Author: Cleve F Adams
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: A tough insurance company investigator is in pursuit of a quarter-million dollars of stolen diamonds, tripping over gangsters, dames, and brutal cops in the search. Hard boiled Private Eye novel by Cleve F Adams (1895-1949), a "Black Mask Magazine" regular.

WHAT PRICE MURDER

Cleve F. Adams

1942

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25

______________________

Chapter 1

McCLOUD was coming out of the Hall of Justice, and Sheila Mayo was on her way in, and while he hadn’t been thinking about her particularly, having plenty other troubles on his mind, the sight of her through the glass of the big revolving door did something to his throat. All at once it became imperative that he speak to her, if only for a moment. He followed his segment of the door around and caught her just as she was about to enter an elevator. “Hello, Sheila.”

She swung about, fine gray eyes lighting with pleasure. “Stephen, how nice!” She was very smart in tweeds and topcoat; smart, but quite business-like too. She was carrying a brown pigskin briefcase, one McCloud himself had given her when she had first opened her own office. Copper-brown hair curled down from beneath a jaunty little hat that was swagger without being silly. McCloud had always liked Sheila’s taste in clothes. She shifted the briefcase, put out a slim gloved hand. “How’s the great detective? I’ve been seeing your name a lot in the papers recently.”

“I’ll bet,” he said. One of his rare smiles enveloped her. He was a big man; bigger than usual today, in a new hundred-dollar camel’s hair overcoat he had just bought. He took off his hat, pretending to be greatly interested in the label inside it. “How’s the law business?”

“The law business?” She shrugged. “Oh, not so bad.” Her face looked thinner, more tired than when he had seen her last. McCloud wondered whether it was the press of work or her husband again. Never much of a diplomat, he asked her, and then watched her mouth get that independent, stubborn look about it, and all the pleasure die out of her eyes. She said she was working pretty hard.

McCloud’s own mouth tightened. “Maybe I’d better have another talk with the guy,” he said.

She caught his arm, flushing. “Oh no, Stephen, you mustn’t. Kenneth is all right, really he is. He’s been doing a lot better lately.”

“I saw him less than an hour ago,” McCloud said in a flat voice. “He was drunker than seven hundred dollars.” He didn’t say that Ken Mayo was also with a lush blonde, but Sheila must have guessed something of the kind for she flinched as though he had struck her.

Small white teeth left their imprint on her. nether lip, but she was quite composed again when she said, “I must forbid your seeing Kenneth about what is, after all, none of your business.” She took a step toward the elevator bank, paused to say over her shoulder, “Goodbye, Stephen.”

Then bronze doors closed on her and the uniformed starter was staring at McCloud with a knowing leer. McCloud pushed out through the throng of home-going clerks and one thing and another. The clock in City Hall tower chimed the half hour. It was just five-thirty. As if it had been waiting for this precise moment the rain which had been threatening all day cut loose. Umbrellas sprouted like mushrooms on the crowded sidewalks and the taxi business rocketed into boom proportions. Nowhere except in Los Angeles or the tropics could it rain so much in so short a time. McCloud sloshed across an already inch-deep street and climbed puffing into his big coupe. There was a note twisted around one of the spokes of the steering wheel. With wet fingers he removed it and spread it on a knee and switched on the dash lights. The message was nothing if not informal. It said:

“Hi, baby! Would you be buying any ice today? On account of if you would, and I do mean lots and lots of ice, you might drop around and see me some time.”

There was no signature. None was necessary. McCloud would have known the writer, and where to find him, even without the scrawled address of a Turkish bath on Spring Street.

Van Felix was the drunken wag of the rialto. Fired from every private agency in Los Angeles, warned off half the lots in Hollywood, apparently sowing not, he nevertheless managed to reap enough to keep him perpetually drunk. Strangely enough, he and McCloud were friends, even though McCloud himself had had to fire him from West Coast Indemnity’s staff. And in the matter of diamonds McCloud was indeed interested. He was interested to the tune of a quarter million dollars. Three whole days had elapsed since the Kahn & Company heist, and in those three days this was the first lead that looked legitimate. He sat there a moment, watching the rain bounce against the windshield, wondering if Van Felix really had something, or if the note were a product of acute alcoholism. Presently he decided that the only way to find out was to look up Felix.

He thought, a very little, about Sheila Mayo, and about her husband Kenneth, the man she had chosen instead of a very nice guy named Stephen McCloud. He became quite angry with himself for thinking of things like that when he should be concentrating on the Kahn diamonds.

Cloud dodged under a newsstand awning and went down marble steps to the- basement of the Granger Building. There was a pool and billiard hall on one side, and the heavy rumble of the bowling alleys was like thunder in the narrow confines of the corridor. McCloud turned left, through the swing doors of the Hammet Baths.

Hammet himself came out, wiping his hands on the towel draped around his neck. Hammet was a Greek made up to resemble a Turk. This hurt him because, politically, he hated the Turks, but business was business. He felt that running a Turkish bath entailed looking like a Turk. He even wore a fez, one that a visiting Shriner had forgotten. His walrus mustaches lifted in a fiendish grin of delight as he recognized McCloud.

“Waal, Meesta McCloud, sheesa really you!”

McCloud said it was indeed he. He said, “Is that sot Felix around?”

Hammet made disparaging sounds. “Sheesa here,” he admitted, adding sadly that he didn’t know why, though. “Why heesa wanting to get sober so he can get dronk again, so he can get sober again, so he can—”

McCloud put an end to that. “Never mind. Just forget I ever mentioned it.” He shook water from his rain-spotted Borsalino. “I want to talk to him.”

“Hah!” Hammet said scornfully.

McCloud looked at him. “What’s wrong with that?”

Hammet’s fat belly shook with sudden mirth. “You can talking yourself blue in the face and those guy Felix ain’t going hear wan word. Heesa dronk like anything. Heesa w’at you are calling fried. Heesa steenking.”

McCloud sighed. “Is that new?” He shrugged out of his overcoat and tossed it and his hat to a chair.

“Well, send out for some coffee and stuff and let’s get to work.”

He pushed through the swing doors and went along the row of tiled booths till he found Felix in Number Seven. Felix did not know he had been found. He did not know anything for quite a while. Hammet had not exaggerated. The man on the couch was painfully thin, almost emaciated, but the indirect light from the ceiling fixture was kind to him. In sleep, some of the lines were smoothed from his young-old face, and the pale touseled hair that clung damply to his forehead made him look somehow like a little boy who has been sick for a long, long time.

McCloud’s rather sombre dark eyes softened and his big hands were strangely gentle as he helped undress the limp body.

Fat Hammet, juggling his fez with one hand and a trayful of cups and saucers and coffee and one thing and another, waddled in and deposited them on a table. McCloud sent the Swede handler out after ice bags.

He was afraid to throw Felix in the plunge all at once. The guy looked as though he might shatter. After a while, under the somewhat heroic ministrations of all three men, he was able to stiffen his neck sufficiently to raise his head all by himself, and his eyes came open and settled blearily on McCloud. He said, quite distinctly and as though he had never had a drink in his life,

“Oh, so there you are, my buxom fraan.” He then went back to sleep again.

Sighing, McCloud waved Hammet and the Swede out of the room. He lifted Felix and propped him against the wall and started slapping him, not hard, but methodically.

Felix said sadly, “All right, if you want to play rough,” and suddenly kicked McCloud in the stomach.

McCloud slapped him again, harder this time. Felix opened his eyes briefly. “Oh, it’s you again!”

“Not again,” McCloud said through clenched teeth. His stomach hurt. “Still. This is the same day.”

He put his hands under Felix’s armpits, stood him up in a corner, leaned close to the flaccid face.

“Look, you dope, you left a note in my car. About some ice, remember?”

Felix’ mouth twisted in a cunning leer. “Sure I ’member. Elephants never forget. Felix never forgets.” He thought this was very funny. He giggled. He shook himself free of McCloud’s grip and sat down suddenly and put his head in his hands. His eyes watched McCloud through slitted fingers.

“How much am I bid for a quarter million dollars in diamonds?”

McCloud licked his lips. He was a long way from being convinced that the whole thing wasn’t a stall on Felix’ part, but in this racket you had to play every possible angle. “The company is offering five grand,” he said.

Felix shook his head, cautiously, lest it become detached from his shoulders. “Not enough.”

McCloud pretended to be very busy lighting a cigarette. After awhile he said, “Ten?”

“Make it fifty.”

McCloud cursed him. “Christ, you must think we’re the mint. I couldn’t offer that kind of money until I got an okay from Jessup and the company.” He considered that for a moment. “And anyway I’d have to know what you’re holding, wouldn’t I?”

Quite suddenly he bent and pulled Felix’ hands away from his face and pushed him violently back against the wall. “Look, Van, you know I play square. Give me what you’ve got, or what you think you’ve got, and I’ll check it. Then, if there’s anything to it, I’ll pay you whatever the traffic will bear. Fair enough?”

Felix appeared to think this over. “All right, you Shylock, I’ll take that.” He blew out his breath. “There’s a girl named Margie Garland. She was pretty swacked when I saw her this afternoon; swacked and a little boastful. She finally slopped over about all the things she was going to be able to buy shortly, and I got the idea she was mixed up in the Kahn & Company heist.” He wrinkled his forehead in puzzled thought. “Say, you know something? She’s Duke D’Arcy’s gal, that’s who she is. I just remembered.”

McCloud frowned. “That simply doesn’t make sense, Felix. D’Arcy’s a gambler. He wouldn’t be mixed up in a heist.”

Felix clung stubbornly to the thought. “Can I help it what he is or isn’t? This dame is his gal. I’ve seen ’em together.”

McCloud shook him desperately. “All right, all right, where did you say I could find her?”

Felix made a valiant effort to get his eyes open, failed, sighed heavily and fell back on the couch. McCloud leaned over him, prodding, nagging, striving to impose his will on the foggy mind.

“Come on, Van, just the address, then I’ll let you go to sleep.”

And finally the flaccid lips parted and the name of an apartment house in the Westlake district came out. McCloud, breathing angrily through his nose, yanked a blanket over the somnolent Felix and went out and left fifty dollars with Hammet the Greek.

Hammet was gratified. He said, “Why, hanh, t’ank you too moch, Meesta McCloud.” He smiled wolfishly. “For those moch monies I am making those Felix like wan new guy.”

“For twenty of it,” McCloud said. He scowled as Hammet attempted to give him an argument. “The other thirty goes to Felix, understand?” He shrugged into the camel’s-hair, yanked on his hat. “And no tricks, either.”

Hammet was cut to the quick. “Whoosa make tricks, me?” Eyes like a disillusioned hound dog’s watched McCloud to the door. “I’ma your fraan, ain’t I?”

“Sure,” McCloud said. “You’re my friend just like all the others.”

He sneered. “Just as long as you think you can get anything out of me.”

He did not really believe this. He was quite fond of Hammet, though he would not have admitted this to anybody, least of all to Hammet himself.

Chapter 2

THE LOBBY of the Insurance Exchange Building was practically deserted when at something after six o’clock McCloud pushed through the doors. The single elevator left running was bringing down only an occasional passenger, and the man at the cigar stand was already putting his counter stock away and beginning to lock up for the night. Leaning on the cigar case and apparently very interested in its contents was Detective-lieutenant Floyd Brannigan. McCloud pretended that he didn’t see Brannigan, which in effect was pretending that he was stone blind, and headed for the elevator. Brannigan yelled at him.

“Hey, you!” McCloud turned. “Oh, hello, Lieutenant.” He looked at his strap watch with exaggerated impatience. “I’m in kind of a hurry.”

Brannigan was not impressed. He was a large man, almost as tall as McCloud and much thicker through the middle. “So you’re in a hurry. Why?”

“Now you’re getting personal,” McCloud said. “Polite people don’t ask things like that.” He tried to give the impression that he had just taken a dose of Sal Hepatica. “When you’ve got to go—”

Brannigan’s pale eyes narrowed. “Save it,” he advised. Casually, almost as though it were an accident, he blocked the elevator doors.

“What’s new on the Kahn & Company job?”

McCloud was indignant. “A fine thing to ask me! It’s your case, isn’t it?”

“Unh-hunh. That’s why I’m hanging around. Emil Kahn is upstairs, closeted with your boss.”

“No!”

“Fact,” Brannigan said. His eyes watched everything in the lobby but McCloud. “What do you think of Kahn?”

McCloud appeared to think. Presently he said, “You mean do I think it was an inside job? It could be. I guess that’s why Jessup is holding up payment on the policy.”

Brannigan spat out the toothpick. “You’re only guessing?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’re a liar,” Brannigan said. He poked a thick forefinger at McCloud’s chest. '“You’ve been busier than a cat on a tin roof the last three days. You mean you haven’t found out anything?”

“Have you?” McCloud countered.

Brannigan flushed angrily. “There’s a difference. I’m a cop. Crooks don’t come to me with off-color deals.”

McCloud was offended. “Are you insinuating that West Coast Indemnity would traffic with thieves?”

“You’re damned right I am!”

McCloud made disparaging noises. “You ought to be ashamed.”

“And you ought to be in jail!” Brannigan yelled. "For years you and Jessup have been giving us the runaround, buying back stolen goods and God knows what else.” He took a slow breath. "This is one time you’re not going to get away with it, baby.”

McCloud was beginning to think the same thing himself. Brannigan’s presence at another time would not have worried him, but now that he actually had a lead, or what seemed to him a possible lead, police interference was apt to be embarrassing. It was not that he or his employers condoned thievery; it was just that many times, through bungling or worse, the constituted authorities managed to apprehend the criminals without recovering the loot; or to so scare the criminals that recovery was impossible. It was McCloud’s job to get the stuff first, provided that it was his company who had insured it, and the criminals later, though sometimes this last didn’t work out exactly as planned. That’s what Brannigan was sore about.

McCloud affected a great earnestness. "Look, Lieutenant, if you can pin this job on Emil Kahn I’ll be the first to congratulate you. I don’t like him.”

Brannigan was partially mollified. “What’s he doing up there?”

“I wouldn’t know,” McCloud said. "Probably trying to collect the insurance, but that’s only a guess.” He grinned suddenly. “If you’d get the hell out of my way I could go up and find out for you.”

Brannigan said a very bad word indeed. “I’ll bet!”

"Well, I would,” McCloud insisted. He exuded righteousness. “I’m all through pulling chestnuts out of the fire for soulless corporations.” He sighed. “It doesn’t get you anywhere.”

Brannigan was unsympathetic. “You seem to be doing all right for yourself.”

McCloud shrugged. “Money! Do you think that money is all that matters to me?”

“Yes,” Brannigan said quite frankly, “I do.” He stood aside, though, and permitted McCloud to get into the elevator.

His entrance interrupted what had apparently been a very heated discussion between the two men already there. Jessup, seated behind his desk with the effect of an entrenched but beleaguered general, had one fist still poised in midair preparatory to banging it down for emphasis to something he was saying. Seeing McCloud, he reconsidered banging it and lowered it with admirable repression to the arm of his chair.

“Oh, so it’s you!”

McCloud admitted that it was indeed he. He said, “You’d better watch your blood pressure, Counsellor.” His dark eyes examined Emil Kahn without warmth.

“Hello.”

Kahn snorted. Obviously he was not in a pleasant mood, nor was he unaware that McCloud’s advent was going to be something of a liability. He was still wearing a bandage on his head, badge of his rather unheroic encounter with the man or men who had made away with his quarter million dollars in unset stones. McCloud looked at the bandage with pointed disparagement.

“You’d think they hit you with your own safe instead of a measly little slap.”

Jessup decided to bang his fist after all. He was head of West Coast’s legal department.

“Stephen, I want you to remember that Mr. Kahn is one of our policyholders. One of our most valued policyholders.”

McCloud accepted the reproof at something less than its face value.

“All right.” He sneered at the bandage. And then, addressing Jessup but really watching Emil Kahn: “Brannigan is downstairs in the lobby.”

Jessup stood up violently. “In God’s name, why?”

“He still thinks it was an inside job,” McCloud said. “He thinks Kahn had a hand in it.”

“The hell with what he thinks!” Jessup yelled.

Emil Kahn blew out his fat lips. “Well!” Two ponderous steps brought him to the desk and he leaned on it and thrust a heavy jaw at Jessup. “Look, my friend, I am not taking any more of this kind of thing from you or anybody else. I have a policy with your company that is supposed to cover the loss of those stones. I either want the stones or the money.”

Jessup appealed to God in Heaven to give him strength. “Am I arguing?”

“Stalling is a better word,” Kahn said nastily. “You’ve been stalling me for three days.” Angry breath whistled through his overlarge nose.

“Do you pay off or do I have to sue?”

McCloud decided that he had helped to precipitate the clash; he would now cast a little oil on the troubled waters. “I think I’ve finally got a lead,” he said.

Both men glared at him. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

He became indignant. “I ask you, have I had a chance? Have you guys done anything but yell ever since I came in? The description you gave us, and the police, doesn’t seem to fit anybody in Los Angeles. Suppose I give you one that does?”

Kahn shrugged. “I don’t like your implication, but go ahead.”

Meticulously, from memory, because he knew Duke D’Arcy very well indeed, McCloud described the gambler and night-club proprietor who Van Felix had thought might be implicated in the diamond heist. Kahn’s broad face remained unchanged.

“No, that is not the man I saw.”

Jessup looked at McCloud. “Well?”

“It was just an idea,” McCloud said. He was still not satisfied about Emil Kahn’s possible complicity, but he had absolutely nothing to hang an accusation on. And in the matter of Duke D’Arcy he had only Van Felix’ word that Margie Garland was D’Arcy’s girl. Still, meagre as the tip was he had to play it. There was nothing else that even remotely resembled a lead.

He pointed the cigar at Jessup. “Can you get me fifteen or twenty grand at this time of night?”

“What for?”

McCloud moved his shoulders impatiently. “Maybe you’d better not know that. Let’s just say that I know a certain lady who might be willing to talk if her palm was crossed with something beside silver.”

Emil Kahn sucked in his breath. “You mean you’d actually compound a felony?”

Jessup barked at him. “He means we’re just like you. We don’t want to lose a quarter-million dollars if we can help it. And as for stalling you on the insurance, we’re perfectly within our rights. There’s a clause in your policy that gives us five days.”

Kahn yelped. “So you’re going to be like that!”

“Not if you leave us alone,” Jessup said. He spread his hands. “McCloud says he’s got a lead. If we can get the diamonds back, we’re going to do it, and it’s none of your business how we do it. We’ll see about avenging your poor head afterward.” He stared appraisingly at McCloud. “What’s this lady’s name and address?”

McCloud shook his head, then changed his mind because he saw that he wasn’t going to get the money otherwise. He gave Margie Garland’s name and address, then went over and stood by the tall windows while Jessup opened the safe. Presently he was counting a neat sheaf of currency and signing the customary receipt for it.

Emil Kahn watched the proceedings with patent disapproval. “Suppose I informed Lieutenant Brannigan of what you intend doing?”

“Go ahead,” McCloud said. “You interfere in our business and we’ll sew your policy payment up in court for so long you’ll have a beard down to here before you collect.”

Chapter 3

THE APARTMENT house was not the best in the Westlake district, neither was it the worst. McCloud got out of his car and crossed the street and went into the lobby. In the marble slab of one wall was set a row of brass mail boxes. He located the one tabbed Garland and went up heavily carpeted stairs to the second floor and pressed the buzzer beside 204.

There was no answer. He waited a moment, then rang again. Still there was no answer.

Faint yellow light seeped out from under the door and tinted the tips of his brogues. Across the hall, another door opened, and a lady with mascaraed eyes and revealing silk pajamas regarded him with a bright mechanical smile. “You looking for somebody, honey?”

“Am I looking for somebody?” He pursed his lips as though debating
the question. “Well, now that you mention it, I believe I am. Sometimes, though, I just go around ringing doorbells for fun. You know— like Hallowe’en.”

Her mechanical smile went away. “Oh, a smart guy!” She retreated, slamming her door.

McCloud waited to see if she would open it again, or if anyone else would get curious about him. When it became apparent that nothing of the sort was going to happen he made heavy, clumping sounds with his feet, as though departing, and reached behind him and twisted the doorknob. It turned under his hand. Dark eyes watchful beneath the tugged-down hat brim he backed into 204 and closed the door. A very jittery feminine voice said, “S-stand s-still!”

McCloud’s stomach muscles crawled. Experience had taught him that there was nothing worse than a gun in the hands of a nervous female, and there was something about the voice that almost guaranteed the presence of a gun. Cautiously, very cautiously indeed, he risked craning his neck for one swift glance over his shoulder. As he had suspected the girl had a gun, and both girl and gun had the shakes, but the thing that really knocked him for a loop was the girl’s identity.

She was Sheila Mayo. Also she was so scared that she didn’t recognize him at first; so scared that the gun in her small fist was liable to go off almost any second. McCloud stilled the incipient nausea in the pit of his stomach and put on what he hoped was one of his very best smiles.

“This is kind of uncomfortable, Sheila. Couldn’t I just sort of relax and lean against the door and let you shoot me from the front?”

Her eyes widened, like a newly awakened sleepwalker’s. “Stephen!”

He held his breath as the gun wobbled uncertainly. Nothing happened. There was something very peculiar about the way she still kept it pointed at him, though. Even after recognition she did not relax. Still hugging the door and being very careful about the whole business he moved his shoulders around, then his feet, until at last he stood facing her.

“Put the gun down, Sheila.”

She did not put it down. All she did was back away from him, still taut, still pale as a ghost. But the slight change in her position discovered to his startled eyes that there was a third occupant in the room, and that this one was dead. She was a woman in her early thirties and she was sitting quite erect, propped between a pile of silken cushions and the raised arm of the chaise longue. McCloud was quite positive that she was dead, because there was a bullet hole just over her right eye. A thin trickle of blood had run down out of the hole, obscuring the eye itself, but the left eye was wide open.

He took a deep breath. “Well, Sheila?”

There was an unconscious caress in his voice, no accusation whatever. For one thing, he had just recognized the dead woman on the chaise longue. She was the platinum blonde he had seen that very afternoon with Kenneth Mayo, Sheila’s husband. Sheila had probably had every right in the world to kill her.

He said calmly, “You’d better put the gun down, hon, and we’ll talk this over.” He nodded at the lady on the chaise longue. “Did you have to?”

Sheila ignored that. Neither did she relax her vigilance with the gun. Her usually quiet voice was hoarse, but at least she was able to control it. “What are you doing here, Stephen?”

He shrugged, humoring her. “Who me?” He even laughed a little, so that she should see that there was no reason to be frightened after all.

“Why, I sort of had a date with Margie, over there. That is, I presume she is Miss Garland.” When Sheila did not answer that either he took a cautious step toward her, then another. “You know, Sheila, I really should be very angry with you about this. I had hoped to get some information from the lady. And now I can’t.”

Sheila apparently was not as completely dazed as she seemed. As he essayed a third step the small gun in her hand steadied on his middle.

“Don’t come any closer, Stephen. I’m going out of here. I’ve got to.”

At the look in his eyes she started trembling all over and McCloud knew then that there was no longer any use trying to reason with her. He made his voice reassuring.

“All right, Sheila, you just run along. I’ll take care of everything.” And then, flexing his knees slightly, he launched his big body in a power dive for her ankles, and while he managed to get her ankles all right his calculations were upset as the thick rug skidded under his own feet. As a consequence he pushed instead of pulled Sheila’s legs out from under her, and she toppled over and fell on his back. Her gun went off right beside his ear, almost deafening him, and then something clunked against one of his upthrust heels, and presently it turned out that this was Sheila’s forehead.

Breathing gustily, he rolled from under her limp body and discovered that she was temporarily out of the running. His heel had knocked her cold.

Rising to his knees he discovered something else that was a trifle more serious. The blonde from across the hall, the one in the yellow silk pajamas, was standing there in the open doorway and getting ready to scream bloody murder. Cursing, McCloud grabbed the gun and pointed it at her. “All right, baby, just come in easy and shut the door behind you.” He had no intention of shooting her if she didn’t obey. Perhaps she sensed this; perhaps she just acted instinctively, but she certainly did not come in as directed. She did shut the door, but she managed to stay on the far side of it, and by the time McCloud had gotten to his feet and raced into the hall he discovered her own door just clicking shut. The bolt slid home with audible finality. Wondering how it was possible that everybody else in the building had not heard the shot McCloud went swiftly back into 204. Sheila Mayo had vanished.

Margie Garland’s one good eye regarded him with what seemed almost sardonic amusement, and then, as though she had grown tired of sitting so long in the one position, Margie made him a loose-jointed little curtsy and fell over on her face. McCloud ran through a bedroom and dinette and kitchen without finding Sheila. There was a service door leading from the kitchen down into abysmal depths and it was obvious that she must have gone out this way. He listened, could hear not the slightest sound of descending steps, finally went back into the living room and located the telephone. But having found it he hesitated, trying to decide what was the smart thing to do. He could— indeed he would have liked to— vanish as completely from the scene as had Sheila Mayo, but he realized almost instantly that this would hardly be the best thing for her. The blonde across the hall would certainly be able to give the police a lot of very damaging information; she could probably describe him, McCloud, right down to the most minute detail, but she could not have got such a very clear picture of Sheila. Sheila had been face down on the floor.

Once more McCloud lifted the phone, once more he put it down, this time because of something he saw on the chaise longue. In tumbling off the seat Margie Garland had taken one of the loose cushions with her. In the space where the cushion had been there was a black tooled-leather envelope purse. McCloud went over and picked it up, saw with a swift tightening of the throat the heavy gold M on its side. It was almost certain that the purse was Sheila’s, for where but one initial is used it is always the last one. M for Sheila Mayo, not for Margie Garland. Besides, the purse did not look frivolous enough for a gal like Margie. Not that Marge looked particularly frivolous any more.

Sighing, McCloud thrust the incriminating piece of evidence into an overcoat pocket, and returned to the telephone and called police headquarters. He had scarcely heard the operator’s first ring when he became conscious of the hall door opening.

It opened slyly at first, just a furtive crack. Then it was suddenly flung wide and there on the threshold stood Lieutenant Brannigan, brandishing a police positive and bellowing like an enraged bull. “Drop the rod, Irish!”

McCloud hadn’t been conscious that he was still holding Sheila’s little gun. He dropped it as though it were red hot. The desk sergeant at Headquarters was yelling now: “Hey, you what in hell you want?”

“Never mind,” McCloud said pleasantly. “The Marines have already landed.” He hung up.

Brannigan cursed him. “You would, would you?” He ran across the room and slammed McCloud alongside the head with the police positive.

McCloud fell down on the chaise, not completely out but with aching thunder racketing around inside his skull. For a little while he could see absolutely nothing but shooting darts of light against what appeared to be a black velvet backdrop, but after a time some of the thunder went away, and the lightnings too, and he put up a hand and felt of his jaw. He decided that it was not broken. Presently he opened smoldering dark eyes and saw Brannigan at the telephone. There was another detective and two harness cops over by the hall door, and beside them was the shopworn blonde in the yellow silk pajamas. She gave McCloud a triumphant leer. “I guess that’ll hold you— you murderer! ”

McCloud said nothing. He watched Brannigan’s red face get a baffled look when Headquarters reported that it had been the police McCloud was calling. Brannigan finally hung up, a kind of puzzled rage in his pale yellow eyes. He motioned the other dick and the two Harness bulls and the blonde into the apartment. A sleepy-looking fat man in a red and green bathrobe tried his best to come in too, and Brannigan told him to get the hell out. McCloud made a mental note to look this fat man up later. He wondered why Brannigan hadn’t recognized him. The fat man’s name was Herman “Dutch” DeGroot and Dutch was a very well-known jewel thief indeed, and had a police record as long as your arm. McCloud decided that it must be Brannigan’s mental turmoil which blinded his eyes, or maybe it was Dutch DeGroot’s trick bathrobe.

The cops rolled Margie Garland over on her back and looked at the hole in her forehead. Margie didn’t seem to mind a bit. Brannigan picked up the gun McCloud had dropped, Sheila Mayo’s gun, and smelled the muzzle. He then broke it open and McCloud could see, even from where he was sitting, that there were two exploded shells. That meant that beyond a doubt this was the weapon which had done for Marge Garland; one shot for Marge and one that had exploded harmlessly during McCloud’s tussle with Sheila. Not that there had been much doubt in the first place. Sweat began trickling down McCloud’s spine, and not because it was especially hot in the room either. His own fingerprints were uppermost on the gun’s butt plates now. He wished Brannigan had not remembered to use a handkerchief in handling the gun. He wished a lot of things, including an acute case of paralysis on the blonde in the yellow silk pajamas, so that she couldn’t talk.

Brannigan came over and kicked him playfully in the shins. “Well, mugg, I’ve been waiting a long time for something like this.” He spat. “Who was the girl?”

McCloud pretended to be greatly surprised. “What girl?”

“You see?” the blonde demanded. “Didn’t I tell you he’d deny it? I seen ’em as plain as the nose on your face, rolling around on the floor indecent as hell’s hinges, and poor Marge sitting there dead!”

“Oh, you mean that girl,” McCloud said. His hat had come off and his dark hair was shaggy, disheveled. Without the hat he looked more like an Indian than ever. His eyes were almost sleepy. “You know, Lieutenant, I’d forgotten all about her in the excitement.” He knit his brows. “I wonder who she was?”

Brannigan moved in, hefting his gun. “So you want to play!”

McCloud took out his own gun, the one he carried in the waistband of his trousers and the one nobody had so far thought to search him for. “I’m a very patient guy, Lieutenant, but I’m not exactly a cigar-store ad. You keep on being the People’s Champion and I’m going to have to take the rap for a real murder.” He smiled briefly, without humor. “Only you won’t be here to see it.”

Brannigan brought up so suddenly that the Chinese rug bunched under his big feet and he sat down with a tremendous whooosh! He stared at his own gun as though he had never seen it before. “Well, unh, did I say you killed the broad? All I asked you was who is the other one?”

McCloud thought about Sheila. He thought about her so hard that he was afraid they would read his mind. But even if it had not been Sheila Mayo he probably would have lied to Brannigan anyway. He never had liked this bull-necked flatfoot, and the clip on the jaw, the uncalled-for kick in the shins was enough to make anybody stubborn. He affected great sincerity when he said he had not the slightest idea who the lady could have been. He said, “So help me, Brannigan, I never saw her before in my life. I had a date with this Margie Garland and—”

Brannigan interrupted him. “What kind of a date?”

“Well,” McCloud said, “as long as we’re all taking down our back hair—” He let his voice trail off suggestively and managed to look like an all-around, two-fisted lecher. He even leered at the blonde. “We boys will be boys, eh, Lieutenant?”

“He’s a goddam liar!” the blonde shouted. “Everybody knows Margie was Duke D’Arcy’s gal friend. She wasn’t no ordinary tramp like he’s pretending.”

“You keep your big mouth the hell out of this!” Brannigan yelled at her. He got up off his bottom and rubbed it absently with his gun. “As for you, Irish, begin at the beginning. We’ll let the matter of the date ride for a minute. You came and rang the doorbell. Go on from there.”

McCloud scratched his jaw thoughtfully with the muzzle of his gun. “Well, I rang the bell a couple of times and there was no answer.”

“That’s what you say!” the blonde sniffed. “You might have been on your way out of here for all I know.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her pajamas. “You probably killed Margie and then got scared when you saw me, so you pretended to be ringing her bell as though you’d just come.”

Brannigan nearly had a stroke. “For Christ’s sake take her back in her own flat and sit on her!”

The two harness bulls grabbed her, one to an arm, and wrestled her struggling across the hall. Her last words were, “I’ll be a ring-tailed bastard if I ever try to help a cop again. The dirty lice!”

Brannigan slammed the door. Almost immediately it opened again, this time to let in a deputy medical examiner and two technicians with cameras and plate cases. For a brief moment everybody was so interested in the new arrivals that they forgot all about McCloud. He got up as unobtrusively as possible and wandered into the bedroom and through the hall to the kitchen. The detective who had come with Brannigan was sampling the contents of a bottle he had found in the cupboard. Directly behind him there was a broom closet, its door slightly ajar.

McCloud pretended he heard a noise inside and started to open the door wider. The dick, apparently a glutton for credit, elbowed him aside and yanked. All McCloud had to do was give the guy a gentle push and turn the key in the lock. After that he went down the service steps very fast indeed.

Chapter 4

WEDGED IN a drugstore phone booth, McCloud dialed the number of Sheila Mayo’s home. He wanted to tell her that so far as he knew she was absolutely in the clear; that unless the little gun she had used, now in Lieutenant Brannigan’s possession, could be traced back to her she had nothing to worry about.

Besides Sheila, there were a few other odds and ends bothering McCloud too. About his own position he was not any too pleased; in running out on Brannigan he had chosen what seemed to him the lesser of two evils. He had believed it almost certain that the police would eventually get around to a thorough search of his person; in addition to Sheila’s purse they would find a West Coast Indemnity envelope containing fifteen thousand dollars. McCloud knew that no amount of argument would ever convince Brannigan that the money wasn’t intended as some sort of payment involving the Kahn & Company jewel theft. Therefore, it had seemed advisable, even without the menace to Sheila, to depart the scene of Margie Garland’s murder. However, though temporarily at liberty, McCloud was still a long way from being a free agent.

Sheila’s telephone kept on ringing. There was no answer. Finally, when it became quite clear that there wasn’t going to be any answer, McCloud pronged the receiver. He was still not satisfied, that she wasn’t home; he pictured her standing there, paralyzed with fear, afraid to touch the instrument.

Mentally he reviewed the salient features of what seemed to him a very intricate problem. Take Margie Garland, now. Seeing Kenneth Mayo with Margie that afternoon hadn’t meant anything to one Stephen McCloud except that Ken Mayo was a heel and not fit to be walked on by a swell girl like Sheila. So McCloud had known that all along. Margie had been just another one of Mayo’s women.

But that had been this afternoon. Now, in the light of recent developments, Ken Mayo’s acquaintance with Margie might turn out to have a direct bearing on the Kahn jewel heist. McCloud remembered quite suddenly that Mayo was the junior partner in the law firm of Dinwiddie, Kleppner and Mayo, and that this law firm was frequently employed by Duke D’Arcy  to keep him out of jail. Also, if you believed that sot Van Felix, not to mention the blonde in the yellow silk pajamas, Margie Garland was the property of the Duke. And it had been Margie who had gotten drunk and slopped over about how wealthy she was going to be presently.

Very well, then, might it not be business instead of pleasure which had thrown Kenneth Mayo and Margie Garland together that afternoon? Here were Duke D’Arcy’s girl and one of Duke D’Arcy’s attorneys, together on what appeared to be a binge but might be something very different indeed. Was it possible that Sheila had misconstrued her husband’s meeting with the girl and committed a murder without actual cause in fact? And how had Sheila found out about Margie Garland?

Sighing, McCloud tackled the phone again. It was well after nine o’clock now, and it took three calls to finally locate his boss, Jessup. West Coast’s legal shepherd was at his club. He was sarcastic.

“Oh, so it’s you. Did you get those rocks yet?”

McCloud said that he hadn’t. He said, “I’m sorry, Counsellor, but all I’ve got to date is a kick in the pants.” His mouth drooped at something Jessup said. “Never mind that, I’ve got other troubles. Brannigan and all the rest of them want me in connection with a murder. How’s about squaring it for me?”

“Good Christ Almighty!” Jessup barked. “Now, see here, McCloud, we’re getting pretty fed up with extricating you from jams of your own making. Who did you have to kill this time?”

McCloud was outraged. “I didn’t have to kill anybody!” he yelled. “You’re as bad as that guy Brannigan, always thinking the worst of me.” He drew a deep breath. “And while we’re on the subject let me tell you something else. Sure I get in jams. Who wouldn’t trying to save you guys money? You want people to know we’re playing both ends against the middle rather than pay off? You want the cops to know we’re buying back stolen goods that we can’t get any other way? Well, they’ll know it, by God, if you leave me out on a limb!”

McCloud thought it best not to mention Sheila. He and Jessup had been together a long time; indeed, in spite of their wrangling, McCloud had come to look on the older man as a sort of cross between, a father in fact and a father confessor. He would have trusted Jessup with his own life, but he could not risk Sheila’s. He said, “I couldn’t stand a search, Counsellor. I had the fifteen grand you gave me. Besides, it looks now as though my tip about the gal was really good. A night in jail, or even a couple of hours, might make all the difference in the world.”

All right,” Jessup conceded grudgingly. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it but I’ll try to square it for you.”

The rain was only a drizzle now. Water still rushed along the gutters, carrying the dry season’s accumulation of debris, but the storm had lost its violence. McCloud’s tires made wetly sucking sounds on the pavement as he drove, and ahead of him other tires on other cars churned little geysers out of the car tracks. Presently, cutting across La Brea from Hollywood Boulevard to Sunset, he was negotiating that section known as The Strip, that stretch of overly ornate restaurants, little shops run under the names of movie stars, too-impressive offices of movie agents and tall modernistic apartment houses. In spite of its fakiness McCloud loved it. This was his town. McCloud was always a trifle resentful when people from the East referred to this as a hick burg. The only difference was that some giant hand had flattened this out instead of standing it on its head.

He was so busy being resentful at one thing and another that when he turned left on Doheny Drive and started down the steep hill; he didn’t notice the other car swing in behind him. Possibly it was because this one didn’t have any lights. The first realization that he was in for trouble came to him when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the long black snout creep up beside him. The light from his own dash was just enough to keep him from seeing more than that the newcomer was driving absolutely dark. Cursing, because he was being crowded to the curb, he stuck his head out of the window and yelled a warning.

Flame stabbed at him then; flame without sound, because by the time the actual noise of the shot could have reached his ears the bullet had already hit him. The whole world seemed to explode in his face, then he was diving down and down into thick, velvety folds of blackness. He did not know anything more for quite a while.

When finally he did awaken it was to the distinct impression that he was in a very small cabin deep in the woods, and looking out the window at slowly revolving trees, and that there was also an earthquake in progress. Gradually the trees steadied and resolved themselves into but one tree, although a very big one indeed, and the cabin window turned out to be the windshield of McCloud’s car. The earthquake identified itself as a motorcycle cop, with goggles and a rakish cap and a pair of gauntletted hands as big as hams. He was leaning through the open door of McCloud’s car and shaking McCloud with great earnestness. “Hey, you, snap out of it! What goes on anyway?”

McCloud cursed him. “How do I know what happened?”

“Well, but Jesus, you can’t just climb a curb and smack into a tree as big as a house without some kind of reason!”

“That’s what you think,” McCloud said. His voice sounded distant, even in his own ears, and the cop still wore a sort of halo of fog. A sudden gust of wind shook a shower of water and pepper berries from the giant tree. Cars were already beginning to collect on the scene. The cop leaned in and sniffed McCloud’s breath.

“Nope,” he said in a puzzled voice, “nope, you ain’t drunk.”

McCloud glared at him. “Certainly I’m not drunk!”

“Then why’d you do it?”

Quite suddenly McCloud remembered the other car, and the swift flash of gunfire. He also became conscious of a terrific headache. He put up a hand, exploring his scalp, and his fingers came away sticky with blood. The cop began yelling all over again. “Hey, you been shot?”

“I think so,” McCloud said. He was no longer as dazed as he pretended. Furtively he patted his pockets. His wallet, his gun, even Sheila’s purse were right where they ought to be. And then, with a sudden premonition of disaster, he remembered the envelope and the fifteen thousand dollars. His hand sought the inside pocket of his coat. The envelope was gone.

The small crowd was rapidly growing into a large one. Perhaps because of this the cop became less solicitous about McCloud and more sarcastic. “Well, so you think you been shot! Don’t you know?”

McCloud licked his lips. “Quit yelling at me, will you?” He passed a shaking hand over his eyes. “I remember now. A car without lights ran me into the curb and there was a flash. After that, well—”

The cop was definitely playing to the gallery now. “So!” He pushed his cap far back on his head. “What’d these guys get off of you?”

“Nothing.” McCloud didn’t want it to get around town that he had permitted somebody to take him for fifteen grand. Especially he didn’t want his boss Jessup to know it. He said earnestly, “Look, officer, the slug just creased me. There’s nothing missing. Would you mind very much if I just went home and laid down for a while?” Somebody in the crowd, a very thoughtful somebody, produced a flashlight and turned its beam full on the registration in McCloud’s car.

The cop let out a yell. “McCloud, hunh?” He thrust his red face down close. I knew there was something fishy about you.” He addressed the assemblage. “There’s a general alarm out for this guy!”

McCloud’s right hand slipped the gear shift into reverse. His toe felt for and found the starter button. Under full throttle the big coupe yanked itself free of the pepper tree; the swinging door knocked the cop sprawling; the hind wheels clunked down off the curb, then the front ones. There was the shriek of tortured metal as fenders clashed, then McCloud was racing down the steep hill. Behind him other cars roared into life, and presently his rear window shattered and there was the sharp pinggg of a slug going past his ear. That would be the cop shooting. Irritably McCloud brushed powdered glass from his shoulder and urged the coupe into even greater speed. At the foot of the hill he made a screaming left turn, bounced over the Pacific Electric right of way and caromed into the parking lot of a neighborhood theatre. Then, lights out, motor silent, he just sat there and waited for the chase to go by. He was not happy. He was out fifteen thousand dollars, fifteen grand for which he had signed a receipt and which represented a year and a half’s salary. He had less than five hundred dollars in the bank.

Chapter 5

SITTING THERE in his car, facing the blank brick wall of the theatre building, McCloud tried to consider his position as dispassionately as though he were merely a spectator. It was pretty difficult.

Not only had he locked one cop in a closet; he had further antagonized the force by knocking another for a loop. Both incidents were bound to convict him in the eyes of the law, if not of the actual shooting of Margie Garland, at least of complicity. He wondered if Jessup had managed to do anything. Apparently not, for the motorcycle cop had said that there was a general alarm out. And thinking of Jessup only reminded him anew of the lost fifteen thousand dollars. Come to think of it, there was something very curious about that. It was almost as though the man or men in the darkened car had known that McCloud was carrying the money; as though this indeed had been the objective. Otherwise they would have stripped him of everything.

It was common knowledge, of course, that McCloud did carry large sums of money; common knowledge, at least in the underworld with whom he frequently did business. Very well, then, this last incident could be merely a side issue. A certain familiarity with McCloud was indicated, and with his movements, but it need not have a direct bearing on this particular job. On the other hand, there was the possibility that it did have. McCloud’s mind probed the immediate past for those who could have known that on this of all nights he was possessed of some really important money. The diamond broker, Emil Kahn, had been present, right there in Jessup’s office. Already suspecting Kahn of complicity in the robbery of his own stones, McCloud had little difficulty in suspecting him of this job too. The only thing was, compared with the size of the original haul, fifteen thousand dollars seemed like rather small potatoes. Kahn, either crooked or honest, was interested in a quarter million. Still, he had certainly had the opportunity to know what McCloud was carrying. Then there was Van Felix. Maybe Felix hadn’t been as drunk as he pretended. Maybe the whole thing had been a frame, a ruse to induce McCloud to get hold of the money so that it could be hijacked. You had to discount this theory, of course, when you remembered that Margie Garland had been killed.

That part of it hadn’t been a hoax. It was very serious business indeed. But again, there was no direct evidence that the killing was over the Kahn diamonds. As a matter of fact, it was pretty obvious that the motive was jealousy. Sheila’s jealousy over an affair between her husband and the lady in 204. Reminded of the fact that he had been on his way out to Sheila’s, McCloud decided that he might as well finish up that angle. He backed his car out of the parking lot and continued on his way as though there had been no interruption. He wished he had a drink. He wished he had two drinks. With his free hand he got out a handkerchief and wiped the drying blood off his forehead. He discovered that by being very careful he could adjust his hat so that it hardly hurt at all.

Presently he turned into the tree-lined street which was Sheila’s and parked his car at the curb before the house. He mounted to the porch and rang the bell.

There was no answer. Apparently nobody was answering their doorbells tonight, yet he had the distinct impression that the bungalow was not empty. Presently he reached out and tried the doorknob. It was locked. It seemed to him then that inside, beyond the faintly glowing windows, there was furtive movement. More than a little angry now, because after all he was trying to do Sheila a favor, he descended the steps and went swiftly back along the driveway to the double garage.

The doors were closed but not locked. There were two cars inside. He now had definite proof that he had not been imagining things. There was someone in the house. Breathing gustily, but moving very quietly for so big a man, he crossed the small back yard and tested the latch on the door to the screen porch. This door was not locked. He opened it and went through, found that the kitchen door was not locked either and used that to gain admittance to the narrow hall leading to the front of the house. He kept on walking till he came to the open door of the living room. Kenneth Mayo, apparently as drunk as a boiled owl, was stupidly attacking the problem of packing an open suitcase. He kept wobbling back and forth between the bedroom and the living room, carrying a little of this and that, and all the while mumbling to himself like a fretful and somewhat idiotic child.

McCloud watched from the darkness of the hall. There was no sign of Sheila. Puzzled a little by this, unable to account for Mayo’s extreme agitation unless it was because of Sheila, he presently stepped forward into the room.

“So where do you think you’re going?”

“My God, McCloud, what are you doing here?”

“Looking for Sheila,” McCloud said in a tight voice. “Where is she?”

A kind of vacuous cunning smeared Mayo’s face. “Sheila?” On all fours he crawled over and appeared to be looking for something under the couch. “Why, let me see, now. Where could Sheila be?”

McCloud took two swift steps and booted the guy where he thought it would do the most good.

“You’re not that drunk, you bastard. Get up and quit clowning around. Do you realize that Sheila just shot and killed one of your harem favorites?”

Mayo’s eyes rolled up in his head. “Oh, my God!” He would have fallen had not McCloud put out a hand to steady him. “Oh, my God, oh, my God!” over and over again. McCloud slapped him smartly across the face and pushed him down on the couch.

Sheila came in from the bedroom. She was still in tweeds and topcoat and she still had a gun, though naturally not the same one. Brannigan had that. This one was bigger and more business-like, and the hand that held it was no longer jittery. Two spots of bright color burned high up on Sheila’s cheeks and her gray eyes were hard and angry above the leveled weapon. She looked at McCloud as though he were a total stranger. “So we meet again, eh, Stephen?”

“God damn it, Sheila, will you put that gun down and quit acting like a fool? What the hell’s the idea? Don’t you realize I’m trying to help you?”

Her mouth curved downward. “Indeed?”

“What else?” he demanded savagely. “It’s me the cops are looking for, not you.” He slid a cautious foot toward her. “And you want to know why? Because I stalled them, that’s why. Unless the police can trace the gun back to you, you’re in the clear, get it? In the clear.” He hauled the envelope purse out of his pocket, tossed it at her feet. “Look, I even copped your bag out from under Brannigan’s nose.”

She gave it but a brief glance. “That is not my bag,” she said distinctly. And then, as her eyes lifted and widened at something she saw behind him, McCloud realized that momentarily he had forgotten all about her husband. Whirling, he had just time to see Kenneth Mayo standing there, a bronze vase lifted in his two hands, a vase as big and heavy-looking as an umbrella jar. Then the vase descended. It could just as well have been an anvil. McCloud went down like a poled ox.

Chapter 6

THE FIRST THING he was actually conscious of was that someone was trying to force liquor between his teeth. He swallowed some of it and almost immediately felt better. “Good!” a distant voice said. McCloud opened his eyes to see who the voice belonged to. The Samaritan was none other than Van Felix. His dissipated, old-young face was a trifle resentful.

“A terrible waste of good liquor,” he said. He upended the bottle, this time over his own mouth, not McCloud’s. “Ahhh!”

McCloud pushed himself to a sitting position. “A fine thing!” His eyes watched the room go around and around. “Nothing but a lush, that’s all you are. “Where the hell did you come from?”

Felix had himself another small drink. “Who me?”

McCloud cursed him. “Who do you think I’m talking to— pixies?”

Felix thought about that for a moment. “Well, no. Pixies come later.”

McCloud had now definitely located the perimeter of his head. Strong brown fingers explored the damage. Aside from a very natural swelling and a fresh trickle of blood from the newly opened bullet crease there seemed to be none. He was vastly relieved. He snatched the bottle from Felix’s loving clutch and imbibed with gusto. He began to feel like a new man. He blew out his breath. “Christ!”

Felix made disparaging noises. He was, so he said, averse to blasphemy. He said with the naive curiosity of a very small child, “Who hit you, pal?”

McCloud stood up, rocking slightly but no longer sick at his stomach.

“I don’t know. I think it was Atlas.”

“Oh, all right,” Felix said. “Would it be our fair Sheila?”

McCloud suddenly towered over him. “You’d better not say that out loud, Van.” Van sucked in his breath. “You’d better not even think it.”

“All right,” Felix said equably. He watched McCloud pick up the leather envelope purse with the big gold M on its side. “As far as I’m concerned, the M stands for Malay Peninsula. Or maybe Macedonia.”

McCloud looked at him. “You haven’t told me how you got here.”

“Taxi,” Felix said. “A yellow one.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Felix shook the bottle, admiring the bead. “I don’t like to be stubborn, pal, but there are a few things you haven’t told me, either. I gave you a tip, remember?” He helped himself to a very modest drink. “You took the tip, but you haven’t paid off— yet.”

McCloud made a bitter mouth. “Nothing but a fink, that’s all you are. Just a lousy fink.” He decided there was no use trying to fool a guy who was already on the spot and who apparently had information which might be valuable. “Somebody took me for the fifteen grand I was carrying.” He watched Felix from beneath lowered lids. “I’m still not sure it wasn’t you.”

Felix appeared genuinely startled. “Now look, Steve—” He gnawed at his lower lip. “Would I be here reviving you if I’d done a thing like that?”

“Not unless you were trying for some more of the same,” McCloud said nastily. He was immediately sorry. “Forget it, keed.” He outlined the various events since he had left Felix in a drunken stupor at Hammet’s Baths. All he left out was the past about seeing Dutch DeGroot outside Margie Garland’s door. He didn’t want Felix getting corked all over again and fumbling that angle. “So you see,” he finished, “I’ve had plenty on my mind beside the Kahn diamonds.” His fingers toyed with the catch on the bag. “Now would you mind telling me—?”

Felix shrugged. “There’s really nothing to it. The news is all over town about you being caught at the Garland girl’s flat, where I knew you were going to be anyway.” He lit a cigarette. “Also, there was talk of a mystery woman. I got an idea, just as the cops did, that you might be covering up, and the only woman I could think of that you might do that for was Sheila Mayo.” He blew a smoke ring. “So I came out and here you were.”

“Yes,” McCloud said bitterly, “here I was.” He looked hard at Felix, trying to read what was going on in that young man’s mind. “You see anything of Sheila or that heel of a husband of hers when you came up?”

Felix shook his head. “Not even a vanishing tail light.”

McCloud remembered that there had been two cars in the garage. He ran out through the back of the house and looked. There was only one car now. Returning, he paused in the bathroom and examined his reflection in the mirror over the lavatory. In the medicine chest he found alcohol and Mercurochrome and adhesive, and with these laid out he was about to treat the shallow bullet furrow in his skull when his eye fell on the envelope purse and he recalled Sheila’s denial that it was hers. Not until then had it occurred to him to open the bag and really examine its contents. He did this now. To his great astonishment he discovered that Sheila had been telling the truth. The bag was certainly not hers. In the first place, Sheila Mayo was not the type of girl who would use Black Narcissus. The purse reeked of it. And in the second place, besides compact, lip-rouge and the ordinary miscellany, there was a handkerchief with an embroidered M, but the M was not alone. It was kept company by a K. Also, there were two letters addressed to Mrs. Felipe Mercedes. McCloud wondered what the lady’s first name was. He memorized the address on the envelope but decided that, temporarily at least, he would be a gentleman and not read the letters.

Hearing Felix approaching the bathroom door he snapped the bag shut and dropped it back into his overcoat pocket. He was dressing his wounds when Felix came in.

“Oh, there you are!” Felix observed happily. He had managed to get himself quite drunk. There was less than an inch of rye left in the quart bottle. Cursing Felix for a hog, McCloud seized the bottle and drained it. “I guess that’ll teach you!”

Quite suddenly he too was drunk, very drunk indeed, so drunk that when he tried to set the bottle down on the edge of the basin he missed completely and it crashed to the floor. Felix regarded him dispassionately.

“You know something? I think you’re tight.”.

“Hah!” McCloud said. He had about a yard of the adhesive unrolled and it kept curling about his fingers and he couldn’t let go of it. “Christ, this is worse than flypaper!”

Felix pushed him down on the toilet seat. “Papa fix.” Somehow he managed to do it, too. Presently McCloud surveyed himself in the mirror again, discovering that Felix had given him a new hair-do which practically hid the adhesive altogether. He decided that he was quite handsome, though he was fair enough to admit that his appraisal was probably influenced by the rye. He ogled Felix. “How’d you like to help me get that fifteen grand back?”

Felix said that he would be delighted. He said, “How much help and how much of the dough do I get to keep if I find it?”

McCloud was outraged. “Have I ever chiseled you? Have I?” He hurled a towel into the bathtub and almost fell in after it.” “What’d you do with the money I left with Hammet for you?”

“I’ve still got it,” Felix admitted. He preened himself before the mirror. “I’ve got Hammet’s share, too.” He shook his head disparagingly.

“These Greeks, they can’t even count the spots on one of the dice, let alone two.”

McCloud glared at him. “That’s gratitude for you!” He cocked an ear at the sound of a distant siren. It seemed to him that it was coming closer. “Well, forget that for now.” He stabbed a forefinger at Felix’ somewhat emaciated chest. “Here’s what I want you to do, pal. Check up on Emil Kahn’s movements tonight, say from six thirty on.” He scowled. “I’ve got a hunch it might be him that took the shot at me, and also lifted the fifteen grand.”

The siren was definitely closer now. For the first time Felix heard it too. “Do you suppose we’re having guests?”

“You think you’re the only one that’s smart?” McCloud demanded. “Much as I hate his guts, that guy Brannigan isn’t dumb.” It occurred to him that Brannigan might indeed have finally traced the murder gun to Sheila. “Stick around and act as the welcoming committee if you want to. Me, I’m anti-social as hell.” He ran out.

Chapter 7

IT WAS ONE of those vast and pretentious apartment hotels which lie adjacent to Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile. Cooperatively owned, it had been built for people with money and looked it. He went into the chaste lobby and asked for the number of the Mercedes apartment.

The lady who opened the door had green eyes, like a cat’s, and a casque of blue-black hair and a lot of other things McCloud could have admired if he’d had time to go into them. She was in a green-and-silver evening gown and her skin was like Guernsey cream, rich, warm-looking. She just stood there a moment, as though surprised that he wasn’t someone else.

McCloud took off his hat. “Pardon me, I’m looking for a K. Mercedes— Mrs. Felipe Mercedes.”

“Yes?” Her voice was full, deep-throated, assured. She had lovely teeth.

“Well, is she here?”

Her green eyes measured him. “I am Kay Mercedes.”

“Oh,” McCloud said. He could not seem to fit this woman with Margie Garland. They were almost of separate worlds. Yet there was a distinct aura of Black Narcissus about the lady before him, and she was now committed to the ownership of the purse he had found in the Garland woman’s apartment. He took out the bag, not offering it to her, just holding it so that she could see it. “Would this happen to be yours?”

Perhaps it was just a trick of the lights, but for an instant it seemed that the rich cream of her skin turned the color of skimmed milk. Her green eyes never even flickered, though. McCloud decided that she could have been, perhaps was, a very great actress. She put out a hand. “May I see it, please?”

McCloud shook his head. “If you don’t recognize it I guess I must have made a mistake.” Behind her there was a small foyer done in black and pale gold, and there was a series of orchid-tinted mirrors. In one of these mirrors McCloud saw a man standing just inside the living-room archway. The man was tall, darkly handsome in white tie and tails, and he was quite well known to McCloud, because McCloud had frequently dropped his weekly pay check on the tables of one or the other of this man’s so-called clubs. The man was Duke D’Arcy.

His eyes met McCloud’s in the mirror with instant recognition, and possibly a fleeting trace of something else. He came into the foyer and stood beside the lady with the green eyes. “Hello there, McCloud. What seems to be the trouble?”

McCloud realized then that the woman’s restraint might have been due to D’Arcy’s presence. He fingered his tie with a semblance of nervousness. “Well, unh, I don’t know that you’d call it trouble exactly. Seems to be a slight misunderstanding, that’s all.” He looked sleepy-eyed at the Mercedes woman, trying to get a lead on his next move. It seemed to him that she made a faint gesture of negation. He said, “Then it isn’t yours?”

She was quite positive now. “No, it certainly isn’t mine.”

D’Arcy’s face might have been that of the Sphinx. “What made you think the bag might belong here, McCloud?” He put out a well-kept hand for it.

McCloud, appearing not to notice, dropped the purse back into the side pocket of his overcoat. He feigned an embarrassed laugh. “I guess I’m just a bum detective after all, Duke. There was one of the
Dos Palmas cards in the purse, and the clerk downstairs said he thought he recalled seeing Mrs. Mercedes carrying a similar bag, so—”

At the word “detective” the lady’s green eyes had narrowed slightly. She now looked from D’Arcy to McCloud. “Apparently you gentlemen know each other. Hadn’t you better introduce us, Duke?”

D’Arcy bowed with exaggerated courtliness. His eyes were a trifle mocking. “Why not, my dear? This is Mr. Stephen McCloud, an investigator for West Coast Indemnity. Mr. McCloud, Mrs. Mercedes.”

She managed a tight little laugh of her own. The tension was terrific, yet D’Arcy seemed completely unaware of it. She said, “Oh, a private detective. How charming.”

“Not a very good one,” McCloud said. He did not really believe this. He thought he was a swell detective. He fiddled with his hat and wondered if Duke D’Arcy knew that Margie Garland was dead.

Finally he put the hat back on. “Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mrs. Mercedes. Good-night, Duke.”

D’Arcy stepped out into the hall. “Now wait a minute, McCloud. Where’d you find this bag in the first place?”

McCloud’s mouth drooped. He was suddenly tired of playing games, of double-talk between himself and the lady in green. He wanted to get away by himself, so he could think. “In a gutter,” he said, and shook D’Arcy’s hand from his arm and went back down the quiet hall to the elevators. This was getting to be a very funny business indeed, he thought sourly. There were so damned many screwy angles cropping up that he was in imminent danger of going screwy himself.

So, investigating the ownership of the bag, who did you again run into? None other than Duke D’Arcy, of whom the lady with the green eyes was obviously afraid. The salient point seemed to be that Duke D’Arcy was the key to the whole business. On the other hand you had the police-established precedent that crooks never step out of character. A professional gambler, for instance, could by no stretch of the imagination be mixed up in a jewel robbery.

The elevator came up and McCloud got into it. Well, then, the hell with police precedent. For a quarter million dollars a gambler or anybody else would be tickled to death to be a ring-tailed monkey if necessary. The only thing was, in case D’Arcy actually was in on the diamond job, it couldn’t have been a one-man job as at first suspected. Because why? Because Emil Kahn had sworn that the description of D’Arcy did not fit the man who had sapped him!

Debouching at the main floor, McCloud was on the point of departing from the premises when a page boy in plum broadcloth touched his arm.

“Mr. McCloud? Telephone in Booth 5, please.”

McCloud stiffened. “What makes you think I’m McCloud?”

“The lady described you, sir.”

“Oh.” McCloud gave the kid a quarter and followed him across the lobby to the row of phone booths. He was not too surprised when he recognized the voice of Kay Mercedes on the wire. Nobody in the

Dos Palmas except she and D’Arcy could possibly have known his name. “Yes, Mrs. Mercedes?”

She was a trifle breathless now. “Mr. McCloud, I’ve got to see you right away.” He got the impression that D’Arcy was still up there, that she was speaking very close to the mouthpiece. “Where could I meet you in, say, half an hour?”

He said tentatively, “Could you make it an hour?”

She tried not to let her eagerness show. “Very well, then, in an hour. Where shall it be?”

He thought a moment. “How about the cocktail lounge at the Ambassador? Say twelve o’clock.”

“All right,” she said, very low. She disconnected.

Chapter 8

HE WAS BACK in the blue-lighted upper hall of the Normandie again. Again he was impressed with the feeling that the residents of this apartment house were familiar with the law in its more unpleasant aspects; that they were very careful indeed to mind strictly their own business. All except the blonde with the yellow silk pajamas and the sleepy-looking fat man in the trick red-and-green bathrobe. It was this fat man, Dutch DeGroot, that McCloud wanted particularly to see at this time, though here again he ran into something of an enigma.

The Dutchman had been conspicuous by his absence for ;the last couple of years. And so far as McCloud knew, the jewel thief was not wanted by the police. But he did have a police record, and to think that he would, without cause, risk being picked up in a murder inquiry— well, somehow that just didn’t make sense.

So, looking at it that way, it became almost certain that DeGroot would not have attempted to enter Margie Garland’s apartment while the police were there unless he had a motive a great deal more impelling than idle curiosity. Added to this you had a man who certainly knew his diamonds, and a dead woman who was alleged to have information about a very specific lot of the same commodity.

It was not stretching the imagination too far to suspect Dutch DeGroot of being the heist artist who had lifted the Kahn & Company gems. Too, it was quite within the realm of possibility that Margie Garland, living on the same floor of the same building, might have seen or heard something relating to the theft. It could be DeGroot, indeed, who for this very reason had killed Margie. McCloud clung to this thought, rather like a drowning man to the proverbial straw, and tried to forget that there was infinitely more damning evidence against Sheila Mayo.

Presently he left the semi-obscurity of the stairwell and moved along the hall, trying to guess which of the six apartments on this floor belonged to Herman DeGroot. There was a directory down in the lobby, but he had not come in by way of the lobby and did not think it advisable to investigate it now. Beside each of the doors there was a slotted plate for a calling card, but McCloud hardly expected DeGroot to be using his own name. However, there was no harm in looking.

He moved along a trifle farther and discovered that at least one of the apartments was vacant. Eliminating 204, that of Margie Garland, and 206, the one occupied by the blonde with the gutter vocabulary, this left but three possibilities. One of these house a Mr. & Mrs. Something-or-other, certainly not DeGroot, because Dutch was an oddity among fat men. He did not like women. The second choice in doors offered a handwritten card in the name of Harold Dixon, which being translated, might conceivably mean Herman DeGroot. Crooks, even the big time artists like Dutch, were funny in the matter of using their own initials when assuming an alias. Just to be on the safe side, though, McCloud went on down to the last door and discovered that a lady named Maysie Minter lived there. Maysie sounded like another blonde. He returned to 203 and very cautiously tried the doorknob. On the instant there were three shots somewhere beyond the door, very loud, very close together. The glass knob shattered in McCloud’s hand. Another bullet screamed through the plywood panel and passed so close to McCloud’s nose that he could smell the grease on it.

Cursing loudly, because it seemed perfectly obvious that whoever was doing the shooting was shooting at one Stephen McCloud, he dropped to the floor, produced his own gun and sent an answering barrage right back at the guy. Mad as he was, and shooting fast, he nevertheless managed to spread his fire so that it would cover the most territory. Cordite fumes heavy in his nostrils, he desisted after the fourth shot and just lay there, waiting. There was no return fire. He was conscious that along the hall doors were opening, but he was till intent on 203. When, after a count of ten, nothing further had happened he got up and hurled his bulk at the panel. It went inward with a tremendous crash and he sprawled flat on his belly on a throw rug. This acted as a sort of sled and he coasted with it until he finally smacked into something soft and yielding. He put out his hands and pushed himself to his knees.

The softly yielding obstacle turned out to be the fat body of Herman “Dutch” DeGroot. He still had the garish red-and-green bathrobe on, but he certainly would not be needing it any more, except possibly as a shroud. Two bullets had pretty well ruined his chest, and probably his heart. McCloud discovered that his left hand was sticky and ugly with blood, where he had touched the fat man’s robe.

There was a gun on the floor near DeGroot’s right fist. McCloud felt of it. The metal was cold, even colder than body heat, which meant that his gun at least had not done any of the recent shooting. Besides, almost in passing, he had noted the bright glitter of something in Dutch DeGroot’s pudgy left fist. He pried open the dead man’s fingers. It was as though he had unveiled the sun on a misty morning.

Lying there in DeGroot’s hand was a square cut diamond of at least three karats. It was an identifiable part of the Kahn & Company loot. McCloud did not touch it.

Instead, he was debating the advisability of closing the dead man’s fist over it again when somebody behind him yelled, “Hey, you, drop that gun!”

He realized that he was still holding his own gun. He dropped it, noisily, so that there could be no doubt in the mind of the man behind him. He was almost sure that this man would be a cop, and that there was a service revolver trained on his, McCloud’s back. Slowly, very carefully indeed, he rose to his feet and risked a glance over one shoulder. As he had suspected, the man was a cop. He was a big, very earnest cop, and his eyes were as round and shiny as the brass buttons on his tunic. He was one of the harness bulls who had accompanied Lieutenant Brannigan on the first expedition into what was turning out to be a veritable charnel house. He recognized McCloud.

“Oh, so it’s you again!”

McCloud said that it was, smiling with his mouth only. “I think you had better call Brannigan, my friend.”

“Oh, yeah? And what would you be doing in the meantime?”

“I’m not going any place,” McCloud said evenly. “Not for a while, at least.” Still being very careful about his movements, because he didn’t like to be shot any better than anybody else, he turned completely around and backed to a big club chair and sat down. He saw now that in the hallway beyond the harness cop there were at least three other people. One of them was the blonde in the yellow silk pajamas. Beside her stood a man and a woman, also in deshabille and thus probably the tenants of Apartment 205. These two were apparently struck dumb by surprise, or horror, or possibly a mixture of both. Not so the blonde. She lifted a lip at McCloud. “So it’s you again!”

The cop looked down at his gun, looked at the blonde, was obviously afraid to trust her to watch McCloud and finally made up his mind that he wouldn’t. Instead he motioned her into the room. “All right, tutz, grab that phone over there on the table and call police headquarters. Ask for Lieutenant Brannigan.”

There was a wait of perhaps ten minutes before Brannigan arrived on the scene. In the meanwhile the harness bull shuffled his big feet, rarely removing his eyes from McCloud, never permitting anything to obstruct the line of fire from his gun.

After a time the lady moved casually around back of McCloud’s chair, leaned on it and put her mouth down close to his ear. She smelled of gardenias.

“I meant what I said about coppers. Shall we take this one apart?”

McCloud drew a slow breath. “No,” he said presently. “No, thanks.”

She was insistent. “I could go for you in a big way.”

McCloud sighed. “Thanks, darling. Maybe sometime when I’m not quite so busy.”

She was not offended. “Any time, honey.”

The harness bull was becoming restive. “Hey, what the hell are you two talking about?”

The blonde gave him a brittle tinkling laugh. “You wouldn’t understand, copper. Not on your salary.” She sat cross-legged on an ottoman and rested her shoulder cozily against the arm of McCloud’s chair. “Poor old Dutch.”

McCloud stiffened to attention. “You knew him?”

“Sure.”

McCloud asked the cop for permission to smoke. Getting it he lit a cigarette, offered one to the blonde. She refused it. She said it wasn’t fashionable for ladies like her to smoke. “You ain’t no different than the society broads if you do.” She yawned. “Hardly any of us gals in the business smoke or drink any more.”

McCloud’s eyes were suddenly alert. “Say that all over again, will you, sister? Didn’t Margie Garland smoke either?”

“No.” She studied his face curiously. “Why?”

“I just remembered something,” he said. He did not say how terrifically important the something was, but when he had first walked into the Garland girl’s apartment there had been a cigarette still alight beside Margie’s right hand. He knew definitely that Sheila Mayo did not smoke. It now appeared that neither did Margie Garland. Someone else, a third person, one who had lit that cigarette, had been in the apartment. While not conclusive, here was evidence that it need not have been Sheila after all who had shot and killed the Garland girl. He even put out a square brown hand and caressed the blonde’s head. She could not know that the gesture was one of pure gratitude. She snuggled against his knee.

It was at this moment that Lieutenant Brannigan arrived. He was a trifle breathless, and his pale yellow eyes settled on McCloud with unmistakable triumph. His face was beet-red. “So you weren’t satisfied.”

“No,” McCloud said, “I wasn’t satisfied.”

Sweeney recounted his side of it. It appeared that he had been left on guard at the Garland apartment after the departure of the others, but had chosen to rest his feet inside instead of mounting watch in the hallway. Which is why McCloud had not known he was around. Hearing the shots, Sweeney had naturally felt called upon to investigate, though he did not explain why it had taken him so long. Oddly, though, he was eminently fair to McCloud. He did not say that he had actually seen McCloud in the act of shooting Dutch DeGroot.

Presently, eyes still carefully avoiding McCloud and the lady in yellow silk pajamas, Brannigan got down on his knees and smelled the muzzle of DeGroot’s gun. He then got out a fresh handkerchief and picked up McCloud’s automatic and checked the magazine and firing chamber. The square-cut diamond in Dutch DeGroot’s pudgy fist winked maliciously, triumphant in a secret knowledge that no harness bull, no lieutenant of detectives could ever fathom.

Finished at last with his routine check-up, Brannigan came over and stood spraddle-legged before McCloud. “Okay, McCloud, it’s your turn.” He made his voice carefully casual. “Commence.”

McCloud nodded toward the huddle on the floor which was Dutch DeGroot. “Was it my gun that got him?”

“I don’t think so.” Brannigan said this grudgingly, as though hating to admit that there was any evil in the world that McCloud wasn’t directly responsible for. “I make it that you fired from the hall. You shot four times, is that right?”

McCloud nodded. “All right, then,” Brannigan said, “I’ve accounted for your slugs.” He sucked in his breath. “And it’s a cinch that Dutch himself didn’t do any shooting.” Beefy-red hands suddenly pounced down on McCloud’s shoulders. “So that leaves a third party.” The bristly red face was now so close that McCloud could almost tell what its owner had had for dinner. “So I want to know who this third party is, and by God you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me if I have to take you apart!”

By a great effort McCloud succeeded in keeping his own hands still. He would have liked nothing better than to bust Brannigan one in the nose, but this was no longer a children’s game. There were two people dead. He lifted suddenly harried eyes.

“Look, Brannigan, the harness cop will tell you— in fact he already has— that I made absolutely no effort to get away. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you, not because I like you particularly, but because I like murder even less.” His mouth drooped in bitter self-appraisal. “I’ll admit I’ve cut corners on you guys when there was only money involved, but this is murder.”

“Yes,” Brannigan said, “this is murder.” His breath made little whistling sounds as he straightened. “There was another one too, remember? And you ran out on that one.”

“I know I did,” McCloud said. He gave the impression that he was very sorry he had done anything so foolish. “There was a reason for that, though. He did not choose even now to tell Brannigan that the reason was a girl named Sheila Mayo. He said, “I didn’t know at the time— that is, I couldn’t be absolutely sure— that the murder of Margie Garland had anything to do with me. It might just have been a coincidence.” He sighed. “I was after a quarter-million dollars’ worth of hot ice. Naturally I didn’t want to be detained, even for a few hours. So I ran out.”

Brannigan’s unaccustomed repression hinted that he was holding something back beside his temper. McCloud didn’t like the man’s eyes, nor his very quietness. The lieutenant was trying to be subtle, like a cat apparently oblivious to the furtive, tentative movement of a cornered mouse. Even his voice was comparatively suave, for Brannigan.

“What took you to the Garland girl’s apartment in the first place?”

McCloud told him, though he did not use the name of Van Felix. He merely referred to him as an informer. He became very earnest indeed.

“You see there was no assurance that Margie Garland was directly connected with the Kahn diamonds. It was just a chance that she might have heard of something. As a matter of fact, when I found out that she was Duke D’Arcy’s girl friend I was almost certain that there couldn’t be anything to the tip. D’Arcy was known as a gambler.” Again he sighed, a disillusioned man. “But I couldn’t afford to skip it. So I came up to see her.”

“I see,” Brannigan said softly. “And you ran into a strange woman?”

Something about the tone set up a jangling inside McCloud’s skull, like a burglar alarm, but he kept his dark face impassive. He allowed his hand to caress the blonde head beside his knee, as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “I ran into a strange woman. She had a gun and I took it away from her and it went off.” He made a little curl out of one of the blonde’s locks. “The young lady here has probably told you all about what happened after that.”

Brannigan ignored her. “All right, so then what?”

McCloud looked at him. “Well, I don’t want to make you sore, Lieutenant, but apparently I noticed something that you completely missed. Among those present in the hall I saw Dutch DeGroot, and his bathrobe told me that he was living here. Naturally I knew Dutch for a jewel specialist. That and his presence on the scene made it almost imperative that I have a talk with him. So I came back.”

Brannigan lifted a lip. “Well?”

McCloud spread his hands. “Christ, what more do you need? Just as I got to his door, somebody inside cut loose with a flock of lead. I didn’t see anybody else around that they might be shooting at, so it seemed to be me. So I shot back.”

Brannigan made a fist of his right hand. “It’s not quite so simple as all that, shamus. The woman you let get away was not a stranger to you. It was probably the same woman who did for Dutch DeGroot too.” His yellow teeth showed briefly, unpleasantly. “Or maybe this time it was the woman’s husband.” He loosed some of his pent-up emotion then in a violent gesture. “And once again who do we find smearing the trail? None other than good old Steve McCloud, the two-timing son of a bitch who says he doesn’t like murderers!”

McCloud’s stomach was suddenly as cold as ice. “You checked the gun?”

“You’re goddam right we did!” Brannigan yelled.

“It could have been stolen,” McCloud said desperately.

Brannigan became heavily sarcastic. “Sure it could have.” He leered knowingly at his small audience, including the blonde." “As a matter of fact, I thought you’d bring that up. So I checked, and sure enough the gun had been reported stolen. That was a couple of months ago.” His beefy-red face took on a purplish tinge. “You think that gag will fool anybody? It’s the first thing an amateur planning a job would think of. Report the weapon as stolen and then use it for a kill!”

Magically a gun appeared in his fist. “Look, McCloud, both Sheila Mayo and her husband are missing. Where are they?”

McCloud licked suddenly parched lips. “I don’t know.”

“You will!” Brannigan yelled. He slammed the gun to McCloud’s jaw.

Chapter 9

HE WAS in a room, a white-washed brick room with scarred golden oak furniture. He was numb, leaden-weighted. From a thousand- watt lamp in a chromium reflector white-hot light poured down on him, searing his eyeballs even though he kept the lids shut tight after the one look.

Words kept hammering at his consciousness, Brannigan’s words and another man’s. Brannigan and the other man were in their shirt sleeves. Brannigan had a short length of rubber garden hose. He had not missed that one brief flicker of McCloud’s eyelids. He began using the hose again. McCloud knew where he was. He was in the goldfish room at Headquarters.

Brannigan kept saying, over and over again, and punctuating his words with blows, “Come on, McCloud, where is she? Where is Sheila Mayo?”

The other man would occasionally slap McCloud’s face with a wringing wet towel, just to be sure he was awake and listening.

McCloud would say, “I don’t know,” and then take another shellacking. The hell of it was that he really did not know. He could not even have the doubtful satisfaction of being a martyr.

Once in a while Brannigan would vary the question, and it became, “You love the gal, don’t you, McCloud? You’re nuts about her, aren’t you?”

And McCloud would try to say, “Yes,” though it sounded more like “Yush,” rhyming with mush. He was pretty far gone, because this sort of thing had been going on for some time. He did not know how long, but he knew it was a long time.

At McCloud’s last answer Brannigan desisted for a moment; not with the questions, with the hose. “Well, now we’re getting some place.” This was wishful thinking on Brannigan’s part. He was not getting any place; he never would get any place, not if he finally reduced McCloud to a pulp, because McCloud did not know the right answers. Brannigan tried reasoning. “Look, Irish, why the hell don’t you come clean? We’re bound to get her eventually. You know that. So why don’t you make it easy on yourself? Where is Sheila Mayo?”

“I don’t know.”

Bang went the rubber hose. It probably did not make any great amount of noise, but that’s the way it sounded to McCloud, whose head was the target. And then, quite suddenly, it seemed to him that there was a new sound, somewhere outside his head, and Brannigan stopped hitting him and began cursing a blue streak. Feet slap-slapped on the linoleum floor, hurriedly, and somewhere a desk drawer opened and closed. Then Brannigan’s voice again:

“See who it is, Selznick.”

The torture of the light went away from McCloud’s eyelids. He sat perfectly still, not opening them, just waiting. A draft of cold air sifted across his wet face as a door opened. He took a deep breath, grateful for even a moment’s respite. And then he heard the door slam back against the wall, and there were voices, lots of voices, shouting fierce accusation and even fiercer denial. Tentatively, because he could not believe even now that rescue was at hand, McCloud opened
his eyes. As through a fog he recognized Jessup, a militant and outraged Jessup leading a small army of reporters. McCloud could identify practically every legman on the police beat. Jessup was waving a small fist under Brannigan’s unlovely nose and calling him, among other things, a bastard. “I’ll have you busted higher than a kite for this, you bastard!”

As Brannigan backed away under the onslaught three or four of the newspaper boys thrust past Jessup and came over and studied McCloud as though he were a museum piece. “Christ!” One of them, apparently not relying on his own memory, made notes on the back of an envelope.

Presently Jessup too came over. Iron gray hair and mustache bristled belligerence, and the tiny veins in his nose and cheeks were purplish, yet there was something almost gentle in his eyes. He put a small hand under McCloud’s chin, tilting the head far back. “What have they been doing to you, boy?”

McCloud licked his lips. “Nothing much.”

“Oh, so you’re going to be stubborn!”

“No,” McCloud said. He discovered that Captain Seward, Night Chief of the dicks, had come in too. He had always rather liked Seward. He said, “Brannigan just had some screwy ideas, that’s all.” He watched the worried look on Seward’s face go away.

The captain went over and began talking to Brannigan and Selznick in a low tone. Jessup put out a hand and touched the chromium reflector of the big lamp. It burned hell out of him.

“God damn it, McCloud, what’s the idea of trying to protect these gorillas?” He appealed to the reporters.

“You know what that lamp is for, don’t you?” He darted over to the golden oak desk and began yanking out drawers. Brannigan, cursing, tried to interfere, but he was too late. Jessup already had the length of hose and he waved this around for everyone in the room to see.

“Exhibit B.” He was talking direct to the reporters now. “This is still wet, men. Wet with McCloud’s sweat and blood. I want you to remember it.” He drew an outraged breath. “The third degree is not as extinct as we have been led to believe.”

Captain Seward looked almost as sick as McCloud felt.

“Now wait a minute, Counsellor,” he protested. “It’s not nice, I admit that, but you know how McCloud is. He’s stubborn, that’s what he is.” He avoided looking at McCloud. “We’ve placed him on the scene of not just one, but two murders. We have an identification by a neighbor of the Mayos, a man who actually saw him going into the Mayo home.”

Jessup snorted indignation. “Am I arguing? All I say is that you can’t beat a client of mine to death.”

Brannigan sneered. “Client, hell! The guy’s working for you.”

He was seized with an idea. “You’re both probably tarred with the same brush, by God!”

Captain Seward silenced him with an abrupt gesture. Jessup took this as a sign that Seward was willing to listen to reason. He stopped yelling and became only mildly accusing. “What is the charge against my client?”

“Well,” Seward said uncomfortably, “well, as a matter of fact—”

Jessup pounced. “So there aren’t any! ” He glared at the reporters. “We knew that anyway, but now he admits it. McCloud has been subjected to the third degree, an extremely brutal third degree, and yet he has not even been booked.” He pointed a quivering finger at Seward’s nose. “Can you prove that my client was actually involved in either of these murders?”

Seward gnawed at his mustache. “Well, Counsellor, the facts—”

“And what are the facts?” Jessup demanded. “Even Brannigan admits that in the case of this Margie Garland he found McCloud in the act of calling Headquarters. And, in the case of Dutch DeGroot, McCloud submitted to questioning and told a perfectly straight story. According to Brannigan’s own report it was not McCloud’s gun that killed DeGroot.” He got out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. “And if you think it was McCloud who shot the Garland girl, then why in hell are you looking for someone else?”

Seward lost his temper. “Did I say McCloud shot anybody? All I’m saying, all any of us are saying, is that he knows who did and is trying to cover her up.” He scowled at the reporters. “We know that McCloud is in love with the girl. We know positively that he visited her home after the Garland murder, and that following that both she and her husband have disappeared.”

Jessup was derisive. “You’re not doing yourself any good, Captain. By your own admission McCloud is in love with Sheila Mayo. What is more natural than that he should visit her? She didn’t have to commit a murder to induce him to call.”

Brannigan thrust himself forward. “You’re kind of forgetting the gun, aren’t you? We’ve proved that it belongs to the Mayos.”

Jessup shrugged. “It was reported stolen.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Brannigan demanded. “If you were intending to commit a murder isn’t that the first thing you’d think of?”

Jessup was sarcastic. “Everyone is not as clever as you, Lieutenant. Nor do most of us have such an evil mind.” He pretended that he was in court and that the reporters were a jury of his peers. “Gentlemen, I ask you. Is there anything in what Captain Seward, or this— this person has said to warrant the brutal and inhuman treatment shown my client? An eyewitness to the struggle in Margie Garland’s apartment has positively refused to identify Sheila Mayo as the mystery woman. This witness has viewed a photograph of the said Sheila Mayo, and unequivocally states that this so-called mystery woman was not my client’s friend.”

“Hah Brannigan snorted. “That blonde is nuts about him too. She’s lying her lousy head off.”

McCloud made a mental note, win, lose or draw, to do something really nice one of these days for the lady in the yellow silk pajamas. He had now decided to be polite to everybody. After some further argument it was agreed that perhaps it would be better to adjourn to Captain Seward’s office down the hall, where the surroundings would be more pleasant. He offered no objection, however, to the change of scene, and it was not until they were actually in Seward’s office that he discovered his pockets were empty. “God damn it, I’ve been robbed!”

“Now wait a minute, McCloud,” Seward said placatingly. “You haven’t been robbed. We just searched you, that’s all. See, your stuff is right here on my desk.” He went over to the desk, and then, quite casually, he picked up the tooled-leather envelope purse. “By the way, McCloud, just who is this lady? Let’s see, now, what’s the name? Oh, yes, Mercedes.” His eyes suddenly probed McCloud’s face. “Kay Mercedes. Mrs. Felipe Mercedes.”

McCloud had completely forgotten all about the lady with the cat-like, but very beautiful green eyes. He looked at the big clock on the wall and discovered that it was half past twelve. He wondered if she would still be waiting for him in the cocktail lounge of the Ambassador.

“Just a friend,” he said in answer to Seward’s question. He tried to look as though he had a woman on every corner in town. “You know how it is. She left her bag in my car.”

“Oh? And when was this?”

“I don’t know,” McCloud said. “A couple of days or so ago, maybe.”

He began putting his belongings back into his pockets. The reporters watched him, fascinated, and he decided that he must be a very dilapidated-looking object indeed. He was counting the money in his wallet and finding that he had less than forty dollars when Jessup approached.

“How’s about lending me a century, Counsellor?”

Jessup was startled. “What did you do with”— He lowered his voice to a whisper— “with the fifteen grand I gave you?”

McCloud affected a casual air. “Oh, that!” He could not very well tell his boss that he had been hijacked out of the money entrusted to him. “It’s in a perfectly safe place, Counsellor. I just didn’t want to use the company’s dough for my own personal needs.”

“Then write yourself a check,” Jessup said unfeelingly.

At this moment Brannigan appeared in the door to an inner room. With him was the blonde gal from the Normandie. She was still in her pajamas, though she was wearing a thousand-dollar mink coat over them. You gathered that this was not in deference to the conventions, but because of the cold night air. Besides the pajamas and the fur coat she was wearing a black eye. She gave McCloud a slightly resentful but none the less admiring stare, and shook Brannigan’s hand from her arm. “He’s been trying to make me say things!” She became aware of all the reporters and put on an act for them. “I never saw the woman in my life. Is it any wonder I always say cops are lice?”

The eye that wasn’t black closed in an almost imperceptible wink for McCloud’s benefit. “That was a nice picture they showed me but it didn’t mean a thing.”

He nodded. “It was swell of you not to lie about it.” He looked at her eye, looked at the reporters. “I see Brannigan even takes his grudge out on women.”

She sniffed. “That guy!” She peered past him at Captain Seward. “Hey, you, can I go now?”

Seward said that she could. She picked up an inkwell from his desk, admired it elaborately, and then, managing to look very clumsy but quite natural, she fumbled it and poured ink all down the front of Brannigan’s gray suit. “Christ, that’s too bad, ain’t it? Well, goodnight, all.” She departed, hips swaying provocatively.

Chapter 10

THE REPORTERS began buzzing around McCloud like flies. Who did McCloud think had killed Dutch DeGroot? Was the square cut diamond found in DeGroot’s hand really a part of the Kahn & Company loot? Why, if Sheila Mayo and her husband were not implicated, had they vanished, apparently into thin air? Had neither of them said anything to McCloud when he was out at their house that would indicate where they might have intended going? And what was this about Margie Garland having been Duke D’Arcy’s girl friend? Why hadn’t the police picked up Duke D’Arcy himself?

“Your guess is as good as mine,” McCloud told them. Dark eyes sultry, he watched Brannigan trying to get the ink off his suit. He was really going to have to do something about Brannigan. For quite a while now the red-head had been letting his personal dislike run away with his judgment. He was going to have to be taken some time, cop or no cop. McCloud decided that as long as it had to happen it might just as well be now, or at least as soon as it could be arranged.

A couple of detectives came in, escorting Mr. Emil Kahn. The reporters almost fawned on the new arrival, for after all a man who could own a quarter-million dollars’ worth of diamonds, let alone lose them, was news. He pushed through them, confronting Captain Seward.

“You sent for me?”

Seward nodded. He was not too happy. He ripped open a small sealed envelope and dumped the square-cut diamond out on the desk blotter. “Is that yours?”

Kahn made a great business of getting out a jeweler’s glass and examining the stone. “Yes,” he said presently, “yes, it’s one of mine.”

Then, ignoring McCloud, who was almost at his elbow, he turned and addressed Jessup. “Where are the rest of them?”

“I don’t know,” Jessup said.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“I’m getting pretty tired of waiting for my money,” Kahn said.

Quite suddenly he saw an advantage to himself in the presence of the newspaper men. “Would it interest you gentlemen to know that West Coast Indemnity is refusing to pay off on my policy?”

“We’re not refusing!” Jessup yelled. “We’re exercising our privilege of a reasonable delay.”

“Reasonable!” Kahn sneered.

McCloud wondered if there might not be a very good motive for Kahn’s urgency. He said, “You wouldn’t be in actual need of money, would you?”

Kahn appeared to see him for the first time. “Everybody needs money.” He looked around at the reporters as though he had just coined a new and very clever phrase. His large white hands made a faintly reproving gesture. “Am I asking for more than my due? Haven’t I always paid my premiums?”

Even Jessup could not deny that. “Of course.”

“Very well then,” Kahn said, “I want my diamonds or my money, and I want the settlement by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” His blue eyes held a glint of triumph. The reporters were definitely an asset now. “Three days is enough to wait.”

Jessup looked harried, but he accepted the challenge. “All right, it’s a deal.” He sighed. “The diamonds or the face of the policy by ten o’clock tomorrow.” He poked a small plump finger at the glittering gem on the desk blotter. “You’re positive about this stone?”

Kahn said that he was very positive indeed. He said, “Any expert could identify it.”

Captain Seward cracked the knuckles in his left hand. “All right, then, let’s you and me take a little trip down to the morgue. Maybe you can identify the man who had the rock in his possession.”

Though he had not invited them, everybody else decided that they would go too. McCloud looked at Lieutenant Brannigan. “I want my gun.”

Brannigan shook his head. “Not a chance.”

Captain Seward backed Brannigan up in this. “You’re loose, McCloud, but you’re loose under conditions where you’d better not be packing a gun.” He was rather obviously thinking of Brannigan’s health. “It might go off and hurt somebody.”

Jessup bridled. “Now look here, Captain, how do you expect McCloud to catch a couple of killers if he’s unarmed?”

“I don’t,” Seward said acidly. “The police department will do all the catching there is to be done.” His eyes were bright and hard. “If McCloud knows what’s good for him he’ll concentrate on keeping his nose clean.”

Emil Kahn, though on the verge of being sick at his stomach, managed an unequivocal identification of DeGroot. “Yes, that is the man who attacked me.” He gagged a little, but was not unmindful of the reporters. He decided that for the benefit of the press he would explain the whole thing again. “I was in my private office when it happened.” He put a hand to his head, recalling that though he no longer wore his bandage he was still an invalid. “I don’t know how the door came to be unlocked, or maybe, like the police say, the man had a key.” He shuddered at the memory. “Anyway, I didn’t even have time to call for help.” He closed his eyes. “My— my secretary found me unconscious.”

Catering to dealers and collectors only, Kahn & Company did not need the usual show rooms or store front. A suite of offices in the Bankers’ Trust Building sufficed. As for the safe, that was perfectly all right— so long as it was closed and locked. But open, as it had been, it wouldn’t offer any more protection than a ten-sent waste basket. Certainly not against a man like Dutch DeGroot, who was noted for his almost uncanny ability to choose the right moment. The point was, who had the diamonds now? Why had DeGroot been killed? Jessup must have been thinking about the same thing. He nudged McCloud.

“Well, Stephen, what do you make of it? Did DeGroot have an accomplice who wasn’t satisfied with his share? Or did someone just stumble on the fact that he had all those stones in his possession?”

McCloud shrugged. “I don’t know, Counsellor.”

Jessup made his voice even lower. “Well, you’ll hardly be needing that fifteen thousand any more, eh?”

“No,” McCloud said sourly. Even if he still had had it, the fifteen grand wouldn’t be any good now. Whoever had the diamonds was in far too deep to risk bargaining for their return. Admitting possession
of the stones was the same as confessing at least one murder, and probably two, and McCloud didn’t think that was being done among the. gentry he knew. No, the stones would now have to be broken up and fenced for a tenth of their value.

Presently everybody decided that there was no use in looking at Dutch DeGroot any longer. The autopsy room emptied. In the corridor McCloud suddenly remembered that though he had the keys to this car he didn’t know where the car itself was. He asked Brannigan.

“One of the boys brought it along,” Brannigan said, “when I— when we— It’s at the curb out in front,” he said shortly.

McCloud thanked him politely. He said good-night to Seward and Jessup and went swiftly up the stairs to street level. It had begun to rain again. After a time he found his car and got in and drove leisurely down Broadway. In the rear vision mirror he saw another car swing around the corner in his wake. It had none of the distinguishing marks of the police department, but McCloud had no doubt that in it would be Brannigan or another just like him. McCloud, freed, was expected to lead the way to Sheila Mason and her husband. He hoped it was Brannigan in the car behind.

The recurrent rain had thinned traffic considerably. Besides, it was now almost one o’clock in the morning. McCloud had no difficulty in finding a place to park in front of the first bar he saw that had phone booths in it. He went in, had a quick shot of rye and got his change in nickels. Presently, from the booth nearest the street door, he called the Ambassador, was connected with the cocktail lounge and asked to have Mrs. Mercedes paged. He kept dropping nickels whenever instructed to do so by the operator, but it turned out that he might just as well have saved his money. There was no Kay Mercedes at the Ambassador.

Still with a watchful eye on the street McCloud next called the Dos Palmas Apartments. There was no answer from the Mercedes suite. He jiggled the hook to attract the girl on the hotel switchboard.

“Pardon me, this is Captain Seward at Police Headquarters. This Mrs. Felipe Mercedes— is she a widow, or living with her husband or what?”

The girl was palpitant. “Oooh, with her husband!” She giggled. “At least he’s supposed to be her husband.”

“Ah, yes.” McCloud sounded suavely pleased. “And her husband’s business?”

“He’s a jewelry salesman.” She thought about that for a moment.

“Unh-hunh, he travels for some importing firm in New York.”

“Thank you so much,” McCloud said. He pronged the receiver a trifle absently. It was beginning to seem that all you had to do in this case was touch a button, just any old button at all, and there was a whole new field of speculation opened to you. The only trouble was, it was sort of like having a handful of quicksilver. You didn’t know what to do with it.

He considered looking up Duke D’Arcy, but discarded that for the moment, because D’Arcy’s name had been mentioned back there at Headquarters and he preferred to wait and see what the police were able to do, if any. Next he considered going out to the Dos Palmas again, on the off chance that the Mercedes woman would return.

Finally, though, he decided that he had better go home and change clothes, because these he had on were getting very disreputable indeed. Through the front window he caught sight of Brannigan going past, head averted, hat pulled down against the rain, but undoubtedly Brannigan. McCloud sauntered out, hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, feigning deep preoccupation. He did not get into his car, but continued walking slowly along until he came to the alley in the middle of the block. He went into the alley and waited. He had to wait quite a while. Presently, though, Brannigan must have decided McCloud wasn’t coming out again. He ran full tilt into the alley.

“Brannigan,” McCloud said.

Brannigan brought up so suddenly that his feet skidded on the wet cobbles. He sat down with a tremendous grunt. “Ooomph!” And then, spotting McCloud standing there above him in the darkness, he went for his gun. McCloud kicked it out of his fist and it went skittering off down the alley. “Now,” McCloud said in a tight voice, “that makes us about even. No guns, no other coppers to help you.”

He unbuttoned his overcoat and tossed it onto a pile of rubbish cans. “Just you and me, Brannigan.”

“You son of a bitch,” Brannigan said. He came up off his haunches and aimed a terrific right at McCloud’s face. That was one thing about the guy; much as some of his methods might be deplored he wasn’t a physical coward. McCloud dodged the blow easily and planted a better-timed one to Brannigan’s eye. Brannigan sat down again. He got up, wiping muddy hands on his thighs. “You son of a bitch.”

“Sure I am,” McCloud said. “I’m ungrateful as hell for all the things you’ve done for me.” He feinted with his left and hit Brannigan in the mouth with his right. Brannigan kicked him in the stomach. McCloud grunted with the pain of it, but did not go down. Instead, he caught the foot and sat Brannigan on his bottom again. He then reached down and got a fistful of overcoat and hauled Brannigan to his feet and socked him in the other eye. This time, though, he did not escape punishment himself. Brannigan hit him twice, sharp hard blows to the middle, before he slid away. They sparred for a moment, both finding their footing better, and then McCloud moved in, perfectly willing to take what came his way if he could only mark Brannigan up so even his best friends wouldn’t know him. He made a pretty methodical job of it. Flailing fists thunked solidly on flesh, or missed entirely, until finally Brannigan landed a roundhouse swing on McCloud’s jaw, and the alley came up and hit McCloud in the back.

Brannigan, making wheezing, animal-like sounds, plunged down on top of him, seized his throat and began beating his head against the cobbles. McCloud had to use his knees, then. Presently, freed of that choking grip on his throat, he rolled out from under, propped himself on one hand and swung the other with all he had left in him. It was more luck than sense that the fist caught Brannigan on exactly the right spot. The big dick folded up like a poled ox.

After awhile, drunkenly, McCloud attained his feet and stood there looking down at his victim. “I still don’t like him,” he told no one in particular. “I don’t like him, but the bastard can sure as hell fight.” He put on his overcoat, looked at the unconscious man again, finally decided that Brannigan might get run over by a garbage truck or something. He bent and got a handful of Brannigan’s hair and hauled him to the comparative safety of a refuse pile.

Chapter 11

MCCLOUD LIVED in the upper half of a Spanish duplex overlooking Silver Lake. He liked it because of its comparative quiet, and because the owners, who occupied the lower half, were nothing if not broadminded. He was halfway up the outside stairs when he observed that there were lights on in his own place.

He brought up rather abruptly at that.

Presently he began climbing again, cautiously and very quietly, until he attained the narrow outside gallery which served as his front porch. Though by comparison with the party downstairs it was very still up here, he had the distinct impression that his visitor had not departed. He knelt and applied an eye to the faint crack of brighter light which indicated that one of the living-room blinds did not quite reach the sill. His visitor was Kay Mercedes.

She sat almost facing him, feet stretched out to the fire which apparently she had built herself. Her long slender legs were outlined beneath the sheer green satin gown he had first seen her in, and a green-lined ermine evening cape was thrown carelessly over an occasional table. McCloud saw no reason to revise his first estimate of her; she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He wondered idly if she happened to love her husband.

After a moment or two he tiptoed along the gallery and investigated the kitchen and bedroom windows. The lady might have brought some rather unpleasant friends with her. Satisfied presently that she had not, he returned to the front door and opened it and stepped inside. “Hello there, Mrs. Mercedes.”

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said.

“So I gathered,” McCloud said dryly.

She turned then, back to the fire, every detail of her body outlined by it. Jungle cat, he thought. Beautiful. She’d cut my throat the first chance she had, but it might be worth it at that. Providing she didn’t do it too soon. She said, “You didn’t come to the Ambassador.”

“No,” McCloud confessed.

“Why?”

“Because the police chose to detain me on another matter.” He took off his hat and overcoat and began shedding his suit coat and vest. “I telephoned just as soon as I could get away. After that I called your apartment.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry I missed you, but it was just one of those things.”

“I see.” She did not quite believe him. “Then I take it that you still have my purse? You haven’t told anyone?”

He stared at her. “Told anyone what?” He was unbuttoning his shirt now.

She stamped a narrow, green-shod foot. “Damn it, stop trying to evade the issue! Have you told anyone what you know?”

“Such as?”

This time she did not stamp her foot. She did none of the things you’d expect a lady to do under somewhat exasperating circumstances. She just sort of flowed toward him in one lithe undulant motion until she stood so close that he could smell the mixed scent of Black Narcissus and her blue-black hair. It was like a heady wine in his nostrils. She was tall, almost as tall as he, and as she tilted her head back her green eyes were candid. “We could be very good friends, McCloud.”

His right temple began to throb. “I’m sure we could, darling.”

She smiled at that lazily. “Did anyone ever tell you you were good-looking?”

“Sure,” he said. His mouth became cynical. “Somebody once told me I was a detective too.” He looked deep into her eyes. “Which reminds me— was it you who killed Margie Garland?”

Not a muscle in her face moved. “No.”

Maybe her eyes had laid a sort of spell on him, maybe it was her perfume, the very nearness of her, but whatever it was he had the feeling that she was telling the exact truth. He drew a deep breath.

“All right, we’ll skip that for a moment. You didn’t kill her, but you might know who did.”

“No.”

He frowned. “Christ, you must have seen something when you were there.”

Her breast rose and fell evenly. Her eyes were still candid. “When I was where?”

He snapped his fingers impatiently. “Look, you don’t have to be coy with me, baby. Where I found your bag, of course.”

She appeared to be genuinely surprised at that. “But I don’t know where you found it!”

In spite of himself he almost believed her. He shook his head as if that might help, sort of like a punch-drunk fighter pushing himself off the canvas. If she didn’t know where the bag had been found, then why in hell was she so eager to get it back? Aside from its presence on the scene of a murder there was nothing particularly valuable about it. Or was there?

He was suddenly reminded of the two letters addressed to her. He decided that before he went much further he had better have a private squint at them. “All right,” he said, stalling for time, “I’ve got to have a shower and a change. After that we’ll see about finding the bag for you.”

“Thank you, darling.” As if to seal a bargain she put her two white hands on his shoulders and lifted her mouth. A gentleman could do not less than kiss her. McCloud kissed her. He became quite enthusiastic about it. He was in the act of kissing her for perhaps the third time when a slight sound from behind him broke the spell. Somewhat hastily releasing his armful of green flame he turned. Sheila Mayo was standing there on the threshold. Her gray eyes were a little scornful, more than a little disappointed in him. “Pardon me, Stephen, I didn’t know you were engaged.” She turned away. McCloud yelled at her. “Sheila!”

She halted indecisively. He ran across and caught her arm and pulled her back into the room. “Look, hon, I’ve been worried sick about you.”

Cool gray eyes went past him to appraise Kay Mercedes. “I’m sure you have, Stephen.”

He flushed. “Damn it, Sheila—”

“It’s really not important,” she said. She disengaged her arm from his grip. “I just stopped to tell you that I was sorry. A news broadcast said you’d been arrested for that— that woman’s murder, and I realized then that you had been trying to protect us.”

“Not us,” he corrected her stiffly. “You. I don’t give one little damn about what happens to that heel you call your husband.”

Of the three in the room, Kay Mercedes seemed the only one completely without embarrassment. Moving lazily and with utter assurance she resumed her seat before the fire and made herself comfortable. Obviously, at least McCloud felt that it would be obvious to Sheila, Kay Mercedes was planning on spending the night.

He said rather desperately, “Now look, Sheila, you mustn’t get any funny ideas.”

He was suddenly conscious of his own disarray. No matter what he said, that alone was enough to damn him. Besides, this was hardly the time nor place. He again took Sheila’s arm and thrust her ahead of him out to the gallery. “See here, do you realize that the police are combing the city for you?” He shook her savagely. “In spite of all I could do they traced the gun.”

Her voice sounded numb. “I know.”

He cursed soundlessly for a moment. “Why’d you have to kill her, hon?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who did?” he demanded angrily. “Kenneth?”

She did not answer that. She didn’t have to. Assuming that she was telling the truth, that it had not been she who pulled the trigger on Margie Garland, there was only one other reason for her to have been on the scene and to be in hiding now. “You’re a fool,” McCloud told her roughly. “The guy isn’t worth it.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. Her whole attitude was one of utter exhaustion. She lifted tired eyes to his. “It’s taken me a long time to admit that, hasn’t it, Stephen?”

He shrugged. “Forget it.”

She leaned against the railing as though for support. “He’s still my husband, Stephen. I couldn’t just let them— hang him.”

“No,” McCloud muttered. “No, you’d have to wet nurse him, just as you’ve always done.” Aloud he said, “Why didn’t you get him out of town?”

She straightened. “I did try, but he was in such a sodden condition that I knew it would be fatal if we were stopped. He’d be worse than no help at all.” She caught her breath. “And now he’s in a stupor or something. I can’t get him awake.”

“Christ!” McCloud said. After a while he said, “All right, kitten, I’ll see what I can do. Where have you got the guy now?”

She shuddered. “We’re at the Hoyt. Registered as Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

McCloud thought sourly that that was certainly original. He refrained from saying it. “Okay, what about your car?”

“I left it in a parking lot.”

“For a lawyer you’re not thinking very straight,” he said. And then, immediately sorry even for that mild reproof, he put a gentle hand under her chin. She was crying. “I’m a heel, Sheila. Would you mind, very much, if I kissed you?”

As though drawn by a magnet her eyes sought the living-room door.

It was still open. “After that?”

He scowled. “What did you expect? A guy’s got to live, hasn’t he? Besides,” he added, “this was business.”

“All right,” she said wearily, “if you want to.” She lifted her face to his. Her lips were icy cold.

After a little while he went with her down the stairs to her waiting cab. “I wouldn’t do any more running around, Sheila. As a matter  of fact, it was pretty foolish to come here. I’m hotter than a firecracker.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Good-night, Stephen.”

He closed the door on her, stood there watching the tail light of the cab vanish down the street. The rain had stopped again, though the night air was chill on his face, and on his chest where he had forgotten to button his shirt. The party in the lower half of the duplex was still going strong. He went back up the steps to his own place.

Kay Mercedes apparently had not moved. She gave him a lazy-eyed stare. “Was she someone important, darling?”

“To me,” he said shortly. He bundled up his discarded clothes and strode with them to the bedroom door. He discovered that someone had done a hell of a thorough job of searching this room. Turning, he noted that there were a number of things out of place in the living room too. He admired the lady in green. “You must want that bag pretty badly.”

She smiled at him. “I do.”

The fingers of his right hand explored the bundle of clothes in his arms. Her bag was still in the pocket of the overcoat. She had not thought to look there. He pretended that he still admired her. “How did you get in, baby?”

“The key was under the doormat.” She laughed. “Even detectives aren’t very original about things like that.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said ruefully. He backed into the bedroom, turned the key noiselessly, went into the bath and turned on the shower. Returning to the bedroom he got out the lady’s purse and once more inventoried its contents. Except for the two letters there didn’t seem to be a thing that was worth more than a hundred dollars at the outside. Therefore, it must be the letters she was worried about. Oddly, though, after having decided this he did not read the letters. All he did was to take them out of their envelopes, substitute blank paper and replace the envelopes in the purse. His face was absolutely expressionless when he went out to the living room and tossed the bag on the table. He did this carelessly, though he made sure that he remained nearer the table than the lady in green. She came to her feet a little breathlessly. “Where did you have it hidden?”

“You’d never guess, darling.”

She sensed the difference in his manner now. “Well, are you going to give it to me or aren’t you?”

He managed to look like the kind of private detective who has given the profession a bad name. “I ought to get a little something for my trouble, don’t you think?”

Her green eyes suddenly hated him. “Oh, so you did read the letters.”

“No,” he said, “I haven’t read them.” He had a momentary glow of virtue at thus being able to tell the truth. He felt that he should try telling the truth more often. He watched avarice and worry play tag across the lady’s beautiful face.

“Very well,” she decided presently, “I’ll give you five thousand dollars for it.”

He was incredulous. “For the bag?”

“For the bag.” Now that she had capitulated she relaxed a little. “You’ll have to take a check, though. I haven’t that much money with me.”

“Perfectly all right,” McCloud assured her. He waited while she wrote the check, accepted it, waved it around in the air to dry the ink, finally picked up the bag and tossed it into her lap. “Nothing like a nice clean deal, darling.”

She actually spat at him. “We don’t have to pretend any more.”

She opened the purse, saw that the two envelopes were there and did not think to examine their contents also. She was quite satisfied that she was getting what she paid for. She stood up, snapping the bag closed. “I hope you die young,” she said.

McCloud amiably admitted that she was likely to get her wish. “The way I’ve been pushed around tonight, baby, death would be almost a relief.” He held the ermine cape for her, gingerly, as though afraid to get too close. At the door he said casually, “Oh, by the way, is your husband in town?”

Cat-like she whirled and struck him across the face. “If you’ve double-crossed me, if you’ve read those letters, I’ll be back to see you.” Her mouth was suddenly ugly. “And this time I’ll have a gun.”

His eyes were darkly humorous as he put up a hand and felt of his cheek.” “I give you my word,” he said. “I have not read the letters.” He held the door wide for her. “Good-night, and thanks— for everything.” He watched her descend the stairs. After a while he heard a car door slam somewhere out in the street. He returned to the bedroom and read one of the letters, and presently, coming to the signature, he emitted a little whistle of astonishment. The writer of the letters was a man named Emil.

Offhand, McCloud could not think of a single person he knew who was named Emil except Emil Kahn. Also it was worthy of note that there was a definite connection between diamond brokers and salesmen for importers of jewelry. One could very well have met the wife of the other. McCloud thought of the grossly fat Emil Kahn and the sleekly sensuous Kay Mercedes. He thought, too, a very little, about what Mrs. Emil Kahn would say and do if it had been she who just read those letters. He did not believe Mrs. Kahn’s mind would be as broad as her hips.

And then there was Mr. Felipe Mercedes, Kay’s husband. Mr. Mercedes must be a very careless fellow indeed. Whistling through his teeth, though without much melody, McCloud shed the rest of his clothes and climbed under the shower.

Chapter 12

It seemed that tonight was his night for visitors. McCloud had scarcely finished dressing when the doorbell rang. It kept on ringing, with a sort of rhythmic cadence, as though the ringer might be humming a tune to its accompaniment. McCloud went out and yanked the door open. He was not too surprised when his caller turned out to be Van Felix.

McCloud scowled at him. “Go away.”

“Who, me?” Felix was indignant. “A fine way to treat a man who has been wearing his feet down to the ankles for you!”

“I’ll bet,” McCloud said cynically.

“Well, I have,” Felix insisted. He moved into the room, a trifle unsteadily but with due regard to obstacles. He looked with patent disapproval at McCloud’s somewhat lumpy visage.

“Fighting again!”

McCloud made a bitter mouth. “Maybe that’s what you’d call it.”

He remembered that he had sent Felix on the back trail of Mr. Emil Kahn. “What did you find out?”

“Is Emil Kahn the man who shot at you out on Doheny Drive and relieved you of fifteen grand?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. Obviously realizing that this was inadequate he enlarged upon it. “He could be. On the other hand, he could not be. His movements for the time in question are shrouded in deep dark mystery.”

McCloud was disgusted. “A hell of a help you are!”

The doorbell rang. McCloud’s eyes had a harried expression as he motioned Felix to answer the summons. He swore up and down that if this was Brannigan again he was going to cut the guy into little pieces. The newcomer turned out to be the blonde in the yellow silk pajamas. McCloud still did not know her name.

She did not see McCloud at first. She just stood there, staring with a kind of surprised fascination at Van Felix. “Well,” she said presently, “you certainly do get around, don’t you?”

Felix appeared oddly embarrassed. “Well, unh—” He attempted to close the door in her face. “I’m pretty busy right now. Perhaps some other time?”

McCloud strode forward and yanked the smaller man aside. “Come in,” he told the blonde. His mouth was a little grim and strained. He banged the door shut. “Now, what’s this all about?”

She drew the mink coat tighter about her. “I must say you’re not exactly a joyous welcoming committee.”

“Should I be?” He looked at Felix who had retired cautiously to the fireplace. “So you know the lady too!”

“Well,” Felix said, “in a way, yes.”

“Then you might introduce me,” McCloud suggested pleasantly.

Both Felix and the blonde stared at him as if he might be slightly off center. Finally she said, “What are you trying to do— kid me, McCloud?”

“No, I mean it.” His eyes never left her face. “I really don’t know your name.”

“I see,” she said. And then, with a laugh that was sharply off
key, “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter much— now.” She backed to the door, reaching behind her for the knob.

McCloud caught her arm. “Not so fast, baby. Tell me some more about you and that lush over there in the corner.”

Felix sighed. “Never mind, I’ll tell it.”

The blonde said, “So you were lying!” and McCloud said, “Shut up!” and Felix just stood there, hugging the bottle to his narrow chest as though afraid someone was going to take it away from him. Finally he said, “Well, unh, to tell you the truth, Stephen, I thought there was something a little fishy about your visit to Margie Garland. It occurred to me that maybe you were not only holding out on the cops, but on poor old Felix too.” The thought of such a thing saddened him. “I just couldn’t stand it.”

“I’ll bet,” McCloud sneered. He was suddenly so mad he was shaking. “So you didn’t check on Kahn after all. You chased back along my trail, trying to trip me up!”

“Oh, no,” Felix said. “I really did investigate Mr. Kahn.” He nibbled reflectively at the neck of the bottle. “But the radio—” He paused and smiled brightly on one and all. “Wonderful thing, the radio. It told me all about a man named Dutch DeGroot being killed, and in his poor dead fist was— guess what?”

“A diamond?” McCloud hazarded.

“Correct!” Felix said. “That’s absolutely correct!”

McCloud regarded him without love. “So you thought there might be more of them lying around.”

The blonde said a very unladylike word. “He told me he was a friend of yours. He said he was looking for clues!”

Felix was outraged. “Well, wasn’t I?” Avoiding McCloud’s glare he had a very small drink. “I was looking very hard.”

“But not for clues,” she said. She looked at McCloud. “I got back home and found this guy taking it apart.” Her mouth drooped. “And I actually let him talk me out of shooting him!”

“So you play with guns too,” McCloud said. It seemed to him that everybody was running around with guns tonight. He wondered if the blonde was not more than the innocent bystander she pretended. He said, “Would it be forward of me to inquire the purpose of your present visit?”

She eyed him indignantly. “Ain’t I been telling you? I got to thinking maybe this guy was not as good a friend of yours as he said. So I dropped around to tell you about him.”

McCloud appeared impressed. “Thank you, darling.”

“Well, is he or isn’t he?”

“In a small way,” McCloud said. He examined Felix with the air of a scientist dissecting a new specimen. “In a very small way.” He stiffened as someone pounded on the outside door. “Well, for Christ’s sake!”

The blonde moved somewhat hastily aside. Felix clutched his bottle even tighter. McCloud lifted his voice in resigned invitation. “All right, whoever it is, come on in.”

Jessup came in. His short thick figure was swathed in a gaberdine raincoat, and raindrops glistened on his hat. The veins in his nose and cheeks had a distinct magenta hue. His eyes took in the blonde, Felix and the bottle, finally came to rest on McCloud.

“Damn it,” McCloud yelled, “I haven’t forgotten the lousy diamonds!” He scowled. “Is that what you came-around to find out?”

Jessup’s eyebrows lifted. “I take it that our friends here are all in on our little secret?” His voice dripped sarcasm.

“Say,” the blonde demanded, “are you insinuating that I ain’t wanted?”

McCloud waved her to silence. “Never mind, baby, this guy just can’t understand anybody having to stop for breath.” He glared at Jessup. “Look, I’ve been mauled all over this man’s town tonight. I had to get some clean clothes.”

Jessup was still sarcastic. “Then I don’t have to hire another detective? Another so-called detective?”

McCloud looked at him. “One of these days something terrible is going to happen to you, Counsellor. Something like having your teeth kicked in.”

Jessup was unimpressed, possibly because wrangling with McCloud had become a daily habit. He said, “Well, I just thought you might have something to tell me.” He looked at his watch with exaggerated intentness. “We made a little promise to Emil Kahn, remember?”

“Not me,” McCloud denied. “You’re the one that goes around making promises.” Sultry-eyed he watched the blonde, who was now helping Felix empty the bottle. They seemed to have forgotten their little differences. He lowered his voice. “I’ve run into a couple of new angles, Counsellor. There’s definitely a tie-up between Emil Kahn and a certain lady you wouldn’t know about, and between the lady and Duke D’Arcy.” He neglected to mention Sheila and her husband. “In other words, I’ve now got an entering wedge.”

“Then you’d better start using it,” Jessup suggested. “In a hurry.”

He went away.

Chapter 13

THE HOYT was one of those definitely middle-class hotels along West Seventh Street. The clerk stopped rubbing his hands when he found out that McCloud was not thinking of becoming a guest. He was still impressed, though. He made a great business of locating the room number, finally cleared his throat portentously and summoned the bell-hop.

“Front! Take this gentleman up to 435.”

The bell-hop languidly folded his racing form and stuck it in a hip pocket. It appeared that he also doubled as an elevator operator. He and McCloud rode up to the fourth floor and went along a dimly lit hall to 435. Neither said anything. McCloud had the uncomfortable feeling that his escort was going to stay right there at his elbow unless bribed to go away. He parted with a silver dollar.

“Goodnight, pal.”

He waited until the elevator had finally whined out of earshot before he knocked on the door.

Sheila opened it almost instantly. “Hello, Stephen.”

He saw that she had been crying. “Hello, hon.” He went in and closed and locked the door. Beyond Sheila, on the room’s one bed, lay Kenneth Mayo, soggily inert. “You still haven’t been able to rouse him?”

“No.” Sheila’s voice had a parched sound to it.

McCloud bent and took the unconscious man’s head in his two hands, moving it back and forth, back and forth. Mayo’s eyelids did not even flicker. What this man needed was medical treatment. He straightened and looked at Sheila. “We’re going to have to get him to a doctor, hon. I think maybe it would be a good idea to leave here anyway. Regardless of what some people think, cops are not dumb. They’re bound to find that car of yours. Starting with that, they’ll check all the near-by hotels.” He drew a deep breath. “You’ll have to help— a little. I can carry him, but you’ll have to front for me downstairs. Otherwise the clerk might think I had killed him.”

“Whatever you say, Stephen.”

McCloud put an arm around her shoulders. “Look, Sheila, there are a number of things that have to be straightened out between you and me, but I’ve got to set you right about one thing immediately. That woman you saw me with tonight, yes, and another one before her— those things have nothing to do with the way I feel about you.”

He wiped his mouth on the back of a hand, as though to erase a very bad taste. “The way I’ve always felt.”

Her voice was without inflection. “It doesn’t matter, Stephen.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” he said angrily. And then more quietly: “I’ve been a pretty good loser, Sheila. I’ve let you take your own sweet time to find out that a lawyer can be even a worse heel than a private dick.” He shook her. “But I’m all through now, understand?”

Her chin came up. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” he said grimly, “that when and if we ever get clear of this mess, you and I are starting all over again.”

Her eyes were clear now, disillusioned but quite clear and unafraid.

“You’re striking a bargain with me, Stephen?”

“A bargain?” He looked blank for a moment, suddenly got her implication and turned ugly. “A bargain, hell! You’re no bargain at any price.” His eyes were savage. “It just happens that I’m nuts about you, that’s all, and the next time I want a fair break. No unpleasant memories cluttering up the view.”

Quite suddenly she put out her hand and touched him. “I’m sorry I misunderstood you, Stephen.” Her mouth trembled, ever so slightly. “Did anybody ever tell you you were pretty swell?”

His anger evaporated as swiftly as it had come. “Sure,” he said.

He remembered the flame in green satin, Kay Mercedes. “There was another gal told me that, but she changed her mind. She found out I was a heel.” He grinned. “In fact, by this time, she probably knows I’m even a bigger heel than she thought at first.” Emil Kahn’s two letters rustled crisply in an inside pocket of his suit coat. “Which reminds me, hon, that this same lady had a very good look at you when you stopped by my place. She’s liable to tell the cops where she saw you. That means I’ll have Brannigan in my hair again.”

Sheila looked at the unconscious man stretched out on the bed, the man who was her husband. “Well, we’d better get on with whatever we’re going to do.”

“Yes,” McCloud said. He thought of something. “Before we start out, though, I’d better have all the angles. That way I can act more or less intelligently.” He stared down at her upturned face. “What happened in the Garland woman’s apartment? Was Kenneth’s gun really stolen, or was that— as the police believe— just an amateurish subterfuge? How did you manage to get involved in the killing?”

“I don’t know about the gun,” she said. Her mouth tightened. “I suppose it may really have been stolen, though Kenneth has frequently lied about things, even when it wasn’t necessary. You see, I came home this evening, last evening rather, and discovered that Kenneth had actually brought that— that woman there. Into my very home, Stephen.” She shrugged tiredly. “There were liquor glasses and things lying around.”

McCloud cursed. The affair was even more sordid than he had thought. After awhile he said in a carefully matter-of-fact voice. “But Kenneth and the girl were not there?”

“No.” She would not look at him. “I couldn’t, of course, know exactly where they had gone, but I was pretty sure of the woman’s identity. You see and hear things, sometimes, that you pretend not to. Anyway, having her brought into our own home like that— well, it was just a little more than even I could stomach. I decided to see the woman.”

“All right, so you ended up at the Garland woman’s apartment. Then what happened?”

“It was pretty horrible, Stephen. In fact, it was ghastly, opening the door on a scene like that. Kenneth was on the floor with the gun in his hand. The woman was partially on top of him.” She caught her breath. “I was literally stunned for a moment. Then Kenneth sort of stirred a little, and the woman’s body shifted and I could see her face.” She was seized with a violent fit of trembling.

McCloud put an arm about her, steadying her. “Forget it, hon.”

“No. I’ve got to tell you.” After a brief moment she again got her voice under control. “I ran to the woman, then, and straightened her up, but of course there was nothing I could do. She was quite dead. I had just made sure of this when Kenneth roused. He came to his feet mumbling incoherently and brandishing the gun about. I knocked it out of his hand.

“Naturally my first thought was to get Kenneth away. I was thinking of myself too, I guess, Stephen. This bade fair to ruin what little there was left of my life.” Her shoulders straightened. “So I finally got Kenneth down the back stairs and almost to the car. It was not until then that he thought to tell me the gun was his. I had to go back after it.”

McCloud frowned. “And that’s where I came in.” Once more he went over and tried to shake some semblance of intelligence into the man on the bed. It was no use. Mayo’s breathing only became more labored.

McCloud turned back to Sheila. “He admitted killing her?”

“Of course,” she said dully. And then; “He could scarcely lie out of it, could he?” She made a resigned gesture. “Not that he didn’t try to make excuses. I gathered that it was she who had the gun in the first place, and that he had accused her of stealing it, and the quarrel turned into a struggle. Finally, so he said, he got the gun away from her, but she picked up something and threw it and it hit him on the head. He must have pulled the trigger unconsciously. At least that was his story. He said he didn’t even remember hearing the shot.”

McCloud looked at her. “By the way, did you hear it?”

She thought a moment. “No, I don’t think I did, Stephen. I remember now, though, that somewhere nearby a radio was making a lot of noise. That may have covered the sound of the shot.”

McCloud returned to the man on the bed, this time to partially check Mayo’s own story. He was surprised to discover that in one respect, at least, Mayo had told the truth. Half hidden by touseled blond hair there was a raised swelling just above Mayo’s right ear. Whatever Margie Garland had thrown had certainly done the business. It may not have actually knocked Mayo unconscious, but it could very easily have, startled him into pulling the trigger. McCloud sighed. This was presuming, of course, that Mayo wasn’t playing on Sheila’s sympathy and lying about the whole thing.

Sheila ended on an apologetic note. “Kenneth was frantic when I told him about my encounter with you, and that I had not been able to get the gun after all. He begged me to help him get away, and I— well, I promised I would. And all the time he kept drinking, and then you appeared on the scene again.” She spread her hands. “I guess we both sort of lost our heads.”

McCloud found a certain amount of humor in the last. It had been he who had almost lost his head, literally, when Ken Mayo conked him with the vase. He remembered that Sheila had had a second gun.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

“Kenneth had it,” she said. “I took it away from him because I was afraid that in his condition he might kill someone else.”

“Thank you,” McCloud said dryly. “All is now as clear as the bottom of a certain creek you wouldn’t have heard about.” He stood there looking down at Mayo’s inert figure, lips moving soundlessly, though obviously not in prayer. It wasn’t bad enough to have to aid and abet an able-bodied murderer; he had to pick one that was absolutely blotto. Finally he pulled the covers off the bed and started putting Mayo’s clothes back on him. “Come on, baby, you and I are going places.”

Being human, McCloud toyed with the idea of turning Kenneth Mayo over to the law. It would be a nice out. In fact, by doing so, he could probably make a deal with the cops about Sheila’s part in the business. The only thing was, Sheila would always remember that he had done it. Especially if, as seemed likely, they hung Ken Mayo higher than a kite. McCloud decided to be noble.

After awhile, when at last he had the slim figure fully clothed, he hoisted it over a shoulder. Sheila snapped the suitcase closed. They were almost to the door when a voice out in the hall said, quite distinctly, “This is the room, Lieutenant.”

Brannigan’s voice was a whisper, but even so you could tell it was Brannigan. “Shhh!”

Sheila dropped the suitcase. The sound of it was like a bomb exploding in McCloud’s ears. Cursing, because there was no longer any use trying to be subtle, McCloud took two swift steps forward and shot the extra bolt on the door. At the same instant Brannigan hit the panel with all of his two hundred pounds. It bulged inward but did not shatter. McCloud, still carrying Mayo over a shoulder, motioned Sheila into the bath, then crossed the bedroom and banged the window up, loudly, so that there could be no mistake. He too retired to the bath, and closed the door until there was nothing but a crack showing.

Under a second and even more terrific onslaught the hall door finally quit resisting and crashed off its hinges. Brannigan floundered in, stumbled to his knees, got up and hurled himself at the open window. The night clerk, palpitant with the excitement of the chase, followed. McCloud opened the bathroom door, reached behind him and got Sheila’s wrist with his free hand. Feeling slightly like a camel train he slid cautiously toward the ravished hall door. Ken Mayo was by this time beginning to weigh a ton. They were actually within reach of the hallway when Brannigan, out on the fire escape, turned and saw them. The little night clerk, facing Brannigan, could not understand why the lieutenant’s gun should suddenly be pointing back inside the room. He must have thought Brannigan intended shooting him, for he gave a little squeak of utter terror and flung himself against Brannigan’s gun arm just as the gun went off.

Cursing a blue streak, Brannigan attempted to rid himself of the clinging man, tripped on the window sill and fell headlong into the room. McCloud saw all of this as in a dream, or a slow-motion picture.

It seemed to him that his feet were weighted with lead, yet somehow he and Sheila were suddenly at the open door of the elevator cage. The combination bell-hop and operator was startled. “Hey, what the hell!”

McCloud dropped Mayo like a sack of potatoes, yanked Sheila inside the cage and banged the gate shut. “Shove off, sailor.” As an added inducement he produced the gun from under his armpit.

“Well, sure,” the kid said. He shoved off. The cage began a plummet-like descent. Somewhere up above there was a terrific clatter, probably Brannigan using the stairs. At the main floor after what seemed an eternity, McCloud picked up Mayo, this time in his two arms, and ran for the street. He didn’t even know whether Sheila was behind him or not, but presently it turned out that she was. It also developed that Brannigan, or somebody just as thoughtfully malicious, had removed the keys from McCloud’s car. He just stood there for a second, struck positively speechless by this final catastrophe.

Sheila, breathing unevenly, said, “Never mind, Stephen. I’ll take Kenneth. You run for it.”

Down at the corner a Yellow cab paused to discharge a late fare.

“Let’s both run,” McCloud said. Yelling like an Indian, still lugging Mayo, he ran toward the cab, threw Mayo through the open door and shoved Sheila in on top of him.

The hacker was trying to collect from his former passenger. “It’s one-sixty, pal, The meter says so.”

McCloud hauled out his gun again. “The hell with that. Get under the wheel, fella. I’ll square this guy’s ride.”

The ex-fare said, “Well, thanks very much, but I really—”

“Don’t mention it!” McCloud snarled. Down the street, Brannigan had just debouched from the hotel. He began shooting. McCloud’s gun and the added incentive of Brannigan’s slugs put wings on the hacker’s feet. The cab was already in motion by the time McCloud had climbed in over the meter. “Jesus!”

McCloud pushed the gun at him. “Never mind praying, pal. Just drive.”

Chapter 14

THE HACKER said from the corner of his mouth, “Where we going, pal?”

“Just keep on driving,” McCloud said. He hefted the gun in his lap, suggestively. “You’re doing fine.”

The cab continued weaving in and out of dark side streets adjoining Wilshire Boulevard. Surprisingly, there was quite a lot of traffic. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. For the moment it appeared that they had successfully eluded Brannigan, though the driver had no doubt of the kind of dynamite he was carrying. The cab’s radio, tuned to the police band occasionally repeated McCloud’s description, and that of Sheila and Kenneth Mayo. Fortunately Brannigan had been too busy to get the hack’s license number, but it was only a question of time until the process of elimination would work in his favor. McCloud knew that he could not continue to just ride around like this.

Back of him, in the tonneau, Sheila was sitting like a stone image, holding her husband’s head against her breast. McCloud was glad that the dividing glass was closed, so that he could not hear Mayo’s rasping breath.

After, awhile the hacker said, “You don’t have to hold no rod on me, mister. I’m friends.” He spat out the side of the cab into the rain. “I’ve been in a jam or two myself.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Well, I have,” the hacker insisted.

McCloud considered this information. “All right, if the gun makes you nervous.” He put the gun away. Presently, as though arguing with himself, he said, “You ought to see how impossible it is for me to let you take us where we want to go. You wouldn’t do it yourself, would you?”

The hacker thought about that for a moment. “Well, no,” he decided,

“I guess I wouldn’t.”

“The cops are bound to catch up with you. If they got as tough with you as they have with me you’d have to tell them all you knew.”

They rode in silence for a couple of minutes. Finally the driver said, “Well, what would you suggest, pal? I’m a very reasonable guy.”

McCloud looked at him. “Would forty bucks pay you for a very light sock on the head? Forty is all I’ve got with me.”

The driver was moved to sincere admiration. “A guy who offers me that when he could just as easy conk me for nothing— well, I’m for you, mister.” Again he spat. “And anyway, for forty bucks I’d take concussion.” Like a man who knows the water is going to be cold, but who would rather dive in than be thrown in, he braked the cab to a halt beneath a giant pepper tree. He got out. McCloud got out after him. They went around the nose of the cab and picked out a suitable spot on the grass of the parkway. The neighboring houses were all dark, silent.

The hacker watched McCloud take out the gun again. He said,

“Look, would it be all right if I took off my cap first?” He was slightly embarrassed. “What I mean is, the company charges us five bucks for the damn’ things, and if this one got ruined or anything—”

“All right, take it off.”

The hacker did this, laying the cap neatly on the running board, right side up, so the rain would not get at the lining. Straightening, he cleared his throat. “Well, now, about that forty bucks—”

McCloud gave him the forty and waited, quite patiently for McCloud, until it was stored away. He then raked the gun smartly across the hacker’s scalp, so there would be at least a little blood to prove the hacker’s story later. The guy promptly fell down and arranged himself comfortably on the sod and apparently went to sleep.

“Good-night, pal,” McCloud said. He climbed into the driver’s seat and drove hurriedly away.

After some little time Sheila opened the sliding window behind him. “I suppose you know what you’re doing, Stephen.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it, hon.”

He concentrated on his driving then, and some ten minutes later brought up with a minor flourish at the curbing in front of Hammer’s Baths. “You’ve got to trust me from here on in, Sheila. Kenneth will be as safe here as anywhere, and I’m going to see that he gets a doctor. Okay?”

He reached in and got Mayo in his two arms and went carefully down the marble stairs. Mayo was dead weight. His breath was hot on McCloud’s neck, and the sound of it was pure agony to the ears. McCloud pushed through double glass doors and laid his burden on the red leather and chromium divan. He went over to the desk and banged the night bell. His eyes were burning as though he too had a fever.

Hammet came out, rubbing his eyes sleepily. His red fez was on crooked and he pretended to be very indignant over being waked up at this time in the morning. Especially by McCloud. “A fine t’ing!” he said. “You know you’re hot like anyt’ing?” He preened his fierce mustaches. “Whatta you trying doing— getting me arrested in jail?”

“You'll have me crying in my beard in a minute,” McCloud said. He led Hammet over to the divan. “Look, here’s a customer I brought you.”

Hammet began cursing in Greek, changed over to a species of English, finally ended up with, “Well, you can josta goddam well take heem away again.”

“No.”

“Whatta you meaning, no?” Hammet demanded.

“Just that,” McCloud said. He put an arm around the Greek’s bulky shoulders. “We’ve been friends a long time, you fat bastard. You going to let me down now?”

Hammet sighed, resignedly. “Well, putting it like those—”

“Fine,” McCloud said. He became brisk. “This guy is being looked for by every copper in town. You know that and I know it. But the doctor you’re going to get doesn’t have to know it. Just tell the doc that you’ve got an old customer here and you want to get him straightened out so you can send him home.”

Hammet’s business instincts came to the fore. He also became brisk. “How moch sheesa wort’ to you?”

“A century,” McCloud said firmly. “No more, no less.”

“Is very cheap,” Hammet sighed. “Is very cheap like hell, but I do it.” His eyes were cagey. “W’en I am getting those century?”

McCloud frowned, remembering that he was stone broke. He was even worse than that. He was short some fifteen thousand dollars of West Coast Indemnity’s money. He pretended to reach for his wallet, then reconsidered. “No, I can’t trust you. I’ll hold the dough till you’ve done your job.” He yanked his hat down over his eyes.

“And don’t try to chisel an extra ten by forgetting the doctor, either. Your regular routine would kill this guy.”

Hammet swore the thought had not even entered his mind. He peered down on Mayo. “Heesa look almos’ like those Felix, hanh?”

He straightened and fixed McCloud with an outraged eye. “You know those fifty bocks you are giving me I should splitting it with Felix?”

“Sure,” McCloud said. “So you gave Felix his share and he hornswoggled you out of yours, too.”

“Heesa cheat, that’s w’at he are doing!”

McCloud was unsympathetic. “By this time you ought to know better than to shoot craps with that guy. He always wins.”

“Heesa always cheat, that’s why!”

“Sure,” McCloud said, “that’s the way to win.” He bade Hammet a more or less fond good-night and went out through the glass doors and back up the marble stairs to the street. Sheila was still sitting just as he had left her. He pretended to be greatly encouraged over Mayo’s condition. “Well, that’s that. Now' we can go find a spot for you.” He climbed under the wheel and started south on Spring Street. A black-and-white police car went by, going north. McCloud held his breath. The prowl car did not turn around. It had stopped raining again. After a time McCloud half turned in his seat and spoke to Sheila. “Did Kenneth ever discuss his firm’s business with you?”

“Not often,” she said. “Why?”

“I just wondered.” He drove in silence for another block. Then:

“They’re Duke D’Arcy’s attorneys, you know.”

“Yes,” she admitted, I knew that.”

“And Margie Garland, the girl you— the girl Kenneth—” McCloud broke off to curse savagely at his own clumsiness. “Well, anyway, she is supposed to have been connected with D’Arcy too.”

Sheila was obviously surprised at that; surprised and a little dismayed.

“I had no idea, Stephen.” After a moment she said in a stifled voice, “What— what is all this leading to?”

McCloud’s laugh was bitter. “There’s the little matter of some diamonds. About a quarter of a million dollars’ worth.” He trod down harder on the throttle. “I’m supposed to find them. They’re the reason I stumbled into you and Kenneth and one thing and another.”

Sheila was appalled. “And we— Kenneth and I— have ruined that for you?” She caught her breath. “I wish you had told me all this before, Stephen.”

“Why the hell should I?” he demanded roughly. And then more gently, “There’s no use getting sentimental about it, hon. All I want you to do is answer a couple of questions.” He framed the first one. “Did Kenneth happen to mention a couple named Mercedes?”

“No.”

“Nor Emil Kahn, or maybe Dutch DeGroot?”

“No, I’m sure he didn’t, Stephen.”

“All right,” he said. He parked the cab before the downtown Y.W.C.A. “Well, here we are, Sheila.” He got out and opened the door for her. “I want you to stay here. Don’t go out for any reason whatsoever until you hear from me, understand?”

She nodded. “I understand.”

He helped her with the suitcase. “If you need anything else, send out for it. You’ve money enough?”

“Yes, Stephen.” She looked up at the blank face of the big stone building. Only the lobby was still alight, and that very dimly. “What name shall I use?”

Abruptly he laughed. “We might as well make it Smith again. God knows there are enough of them so that one more or less won’t make much difference.” He saw that there were no tell-tale initials on the suitcase. You can be Mary Smith from, say, Santa Ana.”

He got back in the cab and drove it to a section of the city that was at least three miles removed from any place he had been in the last month.

Chapter 15

THIS time he was using a Checker cab. He felt that on the whole the Checker hackers were not quite as alert as Yellow hackers, and besides there were no radios in the Checkers. He dismounted in front of the Club D’Arcy and asked the driver to wait. He had to do this because he didn’t have a dime, and the fare came to a dollar-eighty-five.

The hacker was a trifle suspicious. You sure you’re coming back, mister?”

“I always come back,” McCloud assured him. He reconnoitered the modernistic facade of the D’Arcy.

At the moment the trend of patrons was outward. Somewhere inside, an excellent orchestra was playing what was apparently the last number of the evening, “Goodbye, Now.” It was just two o’clock, the legal closing hour, and Duke D’Arcy was as careful about appearances as the poverty-stricken mother of a budding debutante. At closing time he closed the upper room, at least.

McCloud went inside and merged with the dozen or so couples at the checkroom counters in the small lobby. In spite of the prevalence of evening dress he was not too conspicuous in his street clothes. Presently, carrying his hat, he climbed carpeted stairs to the second floor. No one attempted to stop him. It was assumed that if you went upstairs at D’Arcy’s you knew what was there, and if you didn’t know what was there you were still the kind that didn’t talk about it afterward. For some reason police raiding parties always seemed to miss the Club D’Arcy. Duke’s other spots might suffer occasionally, probably to prove that the Vice Squad was working, but the D’Arcy went right on doing business at the same old stand. It was remarkable.

There were two rooms on the upper floor, D’Arcy’s private office and the salon. In the larger room there was a small service bar and a series of roulette and crap tables. These were only moderately busy. McCloud estimated the crowd at around a hundred. Four or five waiters circulated quietly among the guests at the tables, replenishing drinks as needed, and the dealers and lookouts all wore white ties and tails. It was all very quiet, very refined.

McCloud crossed the big room to the cashier’s cage. “Hello, Clyde.”

Clyde looked up from the stack of bills he was counting. “Hello, Mr. McCloud.” He could have been the cashier in any one of the better branch banks, the kind of man you see when you’re trying to renew the mortgage. He did not look the least bit like the popular conception of a gambler. For that matter, neither did the rest of the help. That patrons were the gamblers. The employees were businessmen.

“Something I can do for you?”

“If you can’t,” McCloud said sourly, “I’m going to have a hell of an argument with my cab driver. He’s waiting for me to come back with a dollar and eighty-five cents.” He looked at his strap watch.

“Maybe more by this time.” From his wallet he extracted the check that Kay Mercedes had given him. “How’s about cracking that for me?”

Clyde looked at the check, snapped it a couple times, as a bank teller would new currency. “Five thousand dollars,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to get an okay on that much, Mr. McCloud.”

“I’m in no hurry,” McCloud said. He was, but not entirely for the money. He turned and leaned comfortably on the counter and watched the play at the tables while Clyde summoned a relief cashier. Clyde then carried the check across the big room and disappeared inside D’Arcy’s private office.

After a time the office door opened and Duke D’Arcy himself stood in it, beckoning McCloud across the room. McCloud went over, trying to locate one of the coke straws with his mouth without taking his eyes off of D’Arcy’s face. It was a very difficult feat. Clyde, the cashier, passed him, going toward his cage.

“Hello, McCloud,” D’Arcy said.

“Hello, Duke.”

They went inside. D’Arcy sat down behind the big desk and picked up the check. His eyebrows indicated the chair across from him. “Rest your feet?”

McCloud took the chair, put his coke on the glass top of the desk.

“Something the matter with the check?”

“As a piece of paper it’s very beautiful,” D’Arcy said. “As an even exchange for money it stinks.” He made a faint gesture of annoyance.

“I own several more exactly like it, only I was fool enough to pay for those.” He shook his head. “I’m not buying any more, thank you.”

McCloud was outraged. “Why, the two-timing bitch!”

“A swell looker, though,” D’Arcy said. He made a church and steeple of his slender, well-kept hands. He smiled with his mouth only. “Gorgeous.”

McCloud pretended to be very angry indeed. “God damn it, I tell you she can’t do this to me!”

“She has,” D’Arcy pointed out.

“But not permanently,” McCloud said. He shook with sudden ribald laughter. “I must have had a hunch, because what I gave her isn’t worth any more than the check.” He put out a hand for the slip of paper. “Well, sorry I troubled you, Duke.”

D’Arcy refused to let go of the check. “Maybe you’d better tell me a little more about this deal, McCloud.” His eyebrows drew down. “Just what were you supposed to be selling her?”

McCloud removed part of the ash from his cigar; very carefully, as though it were the most important thing in the world. “I don’t believe you meant that, Duke.”

D’Arcy’s eyes lifted to a point somewhere beyond the. top of McCloud’s head. McCloud turned and looked behind him? There were two men standing there. He had not heard them come in. They were not the usual dapper, hopped-up gunsels, but under the circumstances you wouldn’t mistake them for Bible students either. McCloud settled back in his chair. “I guess it’s my error, Duke. What was that you wanted to know?”

“Now you’re being smart,” D’Arcy smiled. He had dark hair and eyes, but he was not dark in the same sense that McCloud was dark. His skin, even that of his hands, was dead white, as though it had never seen the sun. Not that it looked unhealthy. It was just white. He built another church and steeple out of his long fingers. “You were selling something to Kay Mercedes. What was it?”

“A purse,” McCloud said. “You were at her apartment when I called with it. Remember?”

“I recall the incident perfectly,” D’Arcy admitted. “The lady denied owning such a bag, and you agreed that probably you had made a mistake.” Quite suddenly he was through playing. He put his hands flat on the desk top and half rose. “What was in that purse, McCloud?”

McCloud contrived a look of vast surprise. “You mean you don’t know?” He sighed as D’Arcy shook his head. “I sort of had an idea you did.” He watched D’Arcy’s hands, but these did not tell him any more than the man’s eyes. “By the way, Duke, just what is your own interest in the lady?”

D’Arcy looked at him. “I’m the one that’s asking the questions, not you.”

McCloud sighed. “Excuse it, please.” There was still no sound from the two men behind him, but he scarcely thought they would have gone away. He tried a lie, not really expecting it to be believed, just feeling his way along.

“Well, if you insist, Duke, the valuable part of that purse was not its contents. It was the place in which I found it.”

D’Arcy’s eyes narrowed a trifle, but his voice was still pleasant enough. “Keep on talking, McCloud.”

“Margie Garland was sitting on it.” McCloud said. He shifted slightly in his chair so that again he could see the two men between him and the room’s one door. They weren’t doing anything in particular, just standing there as they had been before, not too bored, not too interested. They didn’t even have their guns in sight.

“Margie didn’t know she was sitting on it,” he said. “Not when I saw her.” He took a deep breath. “Margie was in no condition to know anything.”

“I feel pretty bad about Margie,” D’Arcy said. The way he said it, the very quietness of the statement, was enough to scare the pants off you. “Pretty bad, McCloud.”

“I didn’t like it too well myself,” McCloud said. He picked up his Coca-Cola, stared very hard across it at D’Arcy’s face. “How come you haven’t been tagged for the Kahn diamond heist, Duke?”

D’Arcy gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Mainly because I had an excellent alibi. I had, was having, cocktails with Kay Mercedes at the time that job was pulled.” He shrugged. “And if you’re thinking I might have done for Margie herself, I even have an alibi for that.”

McCloud nodded. “Kay Mercedes again, I’ll bet.” He remembered that D’Arcy had apparently been at the Mercedes apartment for quite a while. “The lady is in a position to do you a lot of dirt, Duke.”

“But she won’t do it,” D’Arcy said. He seemed to know what he was talking about. “No, I hardly think she’ll change her story on me.”

McCloud thought of something. “Under the circumstances I’d certainly hate to call you a liar.” He jerked his head suggestively at the two gunsels. “But if the Mercedes 'woman can alibi you, then you are just as good an alibi for her. In other words, the Mercedes could not have killed Margie Garland.”

“But she could know who did,” D’Arcy said.

“I don’t think she knows, Duke.”

“No?” The man at the desk affected a sudden intense interest in the condition of his nails. “Then why was she so very worried when you appeared with her purse? Why deny in front of me that it was hers, and then telephone you downstairs in the lobby?”

McCloud’s eyes were frankly admiring. “You certainly don’t miss much, do you, Duke?” He attempted to blow a smoke ring, but this was a failure. “A guy who gets around as much as you do must have heard a whisper or two about the Kahn diamonds.” He spread his hands. “I mean, the stones are my only interest in the case. If somebody like you could finger those rocks for me— well, I think I know where I could lay my hands on, say, a hundred grand.” He smiled engagingly. “And positively no questions asked, either.”

Abruptly D’Arcy tossed his suave manner overboard. “You bastard! ”

Eyes glowing like live coals he came to his feet, rounded the desk and smacked McCloud in the mouth. “You’re right, McCloud, I don’t miss much and I do get around. I know exactly how hot you are with the cops, and I know why the heat is on.” He made a fist out of his right hand. “Where is Sheila Mayo and that lousy shyster husband of hers?”

McCloud licked his lips. He was painfully conscious of the two men behind him, or almost behind him. “I don’t know.”

“All right, boys,” D’Arcy said with a specious sort of regret, “I guess we’re going to have to take him apart.” He attempted to hit McCloud with the fist, but this time McCloud was expecting it. At the precise instant that the fist should have landed on McCloud’s chin his right hand caught the wrist above it and yanked. D’Arcy fell into his arms. McCloud came out of the chair in one lithe movement, swung D’Arcy between himself and the two gunsels, still hung onto D’Arcy’s wrist but used his free hand to drag his gun and bury the muzzle in D’Arcy’s back. “You guys still want to play games?”

It seemed that they didn’t. Each had a gun in his hand, but they couldn’t do much in the way of shooting McCloud without shooting their boss first, or getting him shot by McCloud. They just stood there, expecting D’Arcy to do whatever thinking there was to be done. D’Arcy breathing was noisy in the stillness. “You can’t get away with this, McCloud.”

McCloud thought that this was probably a fact. While he might be able to drill D’Arcy it was practically a certainty that the gunsels, or reinforcements, would eventually get him, McCloud. He could not go on holding D’Arcy forever. He considered trying to push Duke ahead of him to the door, using him as a shield, but presently D’Arcy would make up his mind that McCloud did not really want to shoot him. When this happened he would become a definite liability instead of an asset. McCloud had just concluded that he was in a very bad spot indeed when there was an interruption.

The door to the main salon opened and Van Felix staggered in. He was beautifully drunk. Apparently he was unconscious of anyone in the office besides himself and Duke D’Arcy. “Ah, so there you are, Dukie!” A lock of pale hair straggled out from under his hat and his wizened face looked a thousand years old. His eyes were hot, feverish. In one hand he clenched a packet of currency, currency that seemed to run mostly to large denominations and his voice was plaintive. “They want me to play for marbles out there, Dukie. Lousy teeny-weeny little ten-dollar limit.” He waved the sheaf of bills. “A man of my means!”

The two hoods did not move. Neither D’Arcy nor McCloud moved. Tableaux. Finally D’Arcy said in a choked voice, “All right, Felix, I’ll be out in a minute and take the lid off. Run along now, will you?”

Felix essayed a courtly bow and almost fell on his face. “Very well, my good man.” Fumbling at his pockets as though to put his money away he suddenly produced a gun and pointed it at the gunsels’ backs.

“Well, look what I found!” He seemed as surprised about the gun as was everybody else. “Now we can all play, what?”

McCloud let out his breath with a tremendous whooosh! “Take the key out of the door, Felix. No, you damned fool, not with that hand. With the other one. You’ve got a gun, remember?” He was still holding

D’Arcy, still had his own gun in the gambler’s kidneys, but with Felix in that condition there was no telling what might happen. He himself might be Felix’ first target. He looked over D’Arcy’s shoulder at the two gunmen.

“This makes it better than an even break, chums. You can drop the rods now.”

One of the guys looked as though he might be going to argue. D’Arcy cursed him. “God damn it, do as he says!”

Both men dropped their guns. McCloud said, “That’s fine. That’s just swell, boys. Now you can walk over to the windows and admire the view for a while.”

He waited, holding his breath, until they had done this and were standing with their backs to the room. Then, quite suddenly, he bent his knees, and this bent D’Arcy’s knees too, and brought the man’s head down so that it was no trouble at all to conk him. D’Arcy sagged, out cold. Felix began to giggle.

Cursing him for an idiot, McCloud dropped the unconscious D’Arcy and ran across and pushed Felix through the door and turned the key. Felix stopped giggling, and, “Ahhh!” very gently, and folded up like an accordion. People in the salon were now becoming aware that something unusual was in progress, and a couple of the staff men started moving. McCloud waved his gun in an all-inclusive gesture, bent and got Felix around the middle, lifted him dangling like a rag doll and ran for the stairs. Somehow he got outside without being stopped. Felix roused a trifle as the night air hit him. He decided he would give an imitation of Charlie McCarthy. McCloud hurled him violently through the open door of the waiting cab.

“Hey!” the hacker yelled. He came running from the shadow of the left-hand wall. He recognized McCloud. “Oh, it’s you.” He spat.

“You know how much you owe me now, pal? It’s three, six-bits.”

McCloud was afraid the guy wouldn’t turn a wheel unless he saw something on account. Cursing the hacker, himself, Felix and everybody else, he reached in and dragged a handful of money out of Felix’ pockets. He discovered that he was holding half a dozen hundreds and at least one thousand-dollar note. “Well, for Christ’s sake!”

The hacker peered over his shoulder. “What’s the matter, pal?”

“Nothing,” McCloud said. From the tail of his eye he saw the two gunsels come running out of the club’s main entrance. He shoved one of the hundreds at the hacker. “Okay, let’s roll.”

A bullet from the advance guard of the pursuit chipped cement almost between his feet, ricocheted and went screaming off into the night. Perhaps it was the hundred-dollar bill, but more likely it was the bullet which lent wings to the hacker’s feet. The hack was already in motion when McCloud fell in on top of Felix and banged the door.

Chapter 16

IT SEEMED to McCloud that he was spending his life in taxicabs, either by himself or in the company of guys who were nothing but liabilities. He felt a deep sense of injury at this. For a man as fond of peace and quiet as he, he certainly was enjoying precious little of it.

Felix snored, and the cab rocked on, and presently McCloud leaned forward and yelled in the driver’s ear. “Hey, you want to get us pinched?”

“It’d be practically a relief,” the hacker yelled back. He slowed up, though. “You kill anybody back there?”

“How would I know?” McCloud demanded resentfully. It occurred to him that the hacker thought he had hijacked D’Arcy’s games. “Look, pal, just to relieve your conscience, if you’ve got any, my friend and I were the victims, not the aggressors.”

“Hah!”

McCloud let it go at that. There seemed no point in trying further to convince an out-and-out skeptic. He hauled Felix off the floor for perhaps the fifth time and again propped him in a corner of the seat. In Felix’ pockets he discovered some more money. There was nearly three thousand dollars in all. Also there was the gun that Felix had used.

McCloud considered the evidence against his slumbering companion. It was quite possible that this three thousand dollars was a part of the fifteen grand given him by Jessup and later taken from him during the incident out on Doheny Drive. If it were not, then how and where had Felix gotten it? McCloud wished that he had thought to take the serial numbers of the bills. He wondered if Jessup had a record of them.

Certainly Felix had known that McCloud was going to be carrying important money. McCloud had promised him to raise all that the traffic would bear. Too, there was the undeniable fact that Felix had been prowling around the Normandie when he was supposed to be doing something else. Witness the blonde in the yellow silk pajamas. Against all this, the crazy fool had just gotten McCloud out of a terrific jam.

How in hell could you reconcile that?

McCloud leaned over and got Felix by the shoulders and shook him savagely. “Hey, you crazy bastard, where’d you get all this money?”

Felix opened one eye. “My horsh came in.”

McCloud was startled. “Your horse!”

Felix condescended to open the other eye. “Sure.”

“God damn it,” McCloud yelled, “there aren’t any races at this time of night!”

“Are too,” Felix insisted. “Races at Epshom Downsh.” He became instructive. “Thash in England. Later over there than here.” He sighed. “Or maybe it’s earlier.” He giggled foolishly.

Even McCloud could not cope with a situation like this. He wondered sourly what he was going to do with Felix. He himself could not go home. Indeed there was no place in the whole city that he could go with absolute safety. Not only was he hunted by the police, and with excellent reason, this time, it now appeared that Duke D'Arcy was actively mixing in. D’Arcy would certainly be looking for McCloud; probably for Van Felix too. It was obvious that his information had convinced him, as the police were convinced, that Sheila and Kenneth Mayo were guilty of the murder of Margie Garland. It was their present whereabouts that he had been trying to pry out of McCloud when Felix had intervened. McCloud thought that it was very odd indeed that a man like D’Arcy should have been so crazy about a girl whom he must have known was two-timing him. Still, there was no accounting for that thing called love. Proof of that was McCloud’s own feeling for Sheila Mayo. Presently he gave up this trend of thought and again leaned forward and spoke to the cab’s pilot. “Third and Broadway.” He retired behind a wall of gloomy silence until finally the cab drew up at the corner of Third and Broadway. The hacker, muttering something about social injustice, got out and went into the all-night drugstore after change for the hundred-dollar bill.

McCloud, finding the immediate vicinity free of cops or other embarrassments, hauled Felix out and propped him against a convenient light pole.

The hacker came out with a fistful of currency. “I’m holding out ten, pal. Five for the meter and five for keeping my mouth shut.”

Cursing, McCloud hoisted the limp Felix to a shoulder and staggered into the nearest alley. After a time he came out on Spring Street and presently to Hammet’s Baths.

Hammet came waddling out. “Wal, wal, so sheesa you again!” He saw Felix and his mustaches lifted in a fiendish grin. “Hoh, what I going to do to that sonnabitch!”

“You and me both,” McCloud said savagely. He pressed the palms of his hands to his temples, trying to think back. “Look, Hammet, could Felix have left here around nine o’clock? Say nine to nine thirty?”

The Greek nodded solemnly. “Sure, sheesa all fix up hokay by those times.” He scowled. “Sheesa even win my twanny bucks.”

That seemed to settle it. That and the fact that Felix had almost magically appeared at the Mayo house afterward. The money, the gun and the time and place. It all fitted together. He bent and  extracted the gun from Felix’ pocket, smelled the barrel, finally checked the shells. The gun had been fired recently. There was one exploded cartridge. Eyes murderous with the kind of rage which comes from being betrayed by a friend, McCloud seized Felix by the throat.

Hammet hauled him off. “Hey, whatsa thees? You no lika those Felix no more?”

McCloud was shaking. “Sure I like him,” he said thickly. “He’s one of the finest rats I ever met.” Quite suddenly he realized that killing Felix wasn’t going to get him any place. Neither, apparently, was manhandling the guy. Felix was so far gone that he didn’t even know he had been almost choked to death. McCloud looked at the Greek. “All right, see what you can do with him.” He thought. “But this time I want him here when I get back, understand?”

“Sure,” Hammet said. His moon face was placid. “Those Felix, sheesa prisoner.” He hoisted Felix under one huge arm and waddled out of the lobby.

McCloud went over to the desk phone and dialed Jessup’s residence number. It was Jessup himself who answered. He seemed to be laboring under some tremendous excitement. “Well, for God’s sake, Stephen, where have you been?”

McCloud’s mouth drooped. “Let’s not go into that right now, Counsellor. What I want to know is, could you give me the serial numbers of those bills?”

Jessup’s voice was brittle. “What’s the matter, have you lost them?”

“Certainly not,” McCloud said. He gnashed his teeth on the lie. “God damn it, no, I haven’t lost them!”

“Well, I should hope not,” Jessup stated. Then, as McCloud started to say something: “Shut up, Stephen, this is important.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve heard from the party who has the Kahn diamonds.”

McCloud was genuinely startled. “The hell you have!”

“Fact,” Jessup said. “It’s going to cost us a hundred and twenty-five grand to do business, boy, but we’ve got to pay it.”

“You’re crazy.”

Jessup yelped. “A fine one you are to tell me how crazy I am.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “All you’ve done on this job is run around protecting your lousy love life.”

McCloud could hardly argue that point. It was too near the exact truth. He said, “But look, Counsellor, surely not a hundred and twenty-five grand. Who the hell does this guy think he is?”

“I don’t care who he is! ” Jessup yelled. “All I know is that it’s better to pay a hundred and twenty-five thousand and get the stones back than to have to shell out twice that much at ten o’clock tomorrow morning." He drew a deep breath. “Here it is, boy. You’ve got fifteen thousand already. You come out here and I’ll give you the other hundred and ten. Then you can make the contract.”

“Why me?” McCloud demanded angrily. “Haven’t I got troubles enough without that?”

Jessup was hurt. He was cut to the quick. “Haven’t I always stuck by you, boy? You wouldn’t want an old man like me to get killed, would you?”

McCloud could think of at least a dozen people he would have liked to see killed, but Jessup was not one of them. Also, now that he thought of it, this looked as though it might be the break that would solve a lot of his difficulties. It was possible, if he played it right, to not only get the Kahn diamonds, but to retain the ransom money. Also he stood an excellent chance of snaring a killer in the same trap. Not Margie Garland’s killer, of course. Kenneth Mayo had done that job. But almost certainly Kenneth Mayo could not have accounted for Dutch DeGroot. Very well, then, say that he did manage to get the stones, and retain the money, and in addition bag the killer of DeGroot. That ought to help square him with the police; yes, and with Jessup too, for the loss of the fifteen grand. He would still have Sheila and her husband to worry about, but in this life you couldn’t expect to have everything.

“All right,” he told Jessup, “I’ll come out and talk to you about it, anyway.” He disconnected.

Hammet came waddling through the swinging doors. “Those Felix, heesa being terrible stubborn this time,” he announced morosely. “Heesa talk but he don’t saying nothing.”

“Keep after him,” McCloud directed. He took out his gun, checked the action, slid it back in the holster under his arm. “What about the other one?”

Hammet sighed. “That one, heesa gone geese, I am thinking.”

“You get a doctor for him?”

Hammet waved a fist at the back room. “Inna there now.” He looked hopeful. “You gonna talking to him?”

“No,” McCloud decided. “No, I don’t think I’d better.” He selected one of the hundred-dollar bills he had recovered from Felix. “Here’s the century I promised you, you Greek bastard. Keep on and there may be more.”

Hammet was skeptical. “More money or more peoples?”

McCloud regarded him without any indication of affection. “Probably both.” He yanked his hat down over his eyes and went out and up the stairs to the street.

Chapter 17

AT THREE o’clock in the morning no cemetery is a particularly nice place in which to keep a tryst. But if ever it becomes absolutely necessary for you to meet a murderer, and that in or near a cemetery, then there is none nicer than Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

McCloud, passing the main gates of Forest Lawn in a rented car, as per Jessup’s instructions, looked inside and beyond the tall wrought-iron gates. He brought the car to a halt and just sat there for a time, getting the lay of the land firmly fixed in his mind, planning the coming encounter. He did not know whom he was to meet. Had he known, had he been able to hazard even a decent guess, there would have been no necessity for all this secrecy. Jessup had been unable to tell him a single thing beyond the time and the place and manner in which the transfer was to be made. The unknown had contacted Jessup by telephone.

He recalled Jessup’s last words. “And don’t try being cute, boy. We want those diamonds. The hell with the rest of it— at least for the time being.”

McCloud had promised that he would not try being cute. As a matter of fact, he was not feeling the least bit cute. If this meeting did not result as he hoped it would; if he didn’t get the right breaks, he certainly was not going to return to Jessup with the Kahn & Company loot. He was definitely not in a position to purchase the stones, even had he wanted to. He simply did not have the required hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Counting the money taken from Van Felix, and that just given him by Jessup, he was still short something like thirteen thousand. He sighed, lips moving soundlessly in a kind of prayer. Just one little break was all he asked. Just one. Considering his not too brilliant showing so far that night, it did not seem to him that he was asking too much. He was not being hoggish about it.

McCloud, moving very quickly now that he was parked in the designated spot, removed his hat and overcoat and made a lifelike dummy to represent himself back of the steering wheel. He was a little early for the meeting. Also, in his preliminary scanning of the surrounding terrain he had been unable to spot a single suspicious movement. He switched off the headlamps, leaving only the parking lights on. Then, brief case in hand, a brief case containing a hundred-odd thousand dollars, he merged with the shadows on the tree-grown, brush-ridden hillside and toiled upward to a point of vantage. Under his feet the ground was soggy, moistly pungent from the rain. He put the brief case flat on the ground, sat on it and leaned his back against the bole of the tree. The metal of his gun was warm with the heat of his body. It felt reassuring in the palm of his hand. He sat there, updrawn knee supporting his gun wrist, the gun pointed downhill toward the rented car. He waited.

Nobody had approached the car down below on the boulevard. Nobody seemed to care a damn that it had been sitting there with nothing but air around it for the last half hour. Because of his utter stillness, or the dampness of the ground, or both, McCloud’s legs were cramping. Never taking his eyes off his target he nevertheless managed to shift his position. Afterward, it occurred to him that the shift was psychological; that it was caused not by physical discomfort but by some sort of telepathic warning. But whatever the reason, that slight movement at exactly the right moment undoubtedly saved his life.

He had had no sense of impending danger other than from the expected source. There was no sound except those that he had been hearing for the past thirty minutes. The crushing blow to his head simply came out of nowhere. There was a terrific explosion inside his skull, and a million shooting lights, and then he was going down and down and down until, mercifully, black oblivion engulfed him.

Chapter 18

A PALE DAWN was graying the east when at last he awoke to groggy, nauseating consciousness. His first thought was for the brief case, and he put out his hands, numbly feeling for it. The brief case was gone. It was gone as completely as though it had never been.

He lay there for a little while, flat on his belly, physically sick; too sick to consider the problem of what he should do next. After a long time he put up a shaking hand, exploring the damage. He was surprised to find that there weren’t a lot of jagged pieces of bone sticking out. He pushed himself partially erect and leaned against the tree, pressing flattened muddy hands tightly to his temples. Down the hillside, still parked at the curbing of the boulevard, sat the rented car. The overcoat and hat, which he had so carefully arranged, and which he had stupidly imagined would fool the quarry, mocked him by their very presence.

After a brief interval of rest he discovered that he could sit erect without the support of the tree. He took his hands away from his head and began massaging a semblance of life into his legs. They were practically numb, either from lying so long on the wet ground or from a kind of paralysis induced by the injury to his head. He took a little time out to bless whoever it was who took care of such things as moving a guy’s head at the critical moment. If that blow had landed squarely he knew that he wouldn’t be sitting here now. It occurred to him that the potential killer might believe he had succeeded in his aim; that Stephen McCloud was no longer among the living. Oddly, this thought did something to his morale. He even began to consider the possibility of a return to the fray.

The first thing, he decided, was to get himself fixed up; his head repaired and some of the mud removed from his clothes. That’s the idea, McCloud, get on your feet and go down and see what the Greek can do for you. He reached up and got hold of a drooping acacia branch and pulled himself to legs that were rubbery but somehow managed to hold his weight. After a little while he staggered drunkenly down the hillside to the car. He put on the overcoat and hat, cursing them both for false friends. A truck laden with produce came down the grade and the driver smirked at McCloud, thinking he was drunk. McCloud cursed him too. He got in the car and drove slowly, very carefully, back into downtown Los Angeles.

The sky was already turning a faint pink when he descended the marble steps to that haven of sots and worse, Hammet’s Baths. He practically fell through the double glass doors and into Hammet’s massive arms. “Hello, you Greek bastard.”

Hammet pushed him over to the divan. The red fez was well down over one ear, and the fierce mustaches had come unstuck. “Hah!”

Hammet said. He grinned wolfishly. “Hah, so this time you are bringing only yourself, hey?”

McCloud glared at him. “What do you care who I bring, just so you get the business?” He caught sight of his reflection in a mirror and shuddered violently. “Well, don’t stand there like a dope. I want this suit cleaned and pressed, and a fresh shirt and at least a pint of rye.”

Hammet spread his ham-like hands. “P’raps you are not realizing, my fraan, that itsa five o'clock inna morning. Where you think those Greek bastard, heesa gonna get all those theeng?”

McCloud got up and wobbled over to the water cooler and drank about a quart of water. “That’s your problem.” He sat down quite suddenly, sick all over again.

Hammet said, “Hey, wait, you can’t dying on me like this!” He said, “Modder of God!”

McCloud snarled at him. “I’m not dying. Go ahead and get the things I told you.”

“But where I am getting them?” Hammet wailed.

McCloud once more attained his feet. “How do I know? Steal ’em from one of your other guests for all I care.” He turned and pushed through the inner doors.

He ran smack into Sheila Mayo. “Well, for Christ’s sake!”

Her arms steadied him as he would have fallen. “Stephen, you’ve been hurt!”

He grimaced. “You’re telling me.” He thrust her from him, eyeing her dourly. “What the hell are you doing down here? I told you to stay put till you heard from me.”

She gestured toward the open door of one of the little private cubicles along the tiled passage. “Kenneth is dying, Stephen.” Her mouth quivered, ever so slightly. “I couldn’t help worrying about him. Finally I called up to see how he was. The— the doctor said if I cared anything about him I’d better come down at once.”

It seemed to McCloud that if anything else could possibly happen to him this was it. And in the same instant he realized that this night hadn’t been all beer and skittles for Sheila Mayo either. Deliberately he forced himself to forget everything but her. “All right, hon, that’s enough for you to worry about now. I look a hell of a lot worse than I really am.” He took her arm, being very careful not to lean on it, and together they went along the passage and into the little room.

Kenneth Mayo was lying on the narrow cot, much the same as Van Felix had lain, only this time it was clearly evident that something serious was wrong. He was swathed to the chin in blankets, apparently by order of the doctor, and his face was flushed and swollen till it was hardly recognizable. His breath came jerkily, racking him with each agonized inhalation, sounding like a rusty saw in a knot when it escaped.

Eyes hot with fever sought McCloud’s. “Hello, McCloud.”

“Hello, Mayo.”

The sick man retched with the tremendous effort of speaking. “I guess I had this coming, McCloud. Sheila didn’t.” His voice sank to the merest whisper. “Take care of her, will you?”

McCloud discovered a sudden lump in his throat. “God damn it, where’s that lousy doctor? What the hell’s the idea leaving a guy like this?”

Sheila’s hand tightened on his arm. “You mustn’t blame the doctor, Stephen. He did all he could— under the circumstances.” She caught her breath. “Kenneth couldn’t very well be taken to a hospital. He didn’t even want to be taken. And the doctor— well, he was quite aware of Kenneth’s identity. He knew the police were after him.”

McCloud stiffened. “You think he reported the call?”

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “No, he promised he would not. But anything more than that— well, it would have meant risking his license and I had no right to ask it.”

“No,” McCloud said.

Quite suddenly Sheila buried her face against his shoulder. “Oh Stephen, what are we going to do about him?”

“I don’t know,” McCloud said honestly. It was obvious, even to an unpractised eye, that Kenneth Mayo was in the last stages of pneumonia. All of the exposure and strain of the last few hours, on top of years of too much liquor, had finally caught up with him. You couldn’t let even a yellow dog die like this, though.

McCloud pushed Sheila into a chair, reached out a hand and touched Mayo’s forehead. It was like fire. “Burning up, by God!” Mayo’s eyes remained closed.

Out in the lobby the Greek’s voice was raised in a shout. “I don’t knowing, I tell you! I don’t knowing those man!”

McCloud stood up, reaching for his gun. From the lobby came the distinct sound of a heavy blow, and of something that was probably Hammet’s body hitting the floor. Almost instantly after that the swing doors bulged inward and Duke D’Arcy came through and down the passage. He had a gun in his hand.

“D’Arcy!” McCloud said.

The gambler just stood there in the doorway, careless of McCloud and McCloud’s own weapon; careless of Sheila, apparently not even seeing her. His eyes were for the man on the bed alone. “Mayo,” he said. And when Mayo did not, or could not hear him, he smiled a little and deliberately began emptying his gun into the still figure. It was the very casualness of it that stunned McCloud. He realized that he himself was shooting, but it was wildly, without his usual care.

D’Arcy’s gun jumped from his hand, and the man himself staggered but did not go down. That was the trouble with a light gun like McCloud’s. You had to hit them dead center or they would not fall down. And hitting them dead center was pretty difficult when you were in a hurry. Through the haze of smoke McCloud was conscious of Sheila running to her husband’s side. Indeed, for a split second, her body was between D’Arcy and McCloud. Cursing, he held his fire.

D’Arcy stooped for his fallen gun, actually had it in his hand and was coming up with it when McCloud kicked it out again. Then, off balance with the force of the kick, he and D’Arcy crashed to the floor and began wrestling for possession of McCloud’s gun. D’Arcy turned out to be much tougher than he looked. He clamped both hands on McCloud’s gun wrist and try as he might McCloud could not pry the hold loose. Presently he did the next best thing, grabbed the gambler’s hair with his left hand and began beating the guy’s head on the tile floor. D’Arcy suddenly went limp.

McCloud stood up, breathing gustily, and went over to Sheila’s side. She was kneeling beside the cot, not touching it, not saying anything, just kneeling there. Kenneth Mayo’s eyes were wide open now, no longer feverish, no longer afraid. Probably they were seeing things not given to them to ever have seen before. One of D’Arcy’s slugs had hit Mayo just over the right eye, and McCloud remembered how Margie Garland had looked. She too had been hit just over an eye. It seemed to McCloud a sort of poetic justice.

He lifted Sheila and held her to him. “Well,” he said presently, “Kenneth didn’t die of pneumonia after all.” Realizing how that must sound to her he patted her shoulder clumsily. “I’m sorry, Sheila, but he’s gone, and as he himself said, he had it coming.” He looked down at the unconscious D’Arcy, feeling little or no animosity toward the guy. The gambler had simply paid what was, according to his lights, a just debt.

“Look, Sheila, no matter how much you want to you can’t do anything for Mayo by staying here.” He listened for sounds from outside. “There’s going to be hell popping around here in a minute. Can I trust you to go back to the ‘Y’ and wait for me?”

She clung to him. “But what of you, Stephen? You’re hurt.”

“I’ll get along,” he said sharply. “Damn it, Sheila, we haven’t got all the time in the world to argue. Will you or won’t you do what I ask?”

She stood away from him then. “All right, Stephen.” Her face was white but quite composed. “I’ll wait for you at the Y. I promise.”

“That’s better,” he said. He lifted her over D’Arcy’s body and carried her down the tile passage and through the first set of swing doors into the lobby. Seeing Hammet beginning to stir, he stood her on her feet and knelt beside the ungainly form. Hammet was breathing gently, evenly, as though he had just lain down for a short nap. There was a lump over his left ear. Oddly enough, he had not lost the red fez.

Sighing relievedly, McCloud rose and pushed Sheila out into the marble hall. “Snap it up, hon.” He watched her climb the stairs to street level before he returned to the lobby and closed and locked the double glass doors. Distantly then, but not distantly enough, he heard the crescendo wailing of sirens. Apparently someone had heard and reported the gunfire. Someone always did, McCloud thought gloomily.

He was passing the still prone Greek, on his way back to seriously interview Duke D’Arcy, when Hammet came to life and tackled him with a pair of arms like a gorilla’s.

Naturally McCloud went down, and the two men rolled around on the floor for what seemed like an hour before McCloud finally realized that Hammet’s eyes were still shut. Hammet was gradually squeezing the life out of a man he hadn’t even recognized. McCloud sucked in an agonized breath and expelled it in a tremendous yell of rage. “It’s me, you bastard, McCloud!”

“Hah!” Hammet said. He opened his eyes and saw that it was indeed McCloud. “Well, I must say I am very sorry about this.” He started cursing in his native Greek, switched to English, then back to Greek again.

“Shut up!” McCloud yelled. “This is no time to show off your education.” He untangled himself. “Duke D’Arcy just shot and killed Mayo.”

A quiet voice said, “And I am now going to kill you too, McCloud.”

D’Arcy was standing there in the middle of the swing doors, holding them ajar with his well-tailored shoulders. He had retrieved his gun. There was a smear of blood staining his starched shirt, blood that came out of a hole and crawled stickily down inside his white evening vest. McCloud had not known that he had hit the gambler twice. He said, “Now wait a minute, Duke. Let’s talk this over.” His own gun was back in the shoulder holster. The one he had taken away from Felix was in his overcoat pocket. It seemed unlikely that he could get either out in time to beat D’Arcy to that all-important first shot. He licked his lips. “What in hell’s the idea, anyway? You crazy?”

“In a way,” D’Arcy said. His voice was almost sleepy. “I was crazy about Margie, at least. So Mayo killed her and I killed him.” His eyes narrowed as fat Hammet tried to sidle behind McCloud. “Stand still, grease-ball, or I’ll let you have it too.”

Hammet’s feet became glued to the floor. “Who, me?”

“Maybe I’d better anyway,” D’Arcy said reflectively.

McCloud was incredulous. “For Christ’s sake, Duke, be your age.” He became earnest. “Look, a guy like you can’t be a sucker like ordinary guys. Maybe Margie was cheating, maybe she wasn’t, but it certainly looks as though—” He broke off as he saw from D’Arcy’s face that he wasn’t getting anywhere.

“She was my woman,” D’Arcy said evenly. He smiled almost apologetically as he steadied the gun in his left hand. “I guess we’re all suckers about one thing or another, no?” His trigger finger whitened.

“God damn it,” McCloud yelled, “you can shoot and the hell with you, but there’s something I’ve got to know first. What about the Kahn diamonds?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” D’Arcy said, still in that same polite voice. “No, I—”

A sudden change came over his face and it seemed to McCloud that the man’s intent gaze had lifted. He plunged forward, arms outflung, just as one of the glass doors behind him caved in with a terrific crash. McCloud’s dive missed its mark and carried him skidding past D’Arcy and he was only faintly conscious of the banging of guns above him. Surprised that he himself wasn’t hit, he attained the partial shelter of the inner doors before he risked a glance over his shoulder.

It was Lieutenant Brannigan out there in the marble hall, and it was Brannigan who was now Duke D’Arcy’s sole concern. Hammet’s red fez, just the top of it, showed above the ledge of the desk. McCloud’s one brief look showed him all this, showed him Brannigan now flat on his belly and poking the police positive through the hole in the glass door. D’Arcy was already falling as Brannigan shot again.

McCloud came to his knees, then his feet, and was halfway down the tile passage when Brannigan yelled, “McCloud!” and fired twice. One of the slugs actually clipped McCloud’s ear, and he knew then, definitely, that the orders were to get him, no matter how. He heard the click of Brannigan’s gun as the hammer fell on an empty cartridge. He ran as he had never run before in his life.

Chapter 19

THE BLONDE was indignant. “This is a fine time of night to wake a lady up! ” She had finally gotten rid of the yellow silk pajamas and was looking singularly chaste in a white gown and a loosely tied linen robe. Without her make-up she was older, but, oddly enough, not nearly so hard.

McCloud pointed out that it was no longer night; that it was in fact, morning. He did not do this argumentatively. He was merely calling something to her attention that perhaps she had overlooked. She peered past him down the blue-lighted hall, though there was but one possibility of an eavesdropper. Dutch DeGroot and Margie Garland didn’t live there any more. This was McCloud’s third trip. He hoped it would be luckier than the other two. The lady looked at the bloody, muddy, and on the whole very dilapidated condition of her visitor. “I been hearing things about you, Casanova. You’re hotter than the hinges of hell.”

McCloud admitted this. “The cops will probably skin you alive if they find you’ve helped me.”

Her mouth drooped. “Is it true that you’re overboard about this Mayo gal?”

This was a very tough question to answer. The blonde was not in a receptive mood at best, and telling one girl that you’re in love with another is practically the same as cutting your own throat.

McCloud essayed a lie, decided abruptly against it. “Okay, baby, I’ll be shoving off.” He turned away. “Sorry I woke you up.”

She caught his arm. “Don’t be a fool, Irish.” And then, irritably: “Come on in. I don’t mind patching you up for somebody else to enjoy.” She pulled him inside, banged the door and led him over to a chintz-covered wing chair. “Lord, you’re a mess!”

He could not deny this. He was dog-tired, mentally and physically. It seemed to him that he had been running all night, and sitting there, thinking back, he found that he had indeed been running for the greater part of it. His activities made the horse operas look like studies in still life.

The blonde was lighting the gas logs in the fireplace. “My name’s Connie— if you’re interested. Short for Constance, you know.” She laughed. “Ain’t that a scream?”

“Not to me,” McCloud said sincerely. “I wish to Christ I’d met you before—” He sighed. “Well, just before, I guess.”

“Yeah.” She disappeared through a door and presently he could hear water running. When she came back she had a basin and an armload of clean towels. “Better take off your coat and vest, Irish. Your shirt too, maybe. I think I can dig you up a clean one.”

McCloud stirred. “Now look, baby, I don’t need you to wash my ears for me. All I want is a place where I can be quiet and think a minute or two.”

“Sure.” She proceeded to go to work on him just as though he hadn’t said a word. He discovered that it was sort of pleasant, at that, what with the warmth of the fire and all. He nodded. After a little while he slept.

It was the smell of coffee that brought him alive again. He opened his eyes. There was now a pillow behind his head and an afghan spread over his knees.

She poured coffee into his cup. “It’s raining out,” she observed.

“Isn’t it always?” He looked at her profile. “So what?”

“Well, maybe you’d better figure on staying here for a couple of days or so. Until the heat wears off.”

“So you’ve been reading the morning papers.”

She admitted that. “Though they don’t say much more than the radio.” She pretended to be very interested in the electric toaster. “Was it the Mayo gal who killed Margie, or was it her husband?” She lifted her eyes briefly. “Is that why Duke D’Arcy let him have it?”

McCloud blew out his breath. “So the cops actually got the truth for once!” He thought that probably Hammet had recovered from his fright sufficiently to explain things to Brannigan. Either that or some enterprising reporter had got enough facts to force an admission that there might be something to the possibility. He made a bitter mouth. “It’s a wonder they’re not blaming me for that too.”

“They’re blaming you for plenty,” Connie said. “There’s a lot of big words being tossed around on the air; words like ‘obstructing justice’ and ‘accessory before and after the fact’ and ‘criminal conspiracy’ and one thing and another.” She lit a cigarette and stuck it in McCloud’s mouth. “It seems they want very much to stretch your neck, but if that ain’t possible they’ll be satisfied with just shooting you on sight.”

“Unh-hunh.” McCloud sipped some more coffee. “And the hell of it is that they can make every one of those counts stick.” He sighed. “Even if I prove it was Mayo who killed the Garland girl, which I can’t. Mayo is dead. There’s only Sheila’s word for it now, and Sheila is in as deep as I am.”

Connie’s very nice teeth nibbled a piece of toast. “What’s the matter with your boss? Can’t he help?”

“Jessup?” McCloud’s laugh was without much humor. “The Counsellor probably thinks I’ve absconded with a hundred and twenty-five grand of the company’s money.” He thought about that for a moment. “It might just as well be true, too, because I certainly haven’t got it.” He directed a somewhat lopsided smile at his hostess. “Did you ever lose a hundred and twenty-five thousand of somebody else’s dollars, and then try going to them and saying, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry’?”

He lapsed into a brooding silence, because he could see that she never had.

Connie went away. When presently she reappeared again she had a clean shirt for him, and his own tie all neatly pressed. He admired her. “You know something, Connie? You ought to be somebody’s wife.”

“I am somebody’s wife,” she said. And then, casually: “You ought to know Bill. He’s doing a five-to-ten stretch up at San Quentin. You helped send him there.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake!” McCloud licked his lips furtively, wondering if she had put arsenic in his coffee. “You mean Bill Green?”

“Unh-hunh.”

He sat up straight as a new thought hit him. “Look, didn’t Bill and Dutch DeGroot used to be partners?”

She nodded. “Sure.” Her mouth was cynical. “That’s why I couldn’t say a lot of things as long as Dutch was alive. It wouldn’t have been— ethical, isn’t it?” She made an impatient gesture. “And after Dutch was killed— well, I didn’t get a chance to see you alone, and I certainly wasn’t going to sing to the cops.”

McCloud got up and crossed to a wall mirror. The lady had done wonders for his appearance. The deep gash in his scalp had been neatly padded and taped. She had even combed his hair while he slept. He came back and put an arm around her shoulders. “You ever hear of the Samaritan, Connie?”

She shrugged. “I know, you think I ought to hate you for what the judge did to Bill.” Abruptly she stood up. “It’s all a game, Irish. You can’t always win.” After a little while she said, “About the other— well, a gal like me gets sort of lonesome. You do things to kind of kill time.” She gave him a smile that held nothing but self-mockery. “Besides, did anybody ever tell you you were good looking?”

He scowled, remembering something unpleasant. “Now that you mention it, yes.” He put on the shirt and began knotting his tie before the mirror. “Look, what you said about Dutch DeGroot holds true with Margie Garland too. She’s dead. You don’t have to cover her up any more.” He turned to face her. “Maybe she was Duke D’Arcy’s girl all right, but she wasn’t above cheating a bit on the side. Isn’t that a fact?”

“Maybe.” She swayed her hips across to the windows and looked out at the downpour. “She had plenty of callers, if that’s what you mean. DeGroot himself was crazy about her.”

McCloud stared at her back. “Baby,” he said feelingly, “I’m beginning to love you. You’re panning out better and better all the time. Remind me to see what I can do for Bill, will you?”

She eyed him with sardonic amusement. “After what? After you get through doing your own stretch?”

He shuddered. “Connie, my friend, you’re too God damned material.” He looked around for the rest of his clothes. “You insist on seeing life at it is, not as it ought to be.” He frowned at her. “Damn it all, why did you have to bring that up? I was just beginning to see daylight.”

She got a compact out of the pocket of her robe and began putting a little color into her face. “Speaking of daylight, I hope you’re not thinking of going out in it. Even the cops can’t go on missing you forever.”

“Cops!” He affected a complete disregard of police marksmanship. He went over to the windows beside her and looked down at the rain-drenched street. There were certainly no cops down there. For that matter there was scarcely anybody at all in sight. It was pretty early, of course, barely seven o’clock. He turned and sat: on the window sill. “There’s a jewelry salesman, Connie. A guy named Felipe Mercedes. Ever hear of him? Ever hear Dutch or Margie Garland mention the name?”

She shook her head. “What’s he look like?”

“You’ve got me there,” McCloud said. “I’ve never seen the guy myself.” He became resentful. “I must remember to have his wife introduce me some time.”

Connie giggled. “You certainly do get around with the ladies, don’t you, Irish?”

He had the grace to flush. “All right, I’m a bastard.”

“So am I,” she admitted. “That was kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. Forget it.”

He stood up and kissed her on the mouth. “You’ve been swell, darling.”

“Well, that’s something.” She looked at him. “It must be the mother in me, I guess.” After a moment she went over and sat down on the couch. This time she did not use the provocative hip sway. “So what else do you want to know?”

McCloud considered her. “I suppose it would be too much to hope that Dutch DeGroot told you anything about the Kahn heist.” He moved his shoulders impatiently. “Somehow I can’t get over the feeling that he had help on that.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t even know that Dutch himself had pulled the job until the cops found that rock in his fist.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Margie could have known, though. He was crazy enough about her to tell her anything.”

McCloud snapped his fingers at that. “Of course!” He gave her a crooked grin. “It’s perfectly simple when you get hold of some of the missing pieces, isn’t it?” He thought of something else. “By the way, Connie, it’s kind of funny you didn’t hear the shot that killed Margie. Happen to remember a radio playing extra loud about that time?”

“Sure,” she said. “DeGroot’s. Dutch always played it loud when he played it at all. Dutch was kind of deaf.”

“Thank you,” McCloud said. He now had a definite check on that part of Sheila Mayo’s story, and this led him to a new theory about the killing of Margie Garland. “Thank you very much.”

He became so engrossed with the new train of thought that he was unaware of a third presence in the room until the blonde said, “Hey you, don’t you know enough to knock?”

Startled, he swung toward the hall door. Van Felix was just bowing from the waist, courtier-fashion.

“Well, for the love of God!”

“How do you do, my fat-headed sleuth?” Felix inquired. He recovered from his bow. “And you, my lovely?”

“I’m swell,” Connie said. She picked up the coffee percolator and hurled it. Felix dodged it nimbly. It crashed against the door jamb. “You missed,” he informed her gravely. He was only mildly drunk. “But don’t think I lack respect for the attempt.” He smiled. “With a little training— preferably mine— you could be very good at that sort of thing.”

She cursed him fluidly, but without any real anger. McCloud gathered that she and Felix had found much in common on their previous meetings. He took two long steps forward and got a handful of Felix’ shirt front. “Come in, pal, come right in.” He flung Felix into a chair. “There’s a couple of questions I’ve been just dying to ask you.”

“Me too,” Felix said. He became indignant. “What did you do with the three grand you stole off me?” He looked at Connie. “He’s nothing but a thief, you know. I do hope you haven’t left him alone in the room.” He attempted to stand up and McCloud shoved him back in the chair again. He finally curled up like a precocious child.

“And so to bed, kiddies.”

“All right,” McCloud growled, “be funny.” He wondered if Felix had been at the Greek’s all the time the shooting was going on. He decided to leave that question till later. “Where did you get all that money?”

“I told you,” Felix said complacently. “I won it on a horse.”

McCloud made strangled noises. “My God, are we going over that again?” He made a fist of his right hand and held it cocked about three inches from the small man’s nose. “I tell you there weren’t even rabbits running at that time in the morning. Epsom Downs!”

Felix nodded. “Unh-hunh, it’s a game.”

“You’re telling me!”

Connie looked at Felix with new respect. “You mean you actually won three grand on one of those things?”

“God damn it,” McCloud yelled, “one of what things?”

She insinuated her body between him and the man in the chair. Over her shoulder she said, “You know, one of those games you see at the beaches. There’s a big board made up to look like a track, and the horses are in slots and you make ’em run by turning a little wheel. She sighed. “Me, I never won more than a kewpie doll, though.”

McCloud passed a shaking hand over his eyes. “Christ almighty!” He thought of something else. “All right, but it still doesn’t make sense. The beaches aren’t open at this time of year, and besides it was two o’clock in the morning.”

Felix shrugged narrow shoulders. “Well, I really don’t know what I’m being accused of, but I can explain the time.” He smiled at the blonde. “Joe Partik once loaned a guy some money, and the guy went broke and Joe had to take this horse-race game or nothing. So, running a wire joint like he does, Joe thought it would be a good gag to give his clients something to play with after the regular tracks closed.” He winked at Connie. “I got a system.”

She giggled. “My God, you must have. You won three grand.”

Felix saddened. “It doesn’t do you any good if some bastard takes it away from you the minute your back is turned.”

“All right, all right!” McCloud snarled. “If it’s yours you’ll get it back.” He dug in his pockets and separated the two thousand-dollar bills from the rest. “Here’s part of it now.” He retained only the big notes. “Who paid you off in bills this size?”

“The bookie,” Felix said. “Joe Partik.”

“And where did Joe Partik get them?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, Stephen.” Felix appraised Connie’s curves. “What’s the matter with them, are they hot?”

McCloud’s eyes were dark with thought. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” He smacked his lips. “I haven’t had a chance to check the numbers yet, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Quite suddenly he concentrated on Felix anew. “How did you happen to locate me?”

Felix yawned delicately. “I admit I looked everywhere else first.” He became disapproving. “Even with your reputation, I hardly expected you to compromise such a charming young lady as this.” He stared very hard at the charming young lady. “I’m disappointed in you too, Constance.”

“Nuts.”

McCloud glared at Felix. “Listen. I just dropped in to relax for a while.”

“Sure,” Felix leered, “I’ve heard about these guys who want to relax all the time.” He affected extreme righteousness. “Me, I always say that a drink or two, or a mild bout with Fortune never hurt anybody. But morals are morals, Stephen McCloud.” He sighed heavily. “You’ll come to no good end, I fear.”

“You lush,” Constance said lovingly. “You evil-minded little lush.”

McCloud said, “You’re so damned smart, you wouldn’t happen to know where I could lay my hands on the Kahn diamonds, would you?”

“Well, no,” Felix confessed. “That is beyond even such unusual powers as mine.” He kept on looking at Connie, though he addressed McCloud. “Would they do you very much good?”

“Maybe not,” McCloud said sourly. “Just the same, I’d like to put the bite on somebody for laying me out.” He described the episode on the hillside below Forest Lawn.

Felix clucked his sympathy. “What I can’t understand,” he said presently, “is how D’Arcy discovered Mayo was at the Greek’s.”

McCloud had been thinking about that himself. “I figure that when I dragged your worthless carcass out of D’Arcy’s place the two gunsels got the number of the cab.” He cursed. “I certainly didn’t make a friend out of the hacker, and with the license number they could have checked the cab as far as Third and Broadway.” He spread his hands in a resigned gesture. “That’s only a block from Hammet’s, and everybody in town knows you spend half your life there. Probably the hoods called D’Arcy back and were waiting for him when Sheila showed up. Naturally they would tell him about her. Even if they didn’t know who she was, any woman going into Hammet’s Baths would be funny. D’Arcy knew, all right.”

Felix looked at him. “By the way, what happened to Sheila?”

“She’s at the Y.W.C.A.,” McCloud said. And then, quite suddenly, he began to wonder if she really was. Suppose he had guessed right about the two hoods, that they had waited for D’Arcy and told him about her. What became of them after the fireworks started down below? Suppose they had still been waiting there when Sheila came up the stairs?

“Christ!” He seized the phone book and began flipping the pages feverishly. When finally he located the number and called it his voice was shaky. “Connect me with Miss Mary Smith, please.”

At the other end a woman’s voice was tinged with asperity. “Miss Mary Smith is not in. She went out quite early this morning and has not returned. Would you care to leave a message?”

“No,” McCloud said heavily. It seemed to him that the bottom of his stomach had just fallen out.

Chapter 20

RAIN DRUMMED on the roof of the cab, echoing the rhythmic pounding somewhere back of McCloud’s eyes. The mess that Steve McCloud was in was even dirtier than it had been. Hunched low in a corner of the tonneau, wearing a hat and trench coat that had formerly been the property of Bill Green, now sojourning in San Quentin, McCloud shivered with the early morning cold.

He had not called Jessup; had not, indeed, called anyone, mainly because there didn’t seem to be any point to it. Jessup could not help him locate Sheila. Jessup, in fact, would not be interested in anything but the Kahn diamonds and the hundred and twenty-five grand.

Not having either, McCloud thought that the less he said about them the better.

He wondered how Van Felix was making out. Among other chores McCloud had assigned to him Felix was supposed to find out if maybe it wasn’t the police who had Sheila in custody. This was a possibility, no more. The other possibility, and the more likely one, was that Duke D’Arcy’s gunsels had grabbed her. The Club D’Arcy was McCloud’s present destination. There was less than one chance in a hundred that he would run into the two men at this time in the morning, or anybody likely to know their whereabouts, for that matter, but he had to take it. It was his only starting point.

In order to avoid looking at the rain, or the incipient boil on the back of the driver’s neck, McCloud looked at the driver’s registration. The name, he discovered, was Herman Schultz, and his age was given as twenty-seven, though he looked older and much, much tougher. Connie had introduced him to McCloud as a right guy, which could mean a hell of a lot or absolutely nothing.

After awhile the cab sloshed into the curb in front of the D’Arcy, and McCloud got out and went along under the canopied walk to the main entrance. The front doors were locked and his pounding brought no one out to investigate. Presently he decided that just for luck he would try the back. He crossed the. lawn and discovered a narrow passage and a gate marked: “Service Only.” He went through the gate and found a blank steel door without even a knob on it. He pounded on this till people in an adjoining apartment house began raising their windows. There was still no answer. Gloomily he turned back and retraced his path. For the last hour he had been trying to remember the surname of some employee of the club, just one guy that he could contact and thus possibly get some line on the two gunsels. There was the cashier, for instance— Clyde Something-or-other. But Clyde what? McCloud could not remember, possibly because he had never heard it. And then, one foot on the running board of the cab, he chanced to look at his wrist watch. He had looked at that same watch dial a thousand times without consciously noting anything but the hour, but now the name of the manufacturer seemed actually to leap out at him. It was an Elgin watch. And he remembered that the cashier’s name was Clyde Elgin.

“Well, blow me down!”

The hacker looked at him. “You say somep’n, boss?”

“I did indeed,” McCloud told him. “I said let’s go find a drugstore, Herman, or almost anything that has a phone in it.” He climbed in and slammed the door and they rolled out Wilshire toward La Brea. In spite of the rain, traffic was picking up; people on their way to work, McCloud supposed. After the nightmare he had been living for the last twelve hours or so he had a little difficulty visualizing ordinary folk engaged in routine tasks. He wished he had been born, say, a bookkeeper.

At the corner of La Brea Herman brought the cab to an abrupt halt. “There’s a drugstore, chief. I dunno is it open for business, though.”

After what seemed like an endless delay Information finally gave him a number listed to Clyde Elgin. McCloud called the number. Naturally it turned out to be the wrong Clyde Elgin. McCloud found this out by talking to a Mrs. Elgin, who said her husband was a steel worker and a very tough guy indeed, in case McCloud wanted to make anything out of it. He was sweating by the time he had gotten the only other Clyde Elgin who had a telephone.

The voice at the other end of the wire said, “Yes?”

McCloud drew a deep breath. “Hello, Clyde? This is Steve McCloud. Look, I’d like a little information.”

“You’ve got a hell of a nerve, asking me for anything,” Elgin said.

“After what you did to the Duke.”

McCloud licked his lips. “Listen, whatever I did to D’Arcy was in self-defense. Besides, it wasn’t I who killed him. It was Brannigan.”

“But you shot him,” Elgin said dispassionately. “He was my boss, the man I worked for, and you shot him. So what does that make you— my pal?”

Somewhere in the near distance McCloud could hear a police siren.

“Don’t give me that, Clyde. I want the names of the two hoods who were in D’Arcy’s office.”

“The hell with you.”

McCloud cursed him. “You want me to call copper in order to make you talk?”

“Hah-hah,” Elgin said. “Go ahead and call copper. From all I hear they’ll be very glad to see you.”

“All right, you bastard!” McCloud yelled. He dropped the receiver, yanked the phone book from its chain and ran for the front doors. A prowl car was just pulling into the curb behind Herman’s cab. Two cops got out and crossed the sidewalk on the run. McCloud dropped his gun in a side pocket. He banged out of the doors yelling bloody murder. “Help! Police!”

One of the cops grabbed him. “What goes on?”

McCloud gestured wildly toward the interior of the store. “In there!” He was obviously on the verge of hysteria.

The cop was disgusted. “Well, for Christ’s sake, a big guy like you acting like a pansy!”

His partner grunted, “I never seen it to fail. The bigger they are—”

He yanked his gun out and advanced determinedly toward the entrance.

“Wait here,” the other one told McCloud. He too drew his gun and advanced on the store. Presently the doors swallowed them in one gulp. McCloud got into the cab. “I think we’d better be shoving off, Herman, old pal, old pal.” The cab churned water out of the gutter like a sea sled. After a while McCloud looked back. The harness bulls were still in the store.

Chapter 21

CLYDE ELGIN’S address, gotten at leisure from the phone book McCloud had thoughtfully provided himself with, turned out to be a bungalow, not an apartment. McCloud was rather glad of this, because he fully intended to give Elgin quite an argument, and in the daytime there were apt to be interruptions in an apartment. Sitting well back in the cab he instructed Herman to drive on past, and go around the block a couple of times, a preliminary scouting maneuver. He did not believe that Elgin himself was implicated in the kidnapping of Sheila. On the other hand, he was quite sure that Elgin could tell him who was. He looked at the house as they went by it the second time. There was a thin plume of smoke rising from the chimney, but the Venetian blinds at the windows were all shut tight, and the morning papers still lay on the doorstep. The garage doors were closed.

McCloud leaned forward presently. “All right, Herman, you can park around the corner at the mouth of the alley.” When Herman had done this McCloud got out. “I’ll be back.” He went swiftly up the alley, counting houses. Elgin’s was the fifth from the corner. There was nothing but lawn in the back yard, nothing that offered any concealment, so McCloud did not try to be furtive. He went along the series of stepping stones as though he owned the place. There was a screen porch and he opened the door of this without knocking. He went in and tapped lightly on the glass panel of the inner door. Nothing happened.

Remembering the plume of smoke from the chimney McCloud was almost certain that there was somebody at home, but he had no means of knowing that it was Clyde Elgin. Clyde could have left since the telephone call. Maybe, McCloud thought, there was a Mrs. Elgin, and she had gone back to bed. Cautiously he tried the doorknob. It turned quite easily and without noise. He took out his gun, then, and opened the door, pushing the gun in ahead of him.

Something, a very hard something, hit his wrist so smartly that he dropped the gun. The door was yanked inward, and McCloud, hand still clutching the knob, went in with it, let go suddenly and sprawled flat on top of his gun. A guy he could not see advised him to forget all about it. “Just leave it lay, chum!”

McCloud quit fumbling for his own weapon and rolled over and propped himself on an elbow. His right hand was numb anyway and he was never much good at shooting with his left. It was pretty dark in the kitchen, all the blinds being down, but he had practically no difficulty making out two men standing over him. They were the same two who had stood over him in Duke D’Arcy’s office. He said,

“Well, this is quite a surprise!”

“Ain’t it!” This came from the guy who had been hiding behind the door when McCloud opened it. He grinned at his fellow. “He’s surprised as hell, ain’t he, Jess?”

McCloud decided that this last might call for an answer, and that while his captors were engaged in conversation they might forget him. He slid sideways and reached for his gun. He had not been forgotten after all. The hood called jess casually stepped on McCloud’s wrist. The other man kicked him, not quite so casually, in the ribs. McCloud grabbed this guy’s ankle and sat him on his bottom, but it didn’t do much good, because Jess took his foot off McCloud’s wrist and stepped on his face. He meant to really hurt, this time, and he succeeded. Blood squirted from McCloud’s nose, and tears from his eyes, and though he kept on flailing his arms around he didn’t connect with anything more solid than air. By the time he could see again he discovered that Clyde Elgin was in the kitchen with the other two men, and that Elgin was now in possession of McCloud’s gun.

Elgin still looked like the cashier in a branch bank. He was wearing a bathrobe and slippers, but his hair was all nicely brushed and his teeth shone whitely in the gloom, as though he had just finished polishing them. McCloud lay there on the floor and considered his captors without love. So far as he could see, the only bright spot in the situation was that he had at least located the two guys he had been looking for. He had accomplished his objective, though not exactly in the manner he had expected.

Elgin smiled down at him. “We thought you’d be paying us a visit, Mr. McCloud.”

McCloud sat up and began dabbing at his injured nose with a handkerchief.

“You did?”

Elgin’s fingers tapped his mouth over a mild yawn. He used his left hand to do this, though. His right kept the gun pointed at McCloud’s stomach. “Unh-hunh.” He laughed delicately. “We sort of thought you might be smart enough to figure Jess and Lou had picked up your girl friend. And when you telephoned a little while ago we knew we had guessed right.”

“We saw your cab going by,” Elgin observed. He snapped his fingers at a sudden thought. “That reminds me, Jess, you’d better go out and see what happened to that hacker.”

McCloud thought of poor Herman, waiting down at the mouth of the alley. He said, “You don’t have to bother. I let him go.”

Elgin was not impressed. “Go on, Jess, take a look anyway.”

He waited until Jess had gone out the back door. Then, gesturing McCloud to his feet with the gun: “Come on, shamus, let’s go some place where it’s more comfortable.”

The other man, Lou, was certainly not a very talkative guy. All he did was get behind McCloud and push a gun into his back. The three then went down a short hall and through a door into the living room. Apparently this was where the smoke had originated. There was a fire in the fireplace, all very cheery and homelike, and McCloud was considering the set of brass fire tools as possible weapons when he saw Sheila. She was lying on the floor, very neatly and thoroughly trussed up, and although her mouth was obscured by a strip of adhesive her eyes were wide open and quite expressive. She was minus her shoes and stockings. The faintly nauseous odor of scorched flesh hung heavy in the room.

McCloud went slightly berserk then. Careless of all but the immediate urgency of getting his two hands on somebody’s throat, he lashed out behind him with a devastating heel, pivoted and swung a terrific right at the first blurred face he saw. This, it turned out, belonged to Clyde Elgin. Even as the fist landed and the face disappeared in the red haze before McCloud’s eyes he felt the hot blast from Lou’s gun. He was not conscious of hearing the shot itself; all he could actually hear was the pounding of blood in his own temples. The man with the gun was no more than a vague, shifting shape before him, but McCloud’s hands, seemingly with eyes of their own to guide them, presently found a throat and a wrist. He was dragged from his feet by the weight of a suddenly thrashing body and he knew that he was falling, but he hung on, clamping down with everything he had. After what seemed an eternity he landed heavily on something soft and yielding, and there were two hammer-like blows, very close together, against his chest. The man on the floor beneath him quit thrashing.

McCloud just lay there for a little while, panting like a spent swimmer, until finally the red haze went away from in front of his eyes and he saw that his right hand was still buried deep in the flesh of Lou’s throat. Lou’s face was quite black. Presently he discovered that he had also broken Lou’s wrist, and that those two unexplained blows against his own chest must have come from Lou’s exploding gun. Oddly enough, the slugs had not touched McCloud. It had been the recoil he had felt. And whatever Lou had felt, he would not be feeling anything more, ever.

McCloud got to his knees, unsteadily, and after a little while to his feet. Then, remembering that Clyde Elgin was still around some place, he stooped for Lou’s gun, was warned of imminent danger by some sixth sense and went right on stooping till he fell flat on the floor. Gun sound racketed and echoes bounced around the walls. McCloud rolled over, twice, and came up on one elbow and located the source of the noise. Clyde Elgin, using an overstuffed chair as a shield, was pushing the chair ahead of him and firing as he came. Apparently he was on his knees. Only his eyes and the top of his head were visible over the chair back. His gun hand sprouted like a spiritualistic apparition from the side of the chair. McCloud lunged to the right as Elgin’s gun belched flame. The movement took him out of Elgin’s range for just long enough to aim and squeeze the trigger once. It seemed that this once was enough. Elgin’s head vanished. So, presently, did the curiously detached hand and gun.

After a little while McCloud crawled on all fours over to Sheila’s side. “This may hurt a little,” he said thickly. He worked a thumbnail under the adhesive over her mouth and then, ruthlessly, because you couldn’t be gentle with a thing like that, he ripped the tape off. He saw the sudden tears well in her eyes.

“Sorry, hon.” He lifted her to the couch beside the fire.

“Thank you, Stephen.”

He discovered that he had a terrific lump in his throat. He was ashamed of this. “God damn it, don’t be so brave about it!” He looked at her bare feet and saw that Elgin and the others had not really gotten down to business. There were burns, two of them, red and angry looking, but it could have been worse. Sighing relievedly he got out his penknife and was in the act of slashing the cords on Sheila’s wrist when a voice behind him said,  “Hey, did you send this guy after me?”

McCloud whirled. There in the doorway stood Herman the hacker, one huge fist hooked in the collar of Jess’s coat. The rest of Jess sort of trailed limply out into the hall. Jess was totally unaware of his inglorious position.

McCloud stared. “Well, for Christ’s sake!” He had been so busy he had forgotten all about Jess. “Well, for Christ’s sake!”

Herman was painfully conscious of Sheila’s eyes on him. “Did I do wrong, boss?” He finally dropped his burden altogether and Jess’s head made a sound like glunk when it hit the carpet. Herman avoided McCloud’s eyes. “I hope he ain’t exactly no friend of yours, boss.”

He licked his lips. “What I mean is, he made me sore, see? He started waving a gun under my nose and— well, Jesus, a guy ain’t got no right to do that, has he?”

McCloud shook with a mirth that bordered on hysteria. “I see your point, Herman, I do indeed.” He took a deep breath to still his jumping stomach muscles. “As a matter of fact, you did exactly the right thing, Herman.”

Herman looked around the room. “You been kind of busy too.”

“Kind of,” McCloud admitted. He went around the overstuffed chair and looked at Clyde Elgin. Elgin didn’t have a top to his head any more. Slightly sick at his stomach, McCloud returned to the couch and stared gloomily down at Sheila. “You feel like talking yet, hon?”

“Of course.” She stood up, testing her weight on the burned feet. Her face whitened, but she did not cry out. “I’m perfectly all right, Stephen.” She even gave him a small smile. “It’s really my own fault anyway. I should have done as you told me and stayed at the ‘Y’ in the first place.”

“Forget it,” he said gruffly. He found her shoes and stockings for her. “They grabbed you as you came up out of the Greek’s place?”

“Yes.”

McCloud turned then, and saw Herman staring moodily down at the hoodlum. Jess was still unconscious. “Haul him in here, Herman, and then see if you can find a bucket of water.” His eyes were bright and very, very hard. “I want to revive him so he’ll know what’s happening when I kick his teeth in.”

Herman obediently hauled Jess into the room and vanished down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. As yet there was no sign that the neighbors had heard the shooting. Sheila thrust a slim foot into a pump. “I still don’t know the reason for it all, Stephen.”

She looked up at him. “I thought at first that it was because of Margie Garland and D’Arcy.”

“But it wasn’t?”

She shook her head in a puzzled sort of way. “No. They seemed to think I knew something about the Kahn diamonds.”

McCloud was startled. “The hell!” He remembered her feet. That sort of thing, torture, wasn’t the usual method of revenge; it was used to obtain information. Still, there was no doubt that all of these men had worked for D’Arcy, and D’Arcy had certainly shot Kenneth Mayo because he thought Mayo had killed Margie Garland. McCloud was not conscious that he had been thinking out loud until he saw the look on Sheila’s face. “What’s the matter, hon?”

She caught her breath. “What you just said; that D’Arcy thought Kenneth had killed her. Is there any doubt?”

He considered that. “There could be, hon. I’m not certain, of course, but I’m beginning to see a lot of things clearer than I did awhile ago.”

At this moment Herman came back with a dishpan of water. He dumped this over the slumbering Jess and watched the effect interestedly. He was as earnestly intent as the little child who has just dropped a kitten in the bathtub. “Lookit him swim,” he said presently, and indeed this was the impression Jess gave, until, quite suddenly, he was wide awake and cursing luridly at what he saw. McCloud kicked him, though not in the teeth as he had at first intended. It occurred to him that Jess couldn’t talk very well without any teeth. He reserved that for later.

“Save it. You’ll need your breath for other things.”

“You son of a bitch,” Jess said.

Herman knocked him sprawling. “Ain’t you got no manners, you bastard? There’s ladies present.” He admired Sheila elaborately.

McCloud grabbed a handful of Jess’s hair and hauled him up to a sitting position. “Look, you snatched the lady because you knew the Duke wanted to see her. You also heard me mention the Kahn diamonds and that I might be willing to pay as much as a hundred grand for them. Right?”

Jess looked longingly at the gun in McCloud’s fist. He decided there was no use trying to get it. “Am I arguing?”

“Was it you and Lou and Clyde who knocked me over for the hundred and ten grand out at Forest Lawn?”

Jess let loose a stream of obscenity. “Jesus, do you think we’d be fooling around here if we’d had that much dough?” He spat in the direction of Herman’s big feet. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

McCloud started to launch another kick but suddenly thought better of it. “You could be telling the truth at that, you bastard.” He hefted the gun suggestively. “I guess you know we’re not playing clap hands. What did happen, then?”

Jess wiped his mouth on a soggy sleeve. Sullen eyes appraised what had been done to his two former associates. He began talking very rapidly indeed. “Okay, Lou and I figured that D’Arcy could take care of things downstairs at Hammet’s and we was loafing up the street when we seen the dame come out. So we grabbed her and brought her out here to Elgin’s place.” He grunted as Herman nudged him with a heavy foot. “Then we heard that you’d knocked off D’Arcy. We got to talking about the missing diamonds and after awhile we got the idea that maybe the dame knew where they was. Or maybe you knew.” He sighed. “Well, with D’Arcy gone his racket was bound to fall apart anyway, so Elgin thought it would be all right to clean up what we could. We was working on the broad when who should call up but you, and Clyde baited you into coming out here. He said that even if you didn’t have the diamonds you’d probably be packing a lot of dough.”

McCloud took a deep breath. The story was so logical, so much more so than any other explanation, that he could not but believe it.

He looked at Herman. “You knocked this guy out once. Think you can do it again?”

“Why sure,” Herman said. He was a trifle disappointed in McCloud, though. “I thought you was gonna kick his teeth in.”

At this the man on the floor came to his feet and started running for the door. Unfortunately, for him, Herman was in the way. Herman knocked him cold with one blow. He grinned at McCloud.

“How’m I doing, boss?”

“Your batting average is perfect,” McCloud assured him. His mouth drooped. “The only thing is, you’re getting conceited about it.” He turned to Sheila. “Will you be able to walk on those feet, hon?”

“Of course.” To prove it she got up and came quite steadily over to his side. “I think you’ve got something in Herman, Stephen.”

“There you go,” McCloud complained. “Undoing everything I just told him.” He looked at Herman. “Could I trust you to be this lady’s bodyguard for a couple of hours?”

Herman admired the lady in question. “You cer’nly could, boss. You could trust me for even three hours.”

“All right, then,” McCloud said, “see if you can find some more rope to tie this guy up good and solid.”

“You mean you’re gonna leave him here? You ain’t gonna kick his teeth in or nothin’?”

McCloud looked around for the phone. “I’m going to feed him to the cops,” he said. “They can do a better job than I could.” He called Headquarters.

Chapter 22

THE CAB AMBLED along at a carefully lawful gait, Herman sitting very stiff and straight behind the wheel and terrifically conscious of his responsibilities as the newly appointed bodyguard of the lady behind him. Obviously McCloud was just going along for the ride. The matter of Sheila’s protection rested squarely on Herman’s shoulders. He accepted it bravely. It still rained.

After awhile Sheila touched McCloud’s knee. “You’re in an awful jam, aren’t you, Stephen?” Her eyes were shadowed. “Most of it because of me.”

He shrugged. “There’s no use denying that you and Kenneth have complicated things.” He frowned at the rain. “Look, I hate to keep going back to those lousy diamonds, but are you positive that Kenneth never mentioned them?”

She nodded. “I’m certain.”

“I have the feeling,” he said angrily, “that if I could just locate those damned rocks I could manage to pry us out of some of our other troubles.” He scowled. “At least I’d have Jessup and the company on my side. This way, I’m pretty well handicapped.” He told her about losing the hundred and ten thousand dollars.

“Did it ever occur to you, Stephen, that the man or men who waylaid you out at Forest Lawn did not have the diamonds themselves?”

“Of course. That’s why Duke D’Arcy was one of my prime suspects.” He laughed bitterly. “I actually told the guy in his own office that I could probably raise a hundred grand. There was nothing to stop him from calling Jessup and pretending that he had the stones.”

His shoulders drooped. “The hell of it is, anybody else could have done exactly the same thing.”

“Emil Kahn, for instance?”

“Damned if I can make up my mind,” he said irritably. “I’ve been thinking about Kahn, partly because I’d like to hang the job on him, but also because he was present in Jessup’s office when I got the first fifteen grand.” He thought about that. “As a matter of fact, he was there when I told Jessup about the tip on Margie Garland.”  He gnawed at his lower lip. “Against that, say that Kahn did frame the original job— the theft of the stones with himself as the alleged victim. That gives him the diamonds and he also stands to collect a quarter-million dollars’ insurance. Would he go on risking his neck for anything more?”

Sheila was slightly incredulous. “You speak of that ‘anything more’ as though it were a mere bagatelle. After all, Stephen, a hundred thousand dollars or so is quite a tidy sum.”

He patted her knee. “You’re a good egg, Sheila. Foolish, but a hell of a good egg. Remind me to do something nice for you sometime.”

“As if you hadn’t!”

“Well,” he admitted, “I was sort of worried about you at that. The muggs that grabbed you were definitely not nice people and I didn’t know they were after information about the diamonds.” He shrugged. “I had visions of finding you with your throat cut, merely because you were mixed up in the D’Arcy-Mayo feud.”

At her husband’s name she shivered. “Where are we headed for now, Stephen?”

“Well, I had intended going to see Emil Kahn.” His hand touched his breast pocket. Emil’s letters to the lovely Kay Mercedes were still there. “I think I’ve got the means of forcing him to lay off the company for a little while. That would give me time to maybe find the stones.”

She looked at him. “But you’ve changed your mind?”

“Not entirely,” he said. “I just thought of something else, that’s all.” Quite suddenly he laughed, though in the sound of it there was no joy. “I’ve got to make a couple phone calls, hon, and we may as well get some coffee and clean ourselves up a bit.” He looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. He had exactly an hour and a half to the deadline set by Emil Kahn and agreed to by Jessup. In an hour and a half a quarter-million dollars was due to change hands. He gave Sheila a crooked grin. “There’s nothing like looking your best for your own funeral.”

Sheila drew a shaky breath. “Stephen, do you really think it’s possible that Kenneth didn’t kill that woman after all? How could it be?” She bit her lip. “He himself admitted it.” She thought of their own predicament. “And what will we do if—”

“If we have to leave town?” McCloud laughed, pretending that the idea really appealed to him. “Why, we’ll just go some place else, that’s all. I’ve got a couple of thousand I borrowed from a friend, and maybe I can even cash a check for the little I have left in the bank.” He became extremely cheerful. “You see, hon? There’s nothing at all to bother your lovely head about.”

Sheila could pretend too. “Not a thing,” she agreed.

McCloud lifted his voice, addressing the back of Herman’s head. “Hey, Herman, how’s about finding us a quiet spot where we can get some coffee and a telephone and a ladies’ room and one thing and another. And I do mean quiet, get it?”

“Boss,” Herman assured him earnestly, “I know the very place.” He considered that. “The reason I know it’s quiet is on account of my sister runs it and she ain’t made a dime in the last six months.” He wheeled the cab around in a sharp U-turn. “Did I hear you say something about a couple grand? Or did my ears deceive me?”

McCloud cursed him. “You’re nothing but an eavesdropper, that’s all you are.” He scowled. “And don’t go getting any funny ideas, either. I definitely do not want to buy any restaurants.”

Herman nodded discouragedly. “No, I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

He presently pulled into the curb before a place whose sign proclaimed it “Ye Olde Taverne.” The rain had ceased. McCloud wondered if perhaps this wasn’t a good omen. He decided not to put any faith in it because it had stopped raining once before without accomplishing anything.

Herman led the way inside with a flourish, like a tourist guide. He was annoyed to find that his sister was not there. The one and only waitress gave him this information. “It just goes to show,” he stated indignantly. “You can’t make no money if you run around all hours o’ the night, neglectin’ your business.” He pointed a finger at McCloud’s nose. “Now me, I always say—”

“That’s the trouble with you,” McCloud said. “You always say too much.” He discovered a phone booth against the kitchen partition and went back and called Connie’s apartment at the Normandie.

It was Van Felix who presently answered.

“Very well,” Felix said after awhile. “Very well, my flatfooted friend, I shall see what I can do about it.” He sighed. “By the way, have you as yet checked the numbers on those two bills you stole off me?”

McCloud said profanely that he had not. Felix made disapproving noises. “The reason I asked, pal, is that Constance has been describing a fur coat she saw in Magnin’s window. It seems that the price of this coat is exactly two thousand dollars. Would you call that a coincidence, or wouldn’t you?”

“You know damned well what I’d call it,” McCloud said. He affected resignation. “Well, all right, if that’s the kind of snake-in-the-grass you are, you can damned well have the gal. I’ll become a monk.”

Felix thought this was very funny. “A monk!”

“You’ll find out,” McCloud said darkly. He banged the receiver up, lifted it almost immediately and called Jessup at the office. “McCloud, chief.”

Jessup began barking like a seal. “Good God Almighty, I thought you’d run out on me!” He controlled himself with an effort. “Where are you? And where are those diamonds?”

McCloud took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t know, Counsellor. About the diamonds, I mean.” He described in horrific detail the events of last night. “You can see I’ve had a lot of things on my mind.”

Jessup made his voice deliberate. “It strikes me, McCloud, that you’ve forgotten your company’s interests— and mine. You’ve let your personal affairs interfere with business.”

McCloud could not deny that. “All right, Counsellor, so I’m a bastard.” He frowned at the telephone. “I’m not quite washed up, though. Have you by any chance got the numbers of those bills? Particularly the last hundred and ten grand?”

“You ought to know better than that!” Jessup snapped. “You yourself have handled enough deals to know we’ve always played fair with the people we have to do business with.” He swore.  “If word ever got around that we were setting traps with the pay-off money you know damned well we’d never get another chance to trade.”

“Then you haven’t got the numbers?”

“I just got through telling you!” Jessup yelled. “No!”

McCloud’s mouth drooped. “Well, I have, Counsellor.” And when it appeared that Jessup was struck dumb with surprise: “It occurred to me that all was not exactly kosher in this case, and besides— well, Counsellor, this is murder.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket and read aloud from it. “Will you call the police and have them broadcast those numbers?” He sighed. “Believe me, it’s our best bet.”

Jessup agreed that it probably was. “You said you had another angle too?”

“Yes.” McCloud thought a long moment. “As a matter of fact I’ve got the means of scaring Emil Kahn into waiting for his money, even if I can’t prove his complicity in the diamond heist. I’m on my way out there now.”

Jessup’s voice was without anger now. It was almost gentle. “I hate to say this, boy. Personally I believe your story, but I’ve gone as far as I can. If you hadn’t got yourself mixed up in all this killing; if the heat wasn’t on you so bad that you’re burning up— well, I might be able to square the loss of the money. As it is, Grace and the Board are sore as hell.”

J. P. Grace was the president of West Coast Indemnity. He was an austere man, always carefully aloof from such matters as McCloud was required to engage in. McCloud could visualize the bleakness of Mr. Grace’s patrician face when that gentleman was informed that not only was he out a quarter-million dollars in indemnity, but also an additional hundred and twenty-five grand which one of his minor employees had lost. “I’m sorry, Counsellor,” McCloud said.

Abruptly he disconnected.

Out in the cafe, Herman and Sheila were discussing coffee and rolls. Herman was dunking his, unashamed. McCloud discovered that Sheila had somehow managed to repair the ravages of a sleepless and pretty tragic night. To Steve McCloud she looked like a million dollars, but then, to him, she always had looked that way.

Chapter 23

MCCLOUD LEFT Sheila and Herman in the cab and went swiftly up the driveway to the porch, and along that to the front door. Expecting a butler to answer his ring he was mildly surprised when the door was opened by Mrs. Kahn herself. She was a plump, stodgy woman, well over fifty. Round dark eyes regarded McCloud with a faintly resentful recognition. She looked as though she might have been crying recently.

McCloud took off his hat. “Is Mr. Kahn in?”

“He is in,” she admitted. “You will please to wait.” She went heavily away.

McCloud waited only till he could no longer hear her footsteps. He then pushed the door open and went into a carpeted, well-furnished hall to which the light of day had not yet penetrated. It was almost dark inside. Again he was struck by the rather conspicuous absence of servants. He wondered anew if perhaps he hadn’t guessed right the first time; if Emil Kahn wasn’t indeed financially pressed. If this were true it would certainly be an excellent motive for a prearranged robbery of insured gems. Mrs. Kahn reappeared from a room at the right. She gave no evidence of being surprised that McCloud had not waited outside as directed. She pointed. “In there.”

McCloud went through the door into a large room that was a sort of cross between a living room and a library. Though not in the best of taste it was comfortable. You could almost see the struggle that the interior decorator had had with Mrs. Kahn. Emil Kahn was sitting at a flat-topped desk, large white hands in plain sight on the blotter before him. He was obviously nervous but trying his best to look composed. His broad face was haggard. He lifted his triple chins at his wife. “Shut the door as you go out, Mama.”

She went out without a word. The door closed behind McCloud. He had the uncomfortable sense of being furtively watched, of not being alone with Kahn. There were two other doors to the room besides the one behind him and he discovered that one of these was not tightly closed. He hazarded a guess that there was someone behind that door. He loosened the trench coat, so that his gun would be more readily accessible.

“I do hope I’m not intruding.”

Kahn ignored that. “You have news of my diamonds?”

“Well, not exactly,” McCloud said. “As a matter of fact I dropped in here hoping to get some.” He moved forward and leaned his body against the desk. He smiled engagingly. “You know, Emil, I’ve had an idea right along that you were in on this job yourself.”

Kahn actually shivered. “That’s a lie.” He even tried to convince himself. “That’s a lie,” he said again.

McCloud carried his bluff still a bit further. “We’ve been doing a little investigating. Seems that there’s some talk of your being on the verge of bankruptcy.”

Kahn essayed a laugh of derision. “With a quarter-million dollars’ insurance coming to me you claim I’m broke!”

McCloud shrugged. “Maybe you needed even more than the quarter million. I know a lot of guys who would take a crack on the head for a second quarter million. The insurance represents half, the diamonds the other half. If you had them both—”

“You’re crazy!” Kahn yelled. “I’ve already identified the man who robbed me. He was a known jewel thief, and what is more he was found in possession of one of my stones.”

“And found extremely dead,” McCloud pointed out.

Kahn’s white hands moved a little on the desk blotter. “An accomplice killed him.”

“Naturally,” McCloud said. “An accomplice who knew every one of those rocks by heart; a man who knew them so well that he knew when one of them was missing from the lot. That was the one that Dutch DeGroot held out. The accomplice went back after it— and killed DeGroot.”

“Meaning me?” Kahn demanded. He managed a portentous frown. “Have you the slightest bit of proof that I was implicated?”

“Well, no,” McCloud admitted. “Not legal evidence, anyway.”

Again he smiled, unpleasantly. “I’ve run across some very interesting angles, though. You actually need money. You are also acquainted with a man who could dispose of stolen jewels at the top market price. I think I could build a pretty fair case against both of you, Mr. Emil Kahn.”

Kahn glared at him. “Just who is this man you claim I know?”

“A gent by the name of Felipe Mercedes.”

Kahn licked his lips. “I know of no such man.”

“The hell you don’t,” McCloud said. “At least if you don’t you certainly ought to be acquainted. I’ve got two letters to prove you know his wife.” He leered. “Very well, too.”

“My God in Heaven!” Kahn moaned. He pushed himself away from the desk and tried to stand up, but couldn’t quite make it. A voice behind McCloud said, “I’ll take those two letters, my friend.” McCloud turned toward the sound, not too hastily. He had learned that nearly everybody who spoke in that quiet unctuous tone lately had something to back it up. This man had. There was a toy-size automatic in his small right hand and he impressed you as one who knew perfectly well how to use it. The man was like the gun, in that he was small and dark and serious-looking. He was almost feline in his movements. McCloud decided quite suddenly that the name Felipe Mercedes would fit this man perfectly.

Emil Kahn was now pretty well on the verge of apoplexy. “So it was all a trick. You didn’t have the letters!”

“Shut up!” the small man said. It was like a cat spitting. “I’ll take care of this, Kahn.” He moved with infinite care toward McCloud.

“The letters, my friend. I should hate to shoot you.”

“I’m different,” McCloud said. “I should like nothing better than to shoot you.” He smiled. “About the letters, I’m so sorry. I haven’t got them with me.”

“That, I think, is a lie.”

“All right,” McCloud said, “find out for yourself.” He raised his arms high above his head. He waited until the small man was within a foot of him; till the little gun was actually touching his vest. His two hands swooped downward then, and at the same instant his knee came up and knocked the gun aside and landed in the small man’s belly. Agonized breath tried to get out of the small man’s mouth, and couldn’t, because McCloud’s hands were clamped tight on the throat below it. Presently he dropped the limp form to the rug. He was breathing gustily.

“Try frisking me, will you!” The small man did, not answer.

Emil Kahn, making ridiculous little whimpering sounds, ran around the end of the desk and stooped for the fallen gun. McCloud, almost carelessly, kicked Kahn in the jaw.

Out in the street there was a woman’s scream. McCloud didn’t know that it was Sheila but he thought that very likely it was. He ran to the French windows. He saw Sheila on her knees on the sidewalk, saw that she was handcuffed to Herman who was nothing if not an anchor. Herman was lying flat on his back, apparently dead as a mackerel. Lieutenant Brannigan was coming at a run across the intervening expanse of lawn, gun out and ready for business.

McCloud pushed open the windows. He did not take out his own weapon. Instead he raised his arms in token of surrender.

“All right, Brannigan.” He stepped forward out onto the terrace.

Brannigan said, “You son of a bitch,” and pulled the trigger. One of the French windows behind McCloud went out as if hit by shrapnel.

McCloud yelled, “Hey, cut it out, you fool!”

Brannigan did not cut it out. Deliberately, he fired again, and this time he almost did the business. The slug plucked McCloud’s hat off. Christ, he must be crazy! McCloud thought. He dropped behind the partial shelter of the terrace rail and began backing into the room. Through the railing he saw Brannigan steady the gun for another shot, and then, magically, Brannigan threw up both hands and fell flat on his face. McCloud simply could not understand it. He couldn’t, that is, until he saw the wrench lying there beside Brannigan’s head. It was a very big wrench, even seen at that distance. And presently, looking beyond the wrench, and Brannigan, McCloud saw Herman, still poised like a pitcher who has just let go with his fast one.

Herman was very pleased with himself. “I done it!” he chortled exultantly. “Wit’ me little hatchet I done it, and even wit’ one arm tied behind me!” Sheila was still manacled to Herman’s left wrist.

McCloud vaulted the terrace rail and ran cursing down to look at Brannigan. He was relieved to find that the lieutenant was not dead.

He finally located the handcuff key and tossed it to Herman. “Get untangled, you two. I’ll be right out.” He turned and ran back toward the house. All about him now there were the sounds of a neighborhood coming to life, and even Brannigan was beginning to stir. It was only a question of minutes before prowl cars would start arriving, but McCloud was urged by the necessity of finding out exactly what he had stepped into. He was startled to find that the library was completely empty of all save a very hysterical Mrs. Kahn. She was weeping now, quite openly. McCloud shook her.

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know.” She quietly fainted.

Chapter 24

HERMAN, driving one-handed, kept playing with the handcuffs, clicking them open and shut like a kid with a new collapsible puzzle.

McCloud reached through the open partition and relieved him of the cuffs. “You’re making me nervous.”

Herman was indignant. “How can I go on respectin’ you if you’re gonna be like that? What the hell have we got to be nervous about?”

“You ought to know,” McCloud told him. “You just conked the toughest dick on the force, and if you think he won’t remember your ugly mug and also your license number you’re crazier than I think you are.”

Herman thought about this for a moment. Finally he arrived at what he thought was an optimistic conclusion.

“But how would he know it was me? I was behind him when I threw it, wasn’t I?”

McCloud groaned. “He’ll figure it out.” He dismissed the matter of Brannigan and the wrench and turned to Sheila. She was showing unmistakable signs of exhaustion. “I wish I could send you some place to rest, hon, but I’m honestly afraid to. Every time I take my eyes off you something happens.”

“I’m quite all right, Stephen.” Her chin came up in that familiar sign of independence. “It’s just that I’m beginning to feel like a weight around your neck.” She stared out the window at passing traffic. “Without me you could clean this business up.”

He touched her, almost diffidently. “Without you, Sheila, I wouldn’t give a damn whether it was cleaned up or not.” He too watched their progress along Wilshire. The rain had definitely ceased now, but the sky remained overcast and a lot of the stores still had their window lights on. A harness cop at the corner of La Brea and Wilshire looked squarely at McCloud, yanked out his notebook and began flipping the pages. McCloud held his breath, but before the cop could find the entry he was looking for the signal light changed to green and the cab rolled on across the intersection and merged its identity with a hundred other vehicles.

After awhile it turned left into Palmetto Drive, and McCloud got out and went up the walk under the striped canopy and into the lobby of the Dos Palmas.

There was a new clerk on duty behind the desk. McCloud avoided him by detouring around a clump of palms and managed to attain the elevator bank without being questioned. “Seven, please,” he told the boy in the monkey suit. He was the car’s only passenger. They rose to the seventh floor. It seemed to McCloud that the boy took an unnecessarily long time about closing the doors, but finally he did, and McCloud went down the heavily carpeted hall to 710. Before pressing the buzzer he took out his gun and put it in the side pocket of the trench coat. He left his hand inside the pocket too. The door opened as though the buzzer were an electrical release.

“Hello, darling,” McCloud said.

Kay Mercedes was in lavender this morning, but her eyes had not changed. They were still green, still as beautiful as he had remembered them. He remembered too the warmth of her lips. The green eyes considered him. “So you had to be a heel after all.”

“Heel, yourself,” McCloud said genially. “That lousy check you gave me was phony.”

She did not even bother to look surprised. “No phonier than the lying story you gave me.” She twisted the doorknob, back and forth, back and forth. “You said you hadn’t read the letters.”

“And I hadn’t either,” McCloud insisted. “Not at the time I told you that.” He looked past her into the small foyer. “Alone?”

“Yes.”

She’s lying, he thought, but when she turned and led the way into the living room he followed her readily enough. He still kept his hand on the gun, though, and his eyes were watchful. He did not take off his hat.

She sat on the white, uncut-mohair divan. “Well?”

“I might make a deal,” he said.

“What kind of a deal did you have in mind?”

He smiled down at her. “In exchange for some information,” he said presently, “I might forget to tell the law that you’re in the badger racket.” Quite suddenly he stopped smiling. “That you are, in fact, a two-timing bitch with the soul of a Jezebel.”

You would have thought he had complimented her. “Them’s harsh words, Casanova.” She preened herself. She was a sleek, satin-clad cat. “You’re hardly in a position to tell the law anything about anybody.”

“That’s what you think,” he said.

She was definitely not impressed. “All right, go ahead and tell the law for all I care.”

He played his other card. “I’ve still got those two letters, remember?”

She sat up a little straighter at that. “What kind of information would you have to have?”

He nodded as though satisfied that now they were really getting some place. “Well, for one thing, you said you didn’t remember where you had left your bag. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

She smiled. “The letters first, please.”

With his left hand he took them out of his pocket and tossed them on the coffee table at her knee. When she reached for them, he lifted the gun pocket suggestively. “Not yet, darling. I was just showing you I had them.”

“Oh.” She relaxed. “Yes, I lied about that.” Her green eyes met his darker ones. “I left the purse in Kenneth Mayo’s car.”

McCloud’s lips moved soundlessly for a moment. It seemed to him that even after death this Mayo guy would keep popping up interminably.

“Isn’t it odd that you should be so careless with something as valuable as those letters? Just what was Kenneth Mayo to you?”

She shrugged exquisite shoulders. “He was a sort of confidential attorney.”

“Meaning that he was helping you put the screws on Emil Kahn?”

“Maybe.”

McCloud thought about that for a moment. Certain of the varied angles to this case were getting clearer by the moment. Kay Mercedes, by her own admission, had left her bag in Mayo’s car. Later, riding in the same car, Margie Garland either had picked up the wrong bag by mistake, or knowingly had taken it. In either case, it was now apparent that Margie Garland had discovered how valuable a property she was holding, and Kenneth Mayo, suspecting who had the bag, had simply gone after it. That, then, was the real motive for the quarrel, and Kenneth Mayo had lied to Sheila about it. McCloud scowled.

“Of course you notified Mayo that the bag was missing?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Is your husband in on the badger game? Or is he merely interested in the Kahn diamonds?” McCloud saw the woman’s head come up, ever so slightly, and knew that someone else had entered the room. He turned and saw the small man standing there; the small dapper man he had last seen out at the Kahn place. The small man had recovered his toy-size automatic. He pointed it in McCloud’s direction. “Answering your question, I am interested in both.” He smiled. “I see we already have the letters, darling. Perhaps we shall be as fortunate with the diamonds.”

“He’s got a gun too, Felipe,” the lady said. “In his pocket.'”

Apparently McCloud had been right about the small man’s identity. This was undoubtedly Felipe Mercedes. He was annoyed at the information given him by his wife.

“So?” He could not quite make up his mind who had the edge, he or McCloud. He moved his small right foot, daintily, and leaned most of his weight on it. “Seems like a stalemate, doesn’t it?”

It hardly seemed so to McCloud. Nor did he believe that it seemed so to Mercedes. Not really. The lady with the green eyes was the determining factor, and McCloud hardly thought she would be on his side. He had to watch two, whereas they had only to watch one. He said quietly, “You have the stones now?”

Mercedes’ waxed mustache made a little V as he smiled. “If I thought you were going to give me any more trouble I wouldn’t tell you. But as it is—” He shrugged. “No, I haven’t them, but I have a very good idea who has.”

McCloud touched dry lips with the tip of his tongue. The little man knew better than to come in too close a second time. “You mean Emil Kahn?”

“Who else?”

“I get it now,” McCloud said. He did too. “You and your wife bled the poor guy white with the letters. And when he couldn’t raise any more cash you suggested that he pull a fake robbery and collect the insurance.”

Mercedes smiled his V-shaped Machiavellian smile. “Isn’t he cunning, darling? So smart!”

McCloud read the purpose in the man’s eyes, saw the swift flash of lavender as the woman moved. He let his knees fold under him and fell forward. Above him the little automatic coughed gently, almost apologetically compared with the roar of McCloud’s own gun. McCloud rolled over twice before he looked up to see if he had hit anything. Mercedes, tremendously surprised, was still standing there, only now there was a gaping hole in his throat, and blood ran out of it and down his shirt front. He leaned far over, as if to get a better look at himself, and the tiny automatic coughed once more before it fell out of his lax hand. Then Mercedes too fell down.

Slightly dazed, McCloud sat up and looked around for the woman. She was there, propped between the divan and the coffee table, but she was no longer quite so beautiful. Her husband’s first shot missing McCloud, had hit her, dead center. McCloud was seized with a sort of paralysis at the suddeness of the thing. One minute you were alive, the next you were on your way to hell. McCloud stuck his right hand out in front of him and looked at it. As he had suspected, it was shaking. He discovered that he was shaking all over. He found himself wishing rather stupidly that they had given him just a little more time. There was the matter of Dutch DeGroot, for instance. Had Felipe Mercedes killed DeGroot, or had it been Emil Kahn?

As though produced by mental telepathy, Emil Kahn himself chose this moment to burst into the room. He too had somehow secured a gun, and as McCloud rose in his path he waved it wildly.

“Damn you, where are my letters?” He was sweating profusely, and obviously he was unable to comprehend anything except that McCloud had claimed to have the letters, and that McCloud was now right there before his eyes. “I want my letters!”

“Why, sure,” McCloud said. He wondered if he had better try for the gun in his pocket. He decided not. Instead he waved a careless hand at the coffee table presided over by the dead woman. “There they are, Emil. Help yourself.”

Kahn might have been a sleepwalker. He took his vacant stare off McCloud and looked at the letters. McCloud hit him with a roundhouse swing that even a child could have avoided. Kahn walked right into it. He collapsed. McCloud stood there a moment, listening intently. There was not a sound. He decided that either the walls of the Dos Palmas must be triple insulated or all the tenants stone deaf. Stooping, he snapped Brannigan’s handcuffs on Kahn’s thick wrists. After that he found a telephone and called Van Felix at the blonde’s apartment.

“Well?”

“Not very, Steve. Not well at all. No.”

“All right,” McCloud said presently. It seemed that his voice came from a hundred miles away. “All right, Van, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it will have to be.” He hung up.

After a time, with a careful eye on the goings and comings of the passenger elevators, he managed to drag the unconscious Kahn down the hall to the freight lift, and by way of that he descended to the alley. Kahn was as heavy as lead. Cursing, McCloud left him there and went around front, intending to enlist Herman’s help. He found Herman sitting inside the tonneau beside Shelia. And on the cab floor, under Herman’s big feet, lay Lieutenant Brannigan. “Well, for Christ’s sake!”

“Sure,” Herman said. “He keeps on showing up alla time, I gotta keep on bopping him, don’t I?”

Chapter 25

THEY MADE quite a crowd in Jessup’s office. There were Emil Kahn and Brannigan, linked wrist to wrist by Brannigan’s own handcuffs, a rather distrait Saint Bernard and a battered but still pugnacious bulldog. Kahn had gone all to pieces, as overly fat men sometimes do. Brannigan kept nagging at him, and was himself nagged by McCloud’s gun and his inability to jump it. Kahn, liking it or not, was Brannigan’s anchor.

Jessup sat gnome-like before his desk. His close-cropped iron gray hair and mustache bristled belligerently, and he was biting his words off so short they seemed to jump. The myriad tiny veins in his nose and cheeks were now magenta.

Sheila Mayo stood at the windows, her back to the room, very straight and slim in her tweeds, waiting with a calm born of utter resignation. New, fresh-washed sunshine made little golden glints in her coppery hair.

And Herman, of course, was there; and Mr. J. P. Grace, West Coast Indemnity’s president. Herman wore his visored yellow cap like a top sergeant in the Marine Corps. Grace was his usual tall, spare self, excellently tailored, patently resentful of the necessity for all this fuss. His bleak gray eyes studied McCloud through rimless glasses. He was not liking McCloud very well.

Jessup began barking all over again. “All right, we’ve got Kahn. Where the hell are the stones?”

“We’ll find them,” McCloud said sourly. He looked down at the gun in his fist. “It seemed to me there were other and more important matters to be cleared up first.”

Emil Kahn bleated like a stuck pig. “You won’t find them on me!”

McCloud stared at him. Brannigan reached around with his free hand and slapped Kahn in the mouth. “That’s enough out of you. Shut up and quit jerking!”

McCloud lifted the gun a trifle. “That’s typical of you, Brannigan, but I’m getting pretty sick of typical things.” He drew a slow breath. “Now look, I’m telling you flat that if you don’t pipe down I’m going to put a slug right in the middle of your belly.”

“You son of a bitch,” Brannigan said.

McCloud said, “You deliberately kept shooting at me this morning, even after I put up my hands. I want you to think about that, Brannigan. I want you to think about a lot of things.” His mouth twisted. “You’ve got a wife and kid. Presumably you love them. I want you to think about what you’d have done had either of them been in a spot like Sheila Mayo was.”

J. P. Grace cleared his throat. “This seems to be rather beside the point, McCloud. Admittedly you’ve lost the money entrusted to you, and you have not produced the missing stones. Your personal affairs are of no great concern to the company.”

McCloud looked at him. “Thank you for saying that. It makes it so much easier for me to resign.”

Jessup pounded the desk top. “Damn it, boy, what’s the use of going off half-cocked?” He addressed Grace. “Forget what he just said about resigning. He’s the best man we ever had, and any one of our competitors would pay him more than he’s been getting here.” He blew his nose loudly. “Go on, Stephen, tell it in your own way.”

McCloud nodded. “Beginning with finding Sheila, Mrs. Mayo, in the Garland woman’s apartment, it all ties into the one case, though there were varying motives behind everyone’s actions. Sheila went there because she believed her husband was cheating with Margie Garland. Probably he was. Certainly he was an habitual drunkard and in the woman’s company frequently enough for her to have gotten his gun at one time or another.” He shrugged. “Possibly he left it in the apartment on some former occasion and then forgot all about it. He may indeed have been quite sincere in reporting it to the police as stolen.”

“So what?” Brannigan snarled. “He killed her with it!”

“Possibly,” McCloud agreed. “His story even admitted that he did.”

After a long moment he continued: “Mayo lied about why it all happened. He actually went there to recover certain letters; letters that were in a purse Margie Garland had taken from his car.” He made a bitter mouth. “I can’t find myself feeling very sorry over Margie Garland’s death, nor Kenneth Mayo’s. They were pretty low in the scale of things. The same is true of Felipe and Kay Mercedes.”

Watching Emil Kahn with smoldering eyes he told them about the two letters.

“Sure,” McCloud said bitterly. “Just take it easy, McCloud. Just relax and let the whole God-damned world walk on you.” He began to shake. “Like hell I will. I’m all through, you hear?”

Sheila came over and put a hand on his arm. Herman grinned delightedly at the room. “Ain’t he a card? Ain’t he?”

Brannigan cursed him. “I haven’t forgotten you, either.”

The hammer of McCloud’s gun made a faint clicking sound. “Maybe you’d better forget him, Brannigan. Maybe you’d better go on thinking about those things I mentioned.” He spat. “Because if you don’t and you don’t arrive at the right conclusions, I haven’t a damned thing to lose by blasting you too.”

Brannigan must have recognized this fact himself. He subsided.

McCloud described the affair at the Dos Palmas. “I see now that Kay Mercedes only told me what she did because she was expecting her husband back.” He shrugged. “It was not intended that I should leave that apartment on my feet. Therefore, there was no harm in telling me the truth.”

Jessup was becoming restless. “Where did Duke D’Arcy fit? What was his interest in the Mercedes woman?”

“D’Arcy was holding some of her rubber checks,” McCloud said. “Apparently she was a gambler too, and had gotten into him. She didn’t want D’Arcy to know about the blackmail operation against Emil Kahn, because then D’Arcy would have been in a position to really put the squeeze on her.”

Jessup sighed. “But it was Kenneth Mayo who killed D’Arcy’s girl?”

“I don’t think so,” McCloud said. “I did, but I don’t any more.” He retched suddenly, as though he might be going to be very sick at his stomach. “I think it was you, Counsellor.”

The silence was terrific. It became so utterly still in the room that the opening of the hall door was like a dap of thunder. Van Felix came in, nodded once at McCloud, chose a straight chair and turned it around and straddled the seat.

Jessup actually chuckled. “Well, well, so it was really I who killed Margie Garland!”

McCloud shivered. “I wish you had told me, Counsellor.  Maybe I could have helped you figure out a way; maybe I could even have got the dough for you.” His eyes were harried. The man at the desk had been closer to him than anyone in the world except Sheila Mayo. “But this is murder. A lot of it could have been stopped but for you.”

Grace was incredulous. “You must be a little mad, McCloud.” He took off his glasses and began polishing them furiously. “Certainly you’ve either said too much or not quite enough.”

McCloud looked at Jessup. “I’ve always thought you were a pretty swell guy, Counsellor. In my own funny way I guess I thought you were God.” He straightened his shoulders. “But you tried to kill me too.”

Jessup stood up violently. “God damn it, boy, stop it!”

McCloud went on as though there had been no interruption. “Out there at Forest Lawn you meant to crush my skull. Later, when something I said to you on the phone told you that I was getting hot, you tipped the police that I was at the Kahn house. There was nobody else who knew, Counsellor. Nobody but Sheila and Herman, and they were with me every moment.”

Brannigan started cursing. “By God, it’s true, then! We did trace the tip to this office.”

“You see, Counsellor?” McCloud’s voice was almost gentle. “There was always the chance of an accident, of course, but you sort of counted on circumstances and on Brannigan. You thought he would shoot me on sight.” He breathed gustily as he remembered how close Brannigan had come to doing it. “I guess this it is, Counsellor.”

Jessup was as immovable as Buddha. His face had grayed a little, making the fine network of ruptured veins more sharply distinct, but otherwise he had not changed.

“There may have been such a call from this office. It did not come from me.”

McCloud nodded, as though he had thought of that too. “I read you a list of serial numbers, remember? You notified the police and the banks?”

Involuntarily Jessup closed his eyes. “Certainly.”

Van Felix stood up. “That’s very bad, Counsellor.” He looked around the room. “Sort of a slip you know. It’s just one of the things Stephen asked me to check on.” He smiled. “So I did.”

Jessup made a sort of strangled sound deep in his throat and sat down heavily. McCloud turned his eyes away, but went on talking.

“When I read those numbers to you I was baiting a trap. I hated to do it, Counsellor, but I couldn’t afford to miss any chance.” He stared at Sheila. “You remember when we were adding up the counts against Emil Kahn?” He shivered. “It occurred to me then that the same things could apply to the Counsellor. He knew that I had the first fifteen thousand dollars; he knew that I was going to contact Margie Garland; and he certainly knew where I was going with the briefcase full of money, because it was he who sent me there.”

Jessup must have realized then that his number was up, but he had to make one last attempt. “Damn it, McCloud, you haven’t an ounce of proof. Not an ounce.”

McCloud still could not look at him. “I’m afraid I have, Counsellor.” He stared very hard at Brannigan. “This morning, after I telephoned and gave him those serial numbers, he went to a bank. Because of his position he was admitted before the regular hour. He had no difficulty exchanging the incriminating bills for others, but he could not know that Felix would later call the bank and pretend that Jessup had forgotten to take the numbers.” He sighed. “Felix has a list of both lots of currency.”

Jessup’s reaction was startling. He looked so suddenly old and tired and broken that McCloud almost missed the abrupt opening of the desk drawer. The gun seemed to leap into Jessup’s hand, and his short legs thrust the swivel chair over backward as he fired. McCloud shot him. He shot him in the belly, where you don’t die for a while, but where they say it hurts most. After what seemed a long, long time he went over and looked down at his handiwork.

“You’d better clean it up, Counsellor. Tell Brannigan about Margie Garland and Dutch DeGroot.”

Jessup just lay there, singularly small and inoffensive looking. Apparently he was paralyzed from the waist down, but a smile that was almost kindly lifted the close-cropped mustache. “One last good deed, eh?” He coughed gently. “All right, boy, I guess I owe it to you at that.” He rolled his head a trifle, and his eyes found Brannigan. Everybody else in the room seemed to be holding their breath. It was very quiet.

Jessup said quite steadily, “This is the way it was, Lieutenant. I was actually inside the Garland woman’s apartment when Kenneth Mayo came in. I had entered through the back way, from DeGroot’s apartment.” He paused briefly. “DeGroot himself knew what I was going to do. He turned his radio up just to kill the sound of the shot.” The fingers of his small right hand curled tightly into the palm as the shock of the belly wound began to wear off. The pain was only beginning. “It was really all DeGroot’s fault, because he had boasted to the girl. She had already talked to at least one other.”

Brannigan chose to be stubborn. “Tell us exactly how you did it.”

The handcuff on his wrist was a terrific burden. Snarling, he yanked Emil Kahn to his feet. Kahn began to whimper.

Jessup propped himself weakly on an elbow. “Mayo was stupid with liquor. He and the Garland girl were quarreling when I came in. He had the gun, as though he had just taken it away from her, and she was in the act of throwing a book end. The book end missed him. I didn’t. I simply hit him with my own gun, then picked up his and shot the woman.” He was quiet for a moment. “After that I put the smaller gun, his own, back in his hand.”

Brannigan scowled at McCloud. “And DeGroot?”

“I don’t know,” McCloud said. “My guess is that Jessup hired Dutch to pull the original job, the holdup of Kahn, but that after he found out how unreliable his stooge was he decided he’d better fence the stuff himself.” He moved away from Jessup, beyond the desk. “So DeGroot turned the stones over, but could not resist holding out one of them. Jessup discovered the shortage and went back.” He spread his hands. “I arrived before Jessup had a chance to pry the rock out of DeGroot’s fist.” He looked at Brannigan. “Well?”

“Well what, you Irish bastard?” And then, quite suddenly, Brannigan became terrifically embarrassed. “All right, maybe we’re both Irish bastards.” He stared down at his chafed wrist, the one where Emil Kahn had so recently been anchored. “Maybe I’ve been thinking about what you said. Maybe I can figure out a way to get a captaincy out of this lousy case. Anyway—” He coughed. “By the way, how many cases were there?”

“I wouldn’t know,” McCloud said dully. His head ached. “As far as I’m concerned I don’t want any of the credit. You can have it all.”

The bleak and austere Mr. J. P. Grace cleared his throat. “I realize, of course, that I’m just the president of this company. I scarcely rate any genuine confidences.” He fiddled with a paper weight on the desk. “But could I ask just one question?”

“You mean two, don’t you?” McCloud’s mouth drooped. “You want to know where the diamonds are, and why Jessup had to do what he did.”

“Very well, then,” Grace said. “Make it two questions.”

McCloud looked at Felix. “Well?”

Felix was not above accepting his meed of credit. “Well,” he said with a great affectation of modesty, “I also followed our Mr. Jessup to another bank. This one was the First National. He has a safe deposit box there.”

McCloud nodded as though he were not at all surprised; as though, indeed, he had no great interest in the matter.

“I guess that’s where you’ll find the diamonds, then. I don’t know this for a fact, but the urgency, the chances the guy took, indicate a terrific shortage in his accounts. Offhand I’d say that he was short something like a quarter million dollars. He needed quick money; money he could not hope to realize from the sale of the diamonds alone.”

Grace knit his brows in a puzzled frown. “Granted the possibility of a shortage, I still don’t see how trading dollars would help him.”

McCloud wondered how you could get to be president of a corporation and still be unable to see a simple thing like that.

“He wasn’t trading dollars. He was making two dollars grow where one grew before. He had me sign receipts for a hundred and twenty-five grand. Add to that the actual money he took away from me and you’ve got a quarter million.” He sneered at the look on Grace’s face. “The diamonds themselves could have waited for years.”

He went over and took Sheila’s arm. “Come on, hon, we’ve got a lot of things to do, a lot of new places to see.”

Felix suddenly thought of something. “On my money?” He was outraged. “Where’s that two grand you robbed me of?”

Herman let out a tremendous guffaw. “Ain’t he a card, Mr. McCloud?

Ain’t he?” He was overcome with mirth. “The poor dope don’t know you only got one o’ them bills left.”

Felix stared at him very hard. “And where, may I ask, is the other one?”

“Why, Mr. McCloud give it to me,” Herman announced proudly. “For bein’ a bodyguard to the lady.” He dug an elbow into the ribs of Mr. J. P. Grace. “You know somep’n, pal? I never even seen a thousand-dollar bill before!”

Felix considered him, head cocked slightly to one side, naive blue eyes appraising. “You wouldn’t by chance, know how to shoot craps, would you?”

“Why, sure,” Herman said, surprised. “Why, I am considered very good at shooting craps.” He enlarged upon his prowess. “Why, I remember once, down on Central Avenue—”

Felix’ eyes glistened. “Good.” He became almost pensive. “Would you, perhaps care to teach me something of the game?”

Herman said he would be delighted. He looked at McCloud. “If it’s okay with you, chief.”' He lifted the yellow cap gallantly in Sheila’s direction. “It’s been a pleasure, lady.” He followed Felix out of the office.

McCloud crossed the room and stuck out a hand at Brannigan, saw that it was going to be refused and put it in his pocket. They glared at each other like a couple of Kilkenny cats.

“Well, thanks for thinking it over anyway, you bastard.”

Branningan spat. “Nuts, I don’t want any part of you.”

“Well, that makes everything just perfect,” Sheila said. “Because I do want a part of him.” She tucked her hand under McCloud’s arm and turned him toward the tall windows. “Look, Stephen, the sun is shining. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

He looked at the sun without enthusiasm. “Sure,” he said presently.

“Sure, it means that it’s probably stopped raining.”

End

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25