. It was the kid from Dannemora.

iv

HE FRISKED the kid. But at the same time he talked to him like a father. Or talked to him as a good horseman talks to a colt. “Ho, now, buddy. Take it easy. You’re all fresh and suited—”

Benny was unarmed.

Presently, Doctor Coffin unhooked the girl and let her and Benny go into a clinch.

“All right, counselor,” he said, “I guess we’re set for our private talk.”

But he spread a general warning. When he said that the coppers had this place surrounded, he’d meant just that. It was the truth. Those two “guns” Lawyer Udo said were behind the door, who’d taken it on the lam, had been sneezed, pinched, copped— and make no doubt of that.

“What do you want us to do?” asked Benny. He was nervous. He’d just done three years for dropping a guy— and lucky, at that, he didn’t get the dance-house, as he said himself, meaning the execution chamber.

“Stay here and talk, if you want to,” said Doctor Coffin. “I'll steer you out— and the Law won’t touch you— when we’re set to go. It all depends on the counselor here.”

Lawyer Udo broke in. He spoke with a fine mixture of wounded dignity and cold menace.

“As to that,” he said, “I'd feel better if you took off this bracelet.”

"Yes, you would. But I wouldn’t,” Doctor Coffin told him. He turned to Benny and the girl. “Listen, you two. I advise you to stick around. l’m working on a layout, see? I may need your help. If you do help me and we put it through without an upset you’re square with the Law for good.”

“I won’t turn copper,” Benny slurred. “I ain’t no rat.”

“That’s why I want you,” Doctor Coffin answered. “Listen, Benny; I did a stretch in Copper John myself when I was a kid about your age.”

He left them there and, shoving the little lawyer ahead of him, they passed on into the maze of offices beyond the secret door. They carne at last to Udo’s own private room, which was large and richly furnished.

“Sit down right there in that big leather chair,” said Doctor Coffin, “and don’t move until I get through telephoning.”

He seated himself at the lawyer’s big table and telephoned. Udo, sunk in his leather chair and still handcuffed, strained his ears, but he didn’t get very much of what was said. He got enough though to know that Doctor Coffin was intimate with 240 Centre Street— Headquarters— talking to the wheels of the biggest police unit in the world just like a Tammany politician. What was the answer?

He wasn’t long in finding out. "Counselor,” Doctor Coffin asked, “how long’s it been since you saw the Chicken King?”

“Who?”

“You heard me.”

The little lawyer held still. He’d gene a shade whiter, then a shade blacker.

“I have nothing to say,” he stalled. “But I’ll remind you that I am a member of the bar, an officer of the Courts of Justice—”

“Cut it, feller,” Doctor Coffin broke in harshly. And it wasn’t the lascar speaking now. It was the ex-convict, the old alumnus of Copper John. “You heard what I just told that kid in there. I've been waiting more or less ever since I got out of stir to take a crack at one of you crooked lawyers. You’re not in court now. Not before any favorite, hand-picked judge of yours, at any rate. Get this straight. This is outside the law. But the law’s back of me, see? We’re up in front.”

"Will you kindly explain yourself, Doctor Coffin?”

“Why, sure! I've promised certain parties that I'll go out and get the Chicken King. See?”

“Kill him?”

“Naw, not unless I have to. I've promised to turn him over to these certain parties in a certain place. And if I can’t give ’em the Chicken King, I'll give ’em— you!” Doctor Coffin’s voice dropped to a chilling but confidential whisper. “Were you ever— over at that big shed— on the Jersey shore— where they put the knife to about fifty thousand chickens every night?”

v

EVENTS had moved swiftly all along— ever since Doctor Coffin’s call on Inspector Hammond, head of the Racket Squad. Just the same it was early night. Early night was when the day’s Work just about hit its pace, over there on the Jersey shore, in that killing shed that Doctor Coffin had just mentioned.

A long shed, half on land and half on piles, set in the black waters of the lower Hudson— railroad yards at one end, docking space for scows and tugs at the other.

In the killing shed there was a terrific uproar and an overpowering miasma— to anyone not used to it. It looked, smelled, and sounded like a makeshift receiving hospital dose up to some specially busy section of a fighting front.

Outside the switch-engines clanged and snorted, freight cars bumped, and the gabble of carload after car-load of chickens, ducks, and geese drowned out the voices of men. Still outside, on the river end, the tugs and steam scows also added their bit in the way of noise, as a ragged fog carne drifting up from the harbor with the tide.

But all this was as nothing compared with what went on inside the shed. A long shed, big as the train shed of a first-class railroad station almost, lit up by the hard, white glare of overhead rows of naked electric globes, splotched by streaks and blobs of dense black shadow, hazy with a red mist. There was a whir of knives and a rattle of chain pulleys operating waste dumps and elevators. Hand trucks rumbled and banged. But over this, like the howl of a gale, the shrieks and squawks, quacks and honks of the feathered victims— a living, feathered deluge one minute, fresh-killed poultry the next.

Sam Holder, famous in the trade, made his way through the shed, looking glum. Two sons of his had been killed fighting racketeers. But Sam was the sort who kept on fighting.

He was a bulky man, getting on in years, but still powerful and active. He wore a linen cap pulled well down in front, concealing most of his face, but revealing an area of close-cropped silver hair behind. His Street clothes were covered by a long linen coat.

The killing shed wasn’t a place where people loafed— except the few cops on duty and the swarm of inspectors. Killers, pullers, truckers, and others, never skipped a stroke in their smooth routine as Holder passed. Yet there was time for comment.

“Scairt stiff!”

“Him, never!”

“Fraid they’ll bump him off.”

“He’ll bump off somebody else if he gets the chance.”

“He’d be safe in jail with the others.”

“Wouldn’t want to be the Chicken King, if Sam ever meets him.”

There was something of the look and the loneliness of a condemned man about Sara Holder as he made his way through the uproar of the shed toward the open space at the river-end.

Then, just as Sam emerged under the big arc-light into the foggy open air he stood and stared. Three men were coming over the end of the pier from a boat which Sam recognized at once as belonging to the Harbor Police. The boat slid away and the men advanced. It was them Sam had recognized first. They were the three poultry men who’d been staying in prison. They recognized Sam.

They were undemonstrative men. Not much was said, at first— nothing that anyone but themselves could bear, But their handshakes were firm.

And there in the drifting fog, while the dark tide ran, the four of them went into a huddle.

"HE’S taking an awful risk,” said Captain Duffy, of the Detective Bureau, to Inspector Hammond. “How does he know that that little rat of a shyster isn’t putting him on a hot spot?”

“He’s Doc Coffin,” Inspector Hammond answered. “He’s a genius. Nobody ever knows how a genius knows what he knows.”

“Kiddin’ me, chief?”

“Sort of. Anyhow, Doc’s got this advantage over us. He doesn’t belong to the force. He can be just as bent as any crook, when he needs to be— just as bent and just as tough.”

“That helps.”

“And how! He goes in and jams a gun on Udo. He gets more info from him in ten minutes than we’d be able to get in ten years.”

“Short of usin’ the shellac.”

“You don’t put the rubber hose or the boot on a slick shyster like Udo.”

“More’s the pity!”

“I mean us regular cops— we don't. But Doc could and did, and he’s going to do the same thing to the Chicken King.”

“Unless he gets the works himself. If I went up against a mob like that I'd want the riot squad. Aren’t you giving him any help at all?”

“He asked me to lay off until he phones. He’s taking no one but Udo and a kid, Benny Bonn, just down from Dannemora, and the kid’s girl friend, who’s been working in Udo’s office.”

“Some mob! And he’ll be up against one of the swellest parties of big-time crooks ever pulled on Long Island. I've piped the place— ten acres on the Sound. Forty servants, and every one of them an ex-con or a killer. The house is a palace. I went over it at the time of the Chilton murder there ten years ago. Suspected now of being the chief drop for the Swiss-American dope-ring—”

The telephone on Inspector Hammond’s desk buzzed softly. The head of the Racket Squad picked up the instrument and listened.

A girl’s voice bleated something over the wire that Duffy couldn’t hear. But it brought Hammond to his feet.

“Come on,” the Inspector said. “Sounds like our friend, the Doc, is in trouble.”

vi

A BIG blue limousine— Lawyer Udo’s own— had been waiting at the little old brick office building where the lawyer had his office. At the wheel was a chauffeur in uniform. To him the girl, Gertrude Jones, had appeared with a message that the lawyer would like to speak to him upstairs. The chauffeur had been met just inside the office by a man who looked like a sailor and the sailor had a gun. The chauffeur was wired up by this same sailor and left in a locked room. That disposed of him.

A few minutes later Gertrude Jones and her boy-friend, Benny, descended from the offices and entered the limousine, taking the front seat. They were closely followed by Lawyer Udo and Doctor Coffin, who also entered the car, seated to the rear, The car was at once driven away. Benny was an expert chauffeur.

Moreover, Lawyer Udo was often seen to leave his place of business in the company of queer-looking people. His passage now attracted no particular attention— except, perhaps, from one or two plainclothes men, stationed there as a mere friendly attention from Inspector Hammond.

The car was driven, without loss of time, to an old-fashioned hotel near Washington Square where Doctor Coffin happened to be living. One reason this hotel had been selected by Doctor Coffin was that there was a private entrance.

The suite occupied by Doctor Coffin was rather elaborate, considering the fact that he was a man of modest tastes. But most of the space in the suite was occupied by trunks. There must have been at least a dozen large wardrobe trunks, besides others.

And here Doctor Coffin was not only to entertain his guests with dinner, but also a demonstration in the art of make-up such as had made the late Del Manning famous.

“You, too,” Doctor Coffin told Gertrude Jones.

“Me?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Doctor Coffin. “You and I are going to that ball at the Chicken King’s tonight as the Prince and Princess Tewfik— the slickest dope-smugglers who ever came out of Cairo. Benny’s to be our chauffeur, and l’m dolling him up, too.”

“And me?” said the little lawyer. He was still handcuffed— and under the threat of death.

“You’re all right— just as you are,” said Doctor Coffin. “I'm going to be a little lame. See? And l’m going to lean on you. Follow instructions— you’ll get through. Make one bad crack, you’re croaked.”

There was always that chill presence of death about all of this. It was an atmosphere that Doctor Coffin— the late Del Manning— had always loved when he was in certain of his moods. After all, he was “a living dead man.” It wasn’t just mere accident that had made him Hollywood’s leading undertaker, as well as its foremost amateur detective.

Maybe this was going to be his own finish. He didn’t know. Anyway, it was going to be his last job in New York for a while— his last "personal appearance” —  and he wanted to put it over in a way that would satisfy his own artistic sense.

It was Benny and the girl he played up to most.

After all, they were just a pair of kids— hard, bitter, but young enough to like a game. And Doctor Coffin, millionaire, had hung up a prize in this game that was going to stake them to a fresh start and even chances.

Before dinner was over a dozen evening dresses and required accessories arrived for the girl and a fresh outfit for Benny.

But more even than money or clothes and the prospect of adventure was the fact that Benny and Gert were playing tonight with the great Del Manning— him whom the World thought dead. They saw the lascar sailor disappear. They saw the supposed “Prince Tewfik, a nephew of the King of Egypt,” take his place— a semi-Oriental prince, smooth as oil, dressed like Park Avenue—

He had a dozen different names, but the name that the Chicken King went by when he was occupying his Long Island estate was simply Mr. Rose. None of his neighbors knew him, except by his occasional contributions to local charities. Few had ever seen him— a heavy-faced man with furtive eyes, always in a specially built car that traveled very fast, generally with a pilot car in front and a guard car taking the smoke just behind.

The gates of the big estate were never opened except on rare and special occasions. But every now and then Mr. Rose was known to throw some sort of a party. And at such times even guests were as likely to come by water as by land.

The estate had a fine stretch of shore on the sound, with a landing big enough for ocean-going yachts.

Udo was only one of Mr. Rose’s legal staff, and not in the Big Wheel’s immediate confidence, either. It had taken a lot of telephoning for Mr. Udo to arrange this meeting between Mr. Rose and Prince Tewfik tonight.

vii

THE PLACE was a palace, all right, built by some millionaire, now dead and forgotten— or broke, and so forgotten anyway. Set in a park that might have been Central Park, in the city of New York, once you got past the monumental gates. But, at that, more like a combination casino and country-club, very fast, but not very swell, as soon as you began to see things closer up.

Gunmen everywhere— not so tough to look at; more like the shills and bouncers of a semi-fashionable gambling resort, smooth and fast; dressed all right, but something the matter with their eyes.

Then the guests— hop and alky written on most of their faces, even when the faces were beautiful. For there were plenty of good looking girls about. Some of them dancing to a forty-piece band. But most of them just strolling about, looking either lit up or bored.

And flowers— enough flowers for a Capone funeral, in the good old days. And, somehow, a funeral suggestion about all this. Doctor Coffin got it. Death is something you can put a finger on, at times, and say: “This is it—it’s here!”

Everything had been free and easy, so far. It looked as if, once you got in, there was nothing to stop you whichever way your tastes might run. There were at least two bars. There was a dining-room with a buffet-supper set that looked like the dining-room of a hotel so far as food and drink were concerned— a hotel in Paris or London; with lobsters and champagne, olives and pickles, cold turkey and hot roast beef; and other things to eat or drink.

But always that hint of the gangster, the ex-con, about the man who served you.

Doctor Coffin slipped the word to the supposed Princess Tewfik to beat it. This was no place for a girl. She’d know where to find Benny. That had all been fixed up before.

At that, the girl wanted to stick around. She thought all this was grand. And she may have wanted to show herself a little. She had on a grand dress and a facial makeup by the world’s greatest artist. Besides, how was the “Prince” to make his getaway?

“Beat it,”' said Doctor Coffin, and that was final.

He had the satisfaction of seeing the girl slip out of a side door where Benny would he waiting.

Doctor Coffin had continued to lean on the arm of the little lawyer —with a grip that he knew the man-weasel could feel.

He’d made this clear to the little man: The first shot called for would pass right through the lawyer’s stomach.

And Udo had seemed discreet in his questions concerning the presence of Mr. Rose.

At last a servant had come and whispered the information that Mr. Rose was upstairs— “feeling a little indisposed”— and would Prince Tewfik he kind enough to come up.

The moment Doctor Coffin heard this he suspected a plant. But that was nothing now. He’d been suspecting a plant all along. The warning whisper had kept buzzing in his mind all during the long drive out from New York that the little lawyer had put something over on him— something that meant planned murder.

Then, all of a sudden, there it was. They’d followed the servant down across what was supposed to be the ball-room, but not very many dancers there— and those who were, mostly dancing on a single ten-inch space— “dancing on a dime,” as they say. Then, right on along through a doorway with heavy curtains.

Just as the curtains fell into place again Udo jerked.

He jerked with something of the concentrated essence of speed and strength that makes the real weasel the world’s champion killer.

But, even so, there was that promise that Doctor Coffin had been nursing in his mind.

Doctor Coffin, at the first hint of that jerk had ducked forward, drawn and fired. He rested on his knee, half slewed round, and saw the little lawyer do a rabbit jump and come down on his head, doubled up— kicking a little, but undoubtedly harmless.

At the same time the servant had fallen.

He must have lunged — with a blackjack, it turned out—just as Udo jerked; and so had missed his blow and slipped.

Doctor Coffin was on him and had poked the gun so hard against his jaw that the muzzle of the weapon started a smear of blood.

The funny part about this was that the orchestra kept on playing. Not more than twenty feet away just the other side of those heavy curtains. In that direction, at any rate, the shot hadn’t even been heard.

Doctor Coffin threw a quick scan about him, his gun still poked against the servant’s face.

“You next!” he said.

The man began to chatter. Doctor Coffin silenced him with a hiss and jerked to his feet.

“You can lam, you louse,’’ he said. “l’m turning off this joint. But show me the Big Boy first.”

They let the little lawyer lie where he was and went fast down an arched hallway to a narrow flight of stairs.

“He’s up there,” said the man, “with six of his mob.”

Doctor Coffin slugged the man where he stood— it was a blow he’d learned from Ching, one of his Chinese butlers at his place in Hollywood, guaranteed to bring sleep but not death.

While the man was still rocking to a fall, Doctor Coffin jumped up the stairs. He could see at once that this was some private part of the house— one not meant except for special guests. There was a smell of opium in the air.

He followed the smell to a door in a softly lit, dome-ceilinged area, richly carpeted and hung with Oriental tapestries.

Just as he started to open the door, someone sprung on him from behind. He shot— back of him— without looking. There was a screech and a fall.

At the same instant he flung himself through the door. It was a large room, shadowy and airless, surrounded by divans on which the figures of men and women could be dimly seen. Then, in the center of the room a single figure— heavy, almost colossal he seemed; the figure of a man in evening clothes with a brutal face stamped with fear, and rage, and surprise.

viii

THE GIRL, Gertrude Jones, hadn’t made such a quick getaway as Doctor Coffin had hoped. Once she was sure that Benny was there and all set to go, she’d returned to the house. It was as much as her life was worth to telephone to Police Headquarters in New York —and she knew it—but she’d put through her call and found Hammond.

This was out of Hammond’s territory, but he was in dose touch with State troopers and the county police, also with certain Federal men, all of whom had been hankering for a long time to put on a show at the Rose estate.

But, even then, Benny and the girl had been unable to tear themselves away. This was Del Manning in there. Could they leave him? What was going to happen next? They stalled around.

After all, the stalling wasn’t going to be for long.

Suddenly, from an upstairs window toward the rear of the house, there carne a crash. Benny shot the car around.

“Good God!” he said. “It’s him— and the Chicken King!”

Doctor coffin could have shot the Chicken King in the moment of that first glance, and the account would have been ended right then— so far as the Chicken King himself was concerned.

There were moments later when Doctor Coffin wished he had let out that shot. So far as killing this big vermin went he had no compunctions. It was all in the way that you looked at things— all right to kill a mad dog, or a rattlesnake, or a louse. The Chicken King was all these things, then multiplied.

But killing the Chicken King wasn’t what he'd promised to those three poultry men he’d talked to at Headquarters this day.

Instead of shooting, he dropped head and shoulders and charged— a good deal as a fighting-ram would have charged. But the Chicken King himself was an old gang-fighter, with knowledge of how to kill and maim. For years he’d made his living doing just that— so much for breaking a leg or an arm, so much for maiming a man for life, so much for leaving his corpse in a nice Public place.

His parry for this attack was a kick. The kick should have given him time enough to reach his own gun and get it into play. But there must have been a little smoke on his brain. For years, now, he’d also been at the head of the dope-ring in the United States; and this stuff he’d furnished his guests tonight was some of the finest poppy that ever came out of Persia, where the best of the blue smoke carne from.

In a moment his kick had been jerked too high and he was over on his back with Doctor Coffin on top of him— the two of them gouging, beating, strangling like jungle beasts.

When the fight began, there wasn’t a window visible anywhere. It was this that started Doctor Coffin to tearing down drapes whenever he got the chance. Anyway, it added to the confusion, and confusion was all that he had fighting on his side just then.

Smokers were coming awake. There were some who were still active. They didn’t know what it was all about. But they were finding out.

A girl ran screeching from the room and that was going to bring up the mob from below. They would come primed to kill.

Doctor Coffin gathered all he had of strength and heaved himself and the Chicken King at one of the Windows he had bared. What the drop might be, he had no way of guessing. He didn’t care greatly. It was great to die fighting— fighting a man-eating tiger like this big brute—

They were through the window, and there was no drop at all— just a sloping roof, and down this they went— over and over— struggling,  kicking.

They were at the eaves, then over the eaves.

And not even then was the earth ready to receive them. They’d dropped not more than three or four feet and landed on the top of a limousine.

The limousine slid away—faster— faster— to a rat-tat-tat of shots and a medley of yells.

ix

IT WAS when they were away back in the woods, somewhere, that the limousine stopped. And there Benny jerked the Chicken King to the ground, while Doctor Coffin jumped.

They put the Chicken King in the car and then shot the heavy car ahead again. Somewhere they crashed a gate and were out in the open country.

By a roundabout course they got back to New York. It must have been by a roundabout course, for, by this time, the combined Federal and local raiders were closing in on that big estate of “Mr. Rose” and yet Doctor Coffin and his own private little mob made a getaway.

They went on from New York right through the traffic tube under the Hudson and twisted around through the network of causeways and roads in New Jersey until they found that killing shed down on the Jersey water front.

It was now a time of the night when most of the work was over— so far as the killing was concerned, But there was a lot of cleaning up to do.

But, just the same, there were a good many men about— hard-working men of the poultry trade; not a very pretty trade, perhaps, but as good, as many. And exceedingly difficult—in bitter weather, in stormy nights, and nights again when the heat of a New York-New Jersey summer intensified in that shed of red horror and made it a sort of anteroom to an old-fashioned bell.

Benny drove the big limousine right down across the car-tracks, and there Doctor Coffin and the Chicken King got out and started to stroll down the big covered shed.

“You’ve been bleeding these people pretty hard,” said Doctor Coffin, softly. "They got a right to have a look at you. Later, I'll turn you in for the cops and lawyers to take their turn—”

But, suddenly, the Chicken King had turned and struck at him. Doctor Coffin carne back with a jolt that made the Chicken King reel.

It was this that really lost him. For he started to run. He knew that if he got out once into those black railroad yards he had a good chance for a getaway.

But he must have lost his sense of direction. And instead of running for the yards, there he was, headed right down the shed.

Just as word got out that here was the Chicken King come on a visit.. Sam Holder had passed that word around. So had those three friends of his. Now a shout went up. Some one threw a knife.

“Don’t kill him,” Sam Holder bellowed. But that was too late. Other knives were out.

This man had robbed them, had had them slugged, had had their friends and relatives murdered.

Once more there was a scream of death in the killing shed— another red haze.

Headlong, blind, feeling as if all the crimes of his life had come back upon him in this final moment— and all his victims had returned to gang him now from the land of ghosts— the Chicken King stumbled onto a slimy spillway, then fell dead from a hundred wounds.

__________________

7: The Red Road to Shamballah

Perley Poore Sheehan

Thrilling Adventures Sep 1932

ALTHOUGH he was American— related on his father's side with Daniel Boone and his mother's side with Nathan Hale— somewhere in the makeup of Pelham Rutledge Shattuck there was a strong streak of the Oriental as well. There must have been. For all the time he sat his horse there in the on blackness of the great desert and looked at the strange blue flame in front of him he could feel the two currents at work in him.

The American part of him was telling him that the flame was natural— it was magnetic, electrical, or just some new form of luminous gas. But almost equally strong was his Oriental feeling that this was ghostly.

The little war-horse he rode was taking that blue light for no ordinary fact at any rate. The animal had reared back on its haunches. Shattuck could feel it tremble between his knees.

At first, there had been just that blue flame. It flickered in mid-air perhaps twenty paces in advance. Its evolution was swift. It became a pillar of blue light resting on the earth. This expanded. And now, in the center of the blue radiance, Shattuck saw the figure of a man.

Shattuck stared.

From the time of that childhood of his, passed at treaty ports up and down the Chinese coast, generally in the company of Chinese servants, he had been in contact with various sorts of magic.

What was this then— a ro-long?

Many were the tales he'd heard of ro-longs— those unfortunate dead brought back to life— boys, girls, men and women— to serve the unholy will of some vicious master.

Were such things possible? Sure they were possible!

But, even while this speculation, with a crowd of others, was racing through his mind, his eyes were telling him that this apparition, whatever it was, would be unable to hurt him if he only kept his nerve.

He quieted his horse. He took a mental survey of his surroundings.

He was in the midst of the Kara Kugen— the Black Hills of the Gobi. It was a region with such an evil reputation for ghostly dangers that even the wildest of the fighting nomads gave it a wide berth.

BACK of him was Kara Koto, that "Black City" he had come to find. Ahead of him there had been a battle in progress between rival factions of this lost city of the desert.

There was nothing to do but— face it out!

He could see now that the apparition before him— luminous, ghostly still— was that of a high— class lama. The head was shaven. The expression of the face was pensive.

THE nobility of this head and face gave Shattuck his first inkling as to the identity of this ghostly visitant. It was a surmise almost instantly strengthened when he saw the stranger's robe emerge from the blue light-haze that enveloped it and become what looked like a tissue of woven gold.

"The Living Buddha!" Shattuck cried, with reverential awe, and he swung down from the pony's back.

There were many "Bogdos," Living Buddhas, or Great Holy Ones, scattered throughout Central Asia. There was the old Bogdo of the Soaring Meditation, for example, whom Shattuck himself had met. It was that old holy man who had recommended that Shattuck make this pilgrimage to the great lost city of the Gobi— the Black City, Kara Koto.

Now Shattuck was beginning to guess why. The old man had wanted him to meet "the Shining One." The almost killing pilgrimage thus far into the region of the black sands had been a sort of test, an initiation.

"You are— He?" Shattuck gasped.

His excitement was such that he'd spoken in English. It was in English he heard the reply.

"I am He."

All languages were said to be alike to the Great One.

"I was sent here," said Shattuck, "by the Bogdo of Samding— the Lamasery of the Soaring Meditation."

"I know."

"Just now, here in the desert, I and my two companions met a Chinese lady. She called herself Miao Chen, the Goddess of Mercy."

"She was but an illusion, sent to test you."

"I killed a man. He called himself Kuan Yu, the War Lord."

"He also was but an illusion— to test your courage."

Awe is a peculiar thing— half fear, half exultation. Shattuck felt a surge of awe sweeping over him.

"But these others I saw," said Shattuck— "the band of warriors who followed Kuan Yu, and the Lang, those human wolves!"

"Illusions all. They've frightened others away from this place. They've not frightened you— nor your two companions, Juma, the Kirghiz robber, and Champela, the lama, whose father came from America."

"Holy One," Shattuck avowed, "you know, then, everything."

"Even to that title given you, my son, of 'the Fighting Fool.'"

ALL the time that the conversation had been carried on, thus far, Shattuck had continued to fit it in with all that he'd ever known. This was an apparition in front of him. He was certain of that. Yet the Gobi itself was real enough. He could feel the sand under his feet. So were his fatigue, hunger, thirst— and dirt!— real enough.

He'd been for so long without a bath that he could have passed for a "dokpa"— a fighting black lama, the sort who never washed.

The Living Buddah— or the apparition of the Living Buddah— who stood-there almost within reach of his hand, looked at him for a while without word or movement.

He seemed to furnish his own light. Shattuck himself was standing in the fringe of this light— a blue radiance, soft but penetrating.

To test the light, Shattuck put out his soiled hand and looked at it. He straightened and doubled his fingers. He could see the callouses. He saw the smudges ground in from many campfires.

Ever since entering the region of the black sands, water had been at a premium. He and his two friends had suffered. The camels had suffered.

Yet— Shattuck also remembered this as he stood there now— each time the crisis seemed to mean death or defeat, a well had been found, a bit of marsh, even a live spring, and these in regions marked on all maps as having no water.

"Illusions!" said Shattuck.

"Illusions, my son!"

"I must have got into a state," said Shattuck, "where I can't tell what's real and what isn't real."

"You've stood the test so far," said the Living Buddah.

Shattuck felt that he was being studied— examined outside and in. Anyway, he was up against something that he'd been hearing about off and on practically ever since he could remember.

"HAD a dream," said Shattuck, "that even a Fighting Fool might be useful in the world just now. I told my dream to the old holy man of the Soaring Meditation. It was by his wish I was given the sword of Kubla Khan. With it I fought a battle and was almost killed. But I seem to have won great wealth— a string of camels, three hundred camel-loads of machine-guns and ammunition— "

"Wealth for yourself?"

"No, to fight with."

"To fight what for?"

"I don't know. I hope— for Shamballah."

"What do you know about Shamballah?"

"Only what I have heard— the empire of Maitreya, the coming King of the World."

The Shining Lama had continued to look at Shattuck quietly.

"Trouble," said the Shining One, "already casts a shadow over the face of the world. It is a sign of the end of the old world, the approach of the new. They call you Captain Trouble— Shadak Khan! And the road to Shamballah will be long and red, Shadak Khan. Are you sure you are ready to take it— with your sword of Kubla Khan?"

"Yes!"

"We'll meet again, Captain Trouble."

ii

A SECOND later— and for a period after that— Pel Shattuck, alias Shadak Khan, wondered if he wasn't again a victim of illusion. Asia— all Asia— was the original Land of Illusion. There were shamans, fakirs, lamas of the old Red Sect, everywhere, who were not only master hypnotists but who dealt with even stranger powers.

Shattuck wondered what had happened.

A second ago he had been talking to that ghostly apparition of the Living Buddah— the greatest of all Living Buddahs. There came to Shattuck the impact of an idea that this might have been the original Buddah Himself— the great Gautauma.

Now, even more suddenly than the apparition had shown itself, it was gone again.

Shattuck put out his hand. He couldn't see it. The darkness of the desert night was blacker than ever. The sudden inrush of this blackness brought a sort of suffocation with it. It was like a blackness of utter despair.

But Shattuck pulled himself together. He still had the sword in his hand. He'd continued to hold it against his breast, in an attitude of respect.

He turned and groped for the little war-horse. The pony was gone. He remembered now. The pony was supposed to have been the one ridden by Kuan Yu, the great warlord. Kuan Yu had been an illusion. So, then, had the horse itself been an illusion.

Shattuck thought of that vision of a girl— Miao Shen, painted, covered with silks and jewels, calling herself the Goddess of Mercy.

And the words of the Living Buddah, the Shining One, came back to him:

"She was but an illusion, sent to test you!"

Shattuck would have laughed, but his caked lips hurt. Still, his heart was throbbing with a sort of exhilaration. He'd stood some tests, even if they were illusions. He'd fought a war-lord. He'd resisted the blandishments of a Chinese goddess— and one, at that, with the highest reputation for beauty and sweetness.

He thought of his friends.

What had happened to them? He'd left them and the camels inside the ruined wall of the ancient, ruined city of Kara Koto— home of magic, home of a thousand legends, gateway— it was said— to the mysteries of Shamballah!

HAD they also been the victims of strange devils and gods during his absence?

As he stood there in the blackness he could hear nothing, see nothing except the stars overhead. Weren't the stars themselves nothing but illusions?

He pulled himself together. He raised his head and let out a call that he and his friends used:

"Ki-ho-ho!"

It couldn't have been very loud, but the cry slithered off into the vastness of the Gobi like a meteor of sound, the silence was such.

IT seemed as if a full minute must have passed before a reply came back. It came faintly, like an echo, and from a quarter opposite to the one from which he had been expecting it.

He tried it again.

This time there were two replies. From opposite directions! That was easy— Shattuck told himself. Juma and Champela had gone out to look for him. They'd taken opposite directions.

But the absurdity of this explanation occurred to him instantly. They wouldn't have gone out looking for him in the dark and made no sound. They wouldn't have left the camels unguarded. They wouldn't, that is, unless they also had been led away as he had been led away.

As he stood there in the almost solid black of a trough between two rolling dunes, a breath of air came in from the further blackness. It brought with it a scent that was unmistakable and unforgettable— musky, aromatic, a smell of temple incense that had somewhere, somehow, burrowed its way into the very depths of Shattuck's soul.

Illusion or no illusion, he started to trace it.

There was no difficulty in that. The faint breeze held steady, it strengthened.

Shattuck had traveled perhaps a hundred yards along the winding trough of the dunes when he was aware that it was no longer so dark as it had been. Dawn, he guessed, could not be far off. Even now the sun, most likely, would be striking the high crests of the Tien Shan— the Heavenly Mountains of the Chinese— and reflecting its light out across the vast stretches of the Gobi.

He'd barely made this notation in his mind when he saw, dimly, a drift of shadows ahead of him, he heard a faint grind and shift of camel feet and gear. There could be no doubt about it.

A caravan was coming this way— a caravan strangely silent— a caravan traveling without bells, without other unnecessary sound of any kind.

iii

SHATTUCK stooped and ran. It took but a few steps to take him around the curve of a dune. He stood there for a while in thought— measuring each second that passed, crowding into each second all that he could of planning, deduction, foresight.

Presently he crawled up the slope of sand to the top of the dune. It was still so dark that there was small chance of his being discovered, but he was as careful as any Apache on the scout.

He could see the caravan again— the camels moving nimbly as if urged to make speed. Each camel was heavily loaded. The mere contour of their shadowy forms and their movement was sufficient to advertise that.

In this part of the desert such a caravan could be headed for but a single place— that black and ruined city of Kara Koto.

Shattuck surveyed the dark horizon. He made out a black mass of different conformation than that of the undulating dunes. That would be Kara Koto with its crumbling walls.

Once Kara Koto had been one of the great cities of the world. The sands had buried it. It had lain buried for so many centuries that the mere existence of it had become a legend. Now, after all these centuries, the winds had shifted it out of its grave again.

WHY should this strange caravan be making for the dead city now? There was only one answer. Kara Koto was not so dead as it seemed. Why should the caravan be moving with such haste?

Manifestly to reach cover before daylight.

There came to Shattuck all that he had ever heard of or dreamed about in connection with Shamballah. Kara Koto, according to the gossip of half the world, was, in some way, the gateway to Shamballah.

More clearly and insistently yet, there came to Shattuck that strange conversation he'd had a little while ago with the spirit-presence of the Living Buddha. But this was no fresh illusion. Illusions were past.

He could foresee for himself and his friends all sorts of complications if he delayed where he was too long. Even now there was barely time for him to reach the ruined city before the caravan got there. If he failed in this, harm might come to old Juma and the mystic Champela.

Again he was running. He had chosen a direction that would bring him to the crest of a dune under which the caravan would have to pass.

It was almost day— torang, as they called it back in the hills— a white tail of light flaunting across the sky. It reminded him of a white-tailed horse he'd ridden, and the thought somehow gave him an extra dash of courage. It was like a good omen.

He straightened up with the sword of Kubla Khan held aloft. Suddenly the dark was shot full of golden mist as the sun came up.

"Halt, down there!" he shouted. He managed to laugh.

At his first glance he saw that the camels were the finest he had ever seen. How many there were of them he couldn't even guess. Here among the dunes the trail wound round out of sight.

Both the camels and the men in charge of them, and then the dogs that swarmed along, were different from those of the Southern Gobi and the great caravan trails between China and Turkestan.

The camels were almost white and heavily woolled. The dogs were white. The men in charge and those who walked were dressed in white.

There was a strong prejudice against white animals and white clothing all through the Gobi. White was the color of Chinese mourning. Shattuck could imagine what sort of an impression a caravan like this might make on a superstitious native when glimpsed at night.

The caravan had halted. There were looks of fear, but more of wild amazement on the faces that Shattuck saw which were turned his way.

The faces were lean and brown. They were neither Chinese nor Mongolian. For the most part they were as aquiline as old Juma's face. Many of them were bearded.

SUDDENLY a name had flashed into Shattuck's thought.

These were the Agharti— the "subterranean people," as they were sometimes called; or the people of the Chud, meaning the "Wonder People," the "Miracle People"— one of the Lost Tribes, the people of Solomon, who'd kept alive through centuries the magic of Solomon, so some of the legends ran.

While their amazement still held them, Shattuck spoke again:

"Make ready a camel. I am to ride at your head."

There was some sort of a confab going on among those near the head camel. It was a splendid beast. There was hardly any load on it at all. Such as there was might have been mere personal equipment of sorts.

SOMEONE stepped a few paces from the others and called back:

"Duke, who are you?"

"Lo, he who speaks to you," he called back, "is Shadak Khan, the new War Lord of the World. It is he who shall clear the long red road to Shamballah for the coming of the King Maitreya. He has but now spoken to the Wearer of the Shining Robe!" If it had started out to be a bluff it hadn't ended as one.

Before Shattuck had spoken half a dozen words, it was as if the words had taken possession of himself. It was as if his "genius" were speaking for him. It was always the "genius" that possessed him when he had a fight on hand, when he was in a corner.

He was in a corner now— in a jam.

There was a swift whistle and a soft thud in the sand near his feet. He looked down and saw an arrow vibrating there, half-buried in the sand. A glance told him the direction it had come from. It meant that there could be no retreat.

He came closer to the halted caravan. Like that, at least, he had the brow of the sandhill back of him. He wouldn't be potted from behind. But, even so, he could hear the movement of runners back of him.

Not only that, he could see a gathering tenseness of the caravan men below. With every step he took he could see fresh details. There were other weapons in evidence than spears and bows and arrows. Here and there a modern rifle gleamed. Rifles, as if carelessly, were pointed in his direction. These men were neither ignorant Mongolians nor superstitious Chinese. They were men to call a bluff.

"You hurry to your holes at sunup like white rabbits," he said. "You need a leader."

It was a reference to the riderless camel that led the caravan.

Not a word was spoken in reply.

Shattuck slowly turned and looked at those who had run up back of him. They were all young men, tall and slender, black-eyed, black-haired, but of a color almost fair.

There was no hint of the Mongol about them, nothing Chinese. Most of them carried bows and arrows of an antique fashion. He met their concentrated glance and looked them over.

He knew his danger, but his thought was that with men like these a man with the will, the imagination, and— the "genius!"— might set about the conquest of the world.

He smiled at them slightly, but his teeth were set and his eyes were narrowed.

Once more he turned and started down the hill.

iv

"WE have come into a land of spells and enchantment," said old Juma, softly. "But you also know powerful spells, Lamachi."

It was a way he had of addressing Champela. It was like calling him little old lama— Lamachi.

"I know powerful spells, Juma-la," Champela answered gently.

It was as if he'd called the old Kirghiz, "Mr. Juma," which was also a form of affectionate address. The two men, so different in other ways as well as that of their respective ages, had a profound admiration for each other. It was a comradeship based on dangers shared, on something even of mystery.

If Champela, a mystic follower of "the Path," admired and loved this old warrior and robber, somewhat as a force in nature, like a tiger, like a turbulent mountain-stream, Juma, the bearded warrior, admired the young lama somewhat as he admired some distant, incomprehensible star.

They sat on the sand inside the ruined wall of Kara Koto. They'd come at last to the lost city of the Gobi. What next?

They'd been sitting here all the latter part of the night. How they'd come here neither was quite certain.

Juma held to the belief that they'd been led here by jinns. The jinns had appeared as an army of people with a beautiful Chinese maiden in their midst.

Even Shadak Khan— just "Dak" to Juma— had been bemused. He'd left them in charge of the camels and the maiden while he went back into the desert to settle some fight that seemed to be going on out there. He had not returned. It was almost dawn.

"Ai-ya-ya!" moaned Juma. "If Dak be lost— "

He beat his breast three hard knocks with his bony fist.

CHAMPELA sat very still. His shaven head of a lama was bare. He was as if unconscious of the penetrating desert cold. He'd let his heavy lama robe of red wool and even his silk undergarment slip from his shoulder. Both shoulder and right arm were bare. In the faint dawn-light his finely modeled face shone composed and white. On it was a look of satisfaction almost like that of someone who has had a happy death.

"Lamachi," Juma whispered, "what do you see?"

"A long white caravan," the mystic answered.

"A long white caravan," moaned Juma, "is a sign of death."

"There has been a death."

"Who?"

"The leader of the caravan."

"Dak?"

"No!"

JUMA snarled a laugh. "There'll be deaths enough— one for each of his fingers and toes— by Satan I swear it!— if they've murdered Dak— though I have to follow them to hell— "

The lama, half-American as he was, faintly smiled as he put out a hand to quiet the old man. The hand stayed where it was on Juma's knee, the fingers tightened.

"Juma," Champela whispered, "the caravan is near. And so is Shadak Khan. I can hear his thought. He is calling us. He is telling to get the camels ready. We are to join him ..."

It was a prophecy, but, like most prophecies, it contained an element of the tragically unexpected.

Barely had they roused the camels and flung the light packs to their thinning backs when there was a rush and a howl like that of a rising wind. It was just at the point of day, and through that thin cold light Juma and Champela saw a mob of apelike creatures swing into sight.

They were men, all right, but nearly naked, covered with hair. There was an animal quality also in the way they herded. There was little sign of individual movement among them. They ran in a compact mass.

"The Chud!" cried Juma.

His eyes had brightened. He was shaking a little, but it was the tremor of a hound in the presence of game. From the pack of the nearest camel he'd slipped out a rifle.

"Hold!" said Champela.

It wasn't his opposition to killing that made him try to restrain the old warrior. It was a keener recognition of the danger involved. He also had heard of this tribe of the two so-called "subterranean peoples" living in the secret expanses of the Gobi— survivals of the inhabitants of the Gobi's buried cities.

There were two such peoples— the Chud and the Agharti. Under almost the same conditions the two peoples had drawn apart, although the old records had given them a common origin. The Chuds had gone down in the scale of evolution— down and back. While the Agharti had risen.

Even the camels seemed effected by the sudden apparition of the Chud. The animals had begun to moan, they tossed their heads and gnashed their teeth.

AT first it had seemed as if this swarm of subhuman people were making for the open desert through a breach in the wall. Then something, it may have been the scent of the camels, brought them round. In an instant they'd all turned at once, were looking through the dim light to where the two companions and their four camels stood in the shadow of the city's ruined wall.

The Chud horde let out a sort of moaning howl that took on volume.

They charged.

The Chud were armed. The arms they carried had come down from some long past age, but they were none the less effective for that— spears, maces, swords, knives of queer design. But, even in that breathless excitement of their charge, it could be seen that they were unused to the weapons.

Some brandished their weapons clumsily. Some even flung them away as if this were a race instead of a battle-charge.

Juma fired five shots into the thick of the swarm as fast as he could pump the modern rifle he held. With an oath— when he discovered that the magazine was empty— he clubbed the weapon and ran a few steps forward to meet the rush.

BUT Champela was even faster. Champela had rushed ahead of the old Kirghiz warrior with his bare arm raised. He shouted some plea or command. He went down under a dozen blows.

He would have been trampled to death— or torn to death— by that infernal pack, if it hadn't been for Juma. Juma was like a giant among the gnomish Chud. He reared twice their height. He swung his clubbed rifle and there was a swath like that cut by a scythe. Only, the bloody harvest wouldn't stay down.

It writhed. It screeched. It rose again.

Even now, Juma, old warrior that he was, could tell that he and Champela were not the chief object of the attack. It was, perhaps, all that had saved them in this first rush.

The camels were what the Chud were after.

Juma, having fought his way free enough to lift Champela from the red welter at his feet, himself turned toward the camels.

The animals were in agony already— sprawling, roaring, choking— as the Chud swarmed over them, devouring them alive.

Champela revived as from a dash of cold horror. He flung himself at the uncanny butchers with bare hands. Juma was at his side. From some fallen enemy Juma had snatched an iron mace.

But the two of them were dragged down— strangled, blinded.

The last that either of them knew, just then, was the sound of a familiar voice.

v

AS Shattuck came down toward that white caravan standing in the early morning light of the desert he suffered from a single fear. Was this, after all, some other illusion that had been thrown up before his eyes?

There was enough about the appearance of everything he saw to make him believe that such might be the case.

The darkness had now turned to a sparkle of gold— a gold that was tinged with pink. In this glamorous light the camels were like creatures dreamed of by Sinbad. They were huge beasts. Their heavy coats were like a golden fleece. They had fine small heads and luminous eyes. Their trappings were of the finest— in polychromed leather, set with rough gems and some dark wood that was richly carved and polished.

No less extraordinary was the appearance of the men. Some of these had been riding as he started down the slope. These had slipped down from their mounts and now stood waiting.

Even the footmen, the camel-pullers, generally the lowest slaves of the desert, had a distinguished look about them, like high-class Arabs, but lighter. The general complexion was that of pale gold.

They were all dressed alike in cloaks of a general Mongolian cut, but white— evidently handwoven from wool of their camels; and on their heads tall conical caps, also of wool, with earlaps, but no decorations, no jewels.

IN comparison with the meanest of these men, Shattuck knew that he himself must look like a tramp.

But something was beating inside of him, holding possession of him— his genius, some higher self, call it what you will.

"Who speaks the language of Shadak Khan?" he asked, in the Northern dialect of China. It was the dialect he'd learned best as a child.

A group had formed about the lead camel. There was silence.

Thrust through the girth or pack-rope of this camel there was the usual spear with a flag attached such as the leaders of all caravans carry— one of the most ancient rites of the Gobi. The flag shook out in the breeze.

ON it Shattuck saw the symbol that he recognized. It was as if he'd swallowed a draught of some magic elixir.

"Who speaks the language of Shadak Khan?" he demanded again

One of the elders of the group near the lead camel answered him:

"Sir, I do— if you be he— "

"If I be he! Do you know your banner?"— he pointed at the flag.

"That banner has been carried by our people," the old man said, "for more than half a thousand years. It's the banner of the great Chi Tsu!"

"Who rides the camel?"

"Chi Tsu— when he comes again!"

"He has come again," said. Shattuck— or the genius that was speaking for him. "You shall know him by his sword!"

And he thrust the carved hilt of the sword he carried toward the group. But he wouldn't advance. Neither would he let them touch it. The group strained forward.

"Lo! Lo!"

It was almost a sob.

"The sign! The sign!"

From around the curve of the dunes other white-robed camel men came running. There was a rising shout.

"It's the sign of Chi Tsu!"

Now the cries and most of the speech were in some ancient dialect of Mandarin Chinese— the Kuan-hua— that Shattuck could understand. And also he could understand that reference of theirs to the sign of Chi Tsu.

For the sign on the flag and that on the hilt of his sword were the same and Chi Tsu was the old Chinese name of Kubla Khan.

"I am here!" Shattuck cried.

There was something about him— that genius of his that was shining out— shining through his rags and his dirt— that told all those who saw him and heard him that he— or his genius at least— was speaking the truth.

Some of those nearest him were already falling to their knees and bumping their heads against the sands.

"I am here!" Shattuck repeated. "No more as Kubla Khan. But as Shadak Khan! Come to clear the long red road— "

Through the tumult of sound about him he caught that swift staccato bark of Juma's rifle.

vi

IT was as if he'd been plucked by a spur. He went as tense as a bucking horse before its first leap, and in a moment he had leaped. He'd made a spring for the lead camel of the caravan.

"Follow me!" he shouted. "And victory to the Gods!"

"Lha-gyal-lo!"

That wasn't Chinese. It was a phrase he had picked up somewhere in the hills. But he knew what it meant. So, evidently, did a good many of those in this great white caravan.

They were repeating it like a battle-cry:

"Lha-gyal-lo!"

It was a cry that was to be repeated up and down the length and breadth of Asia as the battle— cry of Shadak Khan.

Lo, Kubla Khan— Gesher Khan— Shak Khan— Captain Trouble!— he was back again in the Gobi, and his battle-cry was this:

"Lha-gyal-lo!"

IT was only later that Shattuck learned that the lead camel of the caravan was one that had never before been ridden. It was a lordly beast, young and powerful and proud. Its name was Shen Lung— as one might say, "Dragon of the Winds."

Like the winds it ran now, all right— at the feel of that living weight on its back. It ran with the speed of the wild camels of the Gobi. Under that deceptive caparison of white wool there was a body as lean and tough as that of a bull moose.

Shen Lung was making a hurricane of his own as he shot his great weight forward.

There was a wind in Shattuck's face that almost stopped his breath. But, somehow, he had found the saddle. Still, he knew that it was by the grace of God— no less!— that the camel was on a familiar track. It was a track that led him over a high breach— banked up with sand— in the ruined walls of Kara Koto.

Almost from the first giddy slip into speed, Shen Lung had left the rest of the caravan far behind him.

Shattuck heard a diminishing shout in the wind. That shout was barely gone when he was hearing another. It was a different and complex roar that reached him from the ruined city.

The camel ran up a slope and had pitched down the other side. Shattuck was thrown, but as luck— or Destiny— would have it, he'd landed on his feet. He'd clung to his sword— as every nerve of him would have clung to an arm or a leg.

And there before him he saw such a spectacle of slaughter that a shock of sickness hit him. It came with a stench of blood. He saw dead men lying about— wounded men crawling about like scotched baboons. But the thing that had really slugged him was the spectacle of a red feast in progress over his slaughtered camels.

It was the fear that smote him.

ONE glance had been enough for him to recognize these people. He'd heard a thousand weird and grisly tales of the Chud. These were the Chud. In their ravenous appetite for meat the Chud were cannibals. So many of the campfire tales of the Gobi had it— tales of travelers lured into lonely places and there torn to bits— eaten alive.

But who had ever seen the Chud and lived to tell of them afterward?

Once in a Chinese village Shattuck had seen what he'd taken to be a hairy idiot displayed like a bear in a cage. A Mongol with a horribly scarred face was exhibiting the wonder.

"The only Chud in captivity!"

Curious the memories that spin through the brain of a man in crowded moments.

The words of the Mongol barker came back. The Chuds ate human flesh. The Chuds lived in caves. The Chuds were a cross of bears and bats.

Shattuck caught the Chud nearest him by the hair and snatched him backward. He saw a grimace of insane rage and terror. Shattuck's sword was at the creature's throat. But the man was old.

"Where are the white gods, my friends?" Shattuck panted. There was no answer. Some delayed band of the Chud came racing from among the ruins— fifty or a hundred. They made straight for Shattuck with a sort of gibbering shriek. The shriek sounded like wild laughter.

They were on him almost before he had time to fling the old man aside and he was caught in a turmoil of stench and demoniac riot that momentarily maddened him. From this be fought himself clear with the mad energy of a man caught in a whirlpool. Covered with blood he staggered clear.

All this an affair of seconds.

But seconds ago Shen Lung had swept over the wall with him into this stinking hell.

Where was Champela? Where was Juma? Had they been the first victims of this orgy?

He could see what had passed with the camels. He could tell by the way they had fallen— the way they looked even under this living cloak of human vermin squirming over them now. The beasts had been literally torn to pieces on their feet.

The sight and the smell— and also the fact, perhaps, that again he was free of an unaccustomed rider on his back— had brought Shen Lung, the great white camel, to a stand. Shen Lung stood there, sprawling, swaying slightly, a little stricken with the panic of what he perceived and this sudden separation from his mates.

All this was happening with a speed like that of an avalanche— deceptive, seemingly slow, but shrieking toward new catastrophe like a high— powered shell.

AT sight of the great white camel a mob of the Chud who'd been crowded from the earlier feast sprang at him with a howl of glee. One was quicker than the others— covered with blood, armed with an antique scimitar.

Shattuck met him on the run and cut him just above the eyes. He sliced at others. He was horrified, raging. But he would no longer kill unless he had to. These weren't men. They were animals. They were the degenerate children of men. He bawled that battle-cry of his-"Victory to the Gods!"— like a prayer, like a mantram, a word of power.

"Lha-gyal-lo!"

It must have been a mantram like that.

His heart leaped as he saw two red shapes lying close together. Some way or other he cleaved a clear space about them.

"Champela!" he cried. "Juma!" He was kneeling in the blood and slime at the side of his friends— he made a curious picture with something symbolic in it, half-Mercy, half-Murder, like the great Pan Ku, the Maker of the World Himself— when reinforcements got there.

There were other fast camels in the Agharti caravan, and the men to ride them, too, when the new incarnation of Kubla Khan was there.

THEY came over the ruined wall of Kara Koto in a white stampede— the camels, as was their wont, crazy to follow where their leader, Shen Lung, had already showed them the way.

The Agharti fighting men fell to work.

The Chud were beginning to scatter like sated rats. They were heavy with blood and filth. Most of them had abandoned their weapons.

"Don't kill!"

It was curious that the first order Shadak Khan ever gave to these new followers of his should be precisely that.

"Herd them!" Shattuck shouted. "Get them together! Pen them up!"

He turned again to his battered companions.

Shadak Khan or no Shadak Khan, he would have given all he'd dreamed of or ever hoped for to know that they'd still live.

vii

IN every victory some shadow to maintain the old balance of light and shadow, high and low, of yin and yang!

Shattuck meditated on yin and yang in the hours that followed. Now, "yin," according to Chinese philosophy, is the dark female principle, that fumes up from the depth of the earth; "yang" the bright male principle of the sunlight.

Yet now the Agharti, who were a fine, brave people, were apparently headed for the center of the earth.

They'd made two litters, at their new Khan's direction, and on these they'd placed with infinite care his two followers, the warrior-chief and the lama-chief, Juma and Champela.

The Agharti's handling of the Chud had been exceeding swift. At that order of Shadak Khan's to spare the creatures it had become an affair of staves and camel-whips. Only the badly wounded of the Chud were dispatched, and these swiftly.

The remainder of the horde— all those who hadn't got away to the desert— were corralled like goats. Like goats they would be driven later into some rock-fortress of the Agharti far down under the ruins of Kara Koto.

Even in those first few minutes, while Shattuck was more occupied with the care of his friends than the wonders of these two lost tribes he'd somehow brought under his dominion, he was learning much about the Chud and the Agharti. Both were, in fact, descendants of some early race. Both had become what the outside world had come to know as a "subterranean" people.

But only the Chud were truly subterranean. They subsisted on bats. They herded them. They followed the bat swarms in their mysterious migrations from cave to cave. The Chud did this as other nomads followed their flocks across the scant grasslands of desert and mountain.

THE Agharti, on the other hand, while keeping alive the secret cult of the ancient race, had maintained a connection with the outside world. There were emissaries of their race scattered everywhere throughout the world— watching, waiting for the return of the King of the world. They sent an annual caravan to some place they called by the Russian name of "Belavoyde"— a name that meant "White Waters"— where they met some wandering division of their people who lived in the outside world. ...

"These two we must save," said Shattuck— Shadak Khan. "With them— and the sword of Kubla Khan— the road to Shamballah lies open."

"They may live," said an elder of the Agharti, "if we can get them to the Temple."

The elder had the name of Li Ko-liang. It sounded like an incantation to Shattuck. In Li Ko-liang's pale-gold face he saw some quality of a benediction. He felt a breath of cleansing hope.

"Where is the Temple, Li Ko-liang?"

"The Temple, Khan, is in the Home of the Dragon, far down in the great cave."

"Far down in the earth, Father Li, will there not be too much yin?"

"Khan, where there is yin there is also yang."

"Let us make haste, then, but softly, to the Temple, Li ko-liang."

They would have made a litter for Shattuck himself, if he'd have permitted it, and carried him, since he wouldn't ride. He wouldn't ride because he wanted to walk beside those two litters in which his friends were carried.

And, once more the great white camel, Shen Lung, hereafter the camel of Shadak Khan, took up the march.

They passed through the drifted ruins of Kara Koto to where a great rift opened under a tilted ledge of rock. The rift was the mouth of a cavernous descent that zigzagged downward into darkness.

Here, either from the camel-packs or from some secret hiding-place, a score or more of flambeaus were produced, and Shattuck caught the familiar odor of burning crude oil, although the smell had been disguised somewhat— and the flame also quickened, it seemed— by some other oil, the oil of sesame, perhaps.

The camels knew the place. They did not seem to mind the bobbing flames. For that matter, so far as Shattuck could judge, over half of the caravan must have been moving, easily, swiftly, in the dark.

The way down followed a descending ledge, smooth but often at a dizzy pitch. On one side there was a drop into darkness, on the other a wall of rock.

AND sometimes, after a shifting turn, the wall and the abyss had changed sides. The ceiling of this causeway to the "Home of the Dragon," as Li Ko-liang referred to it, had disappeared long ago not to appear again.

No one spoke. The white camels padded softly. The white dogs, that had never barked since Shattuck had first seen them, trotted as if along a familiar lane.

One by one Shattuck saw the flambeaux disappear, and still there seemed to be no loss of light.

Then he saw, as they rounded another turn, what looked like a vast tapestry of woven fire against an expanse of wall. It looked like a tapestry in the course of being woven— the play of a thousand shuttles of clear flame playing back and forth, up and down. A lacelike pattern would be formed. It might hold for the time of a dozen breaths, then start to shift and play again.

He'd heard rumors about these "fire-halls" and "fire-writings" of the old sacred caves in various parts of Asia, but this was the first he had ever seen of them. His engineering mind was telling him that here was a seepage of oil or gas, probably mixed with water or something more volatile still.

"We are near the Temple, Khan," said Li Koliang, softly.

"Has the Temple a holy man, Father Li?" Shattuck asked.

"Yea, Khan," the elder whispered; "the holiest of all, even he of whom you spoke— He of the Shining Garment."

viii

SHATTUCK had the sensation of having entered the greatest temple in the world. It was— the Temple!

They'd come into a cavern that seemed immeasurable, yet it was but one of a series of chambers through which they had passed. There'd been other fire-tapestries. Here and there a twisting column of flame as if flowered against the roof.

In the Temple there was a lake of fire. It was, Shattuck judged, about a hundred yards in length and a half of that in breadth. But neither was this a mass or a solid sheet of flames. The water of the lake was visible. Across this, back and forth, now rising into thin spirals and again sinking out of sight, twining and gliding like ten thousand luminous skaters, the fire played in a myriad of blue flames.

The lake lay against a wall that rose straight up and lost itself in the shadows overhead. This wall had been carved into a series of deep recesses or niches, and in each of these a god smiled down at the eternal fire.

The gods were colossal. But they were small attendants to the great central figure, that of Maitreya, the future King of the World.

Shattuck heard a whisper, at his side:

"Him, O Shadak Khan, for whom you have come to prepare the way!"

He thought that it was Li Ko-liang who had whispered to him. But as he swiftly turned he discovered that for the moment he was standing alone. Then the memory in his brain told him that he'd heard the whisper in English.

He spoke aloud in English, careless of what those who heard him might think of it.

"That's right," he said. "I have come to prepare the way."

The great image of Maitreya also was smiling as the light flared up. Shattuck took it as a sort of promise as he turned to his friends. The promise was fulfilled.

WITHIN a week, both Juma and Champela were up and about again.

Sometimes by the sacred lake of fire and sometimes up in the sun, where the chastened Chud were now working to clean up the ruins of Kara Koto, Shadak Khan sat with his two friends during their convalescence and talked about the coming regeneration of the world.

Throughout the world there was trouble. Captain Trouble would clear it away. After Captain Trouble had done his work— or maybe before that time— the King of the World would appear, and the world would know peace and plenty again.

But there were things closer and just as vital to talk about.

First, there was the rebuilding of Kara Koto.

"We've found a capital," said Shadak Khan. "And we've found a people. Also we've found a thing worth fighting for."

The three of them sat together one day by the sacred lake of fire while a cold Gobi storm made the great Temple more than ever a desirable place to live in, when they were aware that a fourth had joined them.

"You've made a good start, Captain Trouble," said a quiet voice in English.

They looked up quickly.

They saw, dimly, the shape of the Living Buddha standing there.

"Great friend," said Shattuck softly, clutched by a sudden fear, "is all this also illusion?"

The Presence smiled. Just then he looked like the vast stone image of Maitreya. He shook his head.

"You've stood the test of illusion, Shadak Khan," he said. "And your work has just begun."

____________________

8: Shrinking Violet

Cleve F Adams

1884-1949

Clues Detective Stories July 1935

VIOLET McDADE was throwing a party. And, like most of Violet’s parties, this one boded ill for my peace of mind. We were due to dock at San Pedro in the morning. This was the last night of the cruise— the night traditionally set aside for the captain’s ball— the night of all nights that Violet would pick to embarrass me.

There were times when she infuriated me so that I could quite cheerfully have emptied my little .32 into her fat middle. But I never did. Cold logic always came to my rescue. As her partner I was making more money than any dick, male or female, would risk losing. Besides, I liked the creature. There was a third reason, one that perhaps bore more weight than the other two combined: She was faster than a rattlesnake with those two sleeve guns of hers.

And now she was sitting, enthroned like an overstuffed Buddha, in a corner of the main saloon, recounting to a delighted audience tales from her none too savory past.

Captain Lowe was annoyed. Some of the snootier passengers were annoyed. But in view of the fact that Violet was a valuable patron of the line there wasn’t much that he— or they— could do about it.

She was looking a little seedy as she often did after one of her periodic voyages. She took to the sea as some fat women do to a diet. Violet couldn’t— or wouldn’t— diet. But when her weight became oppressive she climbed aboard a boat and stoically reduced by the sea-sick method. It never failed to take off fifty pounds or so. You’ve heard the old gag about falling away to a ton? Well, Violet was down to her normal three fifty, but the strenuous reducing process had left her skin a little loose around the edges.

I looked at her and wished she’d get sick again. She had finished her circus career amid loud cheers from her listeners and was beginning an uncouth discourse on the ramifications of her detective agency when the girl edged into the group.

It was as if she —the girl— were drawn there by some magnetic force ; almost against her will. Studying her with some curiosity I knew she was unused to this sort of thing. Violet herself didn’t drink. Or smoke either. But she was seeing that every one else did. Violet had a propensity for entertaining lavishly. Stewards scurried about with trays, dispensing the best the bar afforded, and my partner airily signed the checks.

The girl refused everything offered her, but still stayed on to drink in the great goofs words. After a time Violet noticed her, pantomimed to me that something must be wrong. Her lips framed what I construed to be, “Bring the dame over!”

Inwardly seething I did as directed. The girl’s name was Joan Lefevre and. she had come aboard at Papeete, ’way down in Tahiti. I remembered seeing her when she engaged passage, but ever since then she had kept to herself. She was evidently traveling alone and for the first time.

“What’s the matter?” asked Violet. “Ain’t them stewards got what you want? Hell’s bells, this line’s supposed to be famous for its—now — cuisine!"

“I— I just don’t care for anything,” said the girl. Her smile was a little forced. Nice-looking thing she was. Tiny hands and feet, hair the color of corn silk, face tanned a rich, golden brown. Her English was good but slightly flavored with some accent— French, I presumed, seeing that Papeete is fifty per cent French. But it was her eyes that got me— sad, they were, infinitely sad. And yet there was something else in their depths; something that spoke of indomitable will power, a fixed purpose I couldn’t fathom. Bashful she might be; unaccustomed to meeting strangers, but she was going somewhere and she meant to get there.

I sickened of Violet’s careless probing into the girl’s affairs and went on deck for a breath of air. It was pretty late and we had run into a Coastal fog. The ship’s horn blasted the stillness of the night at frequent intervals ; her giant searchlight strove ineffectually to pierce the murk, but she still plowed on at full speed ahead. I hoped the officers on the bridge could see better than I could.

The rail was wet, cold to my touch. Drifting fingers of fog curled about me as I stood there, but these things were fresh and clean after the stuffiness of the saloon.

Violet found me after an hour or so. She had the girl, Joan Lefevre, with her and the three of us lingered there in the darkness, listening to the dreary moaning of the foghorn and the swish of water far below.

Joan said, breathing deep: “It is nice, eh? So much nicer than—than— than—”

Violet chuckled that great, booming chuckle that was so characteristic of her. “So you don’t like my parties, huh? Well, I’m not so hot about ’em myself— after I get ’em started. I get to feeling kinda coltish and that’s one way of relieving the strain.” She sighed, and suddenly I was very sorry for her. A woman cast in a man’s mold. She sighed again. “ ’S’like getting drunk, I guess.”

A man’s hoarse shout shattered the night: “Sheer off, you fool!” There followed a prolonged blast from the foghorn. Bells clanged. A tremendous shudder shook the whole ship. I waited, stark with paralyzing fear, for the impact that didn’t come. Instead, voices from the bridge hurled imprecations at some one I could not see.

And out of the fog, muffled yet quite distinct, came an answering hail. This new voice was powerful, blasphemous. It was flavored strongly with the same peculiar accent as Joan Lefevre’s. It said— I can’t repeat its most colorful phrases— but the meaning was clear. One of the last things it said was: “Go to hell!” A vague, blurred shape as of some ghostly ship of yesteryear floated by as we picked up speed.

VIOLET ROARED with Gargantuan mirth. She loved anything in the line of profanity. And then we saw the girl!

She was slumped forward against the rail, pale as a sheet. And she was unconscious.

“Fainted dead away,” Violet grunted. “Damned if I know why, though. She was all right till that crazy frog began cussing! You s’pose she—”

I said, “I’ve no idea. But speaking of ideas it might be a good one to do something for her!”

Without a word, without seeming effort, Violet picked the child up, tucked her under an arm and made for the nearest companionway. Did I say she was a child? I was wrong there. It was the girl’s apparent helplessness, her total lack of sophistication that made her seem so. In reality she was probably nearly as old as I.

She was still out when we reached our suite. We laid her on the bed and I applied smelling salts, started to chafe her wrists. Violet disappeared in search of the ship’s doctor, I thought. She could have phoned; and why she didn’t was beyond me—until later.

Joan Lefevre opened her eyes, stared at me uncomprehendingly for an instant. The fright in those eyes was unmistakable though she tried to veil it with a wan smile.

“There was no— no collision?”

I reassured her. Again I got the impression that it wasn’t the impending accident which had caused her to faint. This was strengthened by her next query: “Do they— do you know who it was out there in the fog?”

“No, my dear; only that it was some one with a rich vocabulary. Some one aboard a sailing ship, I believe.” Which innocent remark set her to trembling ail over again. I soothed her as best I could, forced a little brandy between her lips. I wondered what the devil was keeping Violet, had just about made up my mind to call the doctor myself when she waddled in.

“Doc’s in your stateroom waiting for you, honey,” she said. “So let’s go by-by again.” Once more she picked the girl up, looking strangely awkward as she did so, and yet uncommonly tender, too— for her. She rolled out of the room with her burden.

When she came back a few moments later she informed me that Joan was resting easily, that the doctor had administered a sedative.

“Took you a long time to find him,” I grumbled.

She looked surprised. “Hell,” she said, “I wasn’t looking for the doc. I was searching her room.”

“What in the world for? I never saw such a creature— snooping in the girl’s business! Haven’t you a spark of decency?”

“Nope,” said Violet placidly, “but I sure do find things out. Looks like the kid has located some of this hidden treasure you hear about. Or maybe she’s just a plain thief. Anyway she’s got the craziest collection of money you ever saw— French, English and good old U. S. A. Old stuff, most of it. Smells like it’d been hidden away for years. And she’s got a gun!”

“What of it? So have we!”

“O. K.,” said Violet. She spread her fat, beringed hands in a gesture of resignation. “O. K.; there ain’t no mystery about her. And like you say, I guess it’s none of my business anyway.” She sank into a chair, raised thick ankles to the chaise longue. Weariness showed in every line of her broad face; her little green eyes, imbedded in rolls of fat, mirrored something that brought a lump to my throat. She should have been a man. But she wasn’t. And as a woman—

“I know what you’re gonna say.” She sighed. “Go on, tell me what an ass I made of myself.”

“Nothing of the kind!” I snapped.

“I’m glad you had a good time!”

Surprising the way I flopped around where Violet McDade was concerned, but something about her always got me. I wasn’t looking at her. I couldn’t. I pretended to be very busy brushing my hair.

WE WARPED into the slip at exactly seven the next morning. Joan Lefevre hadn’t appeared for breakfast but she was among the first at the gangplank. Having come aboard in the middle of the cruise and from a foreign port she had to go through certain formalities which the rest of us were spared.

Violet helped her wherever possible. This partner of mine seemed able to pull strings almost anywhere, so it wasn’t long before the three of us were climbing into the great limousine which Violet called her chariot.

The girl was still uncommunicative about her destination. During the ride into Los Angeles she evinced little interest in what— to her— must have been a new world. A question or two about hotels, the facilities for finding people ; that was all.

Until we dropped her at the Grayson. “You are detectives,” she said suddenly. “Los Angeles is your home. Do you by chance know of” — she hesitated— “of a Jonathan Quarles?”

“Yeah,” said Violet, “but I don’t know any good of him. Mealy-mouthed old scout— supposed to be very wealthy. From things I’ve heard he ain’t always been too ethical about how he got his dough. He’s got it, though, which is what counts. I hear he’s reformed in the last few years. Belongs to a church and everything. Why do you ask?”

The girl seemed disposed not to answer. Violet’s chauffeur had deposited the child’s pitiful array of luggage on the sidewalk and there was a porter hovering near. Joan put out her hand to me, blinked back sudden tears as she looked at Violet.

“You have been so good to me,” she murmured. “So very kind. I do hate to leave you like this, but I—”

“O. K., O. K.,” said Violet. “Don’t tell us nothing you don’t want to. You can find this Jonathan Quarles in the phone book. And me, too, if you ever need me. Let’s go, McCloskey!” she bawled at the chauffeur, and we rolled away leaving the girl staring after us.

We spent the rest of the morning at the house, unpacking, straightening out the petty tangles occasioned by a three months’ absence. Violet’s lunch was enormous, certain to restore at least five pounds of the fifty she had lost. But after it was over she seemed her old self again. She could hardly wait to get down to the office.

Busy there with accumulated work—our office doors carried the names of a score of insurance companies and department stores—it wasn’t till well after three o’clock that she paused to send out for what she calls a snack.

“Just a bite to keep body and soul together till dinner time,” she told the boy. “Say a couple of sandwiches, a piece of chocolate pie and some coffee. And bring the papers back with you,” she added.

The boy winked, went out grinning. Violet’s help was a sore spot with me but she was adamant whenever I suggested firing some of them. I never saw a slangier, more disrespectful lot in my life. But, as she pointed out, every last one of them would have died for her. Indeed, some of them had!

There was an extra in the batch of papers the boy brought back. Violet, between gulps of scalding coffee, read the headlines aloud.

“Jonathan Quarles attacked!” she snorted. “Well, what d’you know about that?” She munched on a sandwich, seeming to masticate the boxed account of the affair at the same time.

I read over her shoulder. A madman, according to the extra, had invaded the sanctum sanctorum of one of the city’s greatest financiers. There were several versions of the tale, the most lucid being that of Anne Stimson, the great man’s private secretary. This Miss Stimson seemed to be a pretty level-headed young woman.

The invader, she said, had really not acted like a madman until nearly the close of his interview with Mr. Quarles. True, he had brushed aside ail opposition to his entrance in the first place; voices from within the library had been raised to a frightful pitch, but the actual attack hadn’t occurred until the very last.

Jonathan Quarles had sustained various cuts and bruises; was the possessor of a beautiful black eye; but, strangely, was unable to give any reason for the attack. He didn’t know the man, had never seen him before. Mr. Quarles’ own description was peculiarly vague.

Not so Miss Stimson’s. She— the paper hinted that this was against her employer’s wishes— described the man in detail. His voice she particularly remembered. It was rough, uncouth. His words were a garbled mixture of bad English and worse French.

Did she know the man’s name? No, she did not. And, most unfortunately, he had made good his escape before reinforcements arrived.

“BALONEY!” said Violet inelegantly. “Quarles knows more’n he’s telling!” She paused, struck by a sudden thought. “I wonder,” she mused, “if our little friend Joan Lefevre was mixed up in this. Remember the voice of the guy on that schooner?”

I hadn’t known it was a schooner but I remembered the voice. And I remembered what the voice— at least I presumed it was the voice— had done to Joan Lefevre. And she had asked us about Jonathan Quarles !”

Violet nodded her great head as if she had read my mind. She flicked the switch of the interoffice annunciator, grunted, “Get me Miss Joan Lefevre at the Grayson.”

“Miss Joan Lefevre at the Grayson,” a voice from the box parroted. After a moment the same voice announced: “Miss Joan Lefevre is not registered at the Grayson.”

Violet cursed. “Find out if a dame answering this description is registered under any other name.” She rattled off a word picture of the girl that astonished even me.

But it did no good. Joan Lefevre had vanished. Violet was disposed to admire the girl’s ability to lose herself. To my amazement I found myself annoyed. Why, I asked myself, should. I care if a chance acquaintance chose to avoid me?

But I did. Violet did, too. “I told you,” she grumbled. “I told you there was something funny about the kid! Just the same,” she went on, “I’m betting we hear from her.”

Well, as usual, my elephantine partner was right. We did hear from the girl we knew as Joan Lefevre. But it wasn’t until noon the next day. Not until the late morning editions had blazoned the news of Jonathan Quarles’ murder!

He had been shot during the night; the coroner’s physician placed the time of death at about twelve. The servants sleeping in the house had not been disturbed by the shot; had only discovered the body upon arising in the morning. Jonathan’s son, Jimmy Quarles, had been out until three o’clock, had seen a light in his father’s study when he came in, but had assumed the older man to be working and had gone directly to bed. Jimmy— according to the papers— was unable to account for the atrocious crime and was— still according to the papers— prostrated with grief.

“Which,” said Violet, “is some more baloney. Nobody’d be prostrated with grief over that old curmudgeon’s death!”

I asked her why she disliked Quarles so. She didn’t know. She just didn’t like hypocrites. I assumed from this that he must have fallen in that category, but I didn’t know why.

“The son is offering a reward for the killer,” I suggested tentatively. “And I see the erudite secretary, Miss Anne Stimson, has advanced the theory that yesterday’s so-called madman is the murderer.”

“Yeah,” said Violet, “and he might be, at that. Now, assuming that we could use the ten grand and that the guy with the mixed accent is the same one we heard in the middle of the ocean and assuming that his voice is what scared hell out of Joan Lefevre—”

“We had better look for little Joan!”

“Right,” said Violet. And it was then that Joan Lefevre was announced.

SHE CAME IN quietly, stood before Violet’s great desk looking like an embarrassed child. Her dark eyes were still the saddest I had ever seen, but there was no longer that other thing peeping out at me. Her purpose, whatever it may have been, had either been accomplished or abandoned.

“I have come,” she said, “because that which I planned, that which I wished to do is no longer possible. You, of ail those aboard that great ship, have befriended me. Therefore, having it in my power to repay you in some slight degree, I have come to do that which I may before— before I go.”

“Go where?” Violet growled. “You ain’t going nowhere. You’re gonna stick around and let McDade & Alvarado show you the sights, ain’t she, Nevada?”

I said, “Yes. Yes, of course.” That damnable lump was in my throat again. The girl was so little, so forlorn. And Violet, the big lummox, was so very human at times that—

“Why don’t you sit down?” I snapped. “Don’t stand there like a fool! Sit down!”

Joan sat down meekly and Violet guffawed. “Don’t take it to heart, kid,” she said, waggling a huge fist in my direction. “Nevada is just talking that way to keep from crying, she’s so glad to see you. What’s the guy’s name that bumped old moneybags off?”

“Pierre Lefevre,” said Joan. Then, startled at Violet’s seeming omnipotence, “How did you know why I came?”

“Just a trick of the trade,” said Violet. “I can tell you lots of things about yourself. You probably ran away from home, though Heaven only knows why anybody’d want to live in Papeete in the first place. And you copped some dough. And you were lugging a gun. So why did you kill Jonathan Quarles?”

“I didn’t!” There was nothing meek about Joan Lefevre now. She was out of her chair and stamping a tiny foot to emphasize her words. “How can you say such a thing? Pierre Lefevre killed him, I tell you!”

“O. K., I believe you. Can’t a guy ask a civil question without you having a tantrum?”

Joan sat down quite as suddenly as she’d got up.

“This bozo that scared you stiff out there in the fog— he’s this Pierre you’re talking about? Well, who is he— your brother, your father or what?”

A deep flush crept up beneath the girl’s tan. “My— my stepfather,” she answered, very low. “He is the master of the auxiliary schooner Papeete. I did not know he was coming north when he sailed from home. I hoped I would never see him, hear of him again. And then —then when I heard his terrible voice coming out of the night—”

“You passed out,” said Violet sympathetically. “O. K.”— noting the tears in the girl’s eyes— “you don’t have to tell me why you hate him. Not now, anyway. I wouldn’t have much trouble hating him myself. But Jupiter, he had a peach of a— now— vocabulary!”

So the man’s name was Pierre Lefevre and he was master of the schooner Papeete. But how could we be sure he was the same man who had attacked Quarles? Did Joan know of a motive? And why had she inquired about Quarles herself?”

“I— I had heard the name,” she said, becoming rather vague at this point. “I thought possibly I might look him up.”

“And did you?”

Joan hesitated, evidently decided on at least a certain amount of frankness. “I didn’t see him, if that is what you mean. I went to his home but his secretary said he was too busy to see me. So I went away.”

“But while you were there you heard—or maybe saw your stepfather, this Pierre Lefevre?”

No, it was merely that she knew he must have reached port. And, later, the secretary’s description in the papers had tallied closely enough to coincide. And. then Quarles had been murdered. There was the reward. Joan would like to see us get that.

Violet didn’t press her. The story had a lot of loopholes, was weak in spots. For instance, why hadn’t she stayed at the Grayson which we had recommended? And what was the real motive for her call on Jonathan Quarles? Or for coming to the United States, for that matter? There was no doubt she hated this Pierre Lefevre enough to turn him up. And perhaps she had visions of splitting the reward.

I said: “Let’s ail go over and check up with the admirable secretary, Miss Stimson.” I don’t know why this Stimson woman bothered me. I didn’t know her from Adam’s ox. It was just that the newspapers had played her up as such a model of efficiency, I guess—a paragon of all the virtues.

“Between her and Joan we ought to be pretty sure whether or not Lefevre is the man we want.”

Violet conceded this to be a swell idea. “But just in case,” she added, “I think I’ll shoot a couple of the boys down to San Pedro to look the Papeete over.” Which she did.

JONATHAN QUARLES’ mansion was one of those that seem to go on regardless of a little thing like murder. One got the impression that even the millennium wouldn’t interfere with the regular routine. Everything was very quiet and sedate, of course, but the wheels were still humming. The butler didn’t know if Miss Stimson could see us. She was very busy with young Mr. Quarles and the family lawyer.

Violet said: “She’ll see me. Tell her I think I know who killed her boss.”

Startled, the man went away, came back in a moment to usher us into the middle of what looked like a scene. Having known whom to expect I easily placed the three occupants of the great room.

The lawyer— one could never mistake him for anything else— was well past middle age; important with the assured importance of success, but not in the least pompous. His spatulate fingers toyed idly with a jeweled paper knife, part of the ornate desk set before him. Otherwise he was motionless.

Mot so young Jimmy Quarles. He was pacing the floor nervously, though I wouldn’t have said he was bowed down with grief. Rather, he seemed nettled and just a little stubborn over something that was being discussed when we came in. There were certain telltale marks of dissipation on his good-looking, slightly immature face, but he appeared a harmless sort. One thing I was sure of: He was in love with the beautiful Anne Stimson! Don’t ask me how a woman knows those things. She just does.

Miss Stimson took charge of the interview. Not that she was officious. Merely efficient. She was very lovely and I could readily see why Jimmy Quarles was that way about her, but—well, I guess I was already prejudiced. She was too self-possessed; her eyes when she looked at Jimmy lacked warmth.

And when she turned to Violet I sensed an unspoken antagonism.

“You have a clue to the murderer?”

Violet said: “Yeah— in a way.” She had moved to the desk, was admiring the glittering dagger in the lawyer’s hands. Anything gaudy was sure to attract Violet. “About the reward, now. You folks ready to pay it ?”

Miss Stimson and Biggsby, the lawyer, exchanged glances.

Biggsby hummed and hawed a little. “Well— ah— you see, Miss McDade, certain matters have come to light that make the amount stated somewhat— ah— prohibitive. In fact, we were intending to withdraw the offer entirely.”

“I wasn’t,” said Jimmy Quarles. “Not the sporting thing to do. Course, I didn’t know dad was practically on the rocks, but I made the offer and it stands.”

At this, Miss Stimson’s eyes couldn’t be said to lack warmth. They positively shot sparks.

“You’re a fool, Jimmy Quarles! Do you realize what that will leave us— leave you— under the ridiculous terms of the new will? Do you think I’d—”

You could see Jimmy was in one of those well-known quandaries. If he didn’t pay the reward he was bound to lose face. And if he did he stood to lose— well, her threat was pretty obvious to me. The lady didn’t intend to live on love alone.

She whirled on Violet: “But you are not sure! You haven’t caught the man yet, have you?”

“Nope, and if the reward’s all  that’s worrying you I won’t even try. I'll turn my information over to the cops and forget the whole Works.” Pure bluff. Violet never parted with information free of charge.

“Your information is pretty conclusive then?”

“Well,” said Violet, “there’re points that need a little clearing up. I kind of thought maybe you and Miss Lefevre could—”

“Miss who?” I thought Biggsby, the lawyer, was going to have a stroke. But he didn’t. It did take him a minute or two, however, to regain his composure. “Surely you don’t mean that— that this young woman is Joan Lefevre!”

“ ’Fraid she is,” said Violet. “So what?”

“Of Tahiti?”

“Of Tahiti. To be exact, she’s from Papeete, Tahiti.”

“Well— well, bless my soul!” Mr. Biggsby seemed immensely pleased. He trotted around the desk, extending both hands to the astonished Joan. “Congratulations, my dear girl, congratulations! You will share equally with your—”

Suddenly embarrassed, he flushed hotly, dropped her hands. “I— ah—  mean to say that your— ah— that Jonathan Quarles has bequeathed you half of the— ah— residue.” He mopped his pink forehead with a very large handkerchief. “Unfortunately we find that his affairs were— ah— slightly involved. However,” he brightened considerably, “you should realize at the very least something like fifty thousand dollars!”

JOAN’S FACE was very white. She swayed on her feet like a punch-drunk fighter. Violet’s mouth hung agape till I thought she would never close it. And I? Well, I'll confess I was a little shaky.

But not too far gone to note Miss Stimson’s reactions. If ever a face depicted demoniacal fury, hers did. She caught my eye on her, skillfully masked her emotions. “So this is the illegitimate child of Jonathan Quarles!” Suddenly she was staring at the girl with a new expression. “You were here yesterday! That— that man was— You sent him to kill your father!”

Joan fainted. Dropping to her side I worked on her, conscious of Violet’s booming voice beating down the puny arguments of the others.

Some one handed me a glass of water. It was Jimmy Quarles.

Staring down at the girl in my arms he muttered, “Poor kid,” and turned away. I got part of the water down her throat, slapped her once or twice and finally brought her around.

Things had quieted down considerably by the time she was able to sit up. Anne Stimson was once more her regal self. Biggsby, it turned out, was more than pleased that he didn’t have to search the South Seas for a missing heiress. Of course, he pointed out, substantiating proof of Joan’s identity would have to be forthcoming. Violet agreed to produce it.

Jimmy Quarles took little part in the conversation, confined himself to a covert appraisal of Joan. I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased with her or not. Probably not, I thought cynically. I knew I wouldn’t be overly fond of some one who was getting half of what I’d always considered rightfully mine.

Then there was the love angle. If Anne Stimson gave him the air because he wasn’t inheriting enough to— But would she? She was being pretty sweet to him again. Maybe she’d decided that half a loaf was better than none.

Biggsby said: “Well, that’s all settled then. Where can we get in touch with you, Miss— ah— Lefevre?”

“Miss Quarles!” Jimmy corrected. “Regardless of this and that, she’s my half sister. She can stay here with us if she likes.”

And— imagine our surprise— Anne Stimson seconded the motion!

Joan said, “Oh— oh, I couldn’t! Not yet. I have enough money to keep me at the hotel for a while.”

“Yeah,” said Violet brutally, “but whose money is it? You better come home with Nevada and me till we get things straightened out. Which reminds me: How’s about catching the murderer?”

The murderer had somehow slipped our minds. And, strangely enough, no one seemed to care whether he was caught or not. No one, that is, but Violet.

Miss Stimson suggested that perhaps the police would solve the crime without our help. Violet doubted it. While they argued the point Joan and I quietly departed. We picked up her luggage at a third-rate hotel, left the car for Violet, and took a taxi home.

No one cared about the murderer? How silly of me! I had forgotten the dear public. Violet didn’t come home for dinner. In fact it was nearly midnight before she arrived. But we had news of her activities through the evening papers.

Under the scare head: “QUARLES KILLER KNOWN!” I read of how McDade & Alvarado, cooperating with the police, had practically cornered Pierre Lefevre. His schooner, the Papeete, was being kept under surveillance— as if the ninny, reading this, would go back to it— and his arrest was momentarily expected.

That wasn’t all. Violet had unburdened her soul to the papers. Joan Lefevre, horrified at her step-father’s crime, had come forward to point the first accusing finger. “Girl Positive of Father’s Guilt!” screamed a subhead. And to cap the climax: “Fears Revenge. Under protection of McDade & Alvarado!”

It even gave our home address.

Joan didn’t enjoy the rest of her meal. “Do— do you suppose he will try to—”

“I wouldn’t be surprised!” I snapped. “Not after that!”

I resolved that now would be a good time to fill in some of the gaps in the girl’s story. “See here, Joan,” I said. “I like you. And Violet likes you. But, after ail, you haven’t played exactly fair with us. We’ve got to know, for one thing, why you wanted to see Jonathan Quarles? Did you know he was your father? Did you know he’d mentioned you in his will?”

“I knew he was my— father,” she said hesitantly, “but I didn’t know about the money. And if I had it wouldn’t have made any difference. I hated him— hated him for what he did to my mother; for what he made of me. Illegitimate child?” She smiled crookedly. “That isn’t what they call you in Tahiti!”

“Now, now,” I soothed her. “Times have changed. Things like that are soon forgotten here in the States. I suppose you intended to kill him? Melodramatic vengeance from the South Seas and all that sort of thing?”

“Yes,” she said, so quietly that there was no melodrama about it.

“I stole one of Lefevre’s guns. I stole some of his money. After all, part of it belonged to my mother. Hadn’t she lived with the beast for years?”

“They were really married?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. There was infinite bitterness in her tone. “Yes, he was her legal husband. I suppose I should have been grateful because he let me—the nameless one —use his name. But there was never any doubt in Papeete as to what I really was!”

BUT PIERRE LEFEVRE had never known who she was. The mother had taken care of that. Even the girl hadn’t known until after her mother’s death. And then, sorting through the pitifully meager store of things that were left, Joan had discovered the truth.

Pierre, coming home drunk, had surprised her in the act of running away, had beaten her until she confessed the reason for her going. A few days later he had sailed; she hadn’t known where until his hated voice crashed out of the fog somewhere along the California coast.

I surmised Lefevre had been intent on blackmail. Clever, in a way, he’d probably looked up Jonathan Quarles, found he was wealthy now and would doubtless pay well to keep his past a secret.

But Quarles hadn’t paid— except with his life. Lefevre was an ugly customer, a man of violent temper when thwarted, according to Joan. She showed me bruises that hadn’t healed yet from his last beating.

So, you see, Joan had a mighty good reason for hating both of these men. A funny idea occurred to me. I liked the girl, you understand, but just the same—couldn’t she have read of Lefevre’s attack the same as we had? Couldn’t she have shot Quarles herself and, by blaming it on Lefevre, kill two birds with the one stone?

I studied her. In repose her face was curiously childlike. Her eyes, twin pools of sorrow, were without guile. Nevertheless, the idea in my mind persisted. Detectives, like the Chinese, are strange people.

Violet barged in, cheerful as usual, just as I was going to bed. “Well,” she breezed, “how’s every little thing?” Giving me no chance to tell her what I thought of her, she plowed on through to her own rooms and I could hear the shower going full blast.

Five minutes later she was back, attired in the rainbow effect she called her lounging pajamas. Through the sheer fabric of her sleeves I could see the bulge of her guns. I don’t believe she ever took them off, even under the shower.

“Just a little shrinking Violet,” I said. “Always doing her best to avoid notoriety.”

The irony was wasted. She plumped herself down on the bed, grinned at me, her little, greenish eyes alight with mischief. “Yeah,” she said, “I know what you’re gonna say. But, you see, our two dicks couldn’t get a tumble at Pedro. They found the Papeete O. K., but there was nobody aboard but a couple of natives. Probably old man Lefevre read the papers yesterday, too, and the Stimson woman’s description of him was o accurate he thought he’d better fade. Anyway,
he hasn’t showed up.”

“He’ll most likely show up here!” I snapped.

“That’s what I’m hoping. That’s why I spilled all— or nearly all— the details.” She scowled at me. “Shrinking Violet! Nuts to you, Nevada! You don’t get nowhere nowadays by shrinking!”

“Violet,” I said, “did it ever occur to you that it might be Joan and not Pierre?”

“Sure, it occurred to me! Only I found out from Biggsby that Quarles didn’t have her in his will till yesterday. Quarles called the lawyer in and changed the instrument right after Lefevre escaped. Something must’ve started the old devil’s petrified conscience to working, but the kid couldn’t have known that.”

“No,” I admitted, “but the money angle was out anyway. She hated him!” I repeated Joan’s story, added some of my own theories.

Violet looked thoughtful. “Well,” she said doubtfully, “maybe you’re right. But guilty or innocent, Pierre Lefevre’s gonna be sore as hell when he reads who’s accusing him of the murder. Say, what d’you think of young Quarles and the Stimson dame?”

“He’s a sucker,” I said. “His face tells me he’s been around but just the same he’s a sucker— for her.”

“Yeah, but is she for him? I got an idea she’d marry one of Lefevre’s natives if he had money enough.”

Which proves that Violet had at least one womanly attribute— intuition. She padded away presently, and I turned out the lights and tried to go to sleep. Eventually I did sleep.

I awoke with the sound of shots ringing in my ears. There may have been more but I heard only two. A swift pounding of feet echoed down the hall; a door slammed. It sounded like the front one. Fumbling for the light switch I wasted a few precious seconds, and by the time I had slipped on a robe and got out to the hall Violet was gone. So was her target. The front door stood open.

The sudden roar of a motor racing down the Street was followed by another as Violet’s big roadster flashed out of the drive. She went by me doing fifty, waved a pudgy fist as if she were just out for an airing.

THERE WAS BLOOD on the sidewalk at my feet; great splotches of it made a trail that led from somewhere inside the house to an indeterminate point down the Street, probably to where that motor had come to life. I went in, traced the sticky stuff to Joan Lefevre’s room, found her huddled under the covers, shivering as with the ague.

But she was unharmed. Having ascertained this much I shook her into coherency. That blood might have been Violet’s.

“Snap out of it!” I said sharply. “What happened?”

“Lefevre came!” she gasped. “I— I woke up with him choking me. I tried to scream but his fingers only crushed me tighter. His face in the moonlight—it was horrible! And then—then Violet shot him.”

“Did he have a gun, too?”

“I don’t know. Wait, I think he did! Yes, he shot at her and then she shot again and— and then he ran.” She dissolved into hysterics once more.

Well, ail I could do was hope for the best. I gave Joan a stiff shot of sleeping powder, finally got her quieted, closed the door and started out to mix myself a highball.

The hall was full of goggle-eyed neighbors. Bridget, our house-keeper, was regaling them with her version of the shooting— which she couldn’t possibly have seen— and interspersing it now and then with tales of gorier affairs she had witnessed while in Violet’s service.

I said, “Bridget, you look terrible. Better go back to bed before the cops come.”

She flushed a bright scarlet, disappeared into her own quarters. But the neighbors, I found, were harder to get rid of. It must have been a full fifteen minutes before the last of them went. Locking the door behind them I went out to the kitchen for my postponed highball.

Again I was interrupted; this time by the arrival of Detectives Lafferty and. Bercowicz in a precinct car.

“Somebody phoned,” said Lafferty. “Said there was a shooting.”

“Yes,” I sighed, “someone always does. But it’s all over now, sergeant. You boys come in and have a drink?”

They came in. I led the way to the kitchen.

Bercowicz, a smallish, weasel-faced dick, downed three highballs, one right after the other, without batting an eye. But his mind was still on his work.

“What was ail the ruckus about?” he wanted to know. “Lot of blood spattered around and we gotta make some kind of a report.” Sudden cupidity shone in his eyes. “Say, you girls have got that Lefevre dame here! Was the shooting-”

“Oh, the shooting?” I hoped I was properly nonchalant. It wouldn’t do to tell them too much and let them chisel in on the reward. “Why, it was really nothing much. Just a common prowler got in and Violet happened to be awake. She took a couple of shots at him but he escaped.”

“Oh, yeah? Lemme talk to Mac!”

Violet McDade was “Mac” to every flatfoot in town. I told Bercowicz he should be different and try “Miss McDade” for a change.

He was not to be sidetracked. “O. K.,” he said stubbornly, “Mac or Miss McDade, it’s all one to me. I’m asking where she is!”

“So what?” And there was Violet herself standing in the doorway. She was breathing heavily as if laboring under great excitement. “Spill what you’ve got to say, weasel, and then get to hell outa here. I’m tired.”

Bercowicz, it appeared, had little more to say.

Violet admitted she had chased the wounded man but claimed to have lost him. And she positively had no due to his identity. Catching Lafferty’s admiring gaze on her pajama-clad figure she snatched one of Bridget’s kitchen aprons and tied it around her middle. There were times when Violet was very modest.

“Go on, boys,” she cajoled, “on your way. I’m practically dead on my feet.” As a matter of fact she was as nervous as a wet hen. For some reason she considered it terribly important to get those two dicks out of the house— immediately. She finally succeeded.

AND THEN the storm broke.

“For goodness’ sake, get a doctor!” were her first words. “Joan’s been stabbed!” And after that came a string of curses worthy of even that past master, Pierre Lefevre.

I was petrified. “How could Joan have been stabbed? Hadn’t I locked the front door?”

“Sure, you dizzy idiot! And left the window open! Lefevre came through the window, you nut! Are you gonna get that doctor or are you gonna stand there ail night with your mouth open?”

Well, I phoned for the nearest doctor. After that I kicked myself very thoroughly and went in to see Joan. She was unconscious. A gaping hole in her left side was still welling blood despite Violet’s efforts.

The efforts, typical of Violet as a nurse, consisted of piling an arm-load of towels around and on top of the wound as if she were building a dam. I pushed her aside, managed to staunch the flow, took the girl’s pulse and found it very weak. I hoped the doctor would hurry. And I hoped Violet wouldn’t wring my neck for babbling with a couple of half-wit cops while Joan was being attacked the second time. Still, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I resolved to strike first.

“You let Lefevre get away!” I accused. “Let him lose you and come back to finish the job!”

Violet turned from the open window, stared at me curiously.

“There’re times,” she grunted, “when I wonder why in hell I ever took you in as a partner. As a dick you’re the last word in fashion models. Here’s this poor kid sleeping peaceful, depending on you to take care of her and what happens?” Her voice rose. “Three dicks in the house and what happens? Did I say three dicks? My mistake. Two dicks. And a— a—”

Mercifully the doctor came. The bell gave me a good excuse to leave, pretending I hadn’t heard what she called me.

Dr. Gorham, after five long minutes with Joan, stood up, closed his bag briskly. He was brisk about everything. “She’ll do,” he said. “She’ll do nicely. Lost a lot of blood, of course. Knife just missed her heart, but she’ll pull through. Have to have a nurse, though, maybe two. I'll send one over from the hospital right away and to-morrow we’ll see.” He nodded briskly, took himself off.

Violet, still in her ridiculous pajamas and Bridget’s apron, was puttering about the window again. I heard her curse suddenly, looked up to see her squeezing through it.

“So that’s how you got in,” I said. “I knew I locked the door!”

Something about barn doors and stolen horses drifted up from the lawn below the window. Her tousled head popped into sight.

“Get me a flashlight or some matches, Mex.”

I said, “Do not call me Mex!” But I got her the light.

She scrawled back a moment later, wheezing gustily. Between a fat thumb and forefinger was something that glowed redly; a ruby, I supposed, from one of her many rings. She was always losing something or other.

“How about getting some coffee, Mex? And a little snack? I gotta get dressed.” She waddled through the connecting door into her rooms. “You better get dressed, too!” she bellowed. “Put the coffee on first, though. We gotta lot of work to do before the night’s over.”

I made coffee. And fried bacon and eggs. I could have got Bridget out of bed, but as long as Violet seemed willing to let bygones be bygones I thought I’d humor her.

She came out, sniffing greedily.

“You’re not such a bad egg, Nevada,” she admitted. “Neither are these,” she added, attacking the three on her plate. “So now look; I’m gonna tell you something. When that nurse gets here, you watch her plenty careful ; see if she knows her business. And keep your eyes open in case anybody else shows up. Stay in Joan’s room and keep your eyes open!”

“Don’t worry, sweet Violet. Little Nevada took it on the chin once to-night. It won’t happen again.”

Again I caught that curious expression in her eyes. “Listen, Violet,” I said, “have you definitely made up your mind it wasn’t Joan who killed Quarles? After all, these attacks on her don’t prove that she didn’t kill him. You yourself said Lefevre would try to wreak vengeance, guilty or innocent.”

“Joan did not kill Quarles,” she stated flatly. “I’m surprised at you being so suspicious. I kinda thought you liked the kid. Besides, I checked with headquarters on the slug they took outa Quarles and it couldn’t’ve come from that old horse pistol I found in her state- room.”

“But she could have got another gun!”

The great lummox rose, wiped her mouth on a dish towel. “O. K.,” she said. “You play it that way if you want to, and I'll play it mine. Which reminds me, I gotta beat it down to headquarters again. Remember, keep your eyes open.”

She waddled down the hall and I helped her on with her coat. The night— morning, rather, for it was after two o’clock— had turned cold, and Violet evidently intended to use the roadster which she’d left at the curb. She went down the steps, was just easing behind the wheel when another car— a small coupé— pulled up beside her.

IT WAS the nurse. I could see the starched white uniform in the glow of the dashlight. Violet talked with her a moment, then gunned the roadster into life and shot away down the Street.

The nurse’s name was Miss Hansen. I’d be willing to bet it is still Miss Hansen. A grimmer visage I never saw; and her manner was as starchy as her uniform. But I had to admit she was efficient. In an hour Joan’s room looked like a first-class hospital ward. And, which was more important, Joan had roused from her coma and was able to talk a little.

She couldn’t remember much of the second attack. The sleeping potion I’d given her had— mercifully or not, depending on the way you look at it— stupefied her so she was barely conscious of the knife thrust. And her assailant was but a vague, blurred shape. Joan thought she’d felt fingers clawing at her throat before the blade struck home; she wasn’t sure.

“Anyway, I fainted again or something.” She smiled wanly. “Seems like I’m always fainting, doesn’t it, Miss Alvarado?”

“Nevada, to you,” I said. I felt like— well, like what Violet had called me for thinking evil of the little devil. A murderer? Not Joan! Maybe she’d have killed Quarles, but if she had she’d have taken her medicine. Of that I was sure. Because she smiled at me so apologetically? Well, perhaps.

“Lefevre?” she asked. “Has he been caught?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But he will be, never fear. When Violet shoots anybody a doctor is indicated. He’ll have to get medical attention; the doctor will report in, and then—”

The doorbell rang. Disregarding Violet’s silly admonition to watch the nurse I went to answer it. But before opening the door I removed my little gun from its holster just above the knee and held it ready— for what?

It was Jimmy Quarles and Anne Stimson! At three o’clock in the morning. Jimmy was carrying a florist’s box and. looking slightly flustered. Miss Stimson was, as usual, beautiful and completely at ease.

Well, I invited them in. There was nothing else to do.

“Miss— ah— McDade phoned me,”

Jimmy said, seeing my blank look. “Miss Le— my sister— is she conscious yet?”

“Yes,” I said shortly. “I felt like adding, “But you aren’t!” Couldn’t the fellow go anywhere without the Stimson woman tagging along? And suddenly I knew why I didn’t like her. It was because I liked him! In other words and as idiotic as it sounds— I was jealous!

“Do let me take your things!” I said cordially. “I’m sure Joan will be glad to see you both, if she’s awake.”

Anne Stimson kept her coat on, said they were only going to stay a moment. “Has the girl been able to talk much? Does she know who— who stabbed her?”

“Who could it have been but her stepfather, Pierre Lefevre? Not that she saw him the last time; I’d given her a sedative which practically drugged her into insensibility.  But things may become clearer as she gets stronger.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Jimmy.

Leading the way to Joan’s room I wondered again if Jimmy Quarles really liked his new-found sister. She was only his half sister at most; and a lot of our best people would have considered her— charitably, of course— something less than that. Maybe the flowers were a tribute to the fifty thousand dollars he wouldn’t get, now that she was going to live.

At that, another curious thought took possession of my devious mind. What price Mr. Jimmy Quarles as the knife wielder? After all, we had no proof that Lefevre had returned. Jimmy stood to make fifty grand by the girl’s death, and there was always the elusive Pierre to blame it on.

I found myself clutching the doorknob and staring at Jimmy’s handsome, dissipated face as if—

“Bosh!” I said, and opened the door.

Joan was asleep. The militant Miss Hansen held a cautioning finger to her lips, glared ferociously. We tiptoed in and gathered about the bedside. Jimmy rather awkwardly extended the box of flowers to the nurse who seemed disposed to refuse but finally changed her mind and went off down the hall with it.

And there I was, back thinking of him as a would-be murderer; chair-bait but for the will of Heaven and a certain inexpertness with a knife. Had Violet thought of him as the second assailant? Might she not be even now pinning the deed on his curly head? Hah! So that was why she’d notified him of his sister’s condition! She wanted to get him out of his house so she could prowl it; had probably suggested that he bring Miss Stimson along.

THINKING of Violet, I thought of her last words: “Keep your eyes open!” Well, they’d been open but they’d damned near missed something that was taking place. Anne Stimson was just turning from the array of bottles on the bed table. It was the clink of one bottle against another that brought me to life.

I caught the woman’s wrist, flipped up my gun and jammed it into her side— hard. “Open your hand,” I said. “Open it— or I'll put a slug right through your girdle!”

Jimmy, the fool, grabbed me. “Oh, I say, now”— he must have thought I was clowning— “little girls mustn’t play naughty. Papa spank!” He slapped my wrist playfully.

And that did the trick. My gun leaped in my hand. I saw Anne Stimson, at the door, stagger. Her right hand was in the pocket of her coat, and the pocket suddenly belched flame. She missed me. It seemed like her gun made an awful lot of noise. And then, as she started to fall, I saw Violet coming down the hall behind her. It had been Violet’s gun, not Anne’s, which made most of the noise.

Violet didn’t bother to step over Miss Stimson. She stepped on her. “Dirty sneak!” she snarled.

Jimmy, his face a pasty white, came out of his daze. “Oh, no !” he protested. “Not Anne! You had no right to shoot her like that!” Sudden fury attacked him. “You lured us here! You deliberately trapped us! But why? In Heaven’s name, why? What did we ever do to you?”

“Sh,” Violet admonished him. Ridiculously, you must admit, considering that she’d probably waked the whole neighborhood again with her cannons. “This is a sick room.”

She strode forward, clutched him by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Jimmy boy; the woman had it coming to her. Nevada and I don’t just go around shooting people for fun. Look at the bottle your innocent little Anne’s got in her dead fist. See them skulls and crossbones? Know what they mean?

“They mean she was doping your sister’s medicine so she wouldn’t be able to talk; to tell who really knifed her. And you know why she was afraid of what Joan would tell? Because I called you up and planted the idea!”

“But why? Why should Anne haveꟷ”

“Use your head, boy! Hasn’t the woman been stalling you along because you were broke? Sure she has. And when this tough guy Lefevre comes along and makes a fuss don’t she think it’s a swell time to bump your old man? You’re damn right she does!”

“She killed my father?”

“I’ll bet my last dollar she used the same gun she’s got right now. 'Cause why? 'Cause you never had one. I made it my business to find out. But when the new will pops up you’re left with hardly chicken feed. So little Anne has to get rid of Joan to make marrying you worth while.”

The nurse was dourly ministering to Joan; Bridget, horrible in a flannelette bathrobe, was gawking in the doorway. And the neighbors— I  knew they’d be around— were doing their best to tear the house apart. But the police hadn’t arrived as yet.

Jimmy persisted in his unbelief. “But aside from the poison bottle, where is your proof?”

From one of her voluminous pockets Violet produced a dagger. A very fancy, jeweled dagger it was, and I recognized it as part of the ornate desk set in the Quarles library.

“This little sticker,” she said, “belongs in your house. So what was one of the jewels doing outside Joan’s window? I’ve gotta admit I wasn’t sure the stone came out of your knife, but I thought I’d give the idea a whirl and that’s another reason why I wanted you here— so I could prowl your dump.”

“But Lefevre!” I gasped. I remembered quite suddenly the curious way Violet had stared at me. “Before you found the stone you knew it wasn’t Lefevre!”

“Sure,” she said. “He was plumb dead when I caught up to him. He was in one of those rent cars and the upholstery was sure a mess. No wonder their rates are high!”

“And I suppose you left him right where you found him?”

“Nope, I stuffed him in my rumble seat. I was gonna take him down to the morgue, but I had to get some clothes on first. And then, finding the kid stabbed and all, and the house fulla dicks I kinda forgot him.”

Joan was holding one of Jimmy’s roses. Goodness only knows where he’d got them at that time of night but there they were. He looked pretty sick. “Disillusioned” is too weak a word but it’ll have to do. He came to the foot of her bed, smiled a rather cynical little smile.

“Well, sis,” he said, “I guess that leaves just you and me, eh?”

And Violet said, “Hell’s bells, Bridget, ain’t we got nothing to eat in the house? Nevada claims I’m shrinking!”

________________________

9: The October Blight

Anthony M. Rud

1893-1942

The Green Book, March, 1918

“WILL you paint a portrait of me? I am not in a hurry. In fact, I'd much prefer, if you're not too crowded down there, to come up to town and stay with you for a short time. You can paint me whenever you have sufficient time off from your other work.”

If Crosby Braithwaite had asked me to come out and whitewash his chicken coop, I would not have been more astounded. I do portraits often, while I have devoted little time to the decoration of chicken coops; but to have a blunt, masculine man like Crosby so anxious for his picture that he is willing to come to town and wait around for it— well, it took my breath away. I scarcely could believe the phone receiver.

“Why— why,” I sputtered, “of course! Come right along. I have a place for you here, and I'd enjoy having you here tremendously. I haven't much work on hand, and I can finish you up in two or three sittings.”

“Thanks, Bert, old man!” he answered gratefully. “Don't plan on hurrying, though. I don't care if it takes you a month.”

“A month?” I echoed, scenting something back of it all. “All right, Crosby. I'll take a month to it if you wish. I know you well enough to realize that it's not the portrait you're after, though. Come right along, however, and bring your suitcases— or your trunks if you prefer!”

The cordiality of this last was unfeigned, for Crosby Braithwaite always had been one of the men whose intimate friendship I would have cultivated if I had remained in New York after college days. My training abroad, however, had cut away the bonds I had formed; and when I returned, it had been necessary for me to work every minute. As a result I had seen Crosby only twice since graduation.

The nine years had not even straightened one kink in his curly thatch of reddish brown hair. As he strode into the studio an hour later, I almost could have thought him raiding my room for dormitory hazing. His shoulders were an inch or two wider, perhaps, and the broad smile came and went again instead of hovering constantly on his lips, but otherwise he was the same big-handed, big-hearted aristocrat. Even the light Scotch suit he wore was almost identical with some of the clothes I had envied in his college wardrobe.

HIS greetings were a trifle sheepish. “I'm not much of a bluffer, am I, Bert?” he asked, after shaking hands.

“Sit down and tell me about it,” I commanded, smiling. “You have my curiosity aroused now, and if you are really going to stay with me for a time, you might just as well start at the beginning.”

He stretched his heavy frame on the couch I indicated, but thought better of it immediately and sat upright on the edge. I saw all the lightness of expression and all the bluff heartiness vanish together from his face.

“I'm not going to apologize any more, Bert,” he said quietly, albeit with a deadly seriousness that I could not mistake. “If you think me a coward or a fool, just tell me so to my face, and I'll try to swallow it. I have come to you because I know you're not tactful.”

“Thanks,” I broke in wryly.

“Oh, don't take offense. It is the most wearisome thing in the world to be with people who smile and are polite all of the time they talk to you, and then jeer behind your back. I know your tongue and your fists, too. One is as blunt as the other; I have run into both in times past, and while I don't fear either, I respect both.”

“Well, just what is wrong? If you'll tell me, perhaps we can settle the difficulty.” My voice was stilted, for the one thing I cannot stand is to be complimented to my face.

Braithwaite colored a trifle, but plunged into his story. It was plain to be seen that he had learned to expect ridicule. “Tomorrow is— is the first of October,” he began.

“Yes,” I encouraged, unimpressed as yet. “My father died suddenly on the fourth of October, five years ago. Four years ago Tim— my eldest brother— died; that was on the eighteenth. Three years ago Jesse— you knew him— met a sudden and peculiar death on the thirteenth of October. Then for a year no one lived in Braithwaite Grange, and there were no deaths in our family. Last year the servants stayed; I packed up and came down to the McAlpin. Esther Stearns—she was an old lady who had been my mother's maid for twenty years, and we had kept her because she had become a sort of fixture— died suddenly and mysteriously on the twenty- seventh of October. Now there is not a servant left; they won't stay in the house, and I cannot say that I blame them. I have come down to you because I know that you will know what to do. Max Morton said—”

THE explanation of Braithwaite's visit flashed across my mind as the big chap before me stopped suddenly and bit his lip. I felt myself growing hot about the ears and under the collar, an unfortunate habit of mine when anything displeases me mightily. “What did Max tell you?” I asked, glaring savagely at my caller.

Braithwaite shifted uncomfortably. “Not much of anything,” he admitted.

“He was as mysterious as a sphinx— said that you could put me in touch with a man who could clear up my difficulties if anyone could. I suppose he meant a detective, though what good that would do is beyond me, for I have employed the very best men in this country and England already. Being at my wits' end, I thought to come down here and stay on your hospitality, and then, if you—”

“Did Max tell you who this man is?”

“No; I couldn't pry anything more out of him with a crowbar. In fact, he said that he was violating a confidence even in mentioning you.”

“He was,” I said tersely. “Not that I really care so very much, but this chap once did a favor for Max and myself that we are repaying poorly when we disobey that simple request of his.”

“Well—” Braithwaite looked puzzled. “Do you think it would do me any good to consult this secretive friend of yours? Is it worth while to bother him?”

“He isn't what you'd call a friend,” I said slowly. “He isn't a public investigator, either. He is a sort of super-detective whom a few chiefs of police and big business men call on for solving their most tangled problems. Is this trouble of yours really worth his while?”

Braithwaite regarded me soberly. “So far as I am concerned it is all-important. The servants— and I, too, I must confess— call this something which hangs over our house 'The October Blight.' I am convinced that it is going to get me sometime if I don't get it first.” His voice held conviction.

“Has it occurred to you to sell Braithwaite Grange?” I queried, almost sarcastically.

The man before me straightened perceptibly. “Yes!” he snapped. “But I have had health experts of all kinds out to examine the place. They have gone over it from top to bottom and declare that everything is in superb condition; there isn't a healthier country home in New York State! If I am going to admit that there is something wrong, don't you think it my duty to find out just what that something is? If it is supernatural or of human agency, will the mere fact of moving separate it from me? Anyway, I have run away enough now. If I could find some way of fighting, I'd— I'd—”

“I must ask you to step down to the street while I phone,” I interrupted. Braithwaite started to obey with alacrity.

“Wait! I must also ask your pledge that you will not try to find out anything more about J. M. than he chooses to tell you; that you never will mention your meeting with him.”

Braithwaite raised his right hand. “I promise!” he said quietly.

“All right. Now if you'll go, I'll see if he'll take you on.”

OVER the wire I explained the matter just as it had been told to me, and dwelt upon the fact that my caller did not know anything of Masters' identity. “You can trust Crosby Braithwaite,” I concluded. “There isn't a yellow atom in him. I've known him for years, and I am sure that you will find him satisfactory and his case worthy of your talent.”

The man at the other end of the wire grumbled a little, but acquiesced. “So long as this is not a habit, Hoffman,” he said, “I don't mind obliging. Has he had any others on the case?”

“Yes, so he says. I believe he has employed several, some from this country and some from England.”

“Hm! Sounds like coincidence. Well, I'll be up.” The receiver clacked the close of our connection. I ran to the window, threw up the sash, and signaled to Braithwaite below.

“Will he come?” inquired the latter breathlessly, bursting in. He had run up the three flights, without waiting for the elevator.

“Yes, in five or ten minutes,” I replied. I did not find it necessary to explain to my caller that the short delay would be something in the nature of camouflage, since Jigger Masters occupied the third-floor apartment at the north end of the same building in which we then were sitting. “I can only repeat my previous warning,” I went on seriously. “Don't be too curious about this man, because keeping his identity and personality from the public knowledge is a life-and-death matter with him!”

Crosby nodded solemnly and sat down, attempting to achieve composure. His attitude was strained, however, and I knew that doubts were beginning to assail him. I had felt just the same way the first time I ever met Masters, for Morton had been even more finicky than I in laying our case before Masters.

“Do you think—” began Braithwaite; but he did not finish. I saw his eyes widen as they gazed past me at the door, and I knew that Masters had entered.

It always had been a puzzle to me how the man had succeeded in keeping so much to himself, for no one who encountered him on serious business ever could forget him. Besides his extraordinary height and leanness, he had an air of dignity and capability most impressive. I knew just how he would appear, but I turned my head instinctively.

MASTERS stood in the hall just at the opening of my studio, with his long arms crossed behind him, hands clasping his elbows. He wore a plain blue serge suit, high collar and blue bow tie. His chin, broad but curiously pointed, rested over the edge of his collar in such a way as to reduce, almost to invisibility, what I knew to be a long, homely neck. He was clean-shaven, except for his upper lip. This, as I found out later, he fondly imagined to carry a mustache— his only foible— but the few scraggly black hairs only succeeded in giving the broad lip a smudged appearance.

I arose deferentially. There was nothing of pose in this, for at that time I knew him only well enough to respect him; the liberties I took later were due to steadily increasing familiarity.

“Mr. Masters, this is my old friend, Mr. Crosby Braithwaite,” I began. Masters strode across the room so quickly that it startled me, and Crosby told me afterward that the handshake had so taken him off his guard that his right hand was numb for a half-hour afterward.

“Glad to meet you, indeed!” rumbled Masters, the voice seeming to start very naturally from the depths of his great chest. “Sit down!”

Braithwaite started to speak, muttered a rather confused acknowledgment, then obeyed. To my relief, Jigger Masters started in immediately with Crosby's problem, evidently crediting my estimate of my friend.

“As I understand it,” he said, slapping back a lock of his thick black hair from his forehead with a sweep of his long, knotted fingers, “your father, Anson Braithwaite, and two of your brothers met similar and peculiar deaths while living at your country home?”

“Yes,” answered Braithwaite quickly, “and Esther Stearns also. She was a servant— not related in any way, you understand.”

Masters straightened a little at this, and I could see that this statement had collided with some forming assumption in his brain.“Not a relative, eh?” he said reflectively.

“No sir.”

“Tell me all you can about the manner of death of all these people. Were the cases in any way similar?”

“No one else beside the servants and myself can see any connection.” Crosby's tone was pinged with a sarcasm so unlike him that I could imagine what he must have been through with the other detectives whom he had employed to handle the case.

“Father,” he continued, “was quite a strict old Puritan, so far as his personal life was concerned. I guess he wasn't as scrupulous in business, but that doesn't matter to us. The point is that he had every expectation of living to be a hundred; instead of that, he dropped off at sixty-two.”

“How did he die?”

Braithwaite shrugged his shoulders. “No one knew much of anything about it. Even the inquest didn't clear up the situation. You see, Dad used to get up at five-thirty every morning, drink a cup of coffee, and then go out and play nine holes of golf. He'd return in time to have breakfast with the rest of us. On that morning, Collins— he used to make the coffee— said that Dad complained of feeling stuffy and peculiar. He had said something about the house not being well ventilated, but that was nonsense, of course, because Dad had three windows in his bedchamber, and these always were open at night.”

Masters nodded slightly. “It is certain, I suppose,” he remarked, “that these windowswere open on that night?”

“Oh yes. Dad was something of a crank on the subject of fresh air. It would be hard to imagine anyone climbing in through them, however, for copper-wire screens still were locked in place in the morning. You see the flies get rather pesky up there about the first of October, so we always keep the screens on until snow falls.”

I was watching Masters closely, and saw a blank look come into his eyes. For all the world it seemed as if he had suddenly lost all interest in the details of the case, but from what I learned of him afterward, knew that this simply was a symptom of concentration.

Crosby looked at him doubtfully, but kept on with his story. “That's about all, so far as Father was concerned. He didn't show up for breakfast, so I went out to call him. I found him beside the fifth tee, all doubled up and dead! His ball was all ready for a drive, and his driver lay beside him, so whatever it was that struck him must have come suddenly.”

“Was his mouth open?” The question came from Masters like a flash off lightning from a cloud, and it took Crosby unawares.

“Why— yes— I don't know,” he stammered. “Dad's face was bluish and convulsed— I rather think his mouth was open, though I couldn't swear to it now.”

“Where were his hands?”

“Clutching at his chest and stomach.” Crosby shuddered. “Oh, he looked terrible!”

“Who examined him?”

“Dr. Watry, our old physician, and then the coroner. Both were puzzled, but Watry seemed to think heart failure the cause, and after examining Dad's stomach the coroner gave that as his decision.”

“HEART failure?” Masters' tone held a hint of sarcasm. “Everyone dies of that dread disease, I'm afraid. What made his heart fail? Did they state?”

“No. I think that they were a little loath to go into the matter as thoroughly as a city inquest would have done.” Crosby smiled grimly. “You see, we lived in what is practically a rural community, and whatever a Braithwaite has done in the past has been considered au fait— even when it comes to dying mysteriously.”

Masters frowned. “Well, how about the others? Did they all die playing golf?”

“No, and it's this part that— well, that makes my story seem a trifle absurd to most people. Both of my brothers seemed to have met accidents, but—”

“Yes?”

“I never will believe it!” Crosby plunged on with something like desperation. “Even the detectives I employed ended up by assuring me that there was nothing in my suspicions. You see, Tim got up on the morning of the eighteenth of October, and for no particular reason ran out the roadster, and made off hell-bent-for-election up the pike toward Mowrey. He was found about noon by a party on the road. His car had crashed into a telephone pole, and he was lying there dead; his skull was fractured. The reason I never could swallow it all was that Tim was a good and a careful driver, and besides,his face looked bluish, just the way Dad's had looked!”

“Might have been caused by the rupture of blood vessels,” commented Masters.

“Yes, I suppose so.” Braithwaite's voice was heavy with disappointment. “I took the doctor's say-so then.”

“Dr. Watry?”

“Yes. Why, do you suspect him?” Masters shook his head indifferently.

“No,” he said, “I've run across Watry before— that is, if it's Charles Watry of Phelps.”

“It is.”

“And I just am disappointed; I don't credit him with much intelligence. Go on.”

“Well—” Braithwaite hesitated.

“Hang it, Masters,” he broke out impetuously, “I hope you're not just going to tell me that my family is a victim of coincidences, because I never will believe that as long as I live!”

I shivered a little, for I feared that Masters might take offense at this, but he did not. Instead a slight smile curved his mouth. “No, Mr. Braithwaite,” he answered with a slight drawl, “I shall not tell you that unless I can make you believe it too!”

“Well, then—”

“Call your car,” interrupted Masters. “I presume you have one in town with you?”

“Yes, at the McAlpin garage.” Crosby stepped to the phone and gave the necessary orders.

“Now, while it's coming, tell me about your other brother and the servant.”

Crosby resumed his seat with alacrity; I could see that the prospect of action pleased him.

“The only striking difference in the death of Jesse that I have been able to see,” he began, sobering immediately, “is that he died up at Mangan Hills in the evening instead of the morning. He had gone up to a town dance with Esther Duntley, to whom he was engaged. It was about eight-thirty in the evening—the dance had just started—when he complained of feeling sick, left Esther and went outside, and was found dying there about twenty minutes later. He was unconscious when help reached him, and he never came to at all. His case seemed a little like poisoning, for he was terribly convulsed; but after another inquest they called it apoplexy, for they could find no traces of poison. Then people began talking about a 'disease that ran in our family.'”

“Did his face get bluish?”

“Yes, just the same as Dad's and Tim's. That's what made me connect them one with another.”

“I think that your car is outside, Crosby,” I interrupted.

“Yes, it is,” he answered, glancing down. “We'll just run out,” directed Masters. “You can tell me about the servant on the way out.”

Crosby led the way down and gave crisp orders to his driver. Then the three of us climbed in the tonneau and were off.

“Esther Stearns' case was really not remarkable in itself,” Crosby continued, after we had wormed our way out of the heavy traffic. “She was over seventy years of age and feeble; in the ordinary course of events we would have expected her to pass on in a year or two, anyway. If she had died any time except in the month of October—” Crosby paused and shook his head.

“WHAT were the circumstances?” The baffling dullness had crept into Masters' eyes again, but Braithwaite was too much aroused now to notice.

“Simple, very simple!” he retorted, with a tinge of sarcasm. “Like all the rest, natural causes. Everyone but those confounded superstitious servants and myself think she died of plain, unadulterated old age. I don't, though! She had the same room hat Tim occupied the night before he died.”

“Hm!” Masters' eyebrows shot up. “May I ask if that was the same room which your father and brother also slept in?”

“No. Those have been unused ever since.” A long silence ensued in which I gave up the case for the time being, and watched the scenery.

“Tell me about your servants,” Masters finally broke in. “Have you had the same set all the time?”

“No, confound them!” answered Crosby angrily. “Servants are the dickens of a problem out in the country! We haven't had a single one, except Esther Stearns, more than eight or nine months. They all get lonesome for the city. The last I had quit in a body after Esther died; they said the house was haunted, and that some one would have to die every October! There are none out there now.”

“Well, how about visitors? Do you have many regular visitors? I mean those who have been coming to see you for years.”

Braithwaite considered a moment. “Yes, several,” he answered. “We have a great many cousins, aunts and uncles who make it their habit to drop in on us once or twice a year. You see, it's a regular summer resort for them; we always have kept a sort of an open house, so whenever a family of our relatives decided on a week in the country, all they had to do was to bring their effects right out.”

“Do they usually come any particular times?”

“Oh yes, the Caldwells usually come in July and spend their time fishing over at Lake Chatonki; Cousin Kate and Cousin Eleanor come in for Christmas and New Year's, and sometimes the Ramsgates from Ohio.”

“Does anyone come regularly in August?”

“Yes. Thomas Braithwaite, Dad's brother, usually spends his vacation with his wife at Braithwaite Grange during August. He hasn't been out this year because no one has been there.”

“Anyone else elect August or September?”

“Well, Cousin Hal drops around once in a while in September, but I haven't encouraged him very much because he's poor company— a soured individual.”

THE car turned suddenly into the wide portals of Braithwaite Grange. I recognized the place though I had seen it but once before. The grounds, ill-kept now, still showed traces of the magnificent care the bulging Braithwaite pocketbook had been able to give them. The house, a huge, rambling, rough log bungalow, built in the form of a Greek cross, was as evidently uncared for, yet all had an open-handed look of generous hospitality.

Crosby led the way in, and after carrying in a little kindling, lighted a fire in the big hearth. Masters was not in the mood for sitting down; as soon as Crosby arose, the detective nodded to him.

“Let me have a small hatchet and show me the three rooms that have been occupied by your father, brothers and Esther Stearns,” he said. “While I am looking around, you and Hoffman sit in there and get warm. I'll call you if I need you.”

Crosby bustled out and procured the required article, handed it over, and then led the way back, pointing out the rooms as he did so. I had not been invited, so I remained beside the fire. In a moment Crosby rejoined me. “Unsociable devil, isn't he?” whispered the latter, seating himself beside me.

For twenty minutes we listened to the taptap-tap of Masters' hatchet—he was using the hammer part of the head. Then came a long silence, and I felt myself getting nervous. Crosby's face was drawn and white also; neither of us had the faintest idea of what Masters expected to find, yet both of us knew the importance of the detective's investigation.

The sudden impacts of Masters' heavy strides made us sit up quickly, but it was only to see him disappear into one of the other rooms. The tapping was repeated; this time it was of short duration. Then he stepped out and repeated the performance in the third and last chamber.

This time he returned to the living-room, and Crosby and I rose anxiously to meet him.

“Do you think we are likely to have a heavy frost tomorrow night?” he questioned affably, turning his back to the fire, and eyeing the distraught Braithwaite seriously.

“I haven't an idea! Why, what difference does it make?” cried Crosby. “Have you found out anything?”

“Enough to hang a regiment!” retorted Masters calmly. “But how about the frost?” He turned to me.

“We have a little every night now,” I ventured.

“Well, how near is the closest observatory?”

“Down at Mangan Hills,” snapped Crosby with what I deemed pardonable irritation.

“WELL, gentlemen?” Masters dropped his mask and sat down on the bench before us, rubbing his long fingers together. “I am not chaffing you. If you will allow me to direct your actions for the next day or two, I think we can put a pinch of salt on the tail of this October ghost, or whatever you call it. Don't bother me to explain now; all I can tell you is that the same agency probably killed all four of the people who died here, and that there was nothing supernatural about it.”

“Well, what shall we do?” Crosby's eyes were wide now, but there was a grim look of anticipation there also.

Masters turned quickly to him. “You telephone to those relatives who usually visit you in August and September. Tell them you are getting fixed up here now and that you would like to have them run down any time they found convenient. Mention the fact that the weather is getting crisp, and that if they don't mind breaking the law a little, they might rouse a few partridges.”

“But I have no servants here!”

“Yes, you have— two of them!” Masters indicated himself and me with a sweep of his hand. “I'll get a third, a woman I know and can depend upon who will cook the meals.”

Crosby's face lighted up with pleasure, and he made for the telephone.

“While he's doing that, you run down to Mangan Hills observatory and find out whether by any happy chance there is a cold wave coming within a day or two, and also get the temperature records hour by hour, for all the days in each October for the past five years.”

I bowed my complete understanding of the orders if not of the reasons for them, and started for Crosby's car.

“Get back as quickly as possible,” admonished Masters. “We're servants when anyone arrives, you understand.”

I need dwell little upon my trip to Mangan Hills. Suffice it to say that I obtained the desired records and returned in time to put on a greasy old dress-suit that Crosby had unearthed from some part of the wardrobe of his old staff of servants.

“You're to be door-man, Masters says,” Crosby informed me. “You can put on all the dog you wish.”

“Thanks!” I said dryly. “What is Masters going to do?”

“He has elected himself gardener. I believe he is out now with an old ladder, trimming the vines. He has a Mrs. Jessup coming up here in an hour. She's going to cook our meals; I've ordered everything I could think of from the grocery.”

“BUT how about our visitors?”

Crosby hesitated. “I don't like to cast any reflections on your friend, and I am willing to play this string out the way he says, but I can't see for the life of me why he wants Uncle Tom and Cousin Hal out here! He surely can't suspect either of them of the murders. Why, neither of them were within ten miles of this place within two weeks of the time when any one of the affairs happened.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “If we knew more about what he did with that hatchet, we could tell better,” I remarked. “Don't imagine, though, for one instant, that J. M. is wasting his time or ours. There'll be music in the air just about as quickly as you can say 'Jack Robinson!' after he gets the stage set to his satisfaction.”

Mrs. Jessup arrived on the three-twelve train and was delivered at Braithwaite Grange by the station bus fifteen minutes later. I saw the gardener go down to meet her and knew that Masters was giving her full instructions.

They must have been simple, for the woman, a rather sharp-featured but solid woman of forty or thereabouts, went immediately to the kitchen and began preparations for dinner just as though she had been in the household a year.

When Crosby drove up with the three visitors, I must admit that I mentally accused, judged and hanged Hal Marquis and acquitted Tom Braithwaite and his wife, all while the three were removing their wraps. Marquis was a villainous, dissipated-appearing youth, with blotchy pimples on his face and a stoop to his shoulders that spoke loudly of hours spent over card and billiard tables, while Tom Braithwaite was enough like Crosby in appearance so that no one ever would suspect him of a meanness. His wife was not so attractive; she had a snippiness of manner that seemed small when compared to the easy-going generosity of the Braithwaites, but I dismissed her as not mattering much one way or the other.

Crosby, acting on instructions, took the three to their rooms. On the way he showed them the room he intended to occupy, expatiating long about a set of antlers above his bed which he had acquired since seeing them. He dropped many dark hints of what he intended to do in getting a buck deer when the weather grew crisper. “You know, they come in even this close to town to feed on the rutabaga patches,” he said. “If anyone would like to come out with me tonight and take a chance with the law—”

“I would!” exclaimed Hal.

“I would too,” said Tom Braithwaite regretfully, “except that Sal and I have to hurry back right after dinner. We're catching the nine-four train; you see, I have some business appointments that I must see to very early tomorrow morning.”

CROSBY protested, explaining volubly that he was sure there would be a heavy frost that night, and that was an excellent time to go after deer, but the Braithwaites were firm.

“No, Crosby dear, we'll be out again sometime this winter,” said the snippy one. “You really aren't very well settled yet, anyway. We just came out because we are so afraid that awful October curse might get you, and then we'd never see you again.”

I saw the close-set black eyes bore into Crosby with an expression that was far from either affection or sympathy. At that moment Mrs. Braithwaite's lean face seemed cast in hard lines like the profile of a vulture. I revised my mental disposal of her somewhat.

Crosby laughed heartily, not noticing. “It will never get me!” he boasted. “I'm not afraid of any ghost that walks!” With that the company dispersed to dress for dinner.

I kept an eye on Masters, not knowing what he would wish me to do; and sure enough, a moment later he came into the kitchen, wiping his hands, and dropped a slip of paper on the table beside me. “Keep out of sight but see if anyone goes into Crosby's room after he leaves,” it read.

I tiptoed to the back hall and waited there patiently until Crosby, Hal and Mrs. Braithwaite had gone into the dining-room. I could hear all footsteps, and by peering around the casement I could see well, though exposing myself to detection if not particularly careful.

There was not long to wait. The moment that the three had closed the sliding doors of the dining-room behind them, I heard a stealthy step. Chancing being seen, I bobbed my head around in time to see Tom Braithwaite disappearing into the room Crosby had just left. I did not see details clearly, but he seemed to be carrying a package, part of which looked like a bottle.

Without waiting an instant, I stepped back and reported the intrusion to Masters. He nodded jerkily and motioned to me to follow.

Tiptoeing as quietly as two cats, we crept up to the half-closed door of Crosby's room. Just the second we arrived, Braithwaite emerged. I needed no tip from Masters; the man was our “meat.”

MASTERS and I hit him together and carried him backward through the doorway, crashing to the floor. Then ensued a kicking, scrambling fight, which was not nearly as unequal as it might appear, because of the cramped quarters.

Braithwaite writhed about on the floor and succeeded in dislodging Masters. I had a solid grip on his legs like a football tackler delights to secure, but at that moment I saw Braithwaite's revolver come out. As quickly as I could, I deserted my hold and seized his wrist. Masters jumped back and sat on his head while I wrested the weapon out of his grasp and hit him on the head with the butt. This made Braithwaite go limp, and I stood up to allow Masters to adjust the bracelets.

At that moment a screaming woman burst through the door. I scarcely realized she was Mrs. Braithwaite, however; all I could see was the nickel-plated revolver she leveled at Masters. I seized a brass smoking-stand which had fallen over in the struggle, and lunged wildly at the revolver. As luck would have it, this impromptu weapon struck her wrist just as she pulled the trigger, and the bullet crashed into the glass mirror on Crosby's chiffonier. Before she had time to fire again, I took the revolver away, and held her wrists behind her in such a way that she could not move. Vixen-like she dug her fingernails deep into my left hand.

She changed her tactics as soon as she realized her inability to do serious harm, and screamed for help. Crosby appeared in the doorway with Hal, white-faced, and she appealed to him to kill us immediately for insulting her and her husband.

Hal moved forward as if to comply, but Crosby, pale as his cousin, interposed. “This is all cooked up, Hal,” he said, “so keep out of it.”

“Cooked up, eh?” shrilled Mrs. Braithwaite, approaching what I presume was a hysteria of hate and terror. “I should say it is! Ha! Ha! Fine sort of hospitality I call it! Invite us here and then have us manhandled by the servants! Oh, we'll have satisfaction for it!”

“Shut up, Sal!” commanded Braithwaite gruffly. He had come to consciousness quickly, but had given up all idea of resistance; Masters was busy coiling a rope about his ankles. When this was finished he turned to me. I know he did not intend to tie his other prisoner the same way, for Masters always was chivalrous; but at that moment he received a vicious kick from the woman, so he had to put bonds on Mrs. Braithwaite also, despite her screaming and anathema.

“NOW help me here, Bert,” directed Masters, indicating our captives' feet. I seized Braithwaite's bound legs, and then helped Masters carry him over and place him on the bed. His wife was also placed beside him; this operation stilled all her cries. I saw ghastly terror replace all the pseudo anger on her unpleasant countenance.

“Come in and have chairs,” invited Masters pleasantly, motioning to Hal and Crosby. He took a seat himself as did I. “Don't get near the bed; there is a real reason to keep away.” We all pushed back to the opposite walls at this.

“Now I am sure that we are all ready for a very pleasant little party,” he continued. “The gardener is conducting it. First on the program will be the reading of the report of the United States Weather Observatory at Mangan Hills.” He drew out the report I had brought. “A severe frost may be expected this evening, with a possibility of light snow flurries toward morning. North to northwest winds.”

Tom Braithwaite turned his head in our direction. “Well, what is it all about?” he queried in the tone of a man who is rapidly getting intolerant. “Explain this mummery; I am sure I have had all I want of it. I pretty nearly peppered your gardener, thinking he was a burglar. Now you have me here, and you are reading weather reports to me! At least let my wife up; you can keep me here if you want to, but she is nervous.”

“I noticed that!” commented Masters dryly, glancing at the nickel-plated revolver which now lay on the table. “However, I think she had better stay with you through this little program. You can call it off any time you wish, though. I have a little paper here that deals with some very unpleasant things which happened during the past five years; if both of you wish to sign it, I won't insist upon your remaining on that bed all night.”

“All night!” Both of the captives shuddered, and their eyes turned upward to the wall above. I would have pitied the woman except for her evident guilt—and my smarting left hand.

“Yes, I have reason to believe that neither of you would care much to remain just as you are many hours— you know, it's going to freeze hard tonight!”

“He's got us, Tom! He's got us!” broke in Mrs. Braithwaite hysterically.

“Shut up, you fool!” the man interrupted savagely. “I don't know what the devil you are talking about, sir,” he went on rapidly, turning to Masters, “but if you don't let us up and in a hurry—”

Masters held up his hand. “You have the choice of death by means of your own devilish contrivance or according to the usual processes of the law. Take your choice!”

A gasp escaped Crosby, but other than that and the heavy breathing of the two on the bed, no other sound broke the silence for a full minute. Then Masters arose and walked quietly to the window. “The thermometer says that it is now thirty degrees above zero.”

A scream answered him. Mrs. Braithwaite had turned and was facing us. “I'll confess!” she cried, her voice quivering with terror. “Take me away quick! Move the bed!”

MASTERS quickly unfolded a paper he had been holding in his hand, uncapped a fountain pen, and then, releasing one of Mrs. Braithwaite's arms, held it over for her to sign. “This is a confession of the murders of three of the Braithwaite family and one servant,” he said solemnly. Mrs. Braithwaite seized the pen and scratched her name rapidly on the paper.

“Curse you, Sal!” groaned the man beside her, “you are sending us to the gallows!”

“You did it! You did it!” sobbed the woman in answer.

“Will you sign it now?” queried Masters calmly, addressing Braithwaite.

“I suppose I might as well,” the latter answered heavily, and complied. Masters handed the paper to Crosby Braithwaite, jerked out the bed from the outside wall, and then reaching up slightly above his head, pried out what seemed to be a solid piece of log from its place. Reaching his hand into the space made, he drew out a flask which contained a little white powder and metal scrapings, and then followed it with an ordinary teacup and a flask of yellow liquid which seemed to have been set above the flask in the teacup. “It hadn't started to freeze yet,” commented Masters.

“What's that?” asked Crosby, eyeing the strange apparatus with horror.

“That's your 'October Blight,'“ replied Masters grimly. “Nothing in the world but arsine!”

“What is arsine?” I asked, pardonably curious.

“The most deadly gas in the world. It's the ghastly stuff the Germans used at Armentieres. Its formula is simply AsH3; one good whiff of it kills a man in from six hours to six days, depending on the size of the whiff and the man's constitution. There is no known antidote.” Masters turned suddenly to his captive. “Where'd you get the idea?” he asked. “Was the Lefevre Can Company really shipping through Sweden all of the time?”

“None of your business!” growled Braithwaite savagely through his set teeth.

“Oh, but it is my business!” retorted Masters. “I think that they'll bear investigating. When they hear that their sales-manager has been using arsine— yes, I think we can make them come through!”

HE turned and stepped to the door-way of the room. “You just see that nothing happens that might aid these people to escape, Mr. Hal,” he said to the young chap who had been sitting like one stupefied, gazing in wide-eyed horror at the apparatus Masters held carelessly in his hands. The detective indicated the little revolver which had belonged to Mrs. Braithwaite, and Hal seized this feverishly.

“Now you call up the station at Mangan Hills and have a wagon call for our guests, Crosby,” directed Masters. Crosby hastened to comply, while Masters and I walked into the front of the house again.

“I guess I have you to thank, Bert,” said Masters in a low tone. “To tell the truth I hadn't counted on Mrs. Braithwaite; I thought it was the job of her devil of a husband alone. I admire your aim with the ash-stand; if you had missed, I guess we both would be wearing wings now. Would you—” He colored a trifle, and I waited, astounded, for what might be coming. I had never seen Masters in the least embarrassed before.

“Would you care, once in a while to— to come along, when I have something extraordinary on hand? I know— if you care about compensation—”

“Compensation be damned!” I exclaimed with delight. “Nothing would suit me better!”

Crosby Braithwaite burst in just then, serious of face but with a set to his jaw that meant no mercy for his scheming relatives. “The devils!” he exclaimed in a low tone. “I'll have the wagon here in ten minutes. I hope they get the chair. Lord! That's too good for them!”

“Yes, it is,” I concurred. “But tell me how you did it, Mr. Masters!” asked Crosby. “How on earth did you tumble to that hellish contrivance? I had LePape and Sensibaugh of the Pinkertons, and Jeremy Tunbull from England all on the case, and they all thought me crazy. How did you do it?”

Masters smiled slowly. “Luck— and the law of averages; that's all!” he said. “You see, about a year ago, the Government was investigating the Germans' source of supply in one peculiar type of ammunition— I guess it's no particular breach of confidence to say that the British prompted the investigation, and that the ammunition in question was a type of gas bomb which we all knew the Germans couldn't make themselves— the arsine bomb. The reason why they could not make it was because there isn't enough arsenic in all Germany to kill a regiment; it simply had to come from the mines over here. Well, we suspected a few of the shell-making companies in New York, but we never fastened it on them. I got pretty well acquainted with the heads of the concerns, however, so after I had been thinking of this case for a moment, the coincidence in names furnished me with a clue.”

“BUT how— I don't understand how the law of averages came in,” said Crosby slowly. “Well, I can't understand how LePape failed to get it,” returned Masters, smiling. “If one person in a house dies peculiarly— has his face turn blue and seeks the outside air, and goes off in convulsions— natural causes might possibly get the blame; that is, of course, always supposing the natural cause is established. When two do it very similarly, it looks like more than nasty coincidence; in fact, I'd call the odds at least two to one against that probability. When four people in the same house die that way, however, I give up all ideas of coincidence. The odds against it mount into the hundreds to one.

“The only thing left to look for are the motive and the method employed. The motive was easy to find; your family possesses three or four millions, and that is enough ever to make the host of your poor relations quite comfortable.

“The method was harder. It was inconceivable that anyone could enter the house and administer any sort of poison at night; the fact that you had changed servants often eliminated them from consideration. That the deed had been done at night was fairly simple; all except Esther Stearns had sought the air, and she, being feeble, might easily have tried and failed to rise from bed, even. Your father and one brother had complained of feeling stuffy; your other brother felt the same symptoms come on later in the day.

“Now what kind of poison and what kind of apparatus could bring about such a result? The stuffy feelings pointed directly at gas. What kind of gas, then, would kill but not until some time after inhaling? There is practically only one answer— arsine. One good whiff of this horrible agent is fatal, and it does not kill until six hours, at least, after taking— that is, unless the person happens to be in a very weak condition. Sometimes it takes as long as six days. You see, that accounted for the game of golf, the automobile accident and the desire of your last brother to get out into the air when he was dancing.

“I remembered then that Tom Braithwaite, the regular August visitor you mentioned, had been one of the men in that can company case. Arsine! The connection was almost too obvious!

“Then only remained the apparatus used and the manner of its placing. Clockwork first occurred to me, but I dismissed it even before we arrived out here; clocks won't run from August to October without stopping.

“But why had it all happened in October? I could think of no reason at all unless the first frosts had something to do with it. That is why I sent for the weather reports. During each of the years of the murders,the fatal nights were the nights of the first severe frosts!”

“My God!” ejaculated Crosby. “Well, the rest was simple. I knew that the expansion of some fluid must have been the 'alarm clock' I was looking for, and so it was. The little beaker with sulphuric acid was balanced in the teacup in such a way that the contents, when the water in the cup froze, were splashed into the little flask. The flask contained just a very little pure arsenic and zinc shavings. This generated arsine gas for about five minutes— more than enough to kill fifty men. Because the gas is so heavy, it filtered out through tiny crevices and fell down to the bed below. The sleeper inhaled it without even knowing that he had been poisoned, and then the gas crept along the floor until it was diffused and gone. I knew that there must be a place for it in the outside wall above the bed; the rough log walls made that part of it very easy for your estimable uncle. There is one of those little cupboards of death in each of the three chambers.

“I had you invite these people out because I knew they would try to get rid of you— the only remaining obstacle— just as quickly as they could. Your cousin Hal is no criminal; he is just rather simple. Well, that's about all. I guess.”

“And there comes the Mangan Hills Black Maria for the murderers, I believe,” I said, motioning at an official wagon, swinging in on the gravel.

___________________________

10: "General Utility"

C Ranger Gull (Guy Thorne)

Wagga Wagga Express (NSW) 12 Oct 1901

IN ALL THE COMPANY there was no person of less importance than Miss Flood. She was the target for everyone's wit. From the baggage man to the leading lady, it was the custom to vent all displeasure, to pour the vials of every passing fit of temper upon the silent and uncomplaining lady whose duties in the company were effectively summed up under the name of 'General Utility.'

It had begun upon the voyage out to Africa, where the 'Old Brigade'  company were to play in Johannesburg and various other large South African towns. Very few of the company had met before, and it was only after the first week of close confinement on the boat that the members began to sum one another up, and to form mental estimates of one another's qualities.  With a singular unanimity each actor and actress regarded Miss Flood as a mere figure of fun. They rallied her at dinner, made loud puns upon her name. and never lost an opportunity of holding her up to the ridicule of the other passengers.

It was not very difficult to understand, perhaps. Miss Flood was a shortish, rather thick-set woman of some five-and-thirty years of age. Her face was neither engaging nor the reverse, but resembled nothing so much as a serviceable and somewhat elderly mask. In fact, she was entirely without distillation or personality. It was a mystery to everyone how she had ever been engaged for the tour, for it was difficult to see an actress in her in any shape or form.

As the big grey boat trod its steady way over the waters, and when the Southern Cross jewelled the sky, the members of the company began to treat the general utility lady with a little more kindness. She was extremely useful, and always ready to do anything for anybody.

'Old Flood,' as Mr. Allan Poore, the young leading man would call her, was no longer treated in an ill-natured way. They began to talk to her with a kind of good-natured contempt, as one might, deal with an inferior intelligence, too humble to invite scorn. Miss Harpour, the young and pretty heroine of the 'Old Brigade.' found Miss Flood was an excellent worker with her needle— it was so with all of them.

The tour, which was only moderately successful, came to an end in Johannesburg, where the company remained for several weeks. The place was in a great ferment of excitement, war was in the air, and theatrical business by no means good. The 'Old Brigade' played to almost empty houses night after night. Day by day the atmosphere began to thicken, and the uneasy feeling in the air became almost a panic.

One evening, after the performance was over at the theatre, the storm burst. The members of the company were still in their dressing-rooms, changing into ordinary attire, when the dresser's boy came running down the passage at top speed and in great excitement. He waved an evening paper which announced in bold and startling letters that war had begun.

The news caused a great commotion. The players gathered together on the empty stage to discuss the alarming situation. The scene which occupied the stage, and which had been already reset for the morrow's performance, represented a placid and smiling English landscape, wooded, and with swelling hills in the distance. A country church nestled among the trees. The few lights which still remained at the wings and overhead among the 'floats,' showed the landscape, like a grotesque and ironical parody, to those forlorn and exiled people. They stood together in a close group in the middle of the stage, as if for companionship, talking over this imminent peril in hurried undertones. Pretty Ethel Harpour began to sob with a naturalness that she had never achieved upon the boards.

A small fat man bustled over the stage towards them. It was Mr. Whyte, the manager. Everyone turned to him at once, and there was a chorus of inquiry.

'We must all clear out of this sharp!' said the little man, 'they won't let us stay. The station is crowded with people riding anyhow. We shall have to do the same. Each man must look after one of the ladies. Miss Harpour, if you'll get your things together— you can't take more than a handbag— I'll calI for you at the hotel in half-an-hour. I'm just going to find out what trains are going.'

He moved quickly away. They looked blankly at each other. The prospect did not seem cheering. Miss Harpour's sobs were a melancholy comment on the thoughts of all. As they stood there in indecision, they heard discordant cheering in the street outside. A great crowd of excited burghers was patrolling the city, cheering for the war and shouting insults against the English. There seemed something very menacing in the roar of voices, and the forlorn players looked wildly at each other as the sounds echoed in the big empty theatre. It emphasised their position in a vivid and immediate manner.

Suddenly Miss Flood pushed through the group, and walked quickly to the wings. An old , battered piano stood against the wall. The little insignificant woman sat down before it. With a crashing prelude she began to play 'God Save the Queen.'

The dear familiar notes pulled them up with a curious and almost mechanical precision. With one accord they burst into the song. 'Send her victorious,' rang through the deserted place. Actors are emotional people, but one can forgive every man there on that occasion if the tears ran down his cheeks. They were proud and not unhappy tears. It was good to be an Englishman after all.

Allan Poore went over to the piano.

'Dear old Flood,' he said, bending over the little woman, 'you've done just the right thing at the right moment. You've heartened us all up wonderfully.'

She looked up at him with tremulous eyes, full of gratitude and all her secret was in her face.

THE TERRIBLE mid-day sun beat down upon the veldt. The metals of the railway lines shone like white fire in the fierce, steady light. There seemed not a breath of air in the world. The track ran through a desolate, stony country, which offered no protection of any sort from the heat. There was but little vegetation, and no pleasant trees or yellow cornfields came to break the monotony of the landscape. Stone was everywhere, and every boulder and rock seemed to be giving out quivering rays of heat. The rocks were covered with basking lizards, the only living creatures who seemed satisfied and comfortable.

The train of refugees would have excited any decent traffic superintendent into an enormous scorn. The coaches seemed to have been coupled together almost anyhow. A row of large and comfortable first-class carriages were coupled up with two guards' vans, and the rest of the train was composed of open cattle and coal trucks. The engine was much overloaded, and the whole train moved very slowly. Both carriages and trucks were crowded with people, packed so tightly that it seemed that, to get another man into some of them, you would have to wedge him in with a crowbar.

In one of the open trucks stood Allan Poore and the general utility lady. The truck was so full of men, women and children, that there was no room to sit down. For hours they jolted their tortured way over the great stone kiln which the veldt had become. With the cruel sun beating down upon them, in most cases without water, they had stood thus for hours.

Three children died during the afternoon, overcome by the heat and cramped positions. Poore stood by Miss Flood, and occasionally said a kindly word to her, though conversation was difficult. He told her that he had been talking to a man who had informed him that a troop of irregular horse, mounted infantry, was being raised in Cape Town.

'I shall enlist in it when we arrive,' he said.

'Won't you go home with the others?' said Miss Flood.

'Not I. No, I'll see some fighting, some real life, before I go hack to the stage. I'm tired of play-acting. It's a man's life I mean to lead now. I shall be glad when I've the opportunity of making some Boer pay for what we're going through to-day.'

As he spoke, the train drew up with a jar of brakes. The people in the cattle trucks were thrown backwards and forwards like matches. One of the steam pipes in the engine had burst, and, so the officials announced, the breakage could not possibly be repaired in less than two hours.

Everyone got out of the trucks, glad of the opportunity to bring blood back to cramped limbs, and to feel that arms and legs were real and useful members of the body, and not mere encumbrances.

Miss Flood wandered away over the veldt by herself. She was thinking deeply. Without noticing how far she had gone she continued to walk further and further away from the railway line. Eventually she came to a great twenty-foot boulder, which overhung at one corner and made a fairly good shelter from the direct rays of the sun. Here, in the grateful shadow, she sat down and soon Nature imperiously insisted on her dues, and 'Old Flood' fell into a deep sleep.

The whistle of the train, summoning the wandering passengers, passed all unheeded by her. She heard nothing of its departure. Alone on the veldt, she slept the placid sleep of a child.

At Albrecht farm, 'General Utility' settled down into a hard and unlovely drudgery under the orders of a huge and evil-tempered Dutch woman. A farmer's wife had come across her in the evening, and had taken her to the homestead to serve as a kitchen-maid. Now and again, rumours of the progress of the war reached her. Occasionally Farmer Albrecht would send a message, and her task-mistress would fling the news of a British disaster at her. Sometimes, in her brief moments of solitude, she would take a photograph from her dress— the photograph of a young and handsome mail in the picturesque habit of Romeo— and gaze long and earnestly at it. She had, also, another simple little treasure. Poore had once given her a box of chocolates. She had preserved the lid, and it was a sacred relic to her.

That is all her history until one eventful evening.

Day followed day in one monotonous round of harsh words and wearing toil.

One evening the farmer and his son, together with some thirty Boers, rode up to the house. By great good fortune he had been sent on duty in his own immediate neighbourhood. In the evening General Utility had to serve these guests with food and drink. As she moved among the crowd of men who filled the great kitchen, she looked an absolutely insignificant little creature. No one even noticed her. She might have been a machine to wait on them. Suddenly, she heard something said in Dutch which sent her blood singing in her ears.

'How many are there?' asked the fanner of a man who had just entered the room.

'I crept up close to the camp and I could not count more than fourteen.'

'Good! And the officer, what rank is he?'

'He is only a sergeant-major. I heard two of the men who sat nearest to me mention it. Sergeant Poore, they called him.'

'Well, he will be Sergeant Something Else to-night. In about two hours more, when the moon is full, we will surround them, and finish them while they sleep. They are on the left bank of the river.'

'It is the safest way,' came from half-a-dozen of the men.

General Utility slipped out of the house, and stole away over the veldt. In the moonlight she seemed like some goblin of the rocks as she flitted towards the river bank. She drew nigh to the narrow ribbon of water. A fire was reflected in the stream, and she knew that she was in time to save the man she loved. Very slowly and cautiously she approached the encampment. A hedge of scrub formed a slight defence, and the spot had been carefully chosen for the cover afforded by the rock.

But the scouts were quite unaware that any of the enemy were in the neighbourhood. Only one man was on guard, and he was leaning on his rifle and gazing out into the lovely night in a dreamy, abstracted manner. Nothing was further from his thoughts than a night attack. The little party of troopers had been sent to make sketches and trace a route for the main body of their corps, which was now some fifty miles behind them. They had met no Boers, the farms were all occupied by women, who tilled the land and looked after the cattle. Everywhere the men had gone to the war.

Suddenly Private Wilkinson, who was of a poetic turn of mind, and suffused with a pleasing melancholy at the sight of the silver-washed veldt, was startled from his dream of home by the apparition of a small black figure coming rapidly, and yet almost noiselessly, towards him. He gasped in amazement, and mechanically lifted his rifle. A low note of warning broke from the woman, and he advanced a step towards her.

'Quick! quick!' she said; 'take me to Mr. Poore. The Boers are all up at Albrecht farm, and they are coming to shoot you all while you sleep. I am a servant at the farm, and I have been among them while they were planning it. Take me to Mr. Poore.'

The sentry gave a vigorous kick to sleeping comrade. The man awoke with a howl which roused the rest of the encampment. A horse plunged, and his feet clattered among the stones. In a moment the whole camp was alert and on the watch.

Poore, bronze to the eyes, and with the adornment of a great moustache, which had been impossible for him in his former calling, came striding down towards the entrance to the camp.

'What is the matter?' he called, and his mellow, pleasant voice thrilled through and through the little woman who had come to save him.

'How do you do, Mr. Poore?' said Miss Flood, extending a welcoming hand. 'Are you quite well?'

General Utility must be suspected of a trace of humour. She certainly, perhaps owing to her stage training, could not resist the dramatic opportunities of that moment.

'Old Flood!' gasped the young man, absolutely and utterly bewildered. 'Dear old Flood!' he repeated in an awed whisper. 'Why you're dead, aren't you? You fell out of the train, and what? why?—'

His voice ran down like a dock, and he stared at her with open mouth.

All the troopers crowded round.

'The Boers are just about to attack you,' said General Utility. 'I didn't fall out  of the train, Mr. Poore, I got lost, and a farmer's wife took me to be her servant. There are thirty Boers at the farm, and they have planned to take you by surprise. I got away and come to warn you.'

Poore turned abruptly from her. His voice issued sharp orders with a firm and confident ring which she had never heard in his actor days. As he moved about in the fire glow and moonlight she marked, with an overmastering agony of affection, the splendid poise of his figure. Resolutely she crushed down the love for him which was welling up in her heart. It was wonderful, like the sound of trumpets, to know she had saved him. Then he came to her.

'Come here,' he said. 'Look, here you will be quite safe from the bullets. These boulders and these forage sacks will protect you. We shall easily beat them off.'

A volley rang out into the night, and he leapt away from her.

ALL WAS soon over. The Boers, absolutely taken aback, soon rode off precipitately. Then Poore came to the shelter.

'Old Flood!' he said. 'Poor old General Utility!' He bent and kissed her with his eyes full of tears.

Miss Flood is at present resident at Cape Town, waiting for the war to end. And, on the third finger of her left hand, she wears a plain gold ring.

__________________

11: Cannibal Isle

Albert Richard Wetjen

1900-1948

Action Stories, June, 1941

IF “STINGER” SEAVE was a terror to his enemies he was sometimes no less a terror to his friends because of the unreasonable lengths he would at times go to serve them. It was just one human trait in the otherwise iron little man.

He loved Big Bill Gunther as he might have loved a son or brother. Between the two there were twenty years and more of such a friendship as is seldom seen.

The first meeting of the two men was utterly dramatic. Gunther was entering Montague Bay on the coast of New Britain one hot afternoon, bent on a recruiting cruise for the Queensland plantations. In those days New Britain was sudden death for the unwise, and Montague Bay averaged two ships cut off a year. Gunther therefore was busily directing the rigging of barbed wire round his rails while his mate overhauled the whaleboats and stored dynamite capped and fused in the lockers, when all hands were astonished to see a ship’s boat shoot out from behind a mangrove-covered headland and head for the sea. It altered its course apparently on seeing the schooner, and Gunther, snatching up his glasses, saw a frail figure in stained ducks balanced in the stern sheets and holding the tiller with one hand.

He called to his mate to stand by with a line as the whaleboat sheered alongside with a slatting of canvas and there clambered rather slowly to the ship’s deck a slender, sandyhaired man with a ragged little mustache, very clear and light blue eyes, and a great red stain all down one side of his ducks.

He halted before Gunther, peered blinking up at the big, black-bearded sailor, and said, quite gently, “Can you oblige me, sir, with some .45 shells?”

Gunther almost dropped from astonishment. It is, you understand, rather amazing to have a perfect stranger board your ship off a coast where you don’t expect to see a white man at all and then ask you point blank for ammunition.

Gunther choked, “What?—Shells?” The stranger stood, swaying a little, but perfectly cool and composed, though he was quite obviously badly wounded.

“Forty-fives,” he repeated, nodding. “I will have to pay you later.”

“Come aft!” snapped Gunther, turning and striding away. “You’re crazy.”

The two men went up on the poop and down to the main cabin, followed by the eyes of all the astonished crew. In the main cabin Gunther pulled open a drawer, took out a box of shells and tossed them on the table.

“What next?” he asked grimly.

“If I may suggest,” the little man murmured, “perhaps some whiskey.”

Without comment Gunther got a bottle and some glasses and poured drinks. The stranger finished his, poured another and finished that. He seemed to feel better, and producing a gun from under his left armpit proceeded to load it with a dexterity that bespoke long practice. When he had finished he blinked up at the bearded sailor and said, “Thank you very much. I’ll have to pay you later, I’m afraid.”

Picking up the open box of shells he started quite coolly for the companion. It was too much for Gunther’s patience and his teeming curiosity.

He bellowed, “Hi! ... Sit down and do some explaining. Who the hell are you?” The stranger turned, very polite and apparently anxious to please. “I’m in rather a hurry,” he murmured. “You must excuse me. My name is Seave.”

“Seave?” echoed Gunther in an altered voice, and he seemed to shrink a little. “Not ‘Stinger’ Seave?”

“I have been called that,” murmured his visitor.

“Oh.” Gunther seemed at somewhat of a loss. A vast politeness had come over him, though he was a hot-tempered, imperious man and famous in the south as a seaman and adventurer. “If you’re in trouble, captain, I’d like to help.”

“I always arrange my own affairs, sir,” responded Seave, obviously restraining his impatience merely because the other had obliged him. “From your beard and size I take it you are Captain Gunther, though I’ve never seen you before. I’m sure you will understand my position. I have a ship in Montague Bay with a crew I took aboard at Apia. I stripped a pearl bed at Pondo, and there was some disaffection over the shares to be apportioned. There was a mutiny about two hours ago, and I ran out of shells. I was forced to take to the whaleboat and leave my ship temporarily.”

“And you’re going back to fight?” burst out Gunther. “Don’t be a fool! You’re wounded, man! Let me patch you up and give you a feed, and I’ll come with you. We’re both sailors...”

“I always attend to my own affairs,” Seave broke in gently. “I think that’s all.”

“But you can’t fight a crowd!” choked Gunther, who was genuinely good-hearted, and a man to his finger-tips. “By Heaven, I’ll send a boat-load with you. How many men were you carrying?”

“Ten,” said Seave, unperturbed and still humoring the other. “But there are now only seven.”

“You got three!” Gunther’s face lit up. He loved a fighter.

“Just three,” murmured Seave. “It should be six. I never miss, usually, but I might mention my coffee was drugged this morning and I could hardly see.”

The gentle voice was troubled, for of all things Seave prided himself on, if he could be said to have pride, his astonishing accuracy with a gun was the chief.

Gunther strode across the main cabin, and without a word took down from a peg a heavy cartridge belt with a full holster. He began to buckle it on. When he had finished he poured out two more drinks. Seave took his because he needed it, Gunther because he was shaken to the core. It is not everyone, sick with drugs, who can hit three times out of six. It was very clear that all the mad and wonderful tales of the man they called “Stinger” Seave throughout the Islands were in no whit exaggerated.

“I should feel honored,” said Gunther grimly, “if you would allow me to come with you.”

“I’m a very impatient man,” the Stinger murmured. “I seldom argue so much. But you will please mind your own business.”

He was gone up the companion before Gunther could recover from that. When the big sailor reached the main deck Seave was clambering painfully down to his whaleboat again and was off.

Gunther’s mate stood with dropping jaw, but eventually blurted, “Where the hell’s he going now?”

Gunther roared, “Mind your own damned business! He’s going to die, but remember you’ve seen a man this day!”

And then, as the mate still stood petrified, he added, “Get the Winchesters on deck and prepare to anchor. Then stand by for trouble!”

THE Gottenheim tacked to windward, and made for the entrance to the bay, where the whaleboat was already speeding. An hour later she slid round a headland. Gunther saw lying at anchor in the bay a rakish-looking schooner with her sails furled, and two whaleboats beside her fast by their painters. Climbing up a rope-and-wood ladder was the slender form of Stinger Seave. On the schooner’s deck two men were standing near the midship house, drinking out of a black bottle. That was all the sign of life there was, and Gunther kept his glasses glued to his eyes.

The two men on the schooner’s deck suddenly saw the Gottenheim, and stopped drinking to shout. They started toward the rail. At that moment Seave’s head rose to view, and they stopped, stupefied.

Gunther, intent on the scene, choked back an excited oath. He heard two shots, followed by a third, and saw the two men stagger and drop while Seave drew himself upright on the schooner’s deck and waited, swaying from weakness. Gunther guessed his weakness was such he did not dare try to leave the support of the rail behind him and seek out the other mutineers.

The Stinger’s reappearance with fresh ammunition must have been somewhat of a shock to men satisfied he had escaped to a quick death without provisions or shells, for Gunther saw three or four variously dressed figures rush on the poop from below, then halt to stare at their former captain.

Gunther’s mate, a burly, black-mustached man with a thorough knowledge of the Islands and the sea, was standing behind him and getting restless. He had his own pair of glasses, and had watched everything that had transpired. Now he turned to Gunther with some hesitancy, for experience had taught him the temper of the big sailor.

But he said, firmly enough, “Don’t you think we ought to chip in, sir? One man against six or seven, and mutineers at that...”

Gunther swore. “Don’t you know me well enough to know I’d be there if I could? That man’s Stinger Seave! He’d kill me if I interfered.”

“Stinger Seave?” stammered the mate, staring with all his eyes at the schooner. “Is that him.... But he’s wounded, and we ought to ...”

“It’s none of your damned business!” roared Gunther, irritated and furious because he had the gun-itch himself. “Get ready to anchor!”

The mate shrugged and went for’ard. Gunther muttered to himself and kept the glasses screwed to his eyes. The Gottenheim was now scarcely a quarter of a mile from the schooner, and Gunther flung a curt order to the helmsman that altered her course to bring her abeam. Meanwhile the mutineers on the schooner’s poop were advancing slowly along the main deck, and Gunther caught the glint of sun on steel.

There was a sudden volley of shots. Seave turned half around, as if something had plucked at his sleeve. One of the mutineers fell. Another reeled and caught at a backstay to steady himself. Gunther roared to his mate, and the Gottenheim dropped anchor scarce a cable’s length off the schooner’s beam. Descending to his main deck, her captain rested his arms on the rail and settled impatiently to watch the rest of the tragedy.

Even now he would have braved Seave’s anger and gone to his aid, but he remembered the icy killer’s glint in the little man’s eyes when he had warned him to stay away, and he remembered also the many, many tales of Seave’s eccentricities. He decided to wait. Perhaps the Stinger, magnificent shot that he was, would yet win.

The surviving mutineers, startled by the roaring of the Gottenheim’s anchor cable, had halted again, and were alternately staring at the fuming Gunther and the drooping form of the swaying, defiant Seave. Eventually, after some consultation, they decided apparently that Gunther did not intend to interfere, and being desperate they charged.

SEAVE shot three times. It was a sign of his condition that he missed two shots completely and only wounded a man with the third. A knife caught him in one thigh and sent him to his knees, while a belaying pin numbed his left arm so it hung down useless. Gunther tore at his beard, but still held back.

Then he saw a legitimate excuse to take a hand. A man had climbed the main rigging on the side of the schooner away from Seave and was coming cautiously down over the Stinger’s head, obviously intending to drop and knife him before he could turn. Seave was too far gone to notice this move, for though Gunther waited until the last minute, the little man did not shoot. He was intently watching the mutineers grouped near the break of the poop and talking together.

Gunther snatched a Winchester out of the hands of one of his crew and shot twice, hastily but accurately, so that from the main rigging there came a scream and a dark body suddenly curved down and plunged into the sea.

“He can shoot it out if he wants to,” snapped Gunther, his patience at an end. “But I’m not standing for getting him from behind.”

The mutineers fled. If the strange ship was going to take a hand after all, they were beaten.

Seave clawed up until his bloody, drawn face was on a level with the schooner’s rail. He called thickly, “You keep out of this, damn you!” and then collapsed in a heap on the deck.

Gunther laughed. For some reason it struck him as very funny indeed. He roared to his mate, “There’s a man after my own heart!... Get a boat clear. I’m shipping in on this, if he plugs me afterward!”

When Gunther finally landed on the schooner’s deck with half a dozen men he found Seave lying on one side and quite unconscious.

The deck under him was stained red. He was wounded in three places, beside the original wound in his side. He still held his gun in the hand that rested across his breast. His left arm was badly bruised and quite useless.

He revived for a moment as Gunther bent over him, and he muttered, “I didn’t ask you to interfere. Get to hell out of here! I’ll handle my own affairs.”

Gunther took his gun away from him as easily as if he had been a child. He snarled protests and then lapsed into unconsciousness again. Gunther stood up and thumbed the hammer of his own gun.

“Carry him aft, two of you,” he snapped. “I’m going hunting.”

He strode toward the poop, followed by four men, and the mutineers, expecting to be hung if they were ever taken back to Apia, opened fire from the cover of the main cabin scuttle.

Gunther charged them, utterly reckless, furious with himself for remaining neutral for so long, and roaring like a bull. He killed one man, wounded another, and the survivor gave in.

Then he spent an hour or more doctoring Stinger Seave.

SUCH was the beginning of the friendship. Seave was a man who was scrupulously exact in all his dealings. He never obligated himself to anyone unless he repaid in treble measure. He hated help from others. He was a lone wolf of the Islands, a shark, something of a pariah, and he handled his own affairs or went under. But as Gunther had come unbidden to his aid, undoubtedly saved his life, the Stinger was forced to recognize the bond.

He did it unwillingly at first, but during the long days he was convalescing in Montague Bay under Gunther’s care he discovered a genuine liking for the big, bearded adventurer, a liking which Gunther quite patently returned.

When at last the ships were ready for sea again and the men shook hands, Seave said, “Thanks for the men you’ve lent me. If you ever need me let me know. I’ll come.”

“Sure,” answered Gunther, smiling and looking down good-humoredly at the notorious little man. “And maybe we can be partners some time. With your shooting and my beef we’d sure tear hell out of the Islands. S’long.”

“S’long,” said Seave, smiling his wintry little smile and with something of what might have been a twinkle in his eyes.

He put to sea an hour after the Gottenheim, and for the first time felt a real regret at parting from a man.

Gunther told his mate that night, “He’s a queer card. I like him a lot. He’s a killer, but he shoots square. D’you know he really feels quite ashamed because he passed out before he could clean up that crew of his? Why the hell he should I don’t know! If I could stand up, filled with drugs and wounded, and shoot it out with seven men, I’m damned sure I’d feel pretty chesty!”

IT was a year before Seave paid his debt to Gunther. He had not seen the big man since the Montague Bay affair. He had only heard of him at rare intervals, from traders, other schooner captains, planters and beche-de-mer fishers. But he had not forgotten. Seave never forgot anything.

He fully recovered from his wounds, and spent some months fretting about his shooting skill because he had missed so many shots during that mutiny. It was not until he creased the gun hands of three men who were making for him in a saloon on Woodlark some months later that he set his mind at rest. And then, like a bolt from the blue, he heard by devious channels that Big Bill Gunther had been cut off at Ysabel Island, and was presumably dead.

Seave was in Port Moresby when he heard the news. He was about to close an agreement to take some stores for the Administration to the police post at Cape Nelson. He called the deal off abruptly, hurriedly fitted out his ship, and set sail.

The Assistant Resident Magistrate he had been dealing with was quite astonished, and demanded some sort of explanation.

“Personal business,” Seave said gently. “A friend of mine died quite unexpectedly, and I think there should be mourners at his funeral.”

Which was quite mystifying to the A.R.M. He confided to his wife that evening that Seave was a little out of his head.

Be that as it may, the Stinger arrived off the coast of Ysabel some two months after the reported death of Gunther. He had with him this time a crew of men he had carefully picked from many ports. He had picked chiefly such as were on the bad books of the Administration, men who were hard fighters, hard workers, old in the Islands and not given to talking too much.

It was often wondered why Seave kept this crew so long, why they did not pay off and go in other ships. The reason was that Seave paid them double wages and a share of any very profitable venture, for he needed desperate, faithful men in his acts of semi-piracy, seal and pearl poaching, and to aid him in the little private wars he frequently became involved in.

Seave needed them now to further the unreasonable plan he had in mind. He anchored, his schooner in the mouth of the river where Gunther had died. The charred and ruined hulk of Gunther’s Gottenheim lay on the mud of one shore, in plain view, and so at least verified the cutting-off.

Thereafter, and for three days, Seave did nothing but doze in his big canvas chair on his poop under an awning, while two of the crew kept armed watch and the rest slept. No man could hope to find a native village in the tangle of jungle unless he had an army at his back, and the natives always took their own good time on that coast in showing themselves.

After three days, curiosity overcoming fear of any reprisal for the looting of the Gottenheim, several canoes appeared, paddling round the schooner at a great distance and cautiously drawing closer. This strange ship might not be off its guard as had been the other. Presently a half-caste Fly River boy stood up on the schooner’s rail and shouted friendly words, and the canoes drew closer still. Gifts were flung to them. They were given to understand that the captain wished to see their chief.

Two more days of this followed, and at last a chief appeared. He was a monstrously fat man. He had necklaces of sharks’ teeth and babies’ finger bones. He had a belt studded with brass, obviously from some murdered sailor, and he wore a long stick thrust through the cartilage of his nose, so that his heavy breathing made a whistling noise.

He was coaxed aboard with half a dozen cans of salmon and a bottle of trade gin, though he insisted on bringing a dozen men with him. This was against all common sense and Island lore in a place where a ship had only recently been cut-off, and where the natives were notoriously treacherous.

The crew was a little worried, but Seave had placed them carefully, two men aloft with two Winchesters each and belts of cartridges, two on the top of the fo’c’s’le house, two on top of the midship house, two on the poop, and two smoking lighted cigars by the open boxes of capped and fused dynamite on the main hatch.

Seave himself received the chief sprawled in his canvas chair and with the half-caste interpreter behind him, for the Stinger had not yet mastered the various dialects.

The chief waddled up to Seave, smiling expansively, and squatted down on the deck with his attendants behind him, all armed and all very nervous. He was using his eyes to good advantage, picking out the weak spots in the barbed wire that covered the rails, estimating the value in women and heads of various treasures he saw.

SEAVE opened gin. He poured drinks for the chief alone, though the other natives seemed anxious to get some. He brought up more presents and he set the interpreter to work. At first the chief was cautious. No, he had seen no other ship since the charred wreck had drifted in from the sea one day all afire. No, she had no crew. Yes, he would provide men for laboring on the plantations. So the talk went.

The chief grew drunker and drunker, and he began to boast. His escort grew more and more nervous when this stage was reached, for the chief began to talk of “long pig” and of the crew the burned ship had had. Seave opened gin for the natives, and they began to join their chief in his loud talking.

It was then, as the story became clearer, the astonishing information was dropped, first as hints, then as boastings, that several of the looted ship’s crew had been taken alive; that most of them had already been used at sacrifices at various ceremonials, but that the chief, Big Bill Gunther, the tall man with a beard, was being kept for the period of the full moon and a great “long pig” feast.

As the excited interpreter explained this to Seave the little sailor merely blinked and tiny hard lumps of muscle appeared each side of his jaw. He slid a hand gently inside his coat and caressed the butt of his gun.

That was all the emotion he betrayed. But inwardly he was possessed of a calm feeling of satisfaction. It had been his original intention to discover which of the natives had actually taken part in the killing of Gunther, capture them, and hang them, after the grim, iron custom and code of the Island men who lived outside the law most of the time and never bothered the Administration either for help or revenge.

But this news that Gunther was still living made it possible for the Stinger fully to pay his debt, and he was grateful. His cold, clear mind snapped on the only possible plan immediately.

“Is Captain Gunther at this man’s village?” he asked the interpreter, and the half-caste plied the natives with questions.

Drunkenly and incautiously they replied.

“They traded him to the natives of the hills for twenty heads and ten young women, but they will go to the feast,” said the interpreter at last.

Seave nodded. The fat chief was beginning to look dazed and his eyes closed sleepily. His followers were still in the boasting and hilarious stage when he finally flopped on one side and began to snore stertorously. Seave regarded the gross hulk for a long time, his clear blue eyes turning to ice and his thin lips shutting to a straight line.

“Go for’ard,” said the Stinger finally to his interpreter. “Have the mate and two men patrol the rail and shoot anyone who tries to board us. Bring the rest of the men aft in a body and surround these swine. When I nod take away their weapons. Stun any who resist. Then bring some small line and lash them fast.”

“There will be war,” announced the half-caste nervously. “The villages will come and attack. Besides, the government will say...”

The half-caste had not been with Seave very long. The little sailor blinked.

“I flogged you once for answering me back, Toto,” he said metallically.

The half-caste took one look into the awful, icy eyes and fled.

Fifteen minutes later every savage on board the Sulu Pearl was bound and unconscious, while the canoes that had been paddling idly about, waiting for their chief, began to circle ominously, while their occupants stood up and brandished weapons. They had seen the hubbub on the poop and thought their chief dead.

SEAVE called to his interpreter.

“Tell them I have taken their chief and his men captive. Tell them they must bring back here Captain Gunther and any other white man they have on Ysabel. Each day that passes until this is done I will shoot a man.”

The half-caste grinned. He could appreciate that. It appealed to his own savage sense of humor. Not that he thought any white man would kill a native in cold blood. He had seen enough of white men to know they were possessed of queer and unreasonable ideas of the preciousness of life. But still, it was a good bluff. So he stood on the rail and shouted, and some canoes came closer to listen.

A long conversation ensued. “They say,” said the half-caste, “that they no longer have Captain Gunther or any white man. The captain they have traded away with another man, and the rest are dead. They offer gifts for their chief.”

“Tell them they must get Gunther back,” replied Seave, unperturbed.

“They say they will have to go to war. A trade in flesh cannot be unmade.”

“That’s their affair,” said Seave and smiled his little wintry smile.

He called to a seaman. Buckets of water were flung over the unconscious chief until he stirred. Two seamen then lifted him upright with some effort, and punched and pummeled him awake. He roared and struggled, but he was securely lashed. When this dawned upon him he went gray under his coat of dirt and brown, and was suddenly sobered.

“Explain to him!” snapped Seave, and the interpreter compiled. The chief broke out jabbering. It was impossible. A flesh trade could not be undone. And if he or any of his men were killed there would be war, and the ship looted as the other had been.

Seave merely smiled. “Throw him in the forehold with the rest. Two of you guard them and see they’re fed.... Repeat my message to the canoes, Toto. The first man dies at sunrise.”

CANOES circled the ship’s all night, and torches burned in the mangroves. There was a vast amount of shouting and beating of drums. All that section of the coast seemed to be in an uproar.

Seave was satisfied he had as a prisoner some quite important chief, and, from what the interpreter gathered while taking food and water to the captives, also some of the sons of the more important men of the villages. Sunrise came and there was no trace of Gunther.

Seave had his nervous captives brought up on the main deck and lined against the rail, facing the canoes, each man lashed to his neighbor, and the lot lashed to a dead-eye to prevent them flinging themselves overside. The crew stood by, heavily armed and smiling a little. To a man, hard cases as they were, they believed Seave was bluffing.

The little sailor, with the interpreter beside him, walked the poop smoking a cigar, apparently quite oblivious to all the excitement. When the sun was well up he hailed the canoes and gave the interpreter his instructions.

“They say,” the half-caste reported, “that they have sent runners, and the hill villages will not undo a flesh trade. They would have to go to war to get Captain Gunther.”

Seave shrugged. “That’s their business.”

He walked to the poop taffrail and stood for a moment looking down on the line of bound savages. They were brutal, depraved-looking men, wearing the emblems of many “long pig” feasts and of looted ships.

So abruptly no one saw the move, Seave drew and fired. The native at the end of the line nearest him reeled and then sagged, a neat hole just above his right ear.

“Cut him loose,” said Seave gently, “and throw him overside. Tell them tomorrow another one dies.”

From the watching white men of the crew went up a long sigh, almost of horror. They had never for a moment believed Seave would do as he threatened. They had not been with the Stinger long enough to know his utter ruthlessness. For a moment they were appalled; then, as they cut the dead man loose and tossed him to the sharks, they remembered Captain Gunther a captive in the hills and destined for the “Long Pig” ovens. It would take an army to win him and achieve a rescue. Perhaps Seave knew what he was doing, after all.

The horror of the crew was nothing compared to that which swept the remainder of the captives, especially the chief.

He bellowed and called savagely, threateningly, pleadingly to the canoes. Their occupants were silent, almost awed. The abrupt execution had bitten even under their calloused hides. With a scream of rage the natives dug their paddles into the water, and the canoes charged.

Two men climbed hastily aloft and opened fire with their Winchesters. The others lined the rail and shot hard and fast. The mate and the interpreter lighted cigars, and as soon as the canoes came in range began tossing sticks of dynamite into them.

Seave lounged on the rail of the poop, firing slowly and deliberately with his stubby revolver, and every shot went to the mark. The air whined with spears and showers of stones and arrows.

Two of the crew were wounded before the attack was beaten off. The sharks made the water boil as they fought over the bodies from the canoes, some of which were sinking. The captive chief and his men continued to bellow.

Seave went below to his breakfast and ate well and with relish, though the steward eyed him askance and seemed almost afraid to set a dish before him. Why he was called Stinger Seave his crew now understood.

ALL day the drums hammered. All night they kept up the noise, and torches flamed in the mangroves. Toward dawn another attack, in force, was tried against the schooner, and this time the savages actually got a foothold on the fo’c’s’le-head. The slaughter was terrible. Seave lost two men, and had two others so badly wounded they had to be considered as non-combatants thereafter. The survivors came aft in a body at dawn.

“We can’t stay here, sir,” said the spokesman. “A couple more attacks like that and we’ll be finished. We ought to run north and see the officials about it. They could send a gunboat down and get Captain Gunther....”

“I see,” said Seave pleasantly, looking quite fresh and alert despite the fact that he had not slept for over three days, what with one thing and the other.

“Now listen to me. We are staying here until Captain Gunther joins us. If you want to live you’d better raise the barbed wire along the rails and learn to shoot straighter and faster.

“If the natives get too much of a foothold on this ship, appear about to capture it, I’ve got enough dynamite stored below to blow the Sulu Pearl to smithereens, which is what will happen, because I shall save a shell for that purpose. I think that’s all. Get for’ard and do as you’re told.”

There was no more talk from that crew, and no more suggestions, either on that venture or any other. They looked, each man, into the Stinger’s icy eyes, and went for’ard without delay.

At the same time that morning as on the previous one, with an audience of perhaps twenty canoes, Seave deliberately shot another of his captives. Almost at once a canoe came forward to parley. This was something the ravages could understand. The little white man meant what he said. Neither could he be destroyed, for twice they had tried it and risked his killing off all his captives out of hand.

“They say,” said the interpreter when he had talked a while, “that they cannot make a great war for Captain Gunther unless they have their chief to follow. They offer to send his two sons as hostages if you will let him go.”

“If they are his sons I don’t mind,” said Seave. “But how shall I know?”

The interpreter grinned. “They are like him, it is said.”

Seave frowned. That was not much evidence. The canoe surged fearfully alongside, its occupants scowling but very nervous. Two somewhat fleshy but lithe youths came timidly through the gap opened in the barbed wire, and stood looking round with wide eyes and quivering bodies ready for a leap overside at the first sign of danger.

“Tell them they must be bound,” Seave directed. There was some argument about this, but the chief bellowed, and at last the youths submitted to having their arms tied and linked to the line of the other captives. Then the chief, still bound, was freed from the line and held by two men while Seave walked slowly along the main deck, and, stopping behind one of the hostages, whipped out his gun and rammed it against the black back. The chief whimpered and cried out, and Seave smiled.

“It’s his son, right enough,” he said and put his gun away. “Tell him I give him three days. For three days no one dies, but on the fourth his first son shall die, on the fifth his second, and on the sixth the other man I hold.”

The chief imbibed all this quietly enough, and was seemingly resigned. When he was freed he waddled with some dignity to the side, dropped to the waiting canoe and with a gesture directed the paddlers to push off. All the other canoes fell in line behind him and disappeared up the river.

Two returned later, apparently to watch the schooner.

“He may be figuring on another attack,” Seave told his mate. “As soon as it’s dark you will light a flare every twenty minutes and set it adrift on a board, so we won’t be surprised. We’ll also rig some tar barrels to light as torches if a fight begins. It’s shooting in the dark that causes us to be so hard pressed.”

There was no attack that night. The new dawn came and the day passed uneventfully, except that the two watching canoes kept up a ceaseless circling of the ship. The second day passed, and the drums that had throbbed continuously in the jungle suddenly stopped.

THE third day was half through when a seaman called from for’ard that a fleet of canoes was coming down the river. Seave seized his glasses, and, carefully scanning the bigger and leading craft, saw Gunther.

The chief sat behind him, and was apparently guarding him from all harm with as much care as he might have guarded a very hard-won head. Gunther was dirty, unshaven and almost naked. His beard needed trimming very badly, and there were great pits under his eyes that told of fever. He was so weak he could hardly climb up to the Sulu Pearl’s main deck, but he managed a smile as he saw Seave.

“How the devil you worked it I don’t know!” he said. “I was due for a ‘long pig’ affair next week. The chief told me you were wiping out his young men, and my body alive and well was all that could save them. They had quite a fight getting me. Surrounded the village I was in one night and ripped it open.”

“Cut those natives loose,” said Seave to his mate, and holding Gunther steady with a hand on his arm led him aft. “I had to take some drastic steps,” he admitted gently, as Gunther sank gratefully to a chair in the main cabin. “I take it none of your men survived at all. Too bad.”

“You might have been wiped out yourself,” said Gunther wearily, settling back and slowly pouring himself a drink. “I understand they’ve made two attacks.... I’m a sick man for a bit, Seave. And I’m hungry.”

“You’re my friend,” said Seave, quite simply. “When I heard you had been cut off, I came to make your passing memorable along this coast. And then I discovered you were still alive. I don’t allow my friends to be turned into long pig.... Dinner will be in half an hour.”

“I can never thank you for this—” Gunther started to say.

“I should be much obliged,” said Seave a little coldly, “if you would not mention that. There was a little debt outstanding from Montague Bay, when a man climbed in the rigging above me.... Will you have another drink?”

____________________

12: In Deep Purple

C S Montanye

1892-1948

Detective Novels, April, 1940

STAN CASTLE flopped his valise on the bed in the hotel room. He jerked the window shades even, glanced at the hissing radiator, opened the closet door. He had just hung up his hat and coat when the telephone rang.

“Yeah, Castle speaking,” he said. “Who?... Sure, send him up. Send him right up....”

A slow smile began to crack Castle’s usually expressionless face. Mort Dryden was calling at the Atlas Hotel to see him. That was the payoff, a natural. Castle laughed under his breath. The rats were getting nervous. The proof was that Dryden was coming to him when he, the D. A.’s right-hand man, was supposed to be in Grand City on a secret, undercover mission.

A knock sounded on the door. When Castle opened it, Mort Dryden came in slowly. He was a thick-set, beefy individual with a beet-red complexion, bright blue eyes, a small, petulant mouth and the torso of a wrestler.

“You’re Dryden?” Castle said. He smiled again. “I didn’t expect you around so soon.”

“I don’t waste time,” Dryden retorted, helping himself to the room’s only chair. The blue eyes wandered over Castle’s slim, youthful figure. Castle thought he detected a sneer in the expression that crossed the man’s florid face.

“What do you want?” he asked abruptly. Dryden pushed out his muscular legs. He was wearing thick rubber-soled shoes. He put his hat in his lap and Castle glanced at his fingers, restless on the brim.

“I want to have a talk with you when you’ve got time. I guess you know what it’s about.”

“I’ve got time now,” Castle said. “Let’s hear it.”

“But I haven’t. Make it nine tonight at the Harlequin. A taxi’ll get you there.”

Dryden got up, still turning the brim of his hat in his fingers. Then he suddenly grew conscious of Castle’s intent scrutiny of his hands. He flipped his hat on, put a cigarette in his mouth and nodded.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” Castle agreed.

Dryden opened the door himself. Standing in the doorway, he spoke softly. “I can do you just as much good as you can do me. Catch?”

He laughed significantly and went out.

Castle remained deep in thought. Dryden’s last remark echoed through his mind. He shrugged his broad, well-tailored shoulders and looked at his watch. It was seven-twenty. He figured on grabbing a bite to eat.

Then he’d set the first stone in the foundation of what he had come to Grand City to build.

THREE quarters of an hour later, a cab took Castle through the desultory drizzle of snow. It was dark in the neighborhood that lay beyond the brilliantly lit shopping and business district. The stores were still open because it was Saturday night. The wind kicked down the side streets. When the cab turned east, Castle saw the frozen width of the river whose source was in Illinois. Two more blocks, then the cab pulled in before a huddle of buildings. In the center was a two-story garage.

Castle took his feet off the floor heater. He told his driver to wait.

The double steel doors were closed, locked. But there was an entrance to the left. It led into an office where he saw vague figures through a frost-rimed window. His gloved hand shoved between the buttons of his heavy coat. The flat gun he carried in a leather shoulder holster pressed lightly but comfortingly against him. He opened the door and walked into an overheated room. Two men faced each other, talking. A kerosene oil stove smelled up the air it had already made sweaty.

“I’m looking for Sid Chandler,” Castle stated. “I understand he works here.”

One man took his heels from the edge of the desk. He scraped his chair back, got up and opened a fireproof door in the rear of the room.

“Hey, Sid,” he called. “Somebody wants to see you.”

A minute or two passed before Chandler came in. He was a thin, anemic youth with a pasty complexion and furtive eyes. He wore hip boots and a greasy sweater. He needed a haircut, particularly on the back and sides of his neck, where his blond hair hung clown in yellow wisps. He blinked. His narrow eyes turned from the man who had called him, slid over to Castle.

“I want to see you a few minutes,” Stan Castle said without preliminaries. “I’ve come over from Gramby. I’m a friend of Walker’s.”

Chandler’s weak mouth closed. The furtive eyes widened. He looked at the man who had summoned him.

“Can I get an hour off, Mr. King?”

Castle let Chandler get in the waiting taxi first. He pulled the door shut, told the driver to roll them around for awhile. Then he shoved the glass partition closed.

“We can talk here,” he said to the scared youth beside him. “What have you got to tell me?”

The stoolie lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He kept glancing at Castle’s shadowy face and then at the window next to him.

“There’s a guy here called Lake, Jeff Lake. He hangs around Mort Dryden’s bowling alley. He fits the description pretty well, but he’s a smart bird. He hasn’t dropped anything. He might be the party you want, but I ain’t sure. I’m sorry I can’t pin him down. I can’t peg him for you.”

“He might be Finn?” Castle demanded.

“Yeah.”

“What does he do? Where does he live?”

“He don’t do nothing that I can find out. I’ve seen him in Dryden’s office, just laying around. He’s got a room up on the third floor there. He’s a smart guy, I’m telling you.”

“A little smarter than you,” Castle snapped back.

Chandler made no reply. He kept dragging on his cigarette, blowing out thin vaporish smoke. Castle stirred impatiently. The D. A. had planted Chandler in Grand City when he had first been tipped that Ed Finn had a girl friend there.

CASTLE felt a jar of disappointment. Without Finn, the elaborate machinery of the law was stalled. District Attorney Peter Walsh was successfully smashing the organization to atoms. But the atoms could reunite, Castle knew, unless the brains of the outfit was found and dragged in. The taxi drove him back to the garage.

Castle let Chandler out.

“I might need you later,” he said. “What’s your phone number? Where can I get in touch with you?”

The stoolie wrote an address on the back of one of the garage’s printed cards. Castle put it in his pocket.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do better,” Chandler said humbly. “As I say, this lug Lake knows his way around. Besides, I had to be careful. Dryden’s no dummy either. He’s tough. He’d bump me in a minute if he thought I tied in with you.”

“Okay,” Castle replied shortly. He drove off through the wet snow, his temples throbbing with mounting anger.

He had counted on Sid Chandler’s coming across with the necessary information. His thoughts turned to Dryden, and that made his face grow hot. What did Dryden think he was— some kind of a chump who could be ordered around?

It was still a half hour before his date with Dryden. Castle told the driver to take him to the Harlequin. He settled back farther on the seat, trying to shake off the resentment that gripped him.

The Harlequin was a night spot on the fringe of the amusement center. It was wedged in between a warehouse and a department store, and it blazed with light. Castle paid off the toll on the meter and went in. It was the kind of place he had expected— garish, tawdry, with the usual bar, the usual drinking customers, the usual cheap floor show and noisy swing band.

He sat down at a table in a corner, ordered a drink, tried to ignore a singer whose hair was as brassy as her voice. She was warbling some ditty about a rendezvous in Paris.

Now and then Castle heard what sounded like distant thunder through the music. It interested him. He stopped a waiter.

“What’s back of this building? What’s that noise I hear every few minutes?”

“That’s the bowling alley on the other street,” the waiter said. “Dryden’s place.”

Castle nodded. “Thanks.”

The hands of his watch crawled toward nine. He kept an eye on the main door. There was no sign of the man who had made the appointment with him. After a while he got up and paid his check. He went out and walked around the block.

The bowling alley occupied a stucco-fronted building on the street, paralleling the nightery he had just left. No one paid any attention to him as he went up the stairs. The alleys were on the second floor. They were crowded. Two teams were rolling off the final frames of a match. Castle glanced in briefly, turned and went on up to the third floor.

A NUMBER of doors were stretched out along a wide, jute-carpeted corridor. While he hesitated, one opened and a man came out. He looked like a Swede with his high cheekbones and yellow hair.

“I’m looking for Jeff Lake. Where’s his room?” Castle asked.

“In there.” The man jerked a thumb and went down the stairs.

Castle knocked on the indicated door. There was no answer. Below, the slam and crash of falling pins was constant.

He dropped a hand to the knob. It turned under his fingers. Castle pushed the door partially open. The room inside was dark, except where the window let in faint light from the street.

The heavy smell of cigars cloyed the air. He struck a match, cupping it in his hand and holding it away from him. Its flicker came up. Abruptly, his nerves whipped and tightened. Castle shut the door and turned on a lamp that the glow of the match had marked. He bent over, his eyes narrowing, his mouth a thin streak.

A man lay half across the bed, flat on his back. His glazed eyes were turned toward the ceiling. The agony of his last moments glared out of the ghastly grimace frozen on his face.

Coolly, Castle estimated him at medium height and weight. He had dark, oily hair. He wore trousers and a white cotton jersey. A clean, heavily starched white shirt was draped on the footboard of the bed, a loud silk tie beside it. Stan Castle bent closer.

The man’s skull had been crushed in at a point above the right ear. Blood stained the counterpane on which he was lying. Castle’s intent eyes moved down to the man’s throat. On either side of the windpipe bloomed the clear marks of relentless fingers. Against the white skin, dark bruises stood out as though painted there.

Castle reached out and touched the dead man’s arm. From the warmth of it, not much time had elapsed since he had been killed.

Again the dull flare of anger blazed in Castle’s veins. If this man was the Ed Finn he had come to get, he had been neatly cheated. By whom?

He studied the finger bruises for another long minute. Then he turned out the light, closed the door behind him and went down the stairs. It was twenty minutes after nine. The snow had melted and the gutters were brimming. He walked back to the Harlequin. Standing in the small front foyer, he tried without success to find Dryden. But the room was crowded with a dancing mob of people.

A hard-panned man in a tight-fitting tuxedo came up to him.

“Table?”

“I’m looking for Mort Dryden.”

THE man gave him a cold stare. “Your name Castle?” he rasped. “Mr. Dryden was here at nine o’clock. He told me to tell you he couldn’t wait. He said he’d get in touch with you tomorrow morning at your hotel.”

Castle nodded. He went back to the wet street. He had to wait ten minutes before an empty cab came along. He climbed in and gave the address of the garage where Sid Chandler worked. But when the cab pulled in at the building, the light in the office was out and the place closed.

“You can’t get in there,” the taxi driver called to him. “I could have told you that before.”

Castle went back and got in the cab. He fished out the card Chandler had given him. Holding it in the meter’s light, he read out the address to the hackie. They lunged into high, the windshield wipers clicking. It was warmer, and the fluttering snow had turned to driving rain.

Castle sat in a brown study until, after a time, he found himself entering a cheap, congested neighborhood. The cab angled in before a wooden building that looked like a barracks. Castle told the man to wait and ran up to ring the front door bell. He pressed the button twice before a frowsy woman admitted him to a chilly hall. She wore a buttoned sweater over a faded woolen dress. Her gray hair was put up in metal curlers.

“Where can I find Sid Chandler?” Castle said. “I understand he lives here. “

TWO watery eyes looked at him suspiciously. The woman took a ball of a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her nose. She sniffled from the cold she had, but over the handkerchief she still stared at Castle.

“You a friend of his?” she demanded in a shrill voice.

“Yes. I want to see him. Where is he?”

The woman took a step closer to him. She breathed, wheezing. “He went out not ten minutes ago. It looked kind of funny to me. A couple of men stopped here and asked for him. I went upstairs to his room. Mr. Chandler was getting ready to turn in— he works hard down at the garage, so he always gets to bed early. He put on his coat and came down with me. I don’t know what the men said to him, but he went out with them.”

“What’s funny about that?” Castle asked impatiently. “The way they stood there— waiting. You should’ve heard how quiet and hard they talked. Then Sid— Mr. Chandler, I mean— just nodded and put on his hat and coat. One man had his hand in his overcoat pocket. I’ve been thinking maybe there was a gun in it—”

“All right. Thanks,” Castle cut her short. “If he should come back within the next twenty minutes—” He broke off, abandoning the idea of having Chandler call him at the Atlas Hotel. “Never mind. I’ll check up on him.”

BACK in the taxi, Castle told the driver to take him to the bowling alley. He smoked one cigarette after another, his thoughts zigzagging back and forth over the events of the night. When he reached his destination he found the building in darkness. The street door was unlocked.

For the second time he went up the stairs. On the first landing Castle stopped. Above, he heard low voices, footsteps. Castle glanced around in the gloom. There was a darker, shadowy recess alongside the staircase. He drew into it, flattening himself against the wainscoted wall.

The descending tread on the stairs was heavy. A grunt sounded. Then a smothered oath.

“This stiff’s heavy as hell,” a man said.

“Prop him up more,” another voice snapped angrily. “You’re throwing all the weight on me. Jav ought to have the car ready. When we go out we’ve got to make it look natural. Just in case—”

“Like he was plastered.” The man laughed under his breath. “And us, we’re a coupla pals taking him home.”

They went on down the stairs. Stan Castle moved out from his concealment. The lower door opened and shut. He turned to the stairs and continued climbing to the top floor.

He stood in the murk, his mind working fast. Flashes of thought tensed him. The powerful organization the D.A. was wrecking... Intimidation and murder. What he had come to Grand City to accomplish.... The blaze of anger aroused by the futility of his errand dwindled quickly.

Somewhere down the corridor, new sounds beat in on his speculations. They were curious sounds, something like a slapping thump and then an animal-like whining. They came again and again. After them came a pause, a grumble of voices, then the sounds again, always in the same sequence.

Castle slid out of his overcoat, stuffed his gloves in the pockets. He bundled the garment on the banister rail. He had no trouble locating the room from which the odd sounds emanated. It was almost at the end of the passage, to the left.

Castle opened the door. He hesitated an instant when he saw what was inside.

The room was large enough for the four men in it. Two of them stood over Sid Chandler. The stoolie was tied in a rocking chair. He was gagged and his blond hair hung down his sweaty forehead in long, wet locks. A man in shirt sleeves, a cigar tucked in one corner of his ugly, cruel mouth, stood with arm raised over Chandler. He held a couple of feet of rubber hose. The one beside him puffed on a cigarette and looked on casually.

The fourth man in the room was Dryden. He lounged in a chair that he had tipped against one wall. His bright blue eyes were watchfully interested under the down-snapped brim of his felt hat.

“Well,” Dryden said, when Castle let the door swing shut, “it’s my friend from the hotel. Sorry I missed you at the Harlequin.”

“So am I,” Castle said.

CHANDLER’S haunted, agonized eyes peered up in mute entreaty. Dryden’s chair came down with a bang. He got up and laughed.

“I told Abe over at the nightery to tell you I’d call around in the morning. Okay,” he said to the man with the rubber hose. “You can put him in the other room for a while.”

He nodded toward Chandler carelessly. Castle felt ice water run down the length of his spine.

“Just a minute,” he said easily. “What goes on here? Looks like you’ve given this guy a pretty good going-over.”

Dryden shrugged his bulky shoulders. “Sure,” he grinned, “but it ain’t a patch on what he’s going to get.”

“Cross you?” Castle inquired casually.

“A lousy pigeon,” Dryden answered contemptuously. “Why, this punk would sell his own grandmother if he got paid enough. Do you know what we found out? He’s working for the D.A. of this county! Working for him against me! Imagine.”

“No!” Stan Castle exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Dryden snapped. Castle’s eyes moved in Chandler’s direction. “I suppose he knows something about Jeff Lake’s bump. Did I say Lake? My error. I meant Eddie Finn.”

Not a muscle flickered in Dryden’s masklike red face. His lower lip protruded slightly. He continued in the same quiet, almost jesting tone.

“So Jeff’s out? That is news. Big news, but kind of sad for that D.A. What’s he going to do with his case now?”

“I don’t imagine it will suffer much.” Castle smiled thinly. “Not a great deal, anyhow. Finn was only second fiddle in the band. Walker’s after the guy with the baton, the party who makes the music. In our line, when we gun for the important person, we pick out someone secondary and build him up so the one we want doesn’t get too cagey. A pretty good method. It hasn’t failed so far and it looks like it clicks again.”

Dryden’s lower lip came out further. The man with the hose had stepped around the back of the rocking chair. The other lounged against a table, one hand in his pocket.

“Clever people,” Dryden said.

“We try to be.” Stan Castle’s alert glance darted from one to the other. “For instance, belling Sid like a lamb, to bring on the wolves. Planting him down there with Abe King to get through to you. Making Chandler believe it was Finn we were after all the time. Not a bad setup when you analyze it. Or don’t you think so?”

HE SENSED rather than saw the gun that came out in the hand of the one by the table.

Castle’s own flat automatic was between his fingers like a flash of lightning. He squeezed the trigger before the other could aim and level. The man screamed with pain. His gun flew out of his shattered hand.

Castle ducked back behind him. The hood with the hose fired two slugs. They missed Castle by a yard. Dryden had backed up. He went into action with a long-barreled .45. Swift jets of flame blasted out.

Castle realized that even with a lead-breaker in front of him he could be punctured. The bullets could easily tear through the man he held before him as a shield. He fired over his protector’s shoulder. In his grip, the man was quivering like a bowl of jelly.

It was tough on Sid Chandler. The stoolie was tied down directly in the line of fire. He seemed to have shrunken into himself, cowering in the rocking chair, eyes frantic with terror.

Castle’s third shot caught Dryden in the chest. The burly man reeled away from the wall. He lifted a foot, as if feeling for a step that wasn’t there. When he put his heavy rubber-soled shoe down, his leg kept right on going. It buckled under him like wheat cut by a reaper. The .45 spilled out of his hand. The man with the hose snatched it up and fired from a half-crouching posture. His aim was good.

The thug Castle clung to gave a convulsive leap and almost broke out of his grip. Dryden was still clawing the floor, spitting blood.

Castle poured lead at the only antagonist left. He jammed his shots home in rhythmical succession, picking out the spots he wanted to pierce. It gave him a fantastic satisfaction to see how unerring his quick aim was.

There were people coming up the stairs. They pounded down the hall to the door. When they tore it open, though, they stood back, huddling on the threshold.

A blue uniform shoved to the front. Behind it was the gray of a State Trooper where his rain poncho bulged open. Light glinted on guns. Everybody in the world seemed to be there, all shouting and cursing at once.

Castle tossed his smoking automatic aside. His living shield collapsed, gurgling. Castle lowered him into a chair and went to meet the law.

“Never mind these two,” he said curtly. “Get Dryden to a hospital and pull that slug out of him. We want him— for murder— and a few other things!”

“How about this lug?” the trooper snapped, bending over Chandler. “He’s out cold.”

“Fainted. He’s not dead.” Castle pushed a way through the mob still piling up at the door. “Where’s a telephone? I’ve got to make a call in a hurry—”

HE SCRUBBED at a smear of blood on his sleeve while he waited for the operator to put through his person-to-person call. He straightened his necktie with one hand, leaning over the glass counter in the darkened bowling alley. The wires hummed and buzzed in his ear. His evening-long anger had entirely disappeared. He felt oddly exhilarated, soothed and uplifted.

After a space he heard Peter Walker’s slow, methodical drawl come over the wire.

“It’s cleaned up, D.A.,” Stan Castle said. “We’ve got Mort Dryden— on an operating table. I let him have it high and picked the place. He’ll be good as new pretty soon, and you’ve got a swell charge to hold him on. It’s murder— Finn’s murder.”

Walker asked some questions. Men were coming down the stairs outside. Castle had to let them go by before he could continue.

“Dryden is minus the third finger on his right hand,” he explained. “They’ve dumped Finn somewhere, but we’ll get him back. When we do, we’ll find Dryden’s finger marks on his throat—five on one side of the windpipe, four on the other side, all done in deep purple!”

End

Cumulative Index to Past Masters 22

March 2021 Part 2

An Author Index to the short stories in the Past Masters series produced by "Pulpmeister", in which the issues are identified as follows:

Past Masters: P

More Past Masters: M

Past Masters Two: 2

Past Masters Three: 3

etc.

Cleve F. Adams

Flowers For Violet 4

Forty Pains 4

Punk 22

Shrinking Violet 22

A.J. Alan

The Diver  5

My Adventure at Chislehurst  5

The Hair  5

H2, etc.  5

My Adventure In Norfolk  5

W. L. Alden

Hopkins' Safe  15

Monty's Friend  15

Starkweather's Circular Hotel  15

Grant Allen

The Conscientious Burglar  P

Raymund Allen

Allah Knows Best  13

The Black Knight  13

A Happy Solution  16

The Winning Move  13

Mark Allerton

Price of Office  17

Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews:

The Butler  6

Anonymous

Adventure of the Rubber Pipe  11

The Banshee 21

By a Miscalculation  12

A Detective's Story  12

The Fatal Trapdoor  15

Martin Guerre  12

The Walled Chamber  15

Arthur Applin

Overdue  17

Paul Arène

Uncle Sambuq's Fortune  15

Alice and Claude Askew:

Aylmer Vance and the Vampire  M

The Empty Chair  8

In Masquerade  16

Francis Henry Atkins

The Broken Sword  9

The Third Figure 10

Stacy Aumonier

George  M

A Source of Irritation  7

Where Was Wych Street?  8

F Britten Austin

An Affair Of Honour  5

Buried Treasure  5

Diamond Cut Diamond  11

The Fourth Degree  5

The Inca's Treasure  5

The Other Side  5

Well Lost?  11

W. E. Aytoun

The Glenmutchkin Railway  M

John Kendrick Bangs

Mr. Homes Shatters an Alibi  8

Robert Barr

The Great Pegram Mystery  M

H Bedford-Jones

All Talk 20

The Devil’s Fire 21

The Four Red Circles  4

Gallegher of Beaver  4

Harbor Hazard 21

The Luck of a Cowboy  4

J. J. Bell

The Great Corkscrew Mystery  17

Stella Benson

The Man Who Missed The 'Bus  18

J. D. Beresford

Cut-Throat Farm  15

Leslie Beresford

Black Cats For Luck  15

Diamonds for the Duchess  15

Feminine Feathers  15

Light-Fingered Looting  15

The Man in Khaki  15

Murder in Oils  14

Poker Hand  15

Understudy  15

John Bickerdyke

A Fearful Night 12

Earl Derr Biggers

Volcano-Mad 3

Harold Bindloss

The Evicting of Grainger  9

The Tempter  6

Ottwell Binns

Phantom Gold 15

The Prodigal Son, V.C. 11

The Remittance Man  15

M. McDonnell Bodkin

A Bolt from the Blue 7

Diamond Cut Diamond 9

A Drop of Blood 9

Find the Forger  8

Hide And Seek 9

The Matchmaker 6

Murder by Proxy 7

Only a Voice 8

Over-Ruled  8

Safe Bind, Safe Find

The Slump in Silver 9

The Torpedo 8

Under His Own Hand  9

A Wrong Turning  8

Rolfe Boldrewood

Five Men's Lives for One Horse 8

The Mailman's Yarn  8

Charles G. Booth

Stag Party 11, 18

Guy Boothby

The Family Honour 10

The Great Dives Elopement 10

A Strange Goldfield 10

Through Toil and Tribulation 13

Max Brand

The Silent Witness P and 7

Percy James Brebner

The Cobbler 6

The Lady's Glove 6

The Man with the Carnation 6

The Missing Signorina 6

Miles J. Breuer

The Amazing Power  21

Thomas Charles Bridges

Wingfield's White Elephant 10

Heywood Broun

The Fifty-First Dragon  17

K. R. G. Browne

For One Night Only 20

The Soft Spot 20

Two on the Roof 20

Ellis Parker Butler

The Detective Club 7

Geoffrey's Panklaggephone 6

Wadsworth Camp

The Obscure Move 18

Egerton Castle

The Guinea Smuggler 17

Christopher Caudwell

Four Friends and Death  5

J. Storer Clouston

The Fortunate Lord Fabrigas 13

Magic 13

The Trials of Tony 13

Arthur Conan Doyle:

The Disintegration Machine  10

The New Catacomb  P

When the World Screamed  12

Frank Condon

A New Year's Surprise 13

Richard Connell

Flash!  7

Loser Wins All  9

Man of a Few Words  9

One-Trip Darling  5

The Solid Gold Article  9

Dorothea Conyers

Sir Hector Devereux's Bet 17

When Rogues Fall Out 17

Mrs. George Corbett

Spoofing a Detective  7

Heath Crichton

A Country House Surprise  15

The Gold Mummy  15

The Midnight Guest 15

The Mystery of the Hotel Royal  15

Colonel Henry Curties

A Summer Night's Weird  6

James Oliver Curwood

The Match 20

Richard Harding Davis

In the Fog  9

Aidan de Brune

The Empty Match Box  P

The Fifth Domino (as by John Morris)  12

The Gift to See Ourselves as Others See Us  8

Sir George B. Douglas, Bart.

The Adonis of Slagborough  17

Patience  15

Peter Pirnie's Prison-House  16

George Allan England

Arson in the Jungle  10

The Longest Side  14

Glyn Evans

"The Man Who Was—"  5

Gwyn Evans

The Croucher 18

Francis Flagg

The Dancer in the Crystal 21

The Machine Man of Ardathia 21

The Mentanicals 21

The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds 21

The Superman of Dr Jukes 21

J S Fletcher

Comedy of the Grand Canal  8

The Cracksman's Catspaw  7

The Honour of Two  16

The Yellow Dog  P

Sewell Ford

The Impressing of Looney Fipps  17

R Austin Freeman

The Great Portrait Mystery  P

Jacques Futrelle

Room 666   14

Tom Gallon

The Vengeance of Adam Rook  11

John Galsworthy

Acme  3

J. U. Giesy

The Gravity Experiment 21

Not on the Bill

Guy Gilpatric

Gabriel's Trumpet 18

The Glasgow Smasher 21

The Lost Limerick  20

Mary, Queen of Scots  18

Scotch and Water 20

Kenneth Grahame

The Burglars  16

George Griffith

Five Hundred Carats  18

Harlan Halsey

Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist 18

William H Hamby

Cal Wood's First Case  16

Cosmo Hamilton

Proofs of  Guilt 10

The Mirror of Nature 12

The Silent Witness 5

Frances Noyes Hart

"Contact!"  18

Julian Hawthorne

Greaves' Disappearance 20

Floyd Hamilton Hazard

Front!  13

Headon Hill

Behind the Cupboard 16

The Dragon Casket 16

The Fierce Eyes 16

The Gunman from the Underworld 16

The Sapient Monkey  9

Robert J Horton:

The Ninety-Ninth Proposal 4

Eric Howard

The Miracle Man  22

Fergus Hume

Tragic Voyage  14

The Seaside Girl 15

The Blue Vase  15

C J Cutcliffe Hyne

The Anarchist's Scheme 6

Anchored 10

Beauty and the Beast 4

Confounded 3

Gregory Of Byzantium 3

Guaranteed Countess  8

A Lottery Duel 3

A Marriage of Convenience 3

The Men in Stone 3

Mrs. Seal McIntosh 3

Paradise Coal Boat 3

The Perfumer 3

A QC's Confession 3

The Ransom 4

The Settler-ess 3

The Ship-Breaker's Yard 3

The Tragedy of a Third Smoker P

The Traitor: 3

The Trinidad Treasure 3

A. A. Irvine:

The Fountain of Light 5

Violet Jacob

Secret Intelligence  17

W. W. Jacobs

A Will and a Way 21

Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace:

Mr. Belton's Immunity 7

The Tea-Leaf P

Lord Kilmarnock

A Man's Hand  14

Albert Kinross

He Stoops To Conquer  21

Otis Adelbert Kline:

The Corpse on the Third Slab 20

The Phantom Wolf-Hound 4

Stephen Leacock:

The Prince of Wurttenburg P

William Le Queux

Cheating The Spies!  14

The Mysterious Englishman  16

The Open Eye 11

The Secret of the Fox Hunter  17

Sheer Profit  P

The Wrong Road  17

Bruno Lessing

As It Happened To Moey  16

Moritsky's Ward  16

John Luther Long

Madame Butterfly 14

Sir William Magnay, Bt.

Mrs. Brotherton's Adventure  17

William J. Makin

Flight From Teheran 8

Four Guests 7

The Horror of the Loch 7

Murder off the Map 7

Supper at Midnight 5

Arthur W. Marchmont

The Bolchester Bank Robbery  17

Don Marquis

The Locked  Box  17

Richard Marsh

Giving him his Chance  16

"I Have Killed a Man!"  16

The Other Man's Boots  16

A E W Mason

The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel P

The Ginger King P

L T Meade

Warned by a Mouse 10

L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax

A Doctor's Dilemma  11

A Race with the Sun 10

L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

The Arrest of Captain Vandaleur 10

The Dead Hand 3

The Face in the Dark 7

Finger Tips 3

The Secret of Emu Plain 10

Sir Penn Carlyll's Engagement 3

The Yellow Flag 10

Alice Duer Miller

Slow Poison  18

Lucy Gertrude Moberly

Black Paws 6

C. S. Montanye

Come Back to Aaron 14

Cricket's Last Hop 18

Death With Music 14

Fog is Necessary  14

Frozen Stiff 18

Hoodwinked 18

In Deep Purple 22

Ink  13

Ivan’s Foe 13

Merry Month of Mayhem 14

Opals Are Unlucky 18

A Shock for the Countess 13

This Will Kill You 13

Wings For An Angel 18

Charles Leonard Moore

The Lion Rug 16

F. Frankfort Moore

The Crock 17

Joan's Two-seater  17

W. C. Morrow

The Mated Rubies of Kyat Pyen  16

Lawrence Mott

Nab  13

Talbot Mundy

Making £10,000 3

Edith Nesbit

The Mystery of the Semi-Detached M

William Edward Norris

The Willingham Van Dyke 6

David Wright O'Brien

The Money Machine M

Rats in the Belfry 9

Owen Oliver

Destiny  18

Her Account  6

The Last Laugh 6

A Rapid Conveyance  7

The Specialist 6

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Lady of the Morass 9

The Man Who Lifted the Blind  16

Mr. Senn's Past P

A Royal Dilemma 3

A Strange Conspiracy 13

The Tower Ghost 8

"Ouida"

The Eldest Born 13

John Oxenham

The Missing Q.C.s  18

Frank L Packard

Corporal Bob  12

Barry Pain

Albert Theodore Parish 11

Amphistamium Formosum  10

Clubs and Hearts  7

The Dog's Understudy 11

Hasheesh 11

"If"  13

Rose Rose 18

Some Imitations 6

Twelve Minutes 6

Frederick C Painton

The Dead Speak Once 22

Murder Suspect 22

Stool Pigeon 22

Hugh Pendexter

The Dogs of Purgatory 20

Marjorie Pickthall

Mannering's Men 6

Marmaduke Pickthall

The Poultry Yard  16

Lilian Quiller-Couch

An Exciting Week  16

Mabel Quiller-Couch

A Condoned Crime  11

Frederic Reddale

Galleon Gold 12

C E Bechhofer Roberts

The English Filter 7

The Last Lap 8

The Man Who Lost His Memory 7

Mrs Carnaby's Dairies 8

Murder of a Matchmaker 8

The Mystery of the Chaffeur's Suicide 7

The Radium Robbery 8

Virgin Snow 7

Morley Roberts

The Anarchist 12

The Anticipator 12

The Arbitrator 12

An Edited Story 12

The Figure-head of the "White Prince" 12

The Judgment Of Paris 12

A Man's Death 12

Her Memory 7

A Pawned Kingdom 12

The Pedestal 6

Round the World in a Hurry 12

Two Men and a River 12

The Wedding Eve 12

William J Rollins Jr

Chicago Confetti  21

Clarence Rook

The Stir Outside the Café Royal  17

Theodore Roosevelt

The Wendigo M

Anthony M. Rud

Green for Danger 20

The Molten Bullet 20

The October Blight 22

Ooze 7

A Square of Canvas 20

Damon Runyon

Tobias the Terrible P

Charles  ('Chic') Sale:

The Specialist M

"Sapper" (H C McNeile):

Will You Walk Into My Parlour? P

Dallas Lore Sharp

The Professor's Panther 16

Perley Poore Sheehan

Chicken King 22

The Hands of Killian 12

The Hank of Yarn 20

The Murdered Wife 11

The Red Road to Shamballah 22

Spider Tong  M

The “Smuggler’s Daughter”—Five Reels 12

Tiger Trail 4

Adam Hull Shirk

The Bearded Men 20

Mandrake 20

Osiris 4

George R. Sims

Doctor Mazeppa  18

Lance Warrener's Crime 11

The Man With the Wild Eyes 20

The Silver Fox 18

Under the Mistletoe Bough  18

Howard Dwight Smiley

Smokeless Tobacco  16

Thorne Smith

Yonder's Henry! M

John Philip Sousa

The Conspirators M

Andrew Soutar

Courage  20

The Doctor Takes a Hand  6

The Story without a Title  16

Henry Spicer

Called To The Rescue 18

F St Mars

Shadows  16

There and Back  8

Arthur Stringer

In the Wireless Room 18

Halliwell Sutcliffe

At The Road Top  17

Annie Swan

Aunt Caroline  14

Sir Basil Thomson

The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser  P

Guy Thorne / C Ranger Gull

The Flirt 10

"General Utility" 22

Major Marlowe's System  13

On Christmas Night  13

Puzzle Phyllis  6

Reward of Revenge  12

Unforeseen 5

Katharine Tynan

His Lordship and Kitty-for-Short  17

A Knight-Errant 21

E. Charles Vivian

Locked In P

Other Gods 6

Edgar Wallace

Bill of Scotland Yard  4

Christmas Eve at the China Dog M

A Present for Evans M

The Slane Mystery P

"Waif Wander" (Mary Helena Fortune)

The Dead Man in the Scrub  17

The Dead Witness  17

Monk's Mark 13

The Phantom Hearse 10

The Spirits of the Tower 10

Henry Brereton Marriott Watson

The Devil of the Marsh M

Mrs. Baillie Weaver

The Scarecrow  16

F A M Webster

No Leopards in Surbiton 5

The Schimmel Sets the Pace 6

The Secret of the Singular Cipher 6

Carolyn Wells

The Silent Model  17

Albert Richard Wetjen

Cannibal Isle 22

Ethel Lina White

Cheese P

Wax Works 7

Fred M. White

According to the Statute M

The Azoff Diamonds P

Victor L. Whitechurch

Stopping an Execution 12

Raoul Whitfield

Death in the Pasig 14

The Great Black  14

Inside Job  14

West of Guam 20

Oscar Wilde

The Canterville Ghost  8

Valentine Williams

Blind Guess M

C N and A M Williamson

The Dazzle Plot  8

John Strange Winter

Hunks 12

P. C. Wren

Simple 6

May Wynne

The Tiara   16

Leroy Yerxa

Through the Asteroids— to Hell! 15

Arthur Leo Zagat

Beyond the Spectrum  M

Israel Zangwill

Cheating the Gallows  9

Table of Contents

- 1: Punk / Cleve F Adams
- 2: The Miracle Man / Eric Howard
- 3: Stool Pigeon / Frederick C Painton

- 4: The Dead Speak Once / Frederick C Painton

- 5: Murder Suspect / Frederick C Painton

- 6: Chicken King / Perley Poore Sheehan

- 7: The Red Road to Shamballah / Perley Poore Sheehan

- 8: Shrinking Violet / Cleve F Adams

- 9: The October Blight / Anthony M Rud

- 10: "General Utility" / C Ranger Gull (Guy Thorne)

- 11: Cannibal Isle / Albert Richard Wetjen
- 12: In Deep Purple / C S Montanye
- Cumulative Index