The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Copyright Info

The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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“Homicide, Inc.” was originally published in F.B.I. Detective Stories, October 1949.

“For Value Received” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1952. Copyright © 1952, renewed 1980 by Richard Deming.

“Mugger Murder” was originally published in Manhunt, April 1953. Copyright © 1953, renewed 1981 by Richard Deming.

“Strangers in the House” was originally published in Detective Tales, June 1953. Copyright © 1953, renewed 1981 by Richard Deming.

“The Blonde in the Bar” was originally published in Manhunt, May 1954. Copyright © 1954, renewed 1982 by Richard Deming.

“Hit and Run” was originally published in Manhunt, December 1954. Copyright © 1954, renewed 1982 by Richard Deming.

“The Happy Marriage” was originally published in Manhunt, August 1955. Copyright © 1955, renewed 1983 by Richard Deming.

“Sauce for the Gander” was originally published in Manhunt, February 1956. Copyright © 1956, renewed 1983 by Richard Deming.

“A Little Sororicide” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1957. Copyright © 1957 by Richard Deming.

“The Price of Fame” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1964. Copyright © 1964 by Richard Deming.

“False Alarm” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Feb 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Richard Deming.

“Errand Boy” was originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, March 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Richard Deming.

“The Most Ethical Man in the Business” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Richard Deming.

“Honeymoon Cruise” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1966. Copyright © 1966 by Richard Deming.

“The Monster Brain” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1966. Copyright © 1966 by Richard Deming.

“The Jolly Jugglers, Retired” was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1967. Copyright © 1967 by Richard Deming.

“An Element of Risk” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1972. Copyright © 1972 by Richard Deming.

“Maggie’s Grip” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1975. Copyright © 1975 by Richard Deming.

“Premarital Agreement” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1973. Copyright © 1973 by Richard Deming.

“Guardian of the Hearth” was originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, December 1979. Copyright © 1979 by Richard Deming.

“The Evils of Drink” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1980. Copyright © 1980 by Richard Deming.

“Mother Love” was originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, April 1981. Copyright © 1981 by Richard Deming.

“Friendly Witness” was originally published in The Saint Magazine, July 1984. Copyright © 1984 by Richard Deming.

A Note From The Publisher

Richard Deming (1915-1983) was an American pulp writer who specialised in mystery and detective fiction. In addition to original novels, he found a lucrative niche writing books based on movies TV series (such as Dragnet) and also ghost-wrote no less than ten “Ellery Queen” novels. In addition to numerous stand-alone books and stories, he created series featuring Manville (Manny) Moon and Matt Rudd. This volume provides a great sampling of his work. Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

About The Series

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HOMICIDE, INC.

Originally published in F.B.I. Detective Stories, October 1949.

MacDonald Sprague sat sidewise at the bar, frankly admiring the grave-faced blonde who sat with an escort a few feet away. But the admiration was entirely a surface veneer covering his cold loathing for the woman.

She looks more like a kitten than a murderess, he thought, studying the grave oval face with its slightly upslanting eyes. It was a face that seemed constantly to hold the promise of a smile which never materialized, a poker face, concealing all that lay behind it, yet somehow suggesting that if the mask were lifted, only laughter and innocence would be revealed.

It was hard to imagine those soft lips tensed in a cruel line and that tiny hand deliberately pumping bullets into a man. So hard that a strange reluctance mixed with the loathing in Mac’s mind for the women he believed had killed his brother.

With his hat tilted back at a jaunty angle and with a glint of satanic humor in his eyes, no one would have suspected MacDonald Sprague’s thoughts were composed of anything but admiration. He had rehearsed his part until everything about him was carelessly jaunty: his dress, his speech, his expression—even the way he moved in sudden controlled bounces. In physical appearance he only faintly resembled the deceased killer whose name he had assumed, but his personality was an almost exact copy.

The girl, though obviously aware of his scrutiny, seemed neither offended nor gratified, apparently accepting male admiration as a matter of course. But the man seated beside her did not share her indifference. Repeatedly he scowled at Mac, and once made as though to rise, but was stopped by the girl’s small hand touching his arm. Though it was the merest touch, he subsided immediately.

The movement re-emphasized to Mac that he was playing a game so dangerous, the slightest slip would make it fatal. For the girl’s scowling escort was Thomas Cougar, sometimes referred to as “The Strangler” because of his rumored proficiency with his pale, powerful hands.

Thomas Cougar was a tall, raw-boned man with an oddly narrow face with gray skin stretched so tightly it gave him a mummified appearance, an effect heightened by sparse, nearly colorless hair and eyebrows. Momentarily the mocking smile on Mac’s lips died as his eyes unconsciously dropped to the man’s enormously long and narrow fingers, which played with the stem of a cocktail glass. A mental image of those hands reaching for his throat caused Mac to shift his gaze hurriedly back to the girl.

The Town House was one of those glittering cocktail lounges of chrome and artificial leather, new but cheap, and already beginning to tarnish on the edges. It was the kind of place where the fringe of the underworld gathered—not actual criminals, but grifters and racetrack touts and petty gamblers. A forty-foot bar ran along one wall, and facing it along the opposite wall ran a forty-foot leatherette-upholstered bench before which, at spaced intervals, were set tiny cocktail tables. The blonde and her escort sat behind one of these a dozen feet closer to the door than Mac.

At this hour of the afternoon there were few customers, Mac was gratified to note, for the scene scheduled to occur at any minute was designed solely for the lovely blonde murderess. The fewer interested spectators, the better. At the moment, aside from Mac and the couple, two men seated at the bar near the door were the only customers.

* * *

George Doud slammed open the street door and stalked in exactly on schedule. Without glancing at him, Mac drained his beer, set down the glass and slid from his stool, as though preparing to leave.

Purposefully, George stalked the length of the bar, his wide, flat face set in the belligerent stare of the slightly drunk, and his massive arms swinging at his sides. As he neared the table at which the blonde and her companion sat, he leered sidewise at her, slightly changed direction, and still looking, crashed heavily into Mac.

The smaller man bounced away like a tennis ball, automatically raised both hands to sparring position, then dropped them back to his sides.

“Stick out your hand when you make a turn, mister,” he advised mildly.

George stared him up and down contemptuously. “Smart apple!” he said thickly, and lashed out with a fist the size of a grapefruit.

Mac’s knees bent, lowering his head a foot, so that the blow merely swept off his hat. His left stabbed into the big fellow’s stomach, his right immediately followed to the heart; then the heel of his left palm shoved against the other’s blue-black jaw and smashed the man into the leatherette bench next to Thomas Cougar.

For a moment George remained seated, his expression dazed and his arms spread wide for support on either side. Then he whipped his arms toward each other. His right hand darted at his left sleeve, and a six-inch blade suddenly glittered.

Shifting his back toward the barkeep and the two customers near the door, Mac’s fingers twinkled under his coat and out again. He held the automatic close to his body, so that only George, the blonde and Cougar could see it, but the muzzle centered unwaveringly between George Doud’s eyes.

George let his mouth drop open, and the knife slipped from his fingers to the floor.

“Kick it over here,” Mac said softly.

Obediently George toed the knife toward Mac. The smaller man stooped with a sudden spring-like motion, and when he straightened with the knife in his left hand, the gun had disappeared.

Thomas Cougar made a furtive movement toward his shoulder.

“Don’t touch it,” Mac advised, “I can beat you with my back turned.”

To prove it, he swung his back on all three, scooped his hat from the floor and started to move toward the entrance—a gesture not so heroic as it seemed, since in addition to the probability that Cougar’s motion toward his gun had been instinctive rather than overt, Mac knew George Doud would drop all of his 220 pounds on the gunman if Cougar even looked like he intended to draw.

“Wait, please,” a soft voice called behind him.

Instantly Mac stopped. She took the bait, he thought with savage elation, but his expression was merely quizzical as he eyed her over his shoulder. When her lip corners lifted in the faintest hint of a smile, he turned around. Tossing George’s knife on the bar, he said to the bartender, “Souvenir,” and walked back to the table.

His eyes hard and his face expressionless, he said to George, “Scram.”

George eyed the smaller man warily, licked his lips, rose to his feet and sidled widely around Mac. Like a frightened bear he lumbered toward the door and was gone.

With his face still expressionless, but with the light in his eyes turned from cold to mocking, Mac said to the girl, “Yes?”

“Sit down,” she suggested, “and have a drink.”

Mac shrugged, took a seat next to the girl and dropped his hat on the leather bench beside him.

“My name is Nan Tracy,” she said. “And this is Thomas Cougar.”

“Larry MacDowell,” Mac said. “Generally called Mac.” It was pure coincidence that he and the deceased gunman whose identity he had assumed answered to the same nickname, a coincidence which gave him the slight advantage of not having to learn to respond without thinking when his name was mentioned.

Mac nodded briefly at Cougar and received an equally brief nod in return. Hostility and suspicion seeped from the tall man’s eyes, and his pale fingers caressed his glass stem as though he wished it were Mac’s throat. For a wild moment Mac thought the man had detected the farce with George Doud, and he shifted his gaze to Nan Tracy in order to hide the uneasiness in his eyes.

The blonde was easier to look at anyway. Again he experienced a feeling almost of unbelief that her mask of innocence concealed a coldness and cupidity rare even in criminals—a mind that deliberately planned murder for profit.

“Your best contact is Nan Tracy,” Mac’s chief had said, “because Bart’s last report was on her.”

The chief had paused uncomfortably after mentioning Bart’s name, and Mac felt the bitterness rise in him again. Young Bart, only a year out of law school, already advancing in the bureau and engaged to be married. The kid had the world by the tail, but suddenly the bright future was snuffed out by a senseless bullet.

Mac had said harshly, “All right. What about her?”

“She seems to be the recruiter of professional killers for the organization,” the chief went on. “Possibly she even heads the whole setup. We’re almost certain it was she who killed Bart when they suspected he was an FBI agent. At least we’re sure it was a woman, and as far as we know, she’s the only woman actively connected with Homicide, Incorporated.”

“Nice name they picked for themselves,” Mac commented.

“Describes the organization perfectly,” the chief said grimly. “It’s pure murder for hire, organized down to a T. For a fee they’ll kill anyone, anywhere, anytime. Already they’ve operated in seven states that we know of, and no telling how many we don’t know about.”

“How the devil do they get customers?” Mac asked.

“Mainly through tie-ins with underworld gangs who hire them to do their dirty work. But they also seem to have a plant in at least one insurance company, because they seem to be able to find out what wives have heavily insured their husbands and vice versa, and then they quietly move in and offer to make the insurance payable for a fifty percent cut.

“Drake found out that much, which is why he began to work cooperatively with the insurance investigator from Argus Mutual. But when he and the Argus man both disappeared, we suspected the leak was at Argus, so Bart was instructed to contact no one but local police. Since his death, we don’t trust anyone, and you’re going in on your own. I’m giving you George Doud as an assistant, but aside from you two, myself and the big chief, no one at all will know you’re a bureau man. If you slip up, it’s your own fault, and not because of a leak.”

At the time this information had been reassuring, but now that Mac was actually confronted by his adversaries, a chill skittered along his spine. He knew that at the slightest suspicion that he was a federal agent, he would follow the same road as Drake and Bart Sprague.

Nan Tracy said, “What will you drink?”

“I’ve had it,” Mac said. “I came back for the proposition, not the drink.”

Her eyes widened innocently. “Proposition?”

“I’m a direct guy,” Mac said. “For a half-hour I give you the eye from the bar, and you don’t even know I’m alive. Then I draw a gun faster than you’ve ever seen one pulled, and right away you get chummy. Your pal has ‘mug’ written all over him and a heater under his arm. I can add. You’ve got a proposition for my gun. So spill it.”

Cougar growled, “I don’t like the way you talk, buster.”

“Then lump it,” Mac said indifferently.

The Strangler stiffened and the stem of his glass snapped between powerful fingers. The girl touched his arm, which kept him in his seat, but his eyes turned icily cruel.

“You are direct,” the girl said. “Where you from, Mac?”

“Out of town,” Mac said shortly.

“Hot?”

Mac shook his head. “I leave places before I get hot. The only thing any cop could pin on me is carrying a gun without a license.”

Nan Tracy’s eyes half closed and she regarded him contemplatively through the slits. She asked slowly, “What would you be willing to do with your gun for five hundred dollars a week?”

Mac looked at her expressionlessly for a long time before answering. “Depends,” he said finally. “In a safe setup—anything. In a risky one I didn’t like—nothing. And by risky, I mean gunning the law. I’ll go up against other guns, if the chance of a rap is slim enough.”

“Suppose we go up to my place and talk it over,” the girl suggested.

“What can I lose but my time,” Mac suggested.

Nan’s “place” turned out to be an apartment on the seventh floor of the exclusive Plaza Towers. Nan opened the door with a key, stepped in and then turned to face Mac with her hand out.

“I’ll take your hat,” she said, her face as still as usual, but her eyes smiling.

As Mac handed it to her, he heard the door click shut behind him and started to glance casually over his shoulder at Cougar, who had entered last. He stopped with his head half-turned when he felt hard metal press against his spine.

“Just don’t move,” said the girl, her eyes still smiling.

Mac stood motionless as her hand slid under his coat and removed his automatic. Efficiently she patted his pockets and hips for other weapons, then backed away, dropped Mac’s hat on an end table and seated herself in a soft chair.

She pointed Mac’s gun at him and said softly, “All right, Thomas. You may put it away, now.”

The pressure disappeared from Mac’s back and the Strangler carefully circled toward a sofa so that he did not pass between Mac and the automatic.

“What’s the pitch?” Mac growled.

“Sit down,” the girl suggested, motioning toward an easy chair directly opposite her own.

Mac sank into the chair, stretched his legs with an aplomb he did not feel and repeated, “What’s the pitch?”

“Just being careful,” Nan said. “Now tell me all about yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Cougar put in sulkily, “I’ll test my grip on your throat if you don’t.”

Mac glanced at the man’s mummified face, let his eyes drop to the long narrow fingers which were gently massaging each other, and hastily looked back at the girl.

“What do you want to know?”

Nan Tracy looked him over thoughtfully before replying. Her lovely face was strictly business. She said, “You can start by telling us your real name.”

“MacDowell,” Mac said. “Larry MacDowell. I told you I wasn’t hot, so why should I use a fake name?”

Nan glanced inquiringly over at Cougar, who said grudgingly:

“Sounds faintly familiar, but I can’t place where I heard it. A guy as fancy with a rod as this Joe, I ought to have heard of. I keep my ear pretty close to the grapevine. But he don’t ring a bell.”

Dissatisfaction showed in his expression and his tone became almost querulous. “You jumped at him too fast. Suppose he turns out to be a cop, or maybe a Fed? Now he knows something’s up, and you can’t just kick him out. So we got a body on our hands.”

Mac quirked his lips in what was meant to be an insolent grin, but which he feared more resembled a sickly one.

Nan’s voice developed an edge of ice. “Since you were let in on my next higher contact, you’ve begun to cultivate a bad habit, Thomas. I still do your thinking for you, and if you get too big for your boots, the boss may order you buried in them.”

Cougar’s already pale face turned even paler and he muttered something about only trying to be helpful. Mac’s mind sifted over the words, Next higher contact, and came to the tentative conclusion that more than one link in the organization of Homicide, Inc., existed above Nan. At the same time he experienced mild surprise that the emotionless Cougar exhibited such fear at mention of the boss. He mentally filed the knowledge for future reference.

Nan turned her attention back to Mac. “Who have you been connected with, Mac? Give us some references. Something we can check.”

Her eyes still seemed to be smiling, but her lips were a hard straight line. Mac felt a flood of thankfulness that he had briefed himself for just such an emergency, “John Hagen in New Orleans,” he said. “Jimmy Dow in L. A.”

“Hagen—” Cougar started to say, then stopped and looked at Nan apologetically.

“Go on, Thomas,” she said.

Encouraged, he swung his gaze back to Mac, and suspicion mixed in his eyes with the hostility already there. “Hagen’s dead and Dow’s at Alcatraz,” he said coldly.

Mac shrugged. “Barrel-Head Morgan in St. Louis.”

Nan’s expression showed interest. “We did some work for him once,” she said to Cougar. “Put in a call.”

The Strangler went into the hallway and they could hear him giving a St. Louis number to the operator. Five minutes passed while the girl’s grave eyes examined Mac without expression.

Mac employed the time to glance around the room, noting two of the doors leading off it seemed to lead to bedrooms.

Cougar came back and spat, “Morgan’s on a Mediterranean cruise. How many more guys who aren’t available can you dream up?” His expression had changed from suspicion to open disbelief.

Mac glanced at Nan’s face, noting something new there which was not exactly suspicion, but a kind of alertness. A bead of cold sweat trickled down his side, but he managed to say unconcernedly, “Those boys were before my time. Try my last boss, Dude Emory in Philly. He was alive and present a month ago.”

Cougar started to turn toward the hall again, but Nan said, “Wait, Thomas. I’ll call him myself.”

She waited while Cougar drew a revolver from beneath his arm and covered Mac, then lowered her own gun and went into the hall.

Again Mac sat quietly while the call went through, but this time his muscles were bunched to throw himself at Cougar at the first intimation that his masquerade had failed. For Dude Emory was his hole card, and unless he spoke the proper words, Mac knew he was as good as dead.

Only two weeks before, the FBI fingerprint department had identified as Larry MacDowell an unclaimed accident victim lying in a Brooklyn morgue. No news release had been made for the specific purpose of letting Mac use his name.

Their physical descriptions roughly tallied, but Mac was counting more on the psychology of his acting than on physical resemblance. Most persons in describing someone do not say something like, “A man weighing 240 pounds, light brown hair, gray eyes, freckles, a hook nose and a dimple in his chin.” Instead they say, “A big fellow with horn-rimmed glasses, who is always pursing his lips and talks about nothing but baseball.”

Mac hoped that Emory’s description would be something like, “A stocky guy of average height who sort of bounces when he moves. Wears his hat on the back of his head and always has a mocking grin, like he doesn’t give a damn about anything.”

There was a good possibility the stunt would work, but there was also a double risk. Possibly Larry MacDowell’s death had been gangland vengeance, rather than the accident it seemed, in which case Dude Emory undoubtedly would be aware of it through the underworld grapevine. And also Emory might mention the cheek scar MacDowell bore, which MacDonald Sprague lacked. Mac found himself wishing Cougar had made the call instead of Nan for the alert light in her eyes warned him she would not be too easily fooled.

When Nan finally returned, Mac forced his gaze to meet hers, and immediately he knew he had won, for there was a faint touch of respect in her eyes.

* * *

“Dude Emory seems to think you’re the devil on wheels with a gun, Mac.” She handed back his automatic butt first. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we don’t take any chances.”

“That’s all right,” Mac said agreeably, concealing his flood of relief. “I prefer working for an outfit that doesn’t.”

He slipped the automatic back in its holster and stared pointedly at the revolver still in Cougar’s hand. Slowly the Strangler replaced it beneath his arm, but none of the hostility disappeared from his eyes, and very little of the suspicion, This guy is going to watch me, Mac told himself, and I better watch him if I want to stay alive.

Nan had returned to her chair and was eying Mac speculatively. “How would you like to work for Homicide, Incorporated?” she asked abruptly.

Mac sat up straight and forced a look of surprise on to his face. “Homicide, Inc.! I’ve heard of that, and it’s bigger than any of the guys I mentioned. Don’t tell me that outfit is run by a woman!”

“I won’t tell you anything,” she said in a suddenly cold voice. “Who runs it is none of your business. You’ll get your orders and your salary from me. Who I get them from is something you don’t have to know, and if you try to find out, Thomas will discourage the attempt by squeezing your throat until you stop breathing—permanently.”

“All right,” Mac said agreeably. “I won’t pry. Just so I get paid regularly, and know I’ll be taken care of if I get in a jam.”

“You’ll get five hundred a week, and if you get in a pinch, the best legal talent in the country will be retained to defend you.”

“You’ve got a new employee,” Mac said.

For the first time Nan almost smiled; but instead of being reassured, coldness crept along Mac’s spine.

She turned to Cougar and said, “You better run along now, Thomas. I want to talk to Mac for a while.”

The already tight skin seemed to tighten even more across the Strangler’s narrow face, and his eyes shot open hatred at Mac. But he rose obediently, muttered a good night and left.

As soon as the door closed behind Cougar, Nan’s brittle mask seemed to melt away. For a moment she stood staring at the door with a kind of uneasy relief, looking more like a bewildered young girl than a lieutenant in a murder organization. Again Mac experienced a sense of shock at the combination of sympathy and revulsion her two faceted character aroused in him.

“I hate him!” she said in a low voice. “I’ve wished him dead a thousand times!”

Mac looked at her with his mouth open, unable to correlate her obvious fear and detestation of Cougar with the cold and domineering manner in which she ordered him around. If she really wished the man dead, she was certainly in a position to get him that way. He wondered if for some obscure reason she was putting on an act, and resolved to guard his reactions carefully.

She shook herself like a kitten throwing off water, moved over to Mac’s chair, took his hand and led him to the sofa. Puzzledly he sat beside her while she continued to hold his hand tightly.

“I’m afraid,” she said simply. “I needed you badly.”

On guard, he examined her face, noting the wild excitement deep in her eyes. For a moment he thought the excitement was amorous, and wondered how he could duck such a squeamish situation, for he had no desire to make love to his brother’s murderess. But immediately he sensed it was something else—an uncertainty and something closely allied to terror.

She released his hand suddenly, clasped both of hers in her lap and looked up at him with a strange mixture of hope and wariness in her expression.

“I’m glad you’ve come in with me, Mac,” she said, then added quickly, “With us, I mean.”

A theory began to form in Mac’s mind, a theory that explained her dialogue with Cougar as well as her present action, which he half suspected was a deliberate act. The theory was that Nan was the real head of Homicide, Inc., and her talk of a “next higher contact” plus her present act was deliberate red herring.

At the same time she looked so frightened, so small and so defenseless, he automatically dropped a protective arm across her shoulders, one part of his mind half believing she really needed masculine protection, and the other part regarding himself with amazed disgust. Her head tilted upward, and in spite of his resolution, he kissed her. For a second he completely forgot himself.

* * *

Her lips clung to his coolly. For a moment he completely forgot she was a murderess, forgot his mission, forgot everything but the soft outline of her mouth. Then recollection sent a wave of revulsion over him and he jerked back so suddenly, Nan’s eyes widened in surprise.

At the same moment the door opened quietly and a woman entered from the hall.

She was a slim, shy-appearing brunette of about twenty-eight, pretty in a delicate-featured, subdued sort of way, but the type that instinctively huddle in the background and are therefore overlooked.

She gave an embarrassed cough, and stood twisting the strap of her bag uncertainly.

“Why, Claire,” Nan said in a surprised voice. “Is it after five?”

“Five-thirty,” Claire said apologetically.

Mac rose and Nan said, “This is Mr. MacDowell, Claire. Claire D’Arcy, Mac. She shares the apartment with me.”

Nan’s air of defenselessness had vanished, and her eyes were again brittle and mocking. “Claire is a working girl. Chief file clerk for Argus Mutual. She toils from eight to five while I flit from cafe to cocktail lounge, and secretly she disapproves of me.”

“Why, I do no such thing!” Claire said, coloring.

Mac lowered his lids to conceal the flash of interest inspired by the name, Argus Mutual. But he made no attempt to slow his racing mind.

The leak at Argus was immediately obvious, yet so simple it was no wonder it worked. One look at Claire D’Arcy was enough to indicate that her company would regard her as above suspicion, as she probably was. Even if they knew of Nan, it would never occur to Argus that the attractive apartment-mate of their chief file clerk was part of Homicide, Inc. Nor would it occur to the shy girl, who undoubtedly was glad of a sympathetic audience to listen to her story of the day’s work, never suspecting she was furnishing information to the most ruthless murder gang in the country.

The simplicity and audacity of the plan almost shocked Mac into letting jubilation show on his face. Instead, he greeted the girl civilly and mumbled something about having to run along.

“Come take me to dinner tomorrow night,” Nan told him at the door. “Be here at six and I’ll make you a cocktail first.” She added in a lower voice, “We can’t talk in front of Claire.”

As Mac’s taxi pulled away from the Plaza Towers, Mac saw by a glance through the rear window that another cab a quarter block back pulled out a moment later.

“Union Hotel,” he told the driver. “And don’t bother trying to lose our tail.”

Startled, the cabbie glanced at his rear-view mirror, then shrugged and kept silent.

The other taxi went on by when Mac’s driver stopped in front of the Union Hotel’s main entrance. Without glancing at it, Mac paid off his driver and entered the hotel. From the corner of his eye he saw the second taxi park fifty yards down the street.

At the desk he got his key, then entered the elevator with several other passengers.

“Two,” he said to the operator.

Getting out at the second floor, he walked quickly to the stairs, descended a half-flight and peered over the banister into the lobby. Thomas Cougar and a gangling, freckle-faced man who seemed to be with him were talking to the desk clerk.

Something passed from Cougar’s hand to that of the clerk who glanced at it, grinned delightedly and began bobbing his head in eager subservience.

Mac drew back out of sight, mounted stairs to the third floor and let himself into his room. It was only six o’clock, and he stretched himself on the bed until it got dark.

When it had grown quite dark, he went into the bathroom, turned on the light and wrote a detailed report of the day’s events. Then without turning on the room light, he crossed his bedroom to the window, noiselessly raised it and carefully scanned the street below.

A window stick used for opening and closing the upper part of the window hung from a bracket on the wall. Mac rapped its brass head sharply against the ceiling three times. A moment later a tin can suspended from a string descended from the window above him and gently settled on the outer ledge. Mac stuffed his report into the can, and it immediately rose again.

Silently closing the window again, Mac slipped on his coat to go downstairs for dinner. As he pulled shut his door, he glanced along the hall casually, and saw what he expected to see. Diagonally across the hall from his room a door stood open about an inch, and the room beyond was dark. Apparently Thomas Cougar’s suspicions were far from allayed by the phone call to Dude Emory, and he intended to have every move Mac made watched.

Without glancing at the slightly ajar door again, Mac made straight for the elevator. A half hour later, when he came up again, his room had been expertly searched. So expertly that even though he had expected it, he himself had to look for ten minutes before he found evidence of the search in the form of a pair of socks replaced in an order different from the way he had memorized it.

* * *

At exactly six the next evening Mac rang the buzzer of Nan’s apartment. But instead of Nan answering the door, it was opened by Claire D’Arcy, who wore a simple blue house dress.

“Oh. Mr. MacDowell,” Claire said. “Nan would have called, but she didn’t know where you were staying. She was suddenly called out of town and had to catch a plane.”

“Oh.” Mac said, and waited blankly.

“Nan said to tell you she was sorry, and if you’d leave your number, she’d phone you tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m supposed to give you the cocktail she promised.” She stepped back and held the door wide. “Won’t you come in?”

“Thanks,” Mac said, following her into the living room. It occurred to him that perhaps Nan’s sudden trip was a stroke of luck, for he might never find another opportunity to sound out her apartment mate alone, and on impulse he said:

“If you haven’t had dinner, maybe you’d substitute for Nan—unless you mind being second choice. I planned to take her to the Blue Penguin.”

“I’m afraid I’ve already started cooking dinner,” Claire said. “And besides, I’m not dressed for dining out.” Hesitantly she added, “If you like, you may eat here. I always cook three times too much.”

“I wouldn’t want to put you to any bother.”

“No bother at all,” she assured him, and her eyes lighted with a shy eagerness that almost startled him, for he did not regard himself as the type of man maidens yearn for. He wrote it off as a symptom of loneliness, which might make her glad of any male company.

“Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” she said, taking it for granted he would stay. “Please mix yourself a drink while you’re waiting. You’ll find everything on the side board.”

“Thanks, but I’d prefer a bottle of beer, if you have one.” Actually he preferred a cocktail, but Larry MacDowell’s drink had been beer, so now it was Mac’s.

“In the refrigerator,” she said. “You can drink it at the kitchen table and watch me cook, if you like.”

“That’s my speed,” Mac grinned at her. “I feel more at home in the kitchen.”

They ate at the kitchen table, and afterward Mac helped her with the dishes. Accustomed to dining almost exclusively in restaurants, the domesticity of the situation had a curious effect on Mac. He found himself enjoying the evening more than he ever enjoyed the glitter of cafes and night clubs. Under the influence of his obvious enjoyment, Claire’s shyness evaporated. Beneath the shyness Mac found a quiet intelligence and a nice sense of humor.

By the time the dishes were finished, they had become old friends, and Claire was laughing and chattering like a complete extrovert. Almost automatically their hands clasped together as she led him back into the front room.

When they sat together on the same sofa where Mac had been caught in the act of kissing Nan, Claire snuggled against his shoulder without a trace of her former shyness and looked up at him in almost open invitation.

With an effort Mac recalled that his purpose in staying to dinner was not pleasure, but business.

He made a face at her and asked casually, “How long have you lived here with Nan?”

“About six months. But I don’t live with her. She lives with me. It was my apartment originally. I met Nan at a party.” She moved away slightly. “Are you very fond of Nan?”

Mac dropped his arm across her shoulder and drew her back in place. “I barely know her. Seems like a nice girl, though.”

“Nicer than I?”

Mac frowned, not being particularly fond of coyness; then turned the frown into a grin. “You’ve got one big advantage over her. You’re here.”

“Rat!” she said, and started to twist out of his arms.

He pulled her back and kissed her. And suddenly her arms were about his neck and her lips were pressed against his so fiercely, he was startled. Compared to Nan’s cool lips, Claire’s were like fire. Mac experienced the combined sensation of wrestling with a leopard and holding one finger in a live wall socket.

When eventually he forcibly, broke the kiss to prevent suffocation, she snuggled against him with her head pressed to his chest and her soft hair tickling his chin.

“You shouldn’t kiss me like that,” she said in a muffled voice.

Mac gazed down at her bent head in amazement. “Does seem a waste of time,” he said sarcastically. “I can get the same effect by falling down a flight of stairs.”

“Who are you, Mac?” she asked in the same muffled voice.

“MacDowell. Larry MacDowell. Remember?”

“I mean, what do you do?”

“I’m a C.P.A.,” he said truthfully, though the only accounting work he had done since school was checking books for evidence on FBI cases.

“What’s your business with Nan?”

He frowned down at the top of her head. “What business with Nan?”

Suddenly she straightened and moved a safe two feet away from him. “Why do so many men come to see Nan who don’t seem to be men friends, but appear to have some business arrangements with her? All types men, like that awful Thomas Cougar. Who are they, and what do they want?”

“How should I know?” Mac evaded. “I just met the girl, and don’t know a thing about her. Maybe they’re business friends.” He paused, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “What is her business, anyway? She must have some kind of income to keep up her half of this place.”

“When she suggested we share the apartment, she said some money had been left her. She hasn’t any kind of job, and doesn’t do much of anything but move around socially. But lately I’ve gotten the impression these men who call on her have something to do with her income, and that she never inherited any money. I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling, and it bothers me because I like Nan.” She looked at Mac in sudden suspicion. “Maybe you’re one of them, and know all about it.”

“You’re imagining things.” Mac said, and reached for her again.

Feeling he had obtained what little information Claire had, and that further questions might cause her to suspect he was pumping her and make her mention it to Nan, Mac decided to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure. But he discovered he could not dislodge the subject from Claire’s thoughts. Time and again she returned to her suspicion that Mac was one of the men somehow tied to Nan, sometimes bluntly accusing him of it, sometimes cajoling him to tell her what Nan was involved in, and never entirely accepting his protest that he had no idea what she was talking about.

In the middle of a kiss she would return to the subject, and finally Mac began to wonder—who was the pumper and who the pumpee. Her probing alarmed him for her own safety, for if curiosity led her to the point of questioning Nan, her questions might lead her to the bottom of the river.

He turned over in his mind the thought of warning her, but discarded it as too dangerous to his own position in case Nan ever learned of the warning. There was nothing to do but persist in his denials, and eventually he succeeded in smothering her questions by keeping her lips occupied.

When he left the apartment at midnight, his suit was rumpled, his collar covered with lipstick and his head was spinning like a gyroscope. So far out of his mind had Claire D’Arcy succeeded in knocking Homicide, Inc., he almost forgot to bother to check if he was still being tailed.

It was only when his eyes fell on the door of the room diagonally across from his own and noted it was still ajar that he came back to the present.

Inwardly he grinned, wondering if the spy beyond the door had noticed the red smear on his collar and would report to Cougar that his throat seemed to be cut.

* * *

At noon the next day the room phone awakened Mac. It was Nan Tracy.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said in a tight, unnatural voice.

“That’s all right. What’s the matter?”

“Got a business deal on.” She seemed to be under terrific excitement, for her tone was so forced, her voice nearly cracked. “If you haven’t had lunch, get some, because you won’t have another opportunity. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

“I’ll be waiting in the lobby,” he said quietly.

So he was to be given an assignment, he thought. Probably, the result of her plane trip last night. He hoped it was a one-man assignment. Managing to fail to murder his designated victim would be easier without a witness.

But apparently it was a big mission, for Thomas Cougar and another man were with Nan when she arrived. Mac rose from the lobby sofa where he had been waiting when the three entered, and Nan introduced the second man as Arnold Link. He was a squat, broadly powerful man with “gorilla” written all over him.

Cougar said, “You three wait here a minute,” and his tone made it almost an order.

Mac stared after him puzzledly as the pale killer crossed to the desk and employed the house phone, which could be used only to phone rooms. In a moment Cougar returned and all of them stood waiting, as though expecting someone to join them.

“What’s up?” Mac asked tentatively.

Nan and Cougar stared at him fixedly, as though they had not heard the question.

* * *

Squat Arnold Link said in a toneless monotone, “You’ll find out when we get there. We do not blab in hotel lobbies.”

A man who apparently had gotten off one of the elevators suddenly joined the group. Without surprise Mac noted he was the same man he had seen in the lobby with Cougar the night he peered over the banister.

“Benny Chisholm,” Cougar said briefly, “Mac MacDowell.”

Benny was a tall, gangling fellow with a large nose and freckles. His wide, yokel-like eyes were blandly innocent, but the effect was spoiled by a mouth which was nothing but a cruel, lipless gash. He nodded without offering his hand.

My friend across the hall, Mac thought, and glanced at Nan. With a shock he realized she was actually smiling, but her smile did not come up to the promise at which her usual grave expression hinted. It was fixed and brittle, and her eyes glittered as though she were under intense strain.

The smile made the hair on the back of his neck rise, and something about the flat look with which the three men regarded him warned him of danger. It suddenly occurred to him that he somehow might have been found out, and the gathering might not be a mission at all, but a one-way ride for MacDonald Sprague.

“I forgot to leave my key at the desk,” he said abruptly, and before anyone else could speak, turned on his heel and walked rapidly across the lobby.

Tossing his key on the desk, he said to the clerk in a quick but low voice, “Phone room 418 for me and tell Mr. Crowell I can’t meet him for lunch.”

Instead of immediately returning to the group, he cut diagonally across to the tobacco counter and bought a package of cigarettes. As he paid for them, he saw from the corner of his eye that the clerk was just setting down the phone. Now it was necessary to stall at least a moment in order to allow George Doud time to act on the code message.

Turning toward the group, he called, “Be right with you,” then deliberately opened the cigarette pack, removed one and lit it at the tobacco counter’s gas lighter.

All five of them crowded into a long black sedan which was parked in front of the hotel. Squat Arnold Link drove, Nan sat next to him in the front seat, and Mac found himself between the Strangler and the freckled Benny Chisholm.

“What’s the deal, now that we’re out of the lobby?” Mac asked as they pulled away.

“It’ll keep a while,” Cougar said shortly. The thick-shouldered chauffeur drove smoothly, obeying all traffic rules in town, and when they left the city, limits, pushed up to a sedate fifty miles an hour and kept it there.

At the end of the hour, about thirty-five miles from town, the driver said, “Taxi tailing us.”

Mac started to twist his head rearward, but Cougar said sharply, “Keep your face front.” To Link he said, “Pull over and park.”

Immediately the sedan slowed, pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. In a few moments a cab went by without slowing.

“Got butterflies in your stomach, Link?” Cougar asked contemptuously. “Just because a taxi travels the same speed we do, doesn’t mean we’re being tailed.”

When the sedan pulled away again, the taxi was a quarter of a mile ahead. Link dropped his speed to forty, and soon it could not be seen at all. A mile farther on, they turned to one side on a dirt road.

Twenty minutes later they turned into a private lane, drove another five-hundred yards and stopped before a large, one-story log hunting cabin. Everyone got out. As they approached the door, Nan linked her left arm through Mac’s right.

Behind them Cougar said, “Thanks, Nan,” and his gun pressed into Mac’s back. “Now just remove that automatic from under his arm.”

Mac stood very still as Nan, still holding his right arm, reached under his coat with her free hand and slipped the automatic from its clip holster.

As she stepped away from him, he said, “This is getting to be a habit. What’s the pitch this time?”

“Get moving, copper!” Cougar snarled at his back, and emphasized the command by jabbing his spine with the gun muzzle.

At the word “copper” Mac’s hopes sank. He walked forward stiffly, prodded by the Strangler’s gun, and entered the cabin. Inside Mac found a long beam-ceilinged room running the entire width of the front. It was furnished with rustic furniture and had a fireplace at each end. Directly across from the entrance a drape-covered doorway led to another room in back.

When he reached the center of the room, Mac stopped and looked inquiringly over his shoulder. Cougar had paused just inside the door, and Nan stood with the two other men at the side, as though all three were merely interested observers.

“All right, copper,” Cougar said. “Start explaining who you are.”

Mac looked at Nan. “I thought you gave the orders around here. How come Ugly is tossing his weight around now?”

Cougar’s face darkened, but before he could speak, Nan said viciously, “Thomas is the fair-haired boy now. He brought the teacher an apple and got promoted to honor student.” Her answer was to Mac’s question, but she spoke directly to Cougar and the vicious tone was meant for him.

So there actually was someone higher than Nan in the organization, Mac thought. Hoping to create a diversion, he asked, “Got demoted, did you, Nan? What was the apple?”

Nan’s eyes swung at him. “You were. Smarty-pants Thomas phoned Dude Emory again and asked more detailed questions. When he found out Larry MacDowell had a cheek scar, he went running to teacher instead of to me, and got marked A for effort.”

“Is that all the fuss is about?” Mac asked indifferently. “Ever hear of plastic surgery?”

“Sure,” Cougar said. “I thought of that, which is why I asked the color of his eyes. Explain how you changed your eyes from blue to brown, and We’ll let you go.”

“Shoe polish,” Mac said seriously.

Benny Chisholm said, “What we waiting for? Let’s get this over with.”

“The boss wants her to do it personal,” Cougar said, nodding at Nan. “To sort of make up for her boner.”

He slipped a second gun, a vest pocket automatic, from his coat pocket and held it butt first toward Nan.

“Take him in there,” he said, pointing his own gun toward the drape-covered door.

Nan’s eyes brightened, almost as though she were glad of the opportunity to kill. “All right, Mac, darling,” she said. “Forward march.”

Tickles of cold sweat ran down Mac’s sides beneath his shirt, but he managed to keep both his expression and his tone mocking. “Murder gets to be habit forming, doesn’t it, Nan? You’re becoming almost the official executioner for Homicide, Incorporated.”

“What do you mean by that?” she said suspiciously.

“I won’t be the first suspected cop you killed, will I? About the fourth now, isn’t it?”

Cougar emitted a single hoarse guffaw, which was half laugh and half snarl.

Nan’s eyes burned at the Strangler and she spat, “Don’t throw so much weight around that you get in the boss’ hair. You don’t know how close you have come to the river before, when you got over-ambitious.”

His pale features lost what little color they had, and he seemed to shrink within himself. Nan tossed her head in: triumph at having at least temporarily put him in his place, then jabbed her little gun at Mac.

“I said move. Or do you want it right here?”

Abruptly Mac turned toward the doorway and pushed through the drapes, Nan following with the gun almost touching his back. The second room proved to be sleeping quarters and contained nothing but two double bunks, two heavy dressers and what seemed to be a closet, for at one side of the room was a second drape-covered door.

“Turn around,” Nan commanded in a loud voice.

Slowly Mac turned to face her, his body tensed against the expected jolt of a bullet. Nan’s face was dead white and her eyes held a gleam of unnatural excitement.

In a voice so low he could barely hear it, she said, “I haven’t time to explain, but take this gun and go out shooting.”

Mac’s jaw hung wide as she suddenly reversed the pistol and thrust the butt into his palm.

“Now hit me,” she said tensely. “Quick, so I’ll have an out! Make it look like you got the gun by force.

But Mac merely stared at her. “Quick!” she said fiercely. “Hit me! Hard!”

Recovering his mental balance, he clenched his left fist, slowly and almost reluctantly raised it chest high, then suddenly lashed out and caught Nan square on the chin. Her eyes crossed and she dropped flat on her back.

The drapes parted as Cougar pushed through, his revolver half-raised. Centering the little automatic on the Strangler’s vest, Mac squeezed the trigger and stepped back.

There was nothing but a sharp click. Cougar grinned wolfishly, and as Mac stared blankly down at the empty gun, a soft chuckle came from the side of the room. Mac glanced sidewise just as Claire D’Arcy stepped from the closet, a man-sized .45 automatic clenched in her small hand.

“An interesting show, and just what I expected,” Claire said.

Nan sat up and dazedly felt of her chin.

“Thanks for the demonstration, Nan,” Claire said sardonically. “Did you really think we’d trust you with a loaded gun after planting a cop in our midst?”

Nan worked her lower jaw tentatively and remained both seated and silent.

“When Dude Emory told Thomas over the phone that he had informed you of Larry Mac-Dowell’s cheek scar and blue eyes, there were only two explanations possible for your not branding Mac here a cop right then and there, and taking necessary action,” Claire said. “Either you are awfully stupid, or you’re a cop yourself. I rigged up this little act so I could listen in and learn which.” She smiled, and there was an unpleasant glitter in her eyes. “Now we can have a double funeral.”

The whole picture clicked together in Mac’s mind, and at the same time his mind wildly searched for a way out of the situation. Seemingly of its own accord there popped into his remembrance the Strangler’s craven fear of the “boss,” and Nan’s constant needling of him about the “boss” dislike of his over-ambition. With the remembrance a wild idea occurred to him.

“You mean a triple funeral, don’t you, Claire?” Mac asked insinuatingly.

She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean by that crack?”

“Just what I said.” Mac made his voice confident. “Three people in this room are going to die.”

Both Claire and Cougar frowned at him intently, and a faint uncertainly appeared in Cougar’s eyes.

“I suppose you told Cougar I didn’t know you were head of Homicide, Incorporated, and had been completely taken in by Nan acting as your front,” Mac continued blandly. “But you see, Cougar knows you deliberately sent Nan out of town yesterday so you could talk to me alone in order to satisfy yourself I was safe. He also knows I spent six hours in your apartment, because he was having me tailed.”

“So what?” Cougar asked roughly.

“So she never even suspected I was a cop then,” Mac shot at him. “She didn’t suspect it until you told her today. Last night she thought I was just a newly hired gun, and she gave me an assignment.” His next words he spaced slowly and distinctly. “She said you were getting too big for your boots, Cougar. And she told me to kill you. That’s the third funeral. She’ll get you before you get out of this room.”

The uncertainty in the gunman’s eyes had turned to fear and suspicion. Like a trapped animal he swung his eyes from Mac to Claire and back again. Claire’s expression was merely one of indulgent amusement. Apparently she did not realize the profound impression Mac was making on Cougar.

“Nice try anyway, Mac,” she said, and her .45 centered on his stomach.

Cougar’s’ eyes were still on Mac, as Mac shouted; “Look out, Cougar!”

The muzzle of the Strangler’s revolver jerked toward Claire and suddenly spat flame. At the same moment Mac hurled his empty automatic straight at Cougar’s narrow face. It caught the man square in the left eye, Cougar staggered backward.

Mac hit him in a headlong tackle, and the revolver skittered along the floor to a far corner. As they grappled, Cougar’s elbow caught Mac under the chin.

At the moment a regular fusillade of shots came from the next room, but Mac was too busy to concern himself with anything but the Strangler, who had managed to twist on top of him and get his powerful hands on his throat.

Desperately Mac tried to claw the hands loose, but they held with the grip of a vise. The pale, mummy-like face was inches from his, and the man’s teeth were bared in a sadistic smile. With his lungs bursting and waves of darkness pressing against him. Mac’s struggles became weaker and weaker.

His distended eyes were nearly popping from his head when the Strangler’s cruel smile suddenly faded into a vacuous grin. His grip relaxed and he collapsed.

* * *

For a moment Mac could do nothing but suck great gobs of air into his lungs. Then, as his sight cleared, he was conscious of Nan peering down at him anxiously, Cougar’s revolver held in her hand like a club.

“Drop it, lady,” said a flat voice.

Nan’s gun clattered to the floor and her hands slowly rose at sight of the gun muzzle threatening her from the doorway. Mac pushed Cougar off and sat up.

“I thought that was probably you, giving them fits out there,” he said to George Doud. “Never mind Nan. She’s on our side.” He looked at her wryly. “What are you anyway, Nan? A detective for Argus Mutual?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t warn you today because Thomas and Claire were with me when I phoned. They never let me out of their sight for a minute.”

Mac climbed to his feet and glanced over at what had been Claire D’Arcy. Cougar’s bullet had caught her in the forehead, and she had died instantly.

“How about out there?” Mac asked George, nodding toward the other room.

“Both dead,” George said shortly. “Neither one had their guns out when both decided to take a chance, but only the freckled-faced guy managed to clear his holster. But he didn’t get in a shot.”

“That finishes Homicide, Incorporated, then,” Nan said. “You’re FBI, aren’t you?”

Mac nodded.

“I began to suspect it when all your references were so conveniently unavailable. That’s why I took the last phone call myself. After Dude’s description, I was almost sure, and was trying to work up to telling you who I was when Claire walked in and caught us—ah—talking.”

“Was it Claire who killed Bart Sprague?” Mac asked.

“Who?”

“The FBI man who was shot a month ago. He was my kid brother.”

“Oh,” Nan said. “I’m sorry. I was too late to stop that. I didn’t even realize he was an FBI man until it was all over. Yes, Claire handled that personally, just as she intended to handle you.”

Mac glanced over at the dead woman once more and smiled a dead smile lacking the bitter satisfaction he had expected to find with revenge. Then he looked down at Nan’s white face.

“You’ve got a lot of guts for a woman,” he said. “With all those bullets and all this blood, most women would faint.”

“You have to be tough to work for Argus Mutual,” Nan said.

Then she fainted.

FOR VALUE RECEIVED

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1952.

“The oddest thing happened this morning,” Chalmers said. “I can’t make up my mind whether to take it to the police or forget about it. I’d really have nothing but suspicion to report in any event, and probably would only get a horse laugh for my pains.”

I was a little surprised at his obviously upset manner, for even under stress Lloyd Chalmers ordinarily exhibits the ponderous kind of aplomb you might expect of a man who has practiced criminal law for two decades.

“I did go so far as phoning a ballistics expert I know over at Columbia University, though,” Chalmers said. “He told me it would be quite possible to fire a rifle like an artillery piece with considerable accuracy up to a range of several miles, providing you used a fixed mount, were good at mathematics, and had an observer to adjust your fire.”

Rising to mix fresh drinks. I said, “If you’ll pardon the comment, you’re dithering. I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”

“About the death of Thomas Mathewson III a few weeks back,” Chalmers said testily. “You must have seen it in the papers. He was struck by a spent rifle bullet while seated in a duck blind in the center of a small lake up in the Catskills. The coroner called it accidental death from a stray bullet fired by some unknown hunter, but it occurred to me that the lake would have made artillery observation easy. The blind was a sunken barrel camouflaged by weeds, you see, and was surrounded by water for a hundred yards in all directions. An observer could have adjusted fire by the splashes.”

Handing him a new drink. I reseated myself by the fire and leaned back in my chair.

“Thomas Mathewson III,” I repeated thoughtfully. “The multi-wived playboy who spent so much of his time in jams, wasn’t he? I vaguely recall reading something about his death. Was he a client of yours?”

“One of my better ones from the standpoint of fees,” Chalmers said glumly, “but absolutely the worst from the standpoint of my ulcers.”

“You think he may have been murdered?”

“See what you think after I tell you what came in the mail this morning.” He paused to eye his drink thoughtfully. “But it wouldn’t make sense to you without knowing the background. Let me organize my thoughts a moment and I’ll tell you the whole story…”

Thomas Mathewson III (Chalmers said) was the most horrible example I have ever encountered of what too much inherited money can do to an individual. It was not just that he lived a life of idleness and squandered too much, for compared to the average so-called playboy he was rather niggardly with his money…no, niggardly isn’t the right word either, for on occasion he made gestures which by popular standards could only be regarded as generous. But always with what to him was a logical motive. He possessed a sort of calculated shrewdness which, from his own perverted standpoint, got him what he considered value received.

His eight wives, for example, cost him in excess of a million before he was through with the last of them. A normal person might regard this as an expensive proposition, but Tom Mathewson considered it a good buy. At the time of the last settlement he told me quite candidly each of his wives had cost him about what he had estimated in advance of proposing marriage—the implication being, of course, that he had bought the women like so many cattle and was well satisfied with his bargains.

He firmly believed that money could buy anything, and insofar as he was concerned, apparently it could. It certainly managed to get him out of many a jam which would have landed a poorer man in jail.

But before you anticipate me by assuming I am working up to the old moral wheeze that gold is not all, that Tom Mathewson finally discovered money could not buy the one thing he wanted most, let me assure you I have no such intention. So far as I know, he went to his death never having failed to get exactly what he wanted, and at what he considered a fair price.

What I suspect upended his apple cart was another person adopting his same philosophy.

The circumstances leading up to the incident which upset me this morning go back to early 1945. We were still at war then, and the gasoline and tire shortages kept most people at home. But for Mathewson the war never existed. He somehow managed to escape the draft in spite of being only thirty-five, unmarried at the time, and in perfect physical condition. The dash compartment of his long-nosed convertible was always full of gasoline coupons which he obtained the Lord only knows where, and whenever he felt the urge to take a trip, he simply went.

This particular morning he had driven up from New York with the intention of spending the weekend at the hunting lodge he owned a few miles the other side of Catskill—the same place, incidentally, where he was killed last month. He had with him the blonde young lady who later became his seventh wife.

He was about hall-drunk as usual, and he roared onto the Rip Van Winkle Bridge at a speed witnesses later estimated at eight-five miles an hour. Unfortunately, a six-year-old boy on a bicycle was crossing the bridge from the-other direction.

When I got down to Catskill in response to Tom’s urgent phone call from the jail, I found the local authorities determined to send him up for life, providing they could deter the townspeople from taking the law into their own hands.

The dead boy was from a farm just outside of Catskill and about five miles from Tom’s own place. And of all the children around the village of Catskill whom he could have picked to kill, he had the bad luck to run down the only son of the town’s outstanding hero. Staff Sergeant Jud Peters, the boy’s father, was a battalion communications sergeant with the field artillery supporting General Patton, and only the day before, Catskill had received news of his winning the Distinguished Service Cross.

It was undoubtedly the worst jam I ever had to get him out of. And the worst of it was, his money was a disadvantage in this case—at least, in the beginning. In the end, as usual, it was money that saved his hide.

His tremendous wealth was held against him by the natives, who were in no mood to tolerate special prerogatives for the rich. Had he been penniless, I doubt that public reaction would have been nearly so strong. But his reputation for profligate spending, combined with the suspicion that he was a draft dodger, set them after his blood.

His first thought was to start greasing palms, but fortunately he always waited for my advice before making any move at all when he was in a jam. Not that he always followed my advice; to some extent it depended on whether my arguments were based on moral or practical grounds. Frequently they were the former, for he was constantly ready to bribe anyone who could render him service, and professional ethics demanded I do everything possible to dissuade him from this amoral practice. If the best I could do was read him a moral lecture, he blithely went ahead with his corruption, though he always made a pretense of following my advice and did everything possible to conceal his bribe-giving from me. This, I am convinced, was solely to avoid hearing further moral lectures, and not because he cared a mil for my opinion of him.

But he had considerable respect for my practical judgment, and if I were able to advance any objection to bribery other than an ethical one, he usually complied without question.

I remember him as he looked that day: still firm-bodied in spite of his excessive drinking, for he had professional masseurs work him over daily; entirely at ease and his expression indicating his sole emotion was irritation that the dead child had interrupted his hunting trip.

The first thing he said to me was, “Think it would speed things up if I slipped the Chief a couple of thousand to spread in the proper places?”

Having already talked to the Catskill Chief of Police and noted his grim expression, I knew any mention of money would be the worst tactical error Tom could make.

I said bluntly, “If you offer anyone in this town so much as a dime, I suspect the Chief will order you hanged without trial.”

His shoulders moved in a graceful shrug. “Then I guess it’s your baby. Counselor, just get me out of this town fast.”

But for once there was no last way to get what he wanted. Nor was there any possibility either of hushing the matter up or avoiding trial. So I threw the local authorities off balance by attempting to do neither.

On a writ of habeas corpus I got Mathewson before a J.P. who set bond with the provision the defendant remain in the county. That got him out of jail, but he still couldn’t leave Catskill. Then I quietly pulled a few strings to get the case moved up on the Grand jury’s calendar, and as soon as he was properly indicted. I played my trump. I asked for change of venue on the grounds that public opinion prohibited a fair trial in the county where the offense took place, and since the plea was obviously truthful, I got the case transferred to a neutral county without difficulty.

Then I stalled for a year by getting a series of continuances, and when everyone but the people of Catskill had entirely forgotten the matter, finally let him come to trial. The charges were reckless driving, driving while intoxicated, and manslaughter.

Since it was Tom’s third arrest for drunken driving and the second person he had killed, naturally he was found guilty. Clarence Darrow could have hoped for no other verdict. But he was found guilty with a recommendation of leniency, which I consider a courtroom triumph. All he suffered was a $500 fine, a suspended sentence, and loss of his driver’s license for a year—a mild sentence when you consider his previous record.

In the meantime I had managed an out-of-court settlement with the child’s parents—or rather with his mother, for Sergeant Jud Peters was still overseas. She was a pathetic little woman in her late twenties, so crushed by the loss of her son that she hardly knew what she was doing and automatically signed anything her Catskill lawyer told her to sign. The latter, not being the sharpest legal opponent I had ever encountered, would have settled the matter for as little as $10,000 but Mathewson arbitrarily set $50,000 as the amount which would salve his conscience, and insisted that I offer that amount. Naturally Mrs. Peters’ lawyer told her to sign.

The total cost to Mathewson was terrific, for in addition to substantial legal fees over a period of a year, I am almost certain it involved a large bribe, or possibly bribes. Whether he managed to buy one of the jury, or made a secret campaign contribution to the judge who later pronounced the lenient sentence, or both, I don’t know. I am only guessing, for I would have countenanced no such action on the part of my client had I been able to find concrete proof of it; but it is a partly substantiated guess. Not only was it entirely in keeping with Mathewson’s normal procedure, but since I handled all his financial matters, I was aware he had withdrawn a huge sum from his main bank account. And when he refused to explain the withdrawal, I simply added two and two.

A thinner-skinned person than Tom Mathewson would have disposed of the hunting lodge and never again gone near Catskill, for his squeezing out of the jam with a suspended sentence left him universally hated by the natives. But he seemed to feel that the financial cost to him had balanced his responsibility for the child’s death, and he resumed use of the lodge with an entirely clear conscience.

I believe he was a trifle uneasy for a few days when Staff Sergeant Jud Peters finally returned home, but his uneasiness stemmed solely from fear that the bereaved father might create an embarrassing public scene the first time they met, and not because he felt any further responsibility to the man. He was not without animal courage, however, and made no attempt to avoid contact with Jud Peters, a feat which would have been difficult anyway, since Peters’ farm was only five miles from Tom’s lodge. In that country five miles makes you neighbors.

I vaguely recall him mentioning the first time they finally met, a casual encounter in one of Catskill’s taverns. I remember there was a note of relief in Tom’s voice when he described the meeting, for apparently the young father harbored no active resentment. I gathered he had been cool to Tom, but not uncivil, and left Tom with the impression that his sole wish was to forget everything connected with his son’s death.

I myself had entirely forgotten the Peters affair, for in the six years since the accident Tom had been in many intervening scrapes requiring my attention. I was only reminded of it when I had to make an unexpected trip to Catskill.

It came about when Mathewson phoned me from the hunting lodge and asked me up for a weekend. I would not have gone had it been only a social invitation, for I must confess I detested the man even though he was one of my best clients. But he wanted to see me on a legal matter—not a jam this time, something concerning the transfer of certain securities he owned.

Catskill, as you may know, is not on the New York Central line—you have to change to a bus at Hudson. Since the trip by car from Mathewson’s lodge to Hudson takes only a quarter-hour more than a trip to Catskill, you would think my host would have met me at Hudson. But Thomas Mathewson III could never be described as a considerate host. He paid well for my services and felt he owed me nothing beyond that payment.

Consequently, my instructions were to meet him in the bar at a small hotel near the Catskill bus depot. And as was his habit in keeping appointments, he was about fifteen minutes late. I had a beer while I waited.

I was sipping my beer and recalling without pleasure the sole previous occasion I had visited Catskill when the bartender broke in on my thoughts.

“Ain’t you the lawyer who was down here from New York a few years back about the Peters boy?” he inquired.

Startled, I glanced up and admitted I was.

“Pretty slick way he got out of that,” the bartender commented. “Mathewson, I mean.”

“He didn’t exactly ‘get out of it,’ as you put it,” I said coldly. “He was convicted of manslaughter.”

“Yeah. On paper. Never served a day, did he? Not that I care, Mister. I was brand-new here when it happened and didn’t know any of the parties concerned. Still don’t, for that matter.”

Then occurred one of those odd coincidences which make life so unpredictable. The only other occupant of the bar at the moment, a man of about thirty-five clad in quarter-boots and a hunting jacket, turned an intelligent but moody face in our direction.

He said, “Just happens I’m Jud Peters, it that means anything to you.”

The bartender was as startled as I was and immediately withdrew from the conversation to start polishing glasses. But after my first surprise, I examined the man with friendly curiosity. His tone had been neither bitter nor belligerent. On the contrary, it had seemed faintly apologetic, as though he disclosed his identity merely to prevent the bartender and myself from creating an embarrassing situation.

Moving along the bar toward him, I offered my hand and introduced myself.

“I needn’t tell you how much I sympathized with your loss at the time, and still do, Mr. Peters,” I said. “It was a terrible tragedy, and Mr. Mathewson did everything in his legal power to atone for it.”

“He did?” he asked in a mildly surprised tone. “Oh, you mean the money.”

“Naturally no amount of money could make up for the loss of your son,” I said. “But in fairness to my client you should know I advised him that a settlement of $10,000 would probably be accepted by your wife, and Mr. Mathewson insisted on offering $50,000.”

He looked at me curiously for a long time, then finally said in a puzzled voice. “I didn’t know that. He was exceedingly generous, wasn’t he?”

“Well, he recognized his responsibility. There was no question about the accident being his fault, and I suppose he realized the only way he could begin to make restitution was with money. Some hard things have been said about Mr. Mathewson, but he does have the virtue of being scrupulously fair in money matters.”

A voice behind me said, “Who’s been saying hard things about me, Counselor?” and I turned to find Tom had come in unnoticed by either of us.

While his tone was bantering, there was a barely concealed edge to it, and I could tell he was not happy to find me talking to Jud Peters about him.

Tom Mathewson had changed physically in the six years since the accident. He was now just past forty, and masseurs were no longer able to erase the effects of long dissipation. While still appearing in good physical shape, a weal of fat encased his middle, his jowls were beginning to sag, and a sun-lamp tan could not entirely hide the tiny criss-cross of veins gradually forming in his cheeks.

With the physical change he had undergone a psychological change too, becoming even more overbearing in manner and even more prone to treat those he engaged professionally like servants. He was examining me now with an expression which would have been appropriate had he discovered his valet stealing scotch from his cellar.

Since his expression irked me, I said, “Who hasn’t said hard things about you, Tom? But as a matter of fact we were saying nice things for a change. Until now, Mr. Peters here was unaware that the size of the settlement for his boy was your own idea, and otherwise might have been only a fraction of the actual amount.”

Tom’s eyebrows raised. “Fifty thousand, as I remember,” he said indifferently. “But I believe I once mentioned that Mr. Peters prefers to forget the whole matter. I see no reason to rehash it.”

“It came up kind of accidentally from a remark the bartender made,” Jud Peters said, and again his voice impressed me as being almost apologetic. “And the remark you overheard Mr. Chalmers make was prompted by my comment that you were very generous.”

“Thanks aren’t necessary,” Tom said shortly. “Come on, Counselor. I left my motor running.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thanking you,” Jud Peters said. “I imagine you could afford it.”

Tom had started for the door, but now he stopped and turned around slowly. “No one can really ‘afford’ that kind of accident, Mr. Peters. I’ve had that same remark addressed to me on a number of occasions, particularly by my ex-wives. And, as usual, the implication is that a man with money is fair game. For your information that $50,000 settlement was a small part of the total cost of that accident. When lawyer Chalmers here and a few others were through with me, I had spent exactly 5 percent of my total assets. That’s one-twentieth of an estate intended by my father to provide reasonable comfort for a lifetime. One-twentieth, Mr. Peters, for an incident which lasted approximately three seconds.” The man’s tone was so frosty that both Peters and I stared at him in amazement. Peters’ face perceptibly reddened and there was a moment of embarrassed silence.

Then Jud Peters asked in a soft voice. “You think one-twentieth of your fortune was a fair purchase price for my son, Mr. Mathewson?”

Tom blinked at him, opened his mouth, then closed it again. Finally he said. “You’ve twisted my meaning, Peters. Let’s drop the subject.”

But Jud Peters was staring at Mathewson in an entirely new way, as though he had just at that moment begun to understand the man. And his expression told me he realized, as I suddenly realized also, that he had not twisted Mathewson’s meaning. A fair purchase price was exactly the way Tom Mathewson looked at it and he felt that he and Jud Peters were quits.

As though terminating an interview, Peters turned to the bartender and said quietly, “I’ll have another beer, please.”

The rest of that weekend was singularly uneventful. By late Saturday afternoon we had finished the legal matter which was the basis for my invitation and were free to enjoy what entertainments were available.

I never quite understood what fascination hunting held for Tom Mathewson, for he was not what you would call an “outdoor man.” I suspect there was a streak of sadism in him, and he took his pleasure more from killing than from enjoyment of the sport. But whatever the attraction, during duck season it was hard to get him out of the sunken-barrel duck blind in the center of his lake. He would have his combination caretaker-and-handyman row him out to the blind, leave him, and return to shore, where the handyman would conceal himself in the weeds with a retriever, within shouting distance of Tom.

There was not room in the blind tor two, even had I cared to shoot duck, and in his typically considerate manner Tom simply left me to shill for myself.

The young lady he was contemplating making his ninth wife was staying at the lodge, but while she was beautiful, I did not find her conversation stimulating. She spent most of her time in the cocktail lounge, playing innumerable records on the radio-phonograph and sipping drinks prepared by Tom’s valet, who donned a white coat and dubbed as bartender when required.

By Sunday afternoon I was so desperately bored that I decided to take a hike.

I did not realize the farmhouse where I stopped for a drink of water was the Peters place until I saw Jud Peters through a basement window. The lane approached the house from one side, and I was just stepping onto the gravel walk which led alongside the house when I glanced at an open basement window at the corner and received the shocking impression I was going to be shot by a rifle.

After my initial leap of panic I saw that the rifle was clamped in a workbench vise, and merely happened to be pointing upward directly at me. Jud Peters seemed to be doing something to the stock.

He looked up in time to see my startled expression, and grinned. “Afternoon. Mr. Chalmers. I’m not aiming this at you. You’re aiming yourself at it.”

And twisting the handle of the vise, he released the rifle and stood the weapon out of sight.

“Be right out,” he told me.

And that’s all there really is to the background. I got my drink of water, had a few minutes chat with Jud Peters, and went on my way. That evening I returned to New York, and two days later Tom Mathewson was struck by a spent bullet while seated in his duck blind. There seemed to be no question in the coroner’s mind about it being an accident, since from the angle of impact and the depth of penetration, it was possible to deduce that the bullet had come from a hunting rifle several miles away.

When Chalmers stopped, I said, “How do you make a murder out of all that?”

“I didn’t until this morning,” he said. “But now it occurs to me Jud Peters was not only an artilleryman, but a communications sergeant. About a hundred yards from Tom’s private lake is a densely-wooded knoll and on top of it I recall spotting a telephone pole. Now this is all assumption, you understand, but suppose that pole was the one that supported the telephone wires going to Jud Peters’ place, and suppose Jud cut in a phone to connect that knoll to his phone at home: Certainly if he had an old hand-set around, a communications sergeant could rig up a simple system like that. An observer—say, his wife—could stand on the knoll, completely hidden by foliage and report how many yards over, short, or to one side the splashes were each time Jud fired the rifle—the rifle I saw clamped in his vise and aimed in the direction of Mathewson’s lake.”

I could not help grinning. “No wonder you hesitated about going to the police. On that mass of assumptions, and entirely lacking evidence, you couldn’t even get them to listen to you. What put such a fantastic idea in your head?”

“This morning’s mail,” Chalmers said. “First, there was a letter from a Catskill accounting firm enclosing an audit of Jud Peters’ total resources. Including an estimated value on the farm, it came to exactly $63,000. In a separate envelope there was a check from Jud Peters for $3150 made out to the estate of Thomas Mathewson III.”

I looked blank. “For what?”

“It was marked. For value received. Take one-twentieth of $63,000 and see what you get.”

MUGGER MURDER

Originally published in Manhunt, April 1953.

I was surprised to see Sergeant Nels Parker in the Coroner’s Court audience, for homicide detectives spend too much of their time there on official business to develop any morbid curiosity about cases not assigned to them. I was in the audience myself, of course, but as a police reporter this was my regular beat on Friday mornings, and after five years of similar Friday mornings, nothing but the continued necessity of making a living could have gotten me within miles of the place.

When I spotted him two rows ahead of me, I moved up and slid into the vacant seat next to him.

“Busman’s holiday, Sergeant?” I asked.

His long face turned and he cocked one dull eye at me. For so many years Nels had practiced looking dull in order to throw homicide witnesses off guard, the expression had become habitual.

“How are you, Sam?” he said.

“You haven’t got a case today, have you?” I persisted.

His head gave a small shake and he turned his eyes front again. Since he seemed to have no desire to explain his presence, I let the matter drop. But as the only inquest scheduled was on the body of a Joseph Garcia, age twenty-one and of no known address, I at least knew what case interested him.

The first witness was a patrolman named Donald Lutz, a thick bodied and round faced young fellow who looked as though he, like the dead man, was no more than twenty-one.

In response to the deputy coroner’s request to describe the circumstances of Joseph Garcia’s death as he knew them, the youthful patrolman said, “Well, it was Wednesday… night before last… about eleven thirty, and I was walking my beat along Broadway just south of Market. As I passed this alley mouth, I heard a scuffling sound in the alley and flashed my light down it. I saw these two guys struggling, one with a hammerlock on the other guy’s head, and just as my light touched them, the guy with the hammerlock gave a hard twist, the other guy went sort of limp, and the first guy let him drop to the alley floor. I moved in with my night stick ready, but the guy stood still and made no move either to run or come at me. He just stood there with his hands at his sides and said, ‘Officer, this man tried to rob me.’

“I told him to stand back, and knelt to look at the man lying down. Near as I could tell, he was dead, but in the dark with just a flashlight I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to take a chance on him waking up and running away while I went to the nearest call box. So I stayed right there and used my stick on the concrete to bring the cop from the next beat. That was Patrolman George Mason.

“Mason went to call for a patrol car and a doctor while I stayed with the two guys. That’s about all I know about things except when the doctor got there, he said the guy lying down was dead.”

The deputy coroner said, “And the dead man was later identified as Joseph Garcia?”

Patrolman Lutz nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And the man Garcia was struggling with. Will you identify him, please?”

The policeman pointed his finger at a short, plump man of about fifty seated in a chair apart from the audience and within a few feet of where the jury was lined up along the left wall. He was a quietly dressed man with a bland, faintly vacuous smile and an appearance of softness about him until you examined him closely. Then you suspected that a good deal of his plumpness was muscle rather than fat, and you noticed his shoulders were unnaturally wide.

“That’s him there,” the young patrolman said. “Robert Hummel.”

Just in front of the platform containing the deputy coroner’s bench was a long table, one end pointing toward the platform and the other end toward the audience. On the right side of this table, seated side-wise to it with his back to the audience, sat the assistant circuit attorney in charge of the case. On its left side sat Marcus Prout, one of St. Louis’s most prominent criminal lawyers.

Now the assistant C.A. said, “Patrolman Lutz, I understand Robert Hummel had in his possession a .38 caliber pistol at the time of the incident you just described. Is that right?”

“Well, not exactly in his possession, sir. It was lying in the alley nearby, where he’d dropped it. It turned out he had a permit to carry it.”

Marcus Prout put in, “Officer, was there any other weapon in sight?”

“Yes, sir. An open clasp knife lay in the alley. This was later established as belonging to the deceased. Robert Hummel claimed Garcia drew it on him, he in turn drew his gun to defend himself, and ordered the deceased to drop the knife. However, the deceased continued to come at him. Hummel said he didn’t want to shoot the man, so he used the gun to knock the knife from Garcia’s hand, then dropped the gun and grappled with him.”

The lawyer asked, “Was there any mark on the deceased’s wrist to support that statement?”

“The post mortem report notes a bruise,” the deputy coroner interrupted, and glanced over at the jury.

Marcus Prout rose from his chair and strolled toward the patrolman. “Officer, did the deceased… this Joseph Garcia… have a police record?”

“Yes, sir. One arrest and a suspended sentence for mugging.”

“Mugging is a slang term for robbery with force, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Generally without a weapon. You get a guy around the neck from behind and go through his pockets with your free hand. There’s other methods classified as mugging, but that’s the way Garcia did it the time he was convicted.”

The lawyer said, “Did you draw any inference from the fact that Robert Hummel, with a gun against a knife, used the gun merely to disarm his opponent and then grappled with him with his bare hands?”

The policeman said, “I don’t exactly know what you mean.”

“I mean, did it not occur to you as obvious Robert Hummel’s statement that he did not wish to shoot his opponent was true, and that he went out of his way to avoid seriously injuring Garcia, when under the circumstances he would have been fully justified in shooting the man through the heart? And that Garcia’s subsequent death in spite of Mr. Hummel’s precaution must have been an accident resulting from Robert Hummel exerting more strength than he intended in the excitement of the moment?”

This leading question would have been stricken from the record in a regular court, of course, for not only was it deliberately slanted at the jury rather than to the witness, it asked for an opinion on a matter of which the witness could not possibly have had actual knowledge. But in Coroner’s Court the legal formalities of a court of law are almost entirely lacking inasmuch as no one is on trial for anything, the jury’s sole duty being to determine how the deceased met death. I was therefore not surprised when neither the assistant circuit attorney nor the deputy coroner made any objection to the question.

Patrolman Lutz said he had not thought about the matter, which seemed to satisfy Marcus Prout, as he had asked the question only to implant it in the jury’s mind anyway. The lawyer went back to his seat.

When the deputy coroner asked if there were any more questions, both Prout and the assistant C.A. shook their heads. The patrolman was dismissed and Norman Paisley was called as a witness.

Norman Paisley was a thin, dried up man of middle age who looked like a school janitor. To the deputy coroner’s first question he gave his address as a rooming house on South Broadway two blocks south of Market.

“Were you a customer at Stoyle’s Tavern on Sixth near Olive this past Wednesday night?” the deputy coroner asked.

“Yes, sir. All evening from seven till they closed at one thirty.”

“Did you know the deceased Joseph Garcia?”

“To talk to, yes, sir. I used to run into him at Stoyle’s Tavern off and on. I didn’t know where he lived or what he did, or nothing like that, though.”

“I see. Was the deceased a customer at Stoyle’s that night?”

“Yes, sir. He come in several times during the evening. I guess he was bar cruising all up and down Sixth Street.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes, sir.”

The deputy coroner said, “Do you recognize any other person now present as a customer at Stoyle’s the night before last?”

Norman Paisley pointed at Robert Hummel. “Him. He come in about a quarter of eleven and left at eleven fifteen. I noticed him particular because he bought the house a couple of drinks.”

The assistant C.A. cut in. “Was Joseph Garcia present during this period?”

“Yes, sir. He even remarked about it. When Mr. Hummel bought a drink, Joe said to me, ‘That damn fool must be made of money. He just bought the house a drink at a place I was in up the street.’”

Marcus Prout asked, “Did you get the impression Garcia was following Hummel?”

“No, sir. Joe come in first, as a matter of fact, and Mr. Hummel come in right after him.”

The lawyer looked surprised. He started to ask another question, changed his mind and waved his hand dismissingly. The assistant C.A. stepped into the breach.

“Mr. Paisley, did you get the impression the deceased was particularly interested in Robert Hummel?”

“Not right at first. But when Hummel bought the second drink, he happened to be standing close to Joe at the bar, and when he opened his wallet to pay, Joe looked kind of startled. I was standing the other side of Joe, but even from there I could see there was a lot of bills in it. After that Joe couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off Hummel.”

Marcus Prout spoke again. “When Hummel finally left the bar, did Garcia follow him?”

“Yes, sir. He went right out after him.”

The assistant C.A. said, “Did you get the impression Garcia left because Hummel did? That is, that the deceased was actually following Mr. Hummel? Or that he just happened to leave about the same time?”

“Why, I don’t know,” Paisley said. “I never thought about it at the time. I guess Joe must of followed him out figuring to roll him.”

Marcus Prout smiled at this answer and the assistant C.A. grunted. When both indicated they had no further questions, the witness was dismissed.

Shuffling the papers in front of him, the deputy coroner located the post mortem report, cleared his throat and said, “The autopsy shows death by suffocation due to a crushed larynx.”

Following this announcement, he rose from his bench, advanced to the edge of the platform and asked in a loud voice, “Are any relatives of the deceased present?”

When there was no reply to this routine question, he turned to the jury and signified they were to go out.

While the six man jury was out, I tried to figure what Nels Parker’s interest in the case could be. On the surface it was simply a case of a mugger being killed in self-defense by his intended victim, and the inquest was obviously a routine affair designed to clear the intended victim of any blame. The slant of the questions, not only of Robert Mummer’s lawyer, but those of the assistant circuit attorney and the deputy coroner as well, indicated no one expected or wanted any verdict other than justifiable homicide.

I had no time to question Nels about it though, for the jury was out only thirty seconds. When it filed back in, the foreman read the verdict I expected: justifiable homicide.

Ordinarily, beyond noting down his name, age and address for my news item, I would have paid no further attention to the man who had just been cleared of homicide, for he was not a particularly impressive person. Nels Parker’s unexplained interest in the case intrigued me though, and noting the sergeant continued to linger in the courtroom until Robert Hummel finished shaking hands with his lawyer and finally moved toward the door, I lingered beside him.

When Robert Hummel was erect, you were less conscious of his unusually broad shoulders and the muscle underlying his fat than you were when he was seated. He looked like a well fed businessman who had reached the age when he ought to start watching his blood pressure. He also looked like the last person in the world you would expect to resist a professional mugger so successfully and so violently that the mugger ended up dead.

As the man passed from the courtroom, Nels continued to watch his back through the open door until he reached the stairs at the end of the hall and started down. Then the sergeant gave his head a slight shake and moved toward the stairs himself.

Falling in beside him, I said, “Buy you a drink, Sergeant?”

His dull eyes flicked at me. “One beer maybe. I got to get back to Homicide.”

The nearest tavern to the Coroner’s Court Building was a half block west. I waited until we were standing at the bar with a pair of draft beers in front of us before I asked any questions.

Then I said, “A story hidden here somewhere, Sergeant?”

He shook his head, tapped his glass once on the bar to indicate luck and sipped at his beer. “No story, Sam.”

“Not even off the record?”

“Just a pipe dream I had, Sam. You couldn’t print it without risking a libel suit.”

“Then I won’t print it. But I got curiosity. Whose case was this Garcia’s? On Homicide, I mean.”

“Corporal Brady,” Nels said. “He wasn’t there because the thing was so routine, all they needed was the beat cop’s testimony. Probably I ought to have my head examined for wasting my time on a case I wasn’t even assigned to.”

When he lapsed into silence I asked, “What’s the story?”

He drank half his beer before he answered. Then he said, “I was just interested because this guy Hummel killed a guy once before.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Almost the same circumstances too,” the sergeant said. “A mugger down along Commercial Alley. Only that time the guy’s larynx wasn’t crushed. Hummel just choked him to death.”

“Judas Priest!” I said. “Was there an inquest?”

Nels nodded. “Routine. Happened about twelve years ago. There’s no doubt it was on the up and up. The mugger had a record as long as your arm and it was pretty well established Hummel never saw the guy before he was suddenly waylaid by him. Apparently the mugger had been loitering in a doorway for some time waiting for a likely victim to pass, for they turned up a witness placing him there a full hour before he tangled with Hummel. Picking Hummel was pure accident, and the mugger was just unlucky to jump a guy who looked soft, but turned out to have the strength of a gorilla.” The sergeant paused, then added reflectively, “There wasn’t any of this flashing a roll in dives then.” His tone as he made the last statement struck me as odd.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

But the sergeant ignored my question. “Hummel didn’t carry a gun then either. Matter of fact, it was as a result of the incident that he applied for a permit. He didn’t have trouble getting one because he’s an antique and rare coin buyer and carries large amounts of cash.”

“You’ve been doing some detailed checking on the man.” I remarked.

“Yeah. But it doesn’t add up.”

I eyed him narrowly for a moment, then signaled the bartender for two more beers. I said, “Now give me the pipe dream.”

“Pipe dream?” he asked.

“You mentioned your interest in the case was a kind of pipe dream. You think there’s some connection between the two cases?”

Nels took a sip of his fresh beer and shook his head. “I’m sure there isn’t. Not between the two muggers anyway. Maybe a kind of psychological connection.”

“What docs that mean?”

“Well,” the sergeant said slowly, “I figure the case twelve years ago was just what it seemed to be. A guy unexpectedly jumped Hummel, and Hummel killed him defending himself. So was the case today, I guess. With a slight difference. Maybe this time Hummel killed deliberately when he was jumped.”

“You mean he deliberately lured Garcia into attacking him?”

“Think back over the testimony,” Nels said. “Remember how surprised the great lawyer looked when the witness said Hummel had followed Joe in?”

“There was even something about Garcia remarking he had run into Hummel in another tavern. But why? What would be Hummel’s motive?”

Nels was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “I checked back over unsolved homicides for the past twelve years, and seven of them were guys with records as muggers. They were found dead in alleys, some strangled, some broken necks.”

“My God!” I said.

“That makes nine he could have killed.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak. “But why, for God’s sake?”

Without inflection Nels said, “Twelve years ago I imagine Robert Hummel was just a normal guy. Or at least I imagine any abnormal urges he had were merely latent. Then he killed in self-defense. My pipe dream is that maybe he discovered he enjoyed it. You’ve heard of psychopathic killers.”

“But… but…” I stuttered.

“But what? A guy flashes a roll in dives. There any law to stop him? A mugger tails him for an easy roll. The guy kills the mugger, and if nobody sees it, he just walks away. If he gets caught in the act, he merely tells the truth and the law gives him a pat on the back for defending himself against attack by a criminal. It’s a psychopath’s dream. He’s figured a way to kill legally.”

“But…” I whispered. “But… he couldn’t possibly again…”

“The law says you can use whatever force is necessary to resist attack on your person or property. If you use more than necessary, theoretically you’re guilty of manslaughter. In the case of a farmer shooting a kid stealing watermelons, we can prove unnecessary force, but how do you prove it in a case like today’s? And even if we established beyond reasonable doubt that Hummel deliberately enticed a robbery attempt… which we couldn’t do without a confession, no matter what we suspect… he still has a legal right to defend himself.”

“You mean you intend to do nothing about a homicidal maniac?”

“Sure,” Nels said calmly. “Next time we’ll put a white light in his face and hammer questions at him until Marcus Prout walks in with a writ of habeas corpus. But unless we get a confession that he used more force than necessary to protect himself, he’s safe even if he kills a man every week.”

He laughed without any humor whatever, “Beyond picking him up and questioning him every time he kills, there isn’t one damned thing in the world we can do to stop him.”

STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE

Originally published in Detective Tales, June 1953.

CHAPTER ONE

Harry Nolan slipped his key into the Yale lock, looked surprised when it failed to turn, and raised his eyes to the brass numerals over the door. The numerals were one, three and four, just as they had been when he left for work that morning.

Withdrawing the key, he examined it puzzledly, then tried to fit it into the lock upside down. It refused to enter.

Once more he tried it the right way, but when he had no more success than before, withdrew it and dropped it back in his pocket.

The lock must be broken, he thought, trying to decide what to do about it. He left the shop at four-thirty, while Helen, his wife, worked until five, so it was unlikely she was already home, but he rang the bell on the off-chance she had left work early.

To his surprise, the door was opened by a slim, red-haired woman he had never before seen.

An unprejudiced male would have considered the redhead beautiful, or at the very least pretty. But Harry was in the habit of unconsciously appraising every woman he met by the standard of Helen’s fresh sparkle. It took more than surface beauty to match that sparkle; you had to be clean and fresh inside, in love, and sure you were loved in turn. By beauty contest standards the redhead would have surpassed Helen, but all Harry saw was her brittle hardness.

When she looked at him inquiringly, Harry said, with mild bewilderment, “For some reason my key won’t fit. Is Helen home?”

The woman looked puzzled.

“I’m Harry Nolan,” he explained. “Helen’s husband.”

“Helen?” the woman said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. There’s no Helen Nolan here.”

A man outside Harry’s range of vision called, “Who is it, honey?”

The redhead called back, “Some man looking for his wife, Kurt. Do we know a Helen Nolan?”

Harry began to grow angry. Who these strangers in his apartment were, he had no idea, but he had no intention of continuing to stand in the hall outside of his own home. He started to push by the woman, then stopped in confusion.

The front room was not that of his apartment. Not only were its furnishings entirely different, but the wallpaper was a flowered pink instead of a vertically striped green.

A tall, dark-skinned man seated on the sofa looked up at Harry with a frown, folded the paper he was reading and rose to his feet.

Harry stammered, “I’m…I’m sorry. I thought this was my apartment.”

As he backed through the door, the man crossed to stand next to the woman. He continued to frown at Harry, and now the woman was frowning too. Finally the dark-skinned man shrugged and pushed the door closed in Harry’s face.

Once again Harry looked at the numbers over the door. They still read one, three and four. Checking the doors to either side, he found they were 132 and 136, just as they should have been. Immediately across the hall, as usual, was apartment 135.

Just as his bewilderment started to become tinged with an element of panic, Harry saw the light. He was simply in the wrong building; an understandable error, inasmuch as he and Helen had moved in only a week ago and their apartment house was one of three identical buildings in the same block.

With a relieved but rather embarrassed chuckle at himself. Harry went down the stairs, passed through the front door and studied the gilded number embossed on the glass of the door. Panic jumped within him again when he saw it was 102.

Glancing left, then right, he saw identically solid, red brick apartment houses rising five stories either side of him. Wildly, he turned to study the opposite side of the street. At one end of the block was the same gas station which had been there that morning, at the other end the same drug store. And between them were the same brownstone-front houses which had once been upper middle-class homes, but now were boarding houses.

Harry felt his sanity slipping. Grasping at a straw, he ran to the corner and peered up at the L-shaped street sign. His throat contracted when the sign verified that the corner was Carlton and Fourth.

“Whoa, boy!” Harry told himself. “Let’s pull ourselves together.”

With forced calmness he marshaled facts to convince himself he was not going mad. Last Saturday he and Helen had moved into apartment 134 at 102 Carlton Avenue. It was now Friday, which meant five times he had left apartment 134 at 102 Carlton Avenue to go to work in the morning, and five times had returned after work in the afternoon…

He dismissed the possibility that he had left from and returned to either 100 Carlton or 104 Carlton, for not only was he certain of the address, he was certain it was the center apartment house. With equal certainty he discarded the possibility that his apartment was 34, 234, 334, or anything but 134. Since he always climbed a single flight of stairs to reach it, it had to be 134.

Glancing at his watch, he saw it was five-fifteen, too late to catch Helen by phone before she left work. Since she would be getting off a bus right where he was standing within another ten minutes, Harry decided to wait for her. The thought that they could tackle the problem together reduced his panic to mere worry.

When Helen failed to alight from the five twenty-five bus, Harry was disappointed. When she was not on the five forty-five, he began to experience unease.

When the five fifty-five passed without even slowing down, a cold chill crept along his spine.

Forcing himself to at least surface calmness, he crossed the street to the gas station, located a pay phone on the wall, and then discovered he had no change in his pockets. He extracted a dollar bill from his wallet—and found that he was all alone.

The station’s single attendant was outside gassing a car. Under the stress of his increasing nervousness, it seemed to Harry the man deliberately moved in slow motion when he finally hung up the hose and began wiping the windshield, though actually he was kept waiting no longer than a minute and a half.

When the attendant finally entered the station, Harry thrust the dollar bill at him and asked for change to include some dimes. To his slight annoyance the attendant gave him ten dimes.

Catching his expression, the man said, “Didn’t you want to play the machine?” For a moment Harry was puzzled, but then he noted the dime slot machine in one corner of the room. In Wright City you found slot machines everywhere: in filling stations, drug stores and even in barber shops. And of course in every tavern.

“Phone.” Harry said briefly.

Fishing from his wallet the slip of paper on which Helen had written the unlisted phone number of her boss, he dropped a dime and dialed the number. It rang several times before a woman’s voice answered, “Hello.” It was not Helen’s voice.

“Is this Mr. Dale Thompson’s office?” Harry asked.

“Yes. His home and his office.” The woman’s voice had a dulled edge, as though she had been crying.

“This is Harry Nolan. Is my wife still there?”

“Who?” the woman asked.

“Helen Nolan. Mr. Thompson’s secretary.”

For a moment there was silence. Then the woman said in a puzzled tone, “I’m afraid I don’t understand. You are speaking to Mr. Thompson’s secretary. My name is Miss Wentworth.”

For a long time the constriction in Harry’s throat refused to let him speak. Finally he got out, “May I speak to Mr. Thompson, please?”

On the other end of the wire there was a silence nearly as long. Then in a muffled tone the woman said, “I’m sorry. Dale…Mr. Thompson had a heart attack this morning. He died at Mercy Hospital at eleven o’clock.”

The shock of it flooded over Harry like an icy stream. Not because of any particular feeling for Thompson, for he had never even met the news columnist. But the announcement of his death was like a closing door to Harry, an abrupt curing off of an avenue of escape from what was gradually assuming the proportions of a nightmare.

He managed to stammer, “I’m awfully sorry to hear that, Miss Wentworth. But you must know my wife, Helen. She has been Mr. Thompson’s secretary for the past two weeks.”

“I’m afraid I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” the woman said with a note of finality. “I’ve been Mr. Thompson’s secretary for more than a year. And under the circumstances, I am hardly in a mood for practical jokes.”

She hung up.

In a daze Harry left the station, crossed the street and entered the building at 102 Carlton for a second time. Resolutely he climbed the stairs, paused in front of apartment 134 and took the Yale key from his pocket.

Nothing in the past hour has really happened, he told himself. I’ve been suffering some kind of mental hallucination. Now I will put the key in the lock, open the door and find Helen with dinner ready, beginning to worry about where I have been.

Sliding the key into the lock, he twisted it so hard it bent slightly. But it would not turn.

He dropped it back in his pocket and rang the bell. The same red-headed woman appeared. When she saw him, she frowned in surprised annoyance, but then she noted the strained paleness of his face and withdrew a step in alarm.

“Pardon me,” Harry said in an even tone. “Would you mind telling me how long you’ve lived in this apartment?”

“Why…why going on four months. Why?”

“Thank you,” Harry said, and walked away.

* * *

The night desk sergeant said, nothing for a few moments after Harry finished talking.

Then he said, “You left out one part.”

When Harry only looked puzzled, the desk sergeant said, “The tavern you stopped in on the way home.”

Panic was gripping Harry too tightly for there to be any room in his emotional system for anger. He said patiently, “I haven’t even had a beer in two days. And it wasn’t just the wrong apartment, because I went back to check a second time. Even if it was the wrong place, there’s no explanation for this Miss Wentworth where Helen worked never even hearing of her.”

The desk sergeant drummed his fingers, finally shrugged and said in a tone indicating he was merely humoring a taxpayer, “I’ll let you talk to somebody in the Detective Bureau.”

Lifting his phone, he pushed one of a bank of buttons on its base and asked for a Sergeant Murphree.

“I’ve got an odd one for you, Joe,” he said. “A guy’s lost his wife, but it’s not just a missing person deal. He claims a whole furnished apartment disappeared along with her.”

After a pause he said, “You can get it from the guy. I’ll send him up.”

“Take the elevator to the fourth floor,” he told Harry, after hanging up. “Go left two doors and you’ll find one marked Detective Bureau. Ask for Sergeant Murphree.”

Following directions, Harry reached the door labeled Detective Bureau just as it opened and a thin, cold-faced man stepped out into the hall.

Harry said, “Pardon me, I’m looking for Sergeant Murphree.”

The man glanced at him without interest. “Why?”

The abrupt question disconcerted Harry. “The man downstairs…” his voice stumbled. “On the desk, you know. He sent me.”

“To see me? Okay, shoot.”

“It’s a kind of long story, Sergeant,” Harry said hesitantly.

The sergeant looked pained. Rather grudgingly he said, “My office is next door,” and moved toward it.

Harry followed, his throat experiencing the now familiar constriction when he saw the door they were entering was labeled Homicide Squad. For the first time it occurred to him Helen might be dead.

The room contained approximately a dozen desks arranged in three rows, like in a schoolroom. Only one in the far corner was occupied, and the man seated behind it laboriously typing with two fingers did not even glance up. Waving Harry to a seat next to a desk near the door, the detective sat behind the desk and said resignedly, “Shoot.”

Harry repeated the tale he had told the desk sergeant.

When he finished the detective asked, “What makes you think your wife is dead?”

The question not only startled Harry, it crystallized a host of vague suspicions into a terrible fear. “I…I don’t think that,” he said desperately. “She couldn’t be dead, could she?”

“How would I know?” the detective asked without feeling. “But if you don’t think she is, why did that damn fool on the desk send you to Homicide?”

Harry shook his head miserably. Then the door jerked open and a bull-necked man in plainclothes peered in at them.

“You the guy with the missing apartment?” he demanded of Harry.

Startled, Harry repeated, “Missing apartment? No…missing wife. I mean yes, both of them.”

The seated detective looked at the one in the doorway with unmistakable distaste. Then he looked back at Harry. With a note of exasperation in his voice, he said, “I been wasting my time listening to one of Murphree’s cases. I thought you said Murphy.”

“When did you learn to think?” the bull-necked man growled. “For ten minutes I been cooling my heels waiting for this guy.”

“Tough,” the thin man said with deliberate lack of sympathy. To Harry he said, “This guy is Sergeant Joe Murphree of the Detective Bureau. I’m Sergeant Don Murphy of Homicide. Next time get the mush out of your mouth.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry apologized stumblingly. “I thought… I mean, I didn’t know—”

“Come on next door,” the bull-necked Murphree interrupted irritably.

As they left the office Harry was surprised to see the two detectives exchange glances of profound dislike.

A few moments later Harry was repeating his story for the third time. And this time he was gratified to find he was not met with total skepticism. Not that Sergeant Joe Murphree gave the impression he instantly believed the incredible tale, but neither did he give any indication of disbelief. His questions satisfied Harry he at least was reserving judgment until he had done some investigating.

“You say you got married just a week ago?” Murphree asked. “What was your wife’s maiden name?”

“Helen Lawson.”

“Local girl?”

“No. From Des Moines. We both are. I’ve been here about six weeks, but she only arrived three weeks ago.”

“How’d you happen to move to Wright City?”

“The Ajax people were running a labor recruitment drive,” Harry explained. “They advertised in the Des Moines papers for fit-up men and I applied. They offered fifty cents an hour more than I was making for fit-up work in Des Moines, plus moving expenses, so I grabbed it. After I got settled, I sent for Helen.”

“And right away she got a job as secretary to this Dale Thompson?”

“Well, about a week after she arrived. The Midtown Employment Agency sent her to Mr. Thompson. She was a trained secretary, so she didn’t have to worry about getting some kind of a job after she moved here.”

“Where’d she stay until you got married?” the detective asked.

“I got her a room up the street from mine. Then we looked for an apartment together, and soon as we located one, we got married.”

“Let’s take a little ride,” Sergeant Murphree suggested.

Instead of using a squad car, they went in Murphree’s own automobile, which to Harry’s surprise turned out to be a sleek Mercury convertible. Somehow, the thought of a policeman riding around in a convertible instead of a plain black sedan struck Harry as odd.

The sergeant’s first remark after they climbed into the car struck him as odd, too. Glancing at his watch, Murphree announced it was nearly seven and time to eat.

“Eat?” Harry repeated. “Before we find Helen?”

The bull-necked detective said tolerantly, “Look, kid, according to your story, it’s two hours since you walked into your apartment and found everything different. Whatever it is happened to your wife, another half hour isn’t going to change things. But another half hour without food would change me. I work from four till midnight, and my suppertime is seven to seven-thirty.”

* * *

Murphree drove to a moderately expensive restaurant a few blocks from Headquarters where he ordered a complete meal. Though Harry had tasted nothing since noon, he was unable to eat. He ordered a cup of coffee.

In an agony of suspense Harry spent the next half hour watching the big detective leisurely consume his meal. The minute the man finally sipped the last of his coffee and lit a cigarette, Harry grabbed the check and raced for the cashier.

It did not occur to Harry until after they were back in the car that probably there was some regulation forbidding policemen to accept favors from complainants. However, the sergeant made no offer to repay Harry for his dinner, and since Helen was too much on Harry’s mind for him to bother over the expenditure of two and a half dollars, he dismissed the thought.

The red-headed woman and her dark-skinned husband still occupied apartment 134 when Harry and the sergeant arrived at 102 Carlton. After Murphree identified himself as a member of the Detective Bureau, he and Harry were grudgingly invited in.

The sergeant’s questioning revealed the couple were Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Arnold, that the redhead was a professional model and the man a bit actor in the theater. They claimed to have occupied the apartment for the past four months and to have slept there every night during that period except for one weekend they were out of town…and that weekend was nearly a month before Harry and his bride moved in.

“What’s this all about anyway?” the dark-skinned man asked.

“Nolan here is missing a wife,” the detective said vaguely. “Mind if we look around?”

Kurt Arnold and his wife obviously did mind, but they reluctantly gave permission. Puzzled, they followed Harry and the sergeant from room to room as they investigated the whole apartment.

There were only three rooms and a bath to investigate, and except for their layout Harry recognized nothing familiar in any of them. Even the wallpaper was different in every room. It was not until they had again returned to the front room that Harry suddenly recalled an item which might prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that this was the same apartment he had occupied for a week.

“The bathroom window,” he said abruptly. “A triangle about an inch across is missing from the left upper corner. You have to raise the shade all the way to see it.”

With all three of them behind him, he shade cord and allowed it to fly all the way strode back to the bathroom, pulled the up.

The upper window pane was intact.

Sergeant Joe Murphree made no comment as he and Harry Nolan left the apartment. He simply led the way downstairs and rang the manager’s bell.

The apartment manager Harry had never met, as Helen had been the one to locate the apartment and she had also delivered the first month’s rent. It therefore did not upset Harry to have the man look at him without recognition, but when he denied all knowledge of any tenants named Mr. and Mrs. Harry Nolan and verified the Arnold’s story of having occupied apartment 134 for the past four months, a feeling of hopelessness, settled over him.

Sergeant Murphree’s expression indicated he rapidly was losing his objective attitude.

CHAPTER TWO

Man Alone

Using the manager’s phone, the sergeant checked Mercy Hospital and learned news columnist Dale Thompson had indeed died of a coronary attack at eleven that morning. He then drove Harry over to the Newbold Arms, where the bachelor columnist had lived alone in a seven-room penthouse which comprised both his home and his office. Though it was by now after eight in the evening, they found the woman Harry had talked to over the phone still there.

Dorothy Wentworth was a tall, efficient-looking brunette. In answer to the detective’s question she explained she did not live in the penthouse and ordinarily would not have been there after five, but because Thompson’s nearest relatives lived in California, there was no one else to take the numerous calls which were coming in as the result of his unexpected death. Dale Thompson had been mildly famous, and already she had received calls from the governor, the mayor, two congressmen and fifteen or twenty other notables who phoned to express condolences. During the ten minutes they spent at the penthouse, two more long distance calls came from friends who had heard the news over the radio.

Dorothy Wentworth could shed no light whatever on the mystery of Helen’s disappearance. She said she had been Dale Thompson’s secretary for more than a year, had never missed a day’s work, and was positive no woman aside from herself had done any secretarial work for the columnist during that period.

On the way down in the elevator Sergeant Murphree said, “Let’s see that paper you mentioned with Thompson’s telephone number on it.”

Digging into his wallet, Harry handed over the paper on which Helen had written the number. After studying it a moment, the detective thrust it into his own wallet.

He asked, “Can you say for certain your wife ever worked for this guy? You ever visit her here during office hours, or call the unlisted number before today?”

Miserably Harry shook his head. “But why would she pretend to have a job she didn’t have? What would be the point?” The elevator emitted them at the ground floor. When they got off, the detective paused for a moment and regarded Harry dubiously.

“Your wife talk much about her work with Thompson?”

“Not about her work,” Harry said. “About him some. She said he was a nice guy to work for. But he made it clear to her before she got the job that he wouldn’t stand for any leaks whatever from his office. He said that until after it was published, she wasn’t to discuss anything at all scheduled to appear in his column, even with me. So she never talked about the stuff she had to type up.”

Murphree said ruminatively, “Maybe that was to cover up that she wasn’t really forking for him at all.”

“That’s just silly,” Harry protested, but in the face of Miss Wentworth’s evidence, he was conscious that his voice lacked conviction.

For the first time it occurred to him Helen might have deliberately disappeared, and the thought upset him nearly as much as when he had faced the possibility that she might be dead.

“Where’s this rooming house where she stayed before you got married?” Murphree asked.

The rooming house was at Second and Clark. Harry experienced a sinking feeling when the woman who came to the door was not Mrs. Swovboda, who had been landlady when Helen moved out.

He inquired tentatively, “Is Mrs. Swovboda in?”

The woman, a plump, matronly person of middle age, said. “Mrs. Swovboda moved to Florida a week ago, after I bought her out.”

Sergeant Murphree showed his badge. “You run this place now, lady?”

“Yes, sir, Mrs. Johansen is the name, Sergeant.”

“You got a register of former guests?”

“Yes, sir. Come in please, and I’ll get it.” She showed them into the same plain but comfortably furnished living room where Harry had sat nearly a month ago when he was arranging a room for Helen. From the top drawer of an old-fashioned desk she took the black loose-leafed notebook in which Harry had entered Helen’s name, and in which behind the entry Mrs. Swovboda had written the date and $10.00 paid.

Watching over the sergeant’s shoulder as the man slowly turned the pages, Harry was not surprised to learn the entry was no longer there.

Handing the notebook back to Mrs. Johansen, the detective asked without much interest, “Any of your roomers in?”

Before the woman could reply, Harry said in a tired voice, “None of them knew her. Hers was the side room with the separate entrance. When she moved out I remember her remarking that in the two weeks she was here, she never even glimpsed any of the other tenants.”

Without looking at Harry, the detective moved toward the door. Just before passing through it, he thanked the landlady rather gruffly, glanced once at Harry in a set-jawed manner and looked away again.

Outside, he climbed behind the wheel of the convertible, waited until Harry was next to him, and then said grimly, “We’ll make one more check.”

Driving a block and a half along Clark, he stopped in front of Harry’s old rooming house. With no hope whatever Harry followed him up the front steps.

He was so surprised when the door was opened by his old landlady, Mrs. Weston, he very nearly grabbed the woman and kissed her. Under ordinary circumstances such a thought would have nauseated him, for not only had he vaguely disliked Mrs. Weston when he roomed at her house, she was sixty, fat and had a mustache. At the moment, however, she looked beautiful to Harry, for at last he could show Sergeant Joe Murphree someone who had actually met Helen and could vouch for her existence.

The woman frowned at Harry and asked, “What’s the matter? Lose your key?”

The question took him aback, but he tabled it for the moment in order to introduce Sergeant Murphree. “Tell the sergeant about Helen, Mrs. Weston,” he said eagerly. “You remember. The girl I brought here once and told you I was going to marry.”

“Helen?” the woman asked in a doubtful tone. “Did you bring a Helen here?” To the sergeant she said, “I got twelve young men, and they’re always bringing their girls around for me to meet. Makes it hard to remember.”

“Yeah,” the bull-necked detective said disgustedly. “This guy lived here until a week ago, did he?”

Mrs. Weston looked surprised. “Until a week ago? He still does.”

Harry gazed at her with his mouth open. Sergeant Murphree glared at him, then asked Mrs. Weston in a stiff voice, “Mind if I look around his room for a minute?”

The landlady looked him over doubtfully, frowned at Harry and then apparently decided to cooperate with the police without asking questions. She led them up a flight of stairs to Harry’s old room. Harry gazed at the blank door in dread, almost knowing in advance what was on the other side.

“Gimme that key you claimed was to the apartment,” Sergeant Murphree said, holding out his hand.

Numbly, Harry handed it over. It slipped into the lock easily, and when the sergeant turned it, the door opened. Sergeant Murphree stepped aside, laid his hand on Harry’s shoulder and gently propelled him into the room first.

Harry felt no shock at what he saw, for by now his nerves were anesthetized to shock. A numbness almost approaching indifference had replaced his emotions, and he felt nothing whatever when he saw his own books on the table by the window, his alarm clock and table model radio on the bedside stand, and through the open door of the closet a rack containing his own neckties.

The thought flickered across his mind that somehow he had slipped back in time. In science-fiction stories he had read of “time faults” through which a person could accidently slip and find himself suddenly either in the future or the past. He had never heard of such a thing actually happening, and had never regarded time faults as anything but the stuff of fantasy, but how else could he explain what had happened? Perhaps Helen was still safe in Des Moines and they were not even married yet.”

He turned to look into Sergeant Murphree’s face, finding nothing there but the resigned bitterness of a cop who is long inured to spending much of his time chasing wild geese.

He asked eagerly, “What’s the date today?”

The expression on the sergeant’s face caused his eagerness to die. The man thinks I’m mad, he thought.

At the same time a matter occurred to him which shattered the time fault theory to dust. Dale Thompson had died that morning, which automatically proved he had not slipped back a few weeks in time, for once dead, the man could hardly come alive again weeks later and hire Helen as his secretary.

I am mad, he thought with an odd sense of relief. I haven’t lost Helen because I never had her. I imagined her arrival in Wright City, the apartment, our marriage, everything.

With the detached sense of standing to one side and hearing another person speak, he heard himself saying, “I guess it was all a mistake, Sergeant. Sorry to have troubled you.”

The detective’s face had flushed a dark red. He growled, “What you need is a little psychiatric treatment, Bub. You bring another wild story to Headquarters and you’ll find yourself in the observation ward at City Hospital!”

He strode out of the room and clumped down the stairs without even saying good-by to Mrs. Weston. The landlady regarded Harry strangely for a moment.

“What’s this all about, Mr. Nolan?” she asked finally. “You in some kind of trouble with the police?”

Harry shook his head at her.

“Well, I wouldn’t want a roomer in trouble with the police,” she said. “I’ll have to ask for your room if there’s any more of this kind of goings on.”

Harry merely gave her a trancelike nod. After the woman left, closing the door behind her, he stood in the center of the room for a long time without moving.

Finally, for want of anything else to do, he undressed and went to bed.

Though he almost immediately fell into an exhausted sleep, Harry did not spend a restful night. A recurrent nightmare of chasing Helen along labyrinthine corridors while Sergeant Joe Murphree held him back by the coat tails and Mrs. Weston stood on the sidelines laughing uproariously, awoke him time after time.

His periods of wakefulness were more restful than what sleep he got, for then he could lie still with a deliberately blanked mind and think of nothing. Sleep was merely a half-conscious coma in which agonized fears rose, from his subconscious to torment him.

At seven in the morning he abruptly awoke from a dream in which Helen, for the hundredth time, had just disappeared down a dim side corridor. Physically he was as exhausted as when he had fallen into bed, but he was startled to find his mental processes suddenly clear.

Last night he had gone to bed convinced he was mad, that his marriage to Helen, their week together in the apartment had been figments of a diseased imagination. This morning he knew with stark clarity he was as sane as any man ever was. And with equal clarity he knew that whatever persons or whatever supernatural forces, had created this incredible situation, Helen either was dead or in horrible danger.

While the thought caused a recurrence of all the terrors the numb conviction he was mad had deadened, it also brought relief of another sort. Aside from the natural relief of knowing he was not mentally diseased, for the first time, he faced squarely the problem of Helen’s danger and found the courage to fight it.

He started the fight by mentally going over everything that had happened from the moment his key refused to open the apartment door until his trancelike entry into the room where he now lay. Every action of his own, every word spoken by others, he reviewed in detail in an attempt to find some small point he could grip as a start toward an explanation.

He found two, but they floated into his mind so unobtrusively, it was some moments before he realized their significance. But when he finally did, he leaped from bed in excitement.

The first detail was small, and by itself probably would have escaped his attention.

It consisted merely of his recollection that Mrs. Johansen, the new landlady at the rooming house where Helen had stayed, had addressed the detective as “Sergeant,” although he had offered no introduction other than his badge. How had she known his rank, when she gave no indication that she had ever seen him before?

It was the second detail which filled him with overwhelming excitement. From Mrs. Johansen’s Sergeant Joe Murphree had driven straight to Mrs. Weston’s.

But he had not asked the address, and at no point during the supposed investigation had Harry given it to him.

* * *

Sergeant Don Murphy was not pleased to see Harry.

“I start work at four p.m.,” he said inhospitably. “You’ll find cops on duty at Headquarters.”

“Just any cop won’t do,” Harry told him. “I thought maybe you’d be interested in knowing your police department is crooked.”

The thin detective’s expression did not change and his body continued to bar the door of his small frame cottage. But his voice lost its inhospitable edge.

Without inflection he asked, “You just find that out? How long you been in Wright City?”

Harry ran his eyes over the front of the cheap but tidy cottage, glanced at the neatly trimmed lawn, which was just large enough to accommodate a single tree, and finally settled on a ten-year-old sedan at the curb. “Your car..?” he asked.

Sergeant Murphy stared at him a moment. “Yeah.”

“Sergeant Joe Murphree drives a Mercury convertible. Brand new.”

“Yeah,” Murphy repeated.

“I’ll bet he lives in a bigger home than this, too.”

The thin man regarded him expressionlessly. Then he silently pushed the screen door wide.

Though inexpensively furnished, the living room was as neat and attractive as the outside of the house. Just as Harry seated himself in a worn but comfortable armchair, a boy of about two streaked into the room at a tottering run, a sugar cookie firmly grasped in one pudgy hand.

Behind him rushed a plump, attractive woman clad in a house dress. Before she could reach the youngster, Murphy scooped him up and said, “Here! Who told you you could have cookies before breakfast?” The simple act of picking up the child instantly transformed the thin detective from an emotionless cop to an average husband and father. The habitual chilliness of his expression was replaced by a mock sternness recognizable even to the child as a cover for extreme gentleness. With a happy giggle the youngster allowed his father to salvage the cookie and hand it to his mother.”

“Donnie always grabs a cookie before meals,” Murphy explained to Harry. “It’s a game. Never eats it, but likes the sport of being chased.”

With unconcealed pride he introduced his wife as Anne.

“How do you do?” Mrs. Murphy said. “You’ll have to excuse me while I get some breakfast into this young man.”

Preoccupied with his own problem, it had not occurred to Harry until then that eight o’clock on Saturday morning was rather an early hour for a visit. Confused, he began to apologize for interrupting breakfast.

“We’re finished,” Anne Murphy said. “We let Donnie sleep till eight because we’ve never been able to get him to take an afternoon nap. You aren’t disturbing us at all.”

As soon as she disappeared with the boy, the thin detective became all policeman again. In a cold voice he asked, “Now what’s all this about crooked cops?”

Harry said, “You know about my wife disappearing. Last night, Sergeant Murphree took me on what was supposed to be an investigation, but which I think actually was a deliberate demonstration to me that my case was hopeless. I believe the design was either to convince me I was mad, or frighten me into the realization that if I continued to insist I had a wife and lived at Carlton Avenue, I would end up in an observation ward, and possibly be committed as insane.”

“You mean you think Murphree had something to do with your wife’s disappearance?”

“I’m sure he was a definite part of the cover-up.” He told of Mrs. Johansen’s inadvertent reference to Murphree as “Sergeant,” and of the bull-necked detective driving straight to Harry’s old rooming house without asking the address.

“He’s not only a crook, but a cheap chiseler,” Harry concluded. “Even while he was deliberately making a sucker out of me, he took time out to work me for a two-and-a-half-dollar meal in an expensive restaurant.”

With no expression on his face to indicate his thoughts, Sergeant Murphy turned Harry’s story over in his mind. At last he said, “All right, Joe Murphree is a crooked cop. But why come to me instead of taking your complaint to Headquarters?”

“Maybe at Headquarters I’d run into more crooked cops. I been thinking it over, and it seems funny the desk sergeant referred me to Murphree by name instead of just sending me to the detective bureau. Maybe they expected my visit and were all primed.”

“Maybe I’m crooked too,” the detective said dryly.

Harry shook his head. “Last evening I could tell you hated Joe Murphree’s guts. When I became convinced Murphree was a crooked cop, it occurred to me maybe you hated him because you’re an honest one.”

The thin detective emitted a non-committal grunt. “And what do you think I can do?”

“Maybe nothing,” Harry said. “But you’re a trained investigator and I imagine you know Wright City pretty well. I’m not even an amateur investigator and I’m practically a stranger in the city. Alone, I wouldn’t even know where to start, but with your help I might at least have a chance.”

“Look, Nolan,” Murphy said bluntly. “This isn’t even a Homicide case. At least not yet. I put in more time than I get paid for now. Why should I stick my neck out off-duty for a guy I only met yesterday?”

Harry said slowly, “No reason—except I think you’re an honest cop.”

The detective glanced at him sharply. “What’s that got to do with it? I can name you as many honest cops on the force as crooked ones.”

Harry said evenly, “Doesn’t an honest cop have certain responsibilities that aren’t listed in regulations? Sort of moral responsibilities? Me, I was raised to obey the law and respect the law, but never to be afraid of it. Probably most American kids grow up with that attitude. But when you find yourself in a jam and go to the police for help, only to discover the police are working with the criminals who caused your jam, it shakes your faith in the whole law-enforcement system. I’m not speaking as an irate taxpayer, but merely as a citizen who has always believed in the American system of government. What would happen to our society if all our law-abiding citizens lost faith in our system of law enforcement?”

“Anarchy, probably,” Murphy said laconically. “But even honest detective sergeants can’t buck City Hall. And Joe Murphree has the backing of City Hall.”

Harry was silent for a moment. “I see,” he said finally. “I suppose it is asking a lot, since I imagine an honest cop in this town has to move pretty carefully if he wants to hold his job. Naturally you have to consider your wife and kid’s security.” Rising from his chair and walking to the door, Harry turned and said without any particular emphasis, “I suppose Helen isn’t the first woman in Wright City who ever vanished. Or the last. It could happen in any family.”

Involuntarily, the detective glanced toward the door through which his wife had disappeared with his son. Then his chill face relaxed in a wry smile.

“Come on back and sit down,” he said wearily.

CHAPTER THREE

Proof of A Wife

Sergeant Don Murphy sighed. “Before you get your hopes up, I want you to understand a few things. You know much about Wright City?”

Harry shook his head. “I’ve only been here six weeks.”

“Well, it’s a wide-open town, if you know what that means.”

“You mean gambling and such stuff? I know that much, because you can’t walk into a tavern, drug store or filling station without stumbling over a one-armed bandit. And I’ve heard the fellows at work talk about gambling houses, though I’ve never been to one. You mean it’s wide open—like Reno and Las Vegas?”

“I mean wide open like Wright City. In Reno and Las Vegas gambling is legal. Here it couldn’t operate without a powerful and crooked city administration behind it. And gambling is only one of the things that make it a wide open town. We’ve got ninety-four fleabag hotels where anything goes, and at least two dozen retail outlets for marijuana and heroin. The city is rotten with graft from the mayor on down, with the sole exception of the Homicide Squad. Lieutenant George Blair is our boss, and there hasn’t yet been enough money minted to fix him. Otherwise the whole city is crooked. The mayor himself is only a figurehead for Big John Gault, who runs the whole shebang.”

“I’ve heard of Big John,” Harry said. “But I thought he was just some kind of politician. A couple of guys at work seem to take a kind of pride in knowing him casually. I remember one fellow bragging that he had Big John’s unlisted phone number and no cop could ever nail him on a traffic violation. He said all he had to do was mention the number, and the cop would apologize for bothering him.”

“Yeah,” Murphy said bitterly. “Half the people in town know Big John casually, and every one of them is proud of it. John Gault is a professional glad-hander. He passes out that unlisted number like most politicians pass out cigars, and it actually is a password to kill traffic tickets. It makes everybody who has it feel like a little big shot because he is a personal friend of Big John’s. Just one of the many smooth techniques Gault uses to keep himself entrenched.”

“You think this Big John might have something to do with this?”

“Hardly likely,” Murphy said. “But Joe Murphree is one of his boys, and if Joe is mixed up in it, somebody with real weight is giving orders. That means the minute they suspect I’m moving in, Lieutenant Blair will get instructions from the commissioner to keep his cops on homicide cases. And I’ll get jerked on the carpet. You’ll have to do the leg work. I’ll tell you what I want, and when you get it, either bring it to me or phone it to me.”

“That’s fair enough,” Harry said. “If you can just tell me what to do. I haven’t the faintest idea where to start.”

“You can start by convincing me you actually had a wife,” Murphy told him. “For all I know, you’re a crackpot, and I’m not wasting my off-duty time until I know different.”

“But how can I prove it?” Harry protested. “Everybody lies.”

“Don’t you have any friends who knew you were married?”

“We haven’t had time to make friends. Helen was only here three weeks, remember. The first week, while I was working she was hunting a job, and evenings we spent hunting an apartment. The second week we both worked and evenings still hunted an apartment. When we found one a week ago, we immediately got married, and while we both continued to work, this past week was our honeymoon. Who the devil wants to make friends on a honeymoon?”

The detective’s thin lips quirked slightly at the corners. “How about the men you know at work? You must have mentioned Helen to some of them.”

Harry reddened slightly, and when Murphy simply waited for a reply, said lamely, “There’s a lot of noise. We don’t talk much.”

The detective looked incredulous.

“Well there is,” Harry said defensively. “Ajax makes fractionization units and condensers for the oil industry. My job is fit-up. They hand me a set of blueprints and a lot of steel parts, and I tack-weld them together. I have a helper, but usually he’s a different guy every day, and half the time I don’t even know his name. Even if I do, we have to talk mostly in gestures. Aside from the noise we’re making, all around us guys are using grinders and chippers, cranes are running overhead, and it’s just one constant din.”

Murphy continued to look incredulous. Harry’s blush deepened.

“Well,” he said reluctantly. “I do talk to guys at lunch time. But if you ever worked in a shop, you know how the guys are. They kid a lot. I didn’t want a lot of cracks about honeymooning.”

Murphy’s expression became more understanding. “So you never mentioned at all you were getting married?”

Harry shook his head ashamedly.

“All right. I’ll swallow that. How about the fellows who roomed at the same place you did?”

“I never got to know any of them that well,” Harry said. “Just to say hello to, of chat with a minute when we met in the hall. I doubt they even noticed I moved out.”

Murphy regarded him silently for a moment. “You’re getting harder and harder to swallow, Nolan. Where were you married?”

“At City Hall. By the record clerk.”

“Got the certificate?”

“It disappeared along with all of Helen’s stuff.”

“Got any letters she wrote? Anything at all in her handwriting?”

Harry shook his head. “I did have in the apartment, but everything except my personal stuff disappeared.” Then he thought of Dale Thompson’s private number, which Helen had written down for him, and started to reach for his wallet. He stopped the movement and smiled ruefully when he recalled Sergeant Joe Murphree had appropriated the slip. “I let your friend Murphree get away with the only sample of her handwriting I had.”

Murphy’s expressionless eyes contemplated him for a long time. Finally he said, “I’ve got an open mind on whether or not you’re a crackpot. Get down to City Hall and spend fifty cents on a certified copy of your marriage certificate. Bring me that. And you better go now, because they close at noon on Saturday.”

When Harry left the home of Sergeant Don Murphy, he felt a little cheered in spite of not having completely gained the thin detective’s confidence. At least he was starting to do something definite about finding Helen. But his cheer turned to black despair when the city clerk informed him there was no record of a marriage between Harry Nolan and Helen Lawson.

He did not know the name of the record clerk who had married them, but he prowled through City Hall from one end to the other looking into offices without spotting the man. Similarly, he was unable to recall the names of the witnesses, remembering only that they were a young couple applying for a marriage license and had been recruited from the hall by the record clerk. It gave him no satisfaction whatever to realize both names and their addresses were on the missing marriage certificate.

He phoned a report to Sergeant Murphy from a booth at City Hall.

Murphy grunted noncommittally. “Either somebody really big is behind this, or you’re an out-and-out crackpot,” he said. “Try the Midtown Employment Agency and see if they have a record of your wife’s referral to Dale Thompson.”

With dampened enthusiasm Harry took a streetcar to the Midtown Employment Agency. He was not surprised to discover the agency not only had no record of the referral, but denied ever registering a client named Helen Lawson.

Dispirited, he phoned Sergeant Murphy again. “Listen,” he said, “I can prove by people in Des Moines there is such a girl as Helen Lawson and we planned to get married. She hasn’t any parents, but we had a lot of mutual friends who knew our plans, and she has an aunt there who must have known she left Des Moines to join me.”

“That won’t prove she’s your wife, or even that she ever arrived in Wright City,” the detective said. “For all I know she may have disappeared en route, and maybe worry has sent you off your rocker so you imagine you got married.”

Harry asked wearily, “What should I do now?”

“Try the newspaper morgues. Saturday marriages would be listed in Monday’s papers.”

There were two newspapers in Wright City, the Evening Herald and the Morning Sun. Just before noon Harry phoned Sergeant Murphy for the third time, and this time there was jubilance in his voice.

“I didn’t find the item,” he reported. “But at least I finally found definite evidence of cover-up. Monday’s morgue copy of both papers has the list of marriages scissored out.”

“I hit something too,” Murphy told him. “Why didn’t you mention you had a post office box?”

Harry repeated blankly, “A post office box?”

“Yeah. It occurred to me if you were new in town and had no permanent address, you might have rented a box. And people don’t fix Uncle Sam’s post office. So I made a phone call.”

“Of course!” Harry said, seeing the light and berating himself for not thinking of it sooner. “I rented it in both our names as soon as I got to town, because I knew Helen was coming shortly, and then after we got married, I changed it to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Nolan. I made the change Monday.”

“Yeah. After I told them you were a suspect in a homicide case, they looked up the record and told me about the change.”

“A suspect?” Harry asked, surprised.

“The post office is a little finicky about handing out information even to cops unless you got a good reason. Meet me at Twelfth and Monroe at one o’clock.”

Harry was puzzled by the detective’s abrupt order to meet him at Twelfth and Monroe Streets, but he was also elated. Apparently the evidence of the post office box had converted Sergeant Murphy into belief of Harry’s story, for his tone over the telephone had been almost banteringly friendly. Harry hoped that the rendezvous meant the sergeant now intended to take an active part in the investigation instead of merely sitting at home and issuing orders.

With his confidence elevated and with an hour to kill before he met Murphy, Harry suddenly realized he was hungry. Then with some degree of shock he realized he was not merely hungry, but famished, as he had eaten nothing since noon the previous day. Entering the first restaurant he saw, he ate two blue plate specials.

Harry alighted from a streetcar at Twelfth and Monroe at ten of one. On one corner there was a branch public library, and he sat on its wide steps to wait for the detective.

Sergeant Murphy arrived in his ten-year-old sedan promptly at one.

“Let’s go inside,” he said laconically, and walked up the library steps.

At the desk Murphy asked for two “stack” cards, entered the date and his signature on one and had Harry similarly fill out the other. In exchange for the cards the attendant gave them a key.

A moment later Murphy was unlocking a grilled iron door which opened on a flight of stairs leading downward. At the bottom of the stairs they found a vault-like room containing tier on tier of shelves loaded with periodicals and newspapers.

“The stacks,” Murphy explained. “You’ll find everything from 1864 issues of Godey’s Lady Book to current issues of Argosy. I thought maybe our friends might have forgotten public libraries keep files of newspapers as well as newspaper morgues do.”

They had forgotten, Harry and Murphy discovered. No one had used scissors on the stack copies of Monday’s Herald and Sun. And both listed the marriage of Harry and Helen on the previous Saturday.

Harry let out a long breath. Sergeant Murphy regarded him with a wry smile.

“Don’t get your hopes too high,” he advised. “This puts me behind you a hundred percent, but I’m just a dumb cop, not Sherlock Holmes.”

Harry said with utter confidence, “With one phone call and one trip you’ve managed to find two bits of evidence that I’ve been telling the truth. We’ll find Helen now.”

Murphy was less confident. “We’ve still got a long way to go. But I’ve an idea of where to start.”

A long table for the convenience of research workers was centered in each of the narrow corridors formed by the tiers of shelves. Lifting a stack of newspapers from a shelf to one of the tables, Murphy returned to the shelf for another stack and laid it beside the first.

He said. “When I say I’m behind you a hundred percent, I mean I’m accepting what your wife told you as truth, too. I think she really was Dale Thompson’s secretary and this Dorothy Wentworth you talked to lied. It could be more than coincidence that your wife disappeared just as her boss dropped dead. We’ll start two months back and read every word Thompson put in his column. Maybe we’ll just waste time, but maybe we’ll find a hint of what this is all about.”

Off and on Harry had glanced over Dale Thompson’s syndicated column for a number of years, but he had never before read him with concentration. The man had been a reporter rather than a commentator, Harry discovered, reporting facts as he saw them, but rarely drawing any editorial inferences from his stories. He had an urgent, staccato style which tended to make every item of news seem sensational, whether it was the expose of an ambassador’s liaison with a chambermaid, or merely the expectant motherhood of some well-known actress.

His material was not as specialized as that of most columnists, for he roamed at will from cafe society gossip to politics, war and crime news, and occasionally even to sports. Sometimes his column was straight reporting, other times he would insert personal anecdotes, often of a humorous nature, describing such things as a horse race he had witnessed, a trip to his dentist, or the political views of his favorite barber. Whenever he drifted off into such anecdotes he dropped his staccato reporting style in favor of more leisurely and whimsical narrative style.

It was an anecdote of this nature about six weeks back which brought a low whistle from Sergeant Murphy. Harry had already passed it without grasping its significance when the detective called his attention to it.

“Listen to this,” Murphy said, reading aloud. “‘Monday was our semi-annual checkup time, when old Doc Moody taps our knee with a rubber mallet, looks disappointed when our reactions indicate we have not yet gone mad, sticks a stethoscope to our chest and shakes his head sadly because the pump is still going strong, checks our blood pressure and after numerous other tests, reluctantly decides we may last another six months. At fifty-two no one has a right to health as good as ours, Doc complains, testily letting us know that if all his patients stood the gaff as well as we do, he’d have to cut down to two Cadillacs.’”

Looking at the paper’s date over the sergeant’s shoulder, Harry said thoughtfully, “Six weeks back he had a sound heart, eh?”

“Yeah. Think I’ll have a little talk with Doc Moody.” Murphy made a note of the name on a small pad.

In silence they both read on for a time. Harry, being the faster reader, was several columns ahead of Murphy when he caught the next pertinent item. And this time he recognized its importance.

“Get this, Sergeant,” he said, reading aloud in turn. “‘A local big shot politician is due for trouble up to his eyebrows when Uncle Sam receives unexpected evidence of his involvement in the narcotic business. Watch this column for sensational developments.”

This time the detective peered over Harry’s shoulder. “April sixth,” he muttered. “Three weeks ago.”

“Could the local politician be your Big John Gault?” Harry asked.

“Could be,” Murphy resumed reading.

In the very next column Harry encountered an item which sent his pulses pounding. It read: We used to disagree with the philosophy of the racketeer politician who runs things around here that every man has his price. Reluctantly we’ve come around to his point of view since discovering his money was able to buy a leak right in our own office. The firing of a hireling has plugged the leak, but it can’t bring back the evidence the racketeer bought from our files. The sensational expose promised yesterday is postponed for the time being.

Excited, Harry showed the item to Murphy. “He fired that Wentworth woman!” he exclaimed. “That’s how he happened to need a secretary just when Helen was looking for a job. Somehow, after he was dead and Helen disappeared, they got her to go back and pretend she’d been working for him all along.”

Murphy merely grunted.

The second-from-last column, that of the previous Thursday, contained the item which seemed to please Murphy most. It read: Wright City’s Mr. Big is going to be very angry with his city comptroller for being careless with a certain black ledger. But he’ll have a long time to cool off. About forty years. We’ll start printing excerpts from the ledger tomorrow.

The final column, that of the day before, was full of big name gossip, but made no mention of the black ledger.

“That does it,” Murphy said with a note of finality. He began stacking the papers back on their shelf.

“Does what?” Harry asked, moving to assist in the task.

“Gives me an excuse to start taking an official interest in your wife’s disappearance.”

The remark made no sense to Harry, but the detective apparently did not care to elaborate. When the papers were back on the shelf in proper order, he led the way out of the place.

A block from the library Sergeant Murphy parked his sedan in front of a drug store. When Harry followed him inside, the detective made for the phone booths at the rear. Turning to the “M” section of the phone book, he ran his finger along a page until he reached a whole quarter column of “Moodys”. Harry noted that only two Moodys had the initials M.D. behind the name.

“George and Henry Moody,” Murphy said. “We’ll try George first.”

Dropping a dime in the phone slot, the detective dialed a number. Through the open booth door Harry heard him ask if he were speaking to the Doctor Moody who was Dale Thompson’s physician. After a moment he grunted a thanks and hung up.

“Dr. George Moody is Dr. Henry Moody’s son,” he remarked to Harry. “He says the old man was Thompson’s doctor.”

This time, when he dropped his dime and dialed, he pulled the booth door shut so that Harry was unable to hear the conversation. His talk with Dr. Henry Moody was remarkably brief, however, for in less than a minute he was out of the booth.

“Let’s go visit my boss,” he said tersely.

CHAPTER FOUR

Killer’s Corner

Lieutenant George Blair, head of the Wright City Homicide Squad, proved to be a wiry man of fifty with gray hair, a gentle face and eyes as hard as emery.

After acknowledging Harry’s introduction, he inquired of Sergeant Murphy, “Busman’s holiday, Don?”

“Sort of, Lieutenant. This one looks too hot to wait. I guess you heard about Dale Thompson’s death.”

The lieutenant nodded. “Heart attack yesterday morning.”

“I make it out homicide.”

The lieutenant’s eyebrows raised. Settling himself in his chair, he clasped hands over his stomach and said mildly, “Shoot.”

“What started me on this was Harry Nolan here. Coming in to report his wife missing,” the sergeant explained. “The desk sent him to see Joe Murphree, but by accident he got to me instead and told his story before either of us realized he was talking to the wrong guy.” Briefly, Murphy recounted the facts of Helen’s disappearance, the negative results of the investigation made by Sergeant Joe Murphree, and the subsequent investigation he and Harry had made that day.

“We ended up by reading Dale Thompson’s column for the past two months,” he concluded. “Three weeks ago he hinted at an exposure in his column of a local political big shot being tied in with the dope racket. The next day he mentioned firing an employee for lifting what evidence he had and peddling it to the political big shot. Only this time he made it more definite by calling him the racketeer politician who runs Wright City.”

“Big John Gault,” Lieutenant Blair said thoughtfully.

“Exactly. Day before yesterday he announced he had gotten hold of a certain black ledger which would put Mr. Big Shot away for forty years, and the next day he would start printing excerpts from the ledger. But the next day he died, and when his final column appeared, it contained no mention of the ledger.”

Lieutenant Blair considered his sergeant thoughtfully. “So you think perhaps he was bumped to stop publication of whatever was in the ledger, and somebody substituted another column for the one he had ready to submit? Good enough motive, but pretty thin evidence of homicide in the face of a natural causes death certificate.”

“I’ve got more,” Murphy assured him, “Six weeks ago Thompson mentioned in his column having a physical examination and passing with flying colors. I just phoned his regular doc, who verified he had never detected any heart condition. And Thompson’s regular doctor was not called in the case. The first he knew, about it was where he read it in the papers. He doesn’t know who was called.”

“Hmm,” the lieutenant said.

“Add to that Thompson’s secretary disappearing so completely there isn’t even evidence she ever existed, and the secretary who presumably was fired three weeks ago reappearing and claiming she had never left the job, and at the very least you’ve got evidence of conspiracy. My opinion is Thompson was murdered and Mrs. Nolan disappeared because of the black ledger Thompson mentioned.”

For a few moments Lieutenant Blair said nothing, simply pursing his lips and frowning at one corner of the room. At last he looked up with a crooked smile.

“Big John has been pretty careful about tangling with this department, Don. I kind of doubt he’d take a chance on trying to cover up a murder.”

“To beat a forty-year rap I’d try murder myself, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I see your point. But you know this department is in a peculiar position. For ten years we’ve been in a state of armed truce with the rest of the city administration. Gault and his crew never try to fix a homicide case, and in return we keep our noses out of everything that isn’t homicide business. And for ten years we’ve all known the minute either side steps over the line, it’s all out war.”

Sergeant Murphy asked quietly, “You mean forget it, Lieutenant?”

The lieutenant’s face remained gentle, but his eyes could have chipped stone. “I mean if you make a mistake, the next head of the Homicide Squad will take orders from John Gault.” He glanced at his watch. “You go on duty in an hour. It’s your case. Move quietly and be sure there’s no leak at all until you have it airtight.”

“Yes, sir. Any other instructions?”

“Yeah. For your autopsy order stay away from Judge Bender and Judge Livingston. Bender blabs and Livingston is in Gault’s pocket. Contact either Judge Ward or Judge Centner.” He paused a moment, then added reflectively, “If the autopsy is negative, we’ll have to pull in our horns fast and I start thinking up alibis.”

“Sure—if it’s negative.”

When they were once again outside, the sergeant said to Harry, “Go on home and sit tight. There isn’t a thing we can do until we get an autopsy report, and that will take twenty-four hours. If anything comes up, I’ll phone you at Mrs. Weston’s. If you don’t hear from me, call me at home Monday morning and I’ll give you a briefing.”

“But what about Helen?” Harry asked.

Murphy dropped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll just have to sweat it out. We can’t make a move until we definitely establish Thompson’s death was homicide. You heard the lieutenant.”

“Suppose you can’t prove it’s homicide?”

The sergeant grinned dryly. “Then I’ll ask you to give me a job reference over at Ajax. In the meantime, don’t bother me by calling up for progress reports before Monday. I’ll have enough on my mind until then.”

* * *

So Harry went back to Mrs. Weston’s rooming house to sweat it out. It was the longest period of sweating he ever did. From four o’clock Saturday afternoon, when he reached his room, until Monday morning he left the room only for meals, afraid Sergeant Murphy might phone while he was gone. But the sergeant did not phone.

Just before dusk Sunday evening the downstairs bell rang and Harry glanced out his window to see a squad car at the curb. A few minutes later a burly policeman went down the front steps with Mrs. Weston, helped the landlady into the car and drove away. As the car started off, Harry glimpsed Sergeant Murphy in the back seat.

Overpowering curiosity almost made him phone Headquarters to inquire what this meant, but he was deterred by the definite instructions of the sergeant. He spent a second sleepless night and phoned Murphy at home at exactly eight a.m. Monday.

“Aren’t you working today?” the sergeant asked.

“Working? You think I could calmly go to work without knowing whether Helen’s alive or dead?”

Sergeant Murphy said quietly, “It’s my guess she’s alive.”

Harry’s heart jumped. “You’ve found out where she is?”

“No. Let’s take one thing at a time. First, the autopsy on Dale Thompson showed poisoning by potassium cyanide, apparently administered in coffee. The guess is he got it at breakfast a couple of hours before eleven a.m., the time on his death certificate. We’ve got the doc who signed the certificate, but I think he’s in the clear. He’s seventy-eight years old, half blind, half deaf and semi-retired, which probably was why he was called. The medical examiner tells me unless he suspects poisoning or happens to catch a whiff of bitter almonds, any doctor might diagnose a cyanide death as a simple coronary. This guy was a cinch to. He was called to Thompson’s penthouse at eleven o’clock by Dorothy Wentworth, who told him she was Thompson’s secretary.”

Harry asked, “Did she kill him?”

“Unless she’s a wonderful actress, she didn’t even know it was murder. But that’s ahead of the story. Soon we got the autopsy report, we quietly pulled in Dorothy Wentworth, Mrs. and Mr. Kurt Arnold, the apartment manager, Mrs. Johansen and Mrs. Weston. We stuck them in separate cells, let them brood awhile, and then informed all but Dorothy Wentworth we were charging them with conspiracy to commit murder. We told the Wentworth woman we were holding her on suspicion of first degree homicide.”

The sergeant emitted a dry chuckle. “Wentworth broke first, and as soon as the others learned of her break, they all started squealing like rats. Dorothy Wentworth’s story is she was phoned by a man named Gerald Crane, apparently the same man to whom she sold the evidence that got her fired. He told her Thompson had unexpectedly died of a heart attack and he wanted her to put on an act for him. He told her she’d get two thousand dollars if she went to Thompson’s penthouse, pretended she was still his secretary and phoned a certain physician to come at once because her boss had just had a heart attack! He warned her someone would probably call trying to locate the real secretary, and the police might even come around asking about her. But he told her the investigating cop would be in on the deal, and all she had to do was deny ever hearing of the woman. She says she suspected the plot had something to do with stopping the item about the ledger, but she thought Crane was simply taking advantage of Thompson’s sudden death, and she didn’t suspect murder.”

Harry asked, “Who is this Gerald Crane?”

“A flunky of Big John Gault’s. The rest of the story we got from our other witnesses. Crane contacted the apartment manager first and fixed him with a thousand dollars plus decorating expenses to get in a crew of workmen and change your apartment around. The Kurt Arnolds were moved in by Crane a half hour before you got home from work. Their fee was only five hundred. Apparently Crane got stingier as he went along.

“From the apartment manager Crane learned the former addresses of you and your wife. He fixed Mrs. Weston with two hundred bucks, had your personal stuff moved from the apartment back to your old room, and had the lock from your apartment transferred to your room door.

“At your wife’s old rooming house apparently Crane ran into a snag. Seems Mrs. Swovboda was honest. We don’t know where she is, but she definitely didn’t sell out to Mrs. Johansen and move to Florida. Mrs. Johansen is an old-time bit actress, and she was moved into the rooming house by Crane about an hour before you arrived with Sergeant Joe Murphree. All she got was a mere hundred. She grew quite upset when she learned she was at the bottom of the salary scale.”

Harry asked, “Have you got this man Gerald Crane?”

“Not yet,” Sergeant Murphy said. “We’re a little handicapped because there are only eleven men on the Homicide Squad. If we put out a general call on him, we could draw on the whole police department, but there’s too many leaks in the department. Crane would know about it within minutes. We want Crane under wraps before anybody even knows we’re investigating the case.”

“I see,” Harry said dubiously. “But what about Helen? What’s the reason behind all this elaborate plot? And what makes you think she’s still alive?”

“It’s pure theory from here on,” the sergeant admitted. “But I think it’s sound reasoning. Obviously, as Thompson’s secretary, your wife knew about the ledger, too. I don’t think Gerald Crane or Big John Gault have their hands on the ledger yet. If they had, probably your wife would simply have been killed in a traffic accident or some such thing. Since she wasn’t, they must be holding her somewhere trying to pry out of her where the ledger is.”

Harry said slowly, “You mean torture?”

Murphy hesitated a moment. Then he said reluctantly, “Possibly. But that’s better than being dead.”

A wave of sickness ran over Harry. In a numb voice he said, “I still don’t understand why they went through this elaborate farce of changing the apartment and all.”

“You would if you thought about it,” Murphy told him. “If Dale Thompson’s secretary mysteriously disappeared the same day the columnist died, it would look suspicious as the devil. And with that item about the ledger appearing only the day before, the finger would point straight at Big John Gault. The only way they could hold her without raising such a furor that even the FBI might start nosing around to see if maybe she’d been kidnapped, was to make it appear she never existed. So when Thompson died, his secretary continued on public display in the person of Dorothy Wentworth.”

“I see,” Harry said slowly. “Is there any way I can help from here on out?”

“Yeah. Just sit quiet and stay out of our hair till we break this thing. And we will, don’t worry.”

Yes, Harry thought as he hung up. But in the meantime what kind of pain was Helen suffering?

After fifteen minutes of sitting on the bed and smoking cigarettes, he knew he could not possibly spend another day simply waiting in his room. He had to have some kind of action or go crazy.

The wild thought occurred to him of looking up Big John Gault’s address, calling on the man and beating out of him Helen’s whereabouts. But immediately he realized the man probably not only had bodyguards, but any such attempted act would blow wide open the secrecy Sergeant Murphy wanted to maintain. Reluctantly he decided the Homicide Squad was undoubtedly better equipped to deal with murderers than a half crazed husband would be.

Finally he settled on the innocuous action of going to the post office to see if he and Helen had any mail.

Though the post office was only three blocks from their apartment on Carlton Avenue, a factor in their deciding to keep the box even after they had a permanent address, it was fifteen blocks from Mrs. Weston’s rooming house. Harry took a streetcar.

There was some mail. An envelope containing a coupon worth ten cents on the purchase of a large box of soap flakes, a card addressed to Miss Helen Lawson from Helen’s aunt in Des Moines, who had not yet been informed her niece was married, and a slip informing him there was a package at the package desk.

As he started toward the package desk, two men crowded against him from either side. Politely he waited for them to move out of the way, but neither moved. Instead he felt the prod of something hard and round in his left kidney.

The man on his left, a tall lank individual with a gray face said, “Yeah, it’s a gun. Just move toward the door like we was three pals, or it’ll go off.”

Slowly, Harry glanced from the gray-faced man to the plump, round-headed man on his right. The latter gave him a happy grin.

“There’s another one right close to your right kidney. Do like the man says.”

At a gentle prod from the man on the left, he began to move without hurry toward the door. All about them people were waiting in queues, stamping letters or exasperatedly trying to write with post-office pens, but no one paid the slightest attention as the closely grouped trio left the building. The sidewalk was full of hurrying people too, but not one so much as glanced at them.

At the curb, in a space marked, Reserved for Post Office customers — Ten minute parking only, stood a green Buick sedan. The round man on Harry’s right opened the rear door and the gray-faced man prodded Harry in. He followed behind Harry to sit beside him, while the plump man rounded the car to slide behind the wheel.

As he pulled away from the parking place, the man behind the wheel said breezily, “We been waiting for you since the post office opened at eight. We figured you’d come after your mail eventually.”

Harry asked, “What do you want with me? If this is a holdup, all I’ve got with me is twelve dollars.”

The plump man laughed. Harry’s seat companion said nothing, merely quietly holding his gun pointed casually in Harry’s direction.

Harry grew conscious that he was still gripping his mail in one hand. As he stuffed it into his inside breast pocket, the gray-faced man glanced at him sharply, but made no comment.

The rest of the trip was made without conversation. It was not a long trip, about twenty-five blocks, but the plump man drove leisurely and obeyed all traffic regulations. When the car left the downtown business district, they passed through a middle-class residential district then through a poorer class district and finally through the slums, always moving in the general direction of the river.

In the waterfront area, on a street consisting largely of vacant warehouses and decrepit office buildings which had been condemned by the city to make room for a waterfront parkway which never materialized, the car suddenly swung through the open truck entrance of what looked from the outside like an unoccupied warehouse. As his seat mate backed from the car and gestured with his gun for Harry to alight, the plump driver returned to the truck entrance and closed the doors.

Then the two men urged him up a flight of stairs and into a barnlike room large enough to office at least fifty clerks. There were no longer any desks in it, however, its furnishings now consisting of only a kitchen table and a few straight chairs, three folding canvas cots containing single blankets and a packing case with a table model radio on it.

One corner of Harry’s mind noted that two men sat at the kitchen table and a third sat on one of the cots, but the notation was merely automatic, for his attention centered on the figure stretched full length on a second cot. It was Helen and she was alive.

Ignoring the sharp command of the gray-faced man, Harry ran to his wife and took her in his arms. She looked up at him wonderingly, her face drawn with fatigue and streaked with dried tears, then buried her head in his shoulder with a little whimper.

After a moment she exhaustedly lay back on the pillow and looked up at him with sorrow. “I hoped they’d let you alone,” she whispered. “Why did they have to involve you?”

“Have they hurt you?” Harry demanded.

“My feet,” she said. “Just my feet.” She closed her eyes with an expression of pain.

Twisting in his seat on the cot, Harry stared down at his wife’s feet. Both were encased in bandages.

An almost insane rage engulfed him. Slowly he rose to his feet and glared through a crimson haze at the five men in the room. The man seated on the other cot was thin and pock-marked and had cold eyes which stared back at Harry indifferently. Of the two men seated at the table, one was huge and red-faced and carried about him an air of bluff good humor. The other was slim, and distinguished-looking, with a thin, austere face and iron-gray hair which curled upward over his ears. The two men who had brought him in stood just inside the door.

Harry took a step toward the table. “Which one of you…?” he said with muffled incoherency. “I’m going to—”

Casually, the pock-marked man on the cot produced a knife with a thin six inch blade. He balanced it on his palm and studied Harry appraisingly. Harry swung his gaze to the man. “Are you the one?” he asked softly.

The knife flipped in a small arc and landed back in the man’s palm. His eyes remained on Harry. “Yeah,” he said. “Cigarettes on the soles, if you’re interested. Tape on the mouth, to keep her from yelling. Make you mad?”

Harry’s muscles bunched for a blind rush, then he froze as a voice from the table cracked like a pistol shot. “Hold it, Nolan!”

Harry twisted toward the voice. It was the big, red-faced man who had spoken.

In a reasonable tone the man said, “Ripper can slice the edge of a playing card with that thing at thirty feet. On top of that my two boys at the door have cocked pistols aimed at your guts. Nobody wants to harm either you or your wife. Let’s talk things over like reasonable human beings.”

He waved a hand at one of the vacant chairs around the table. Harry glanced back at the knife, then at the two guns centered at him from the doorway. Finally he looked down at Helen, who gave him a smile full of pain and shook her head hopelessly.

Harry’s shoulders slumped and he walked over to seat himself at the table.

“Let me introduce myself,” the big man said. “I’m John Gault, and this is my assistant, Gerald Crane.”

Without preamble, Big John Gault announced what he wanted the black ledger mentioned in Dale Thompson’s column. He was convinced Helen knew where it was, but had been unable to persuade her to tell. Harry had been brought in to aid the persuasion. If he could talk his wife into disclosing where the ledger was, Big John was willing to pay them five thousand dollars and put them on a train for Des Moines, with the stipulation that neither ever return to Wright City.

The alternative Big John did not mention, but the implication was obvious.

Harry suppressed his rage enough to remark, “This ledger must be important.” He turned toward Helen. “What’s in it, honey?”

Lifelessly Helen said, “A complete record of payoffs in Wright City for the past ten years. Publication would have put John Gault and his whole crooked gang behind bars.”

“And you know where it is?”

The distinguished looking Gerald Crane answered for her. “We talked to the elevator operator at the Newbold Arms. Your wife arrived for work Friday at eight-thirty, and left the building again ten minutes later with a package the size of the ledger under her arm. She was gone twenty minutes and returned without it. In the interim my friend Ripper and I…ah…called on Mr. Thompson, so when your wife returned, she walked right into our arms. Obviously Thompson suspected we might try to recover the ledger and had your wife secrete it somewhere. She’s wasting her time and ours by insisting she doesn’t know where it is.”

A package under her arm, Harry repeated to himself. His thoughts touched the package slip in his inside pocket, and he knew where the ledger was. Helen had mailed it to their box.

“Why have you held out, honey?” he asked gently. “Was it worth torture?”

Her pain-racked eyes swung to him. “Dale Thompson worked ten years to break this gang’s power,” she said quietly.

Harry said thoughtfully, “Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. Suppose we made a deal so they couldn’t kill us? Suppose we insisted on getting to Des Moines first, and phoning back long distance the information about the ledger? They’d have to trust us to phone, and we’d have to trust them to send the five thousand dollars.”

John Gault said quickly, “We should have picked you up sooner. I’ll buy that one with a slight change. We’ll put your wife on a train for Des Moines, hold you as a hostage so she doesn’t get any ideas about double-crossing us, and release you with five thousand bucks the minute we get the ledger back.”

Helen had looked at Harry with disappointed shock. Looking back at her without expression, Harry slowly let one eyelid droop. Momentarily she looked startled, but she covered her understanding that Harry’s motive was other than appeared on the surface by making her eyes harden.

She said to John Gault, “And let you keep on running your gambling houses and dope shops? That’s what Mr. Thompson was fighting, and what he died for.”

“You’d rather we both die?” Harry asked reasonably.

Helen looked at him silently for a moment, then her lips trembled and she burst into tears.

It took but a few minutes to work out the details of the agreement. The two men who had brought in Harry would get Helen to the noon train, which was scheduled to arrive in Des Moines at eight that evening. Helen would phone John Gault’s unlisted number before midnight, and as soon as the ledger was recovered, Harry would be escorted by the same pair to a train for Des Moines.

She clung to Harry for a moment before she was carried out, but her face was set and emotionless as the trio disappeared through the door. Only a fleeting, final glance of worry from her at the last moment told Harry she knew he was planning something desperate.

Big John Gault rose to his feet. “Just make yourself comfortable and we’ll hope to have you out of here by midnight,” he advised Harry. “You seem like a sensible young man, but I’m sure you’ll understand I can’t taken any chances.” To the pockmarked Ripper he said, “You can handle him all right alone, can’t you?”

Ripper gave the knife in his hand an expert flip and looked at Harry with contempt. He did not bother to reply.

“Then expect us back about midnight,” Gault said. “The boys will bring you in lunch and supper.”

He motioned to Gerald Crane and the two of them left together.

Harry studied the pock-marked man reflectively. “It’s only about ten o’clock,” he said. “You going to sit with that thing in your hand for fourteen hours?”

Smoothly the pock-marked man flipped it once more, then slid it out of sight beneath his coat. In a bored tone he said, “I can get it out and sink it anywhere I want faster I than you could spit. Your limit is fifteen feet away from me. Get an inch closer and you swallow six inches of steel.”

Harry walked over and sat on the cot Helen had occupied. “Got any objection to my taking a nap?” he asked.

Ripper shrugged with indifference. Elevating his left shoe to the cot, Harry unlaced it, pulled it off and left it sitting on the cot next to him. He repeated with the right, also leaving it on the cot then put his feet flat on the floor and wriggled his toes.

“Them’s kind of beat up high shoes you got,” the pock-marked man remarked. “What are you, a farmer?”

“Shop worker. These are safety shoes.” He picked one of the heavy, high-topped shoes up by the toe. “They’ve got steel toes.”

And he sent the heavy shoe spinning end-over-end at the man.

Steel glittered in Ripper’s hand just as the shoe’s steel toe caught him in the chest. He fell backward, righted and flung the knife just as the second shoe caught him full in the face.

A streak of light slithered past Harry’s ear as he hurled himself forward. When he reached the other cot, Ripper was leaning on one elbow, groggily fumbling for the gun under his arm.

Winding his fingers into the man’s hair, Harry pulled him to a seated position and smashed his fist against the pock-marked jaw.

* * *

Sergeant Don Murphy said, “Stop jittering. They’ll be here. The train isn’t due to leave for another hour and a quarter.”

The plainclothes man Murphy had dispatched to check the waiting rooms returned and reported a woman with crutches and two men answering the descriptions of the gunmen were in one of the side waiting rooms on the mezzanine. Quickly, the sergeant issued instructions to the messenger and the two other men with him, then moved toward the stairs leading to the mezzanine without hurry. Harry fell into step beside him, and the others followed.

Harry had expected Murphy to surprise the men from behind, but the sergeant calmly walked around in front of them, stopped and flipped back his coat to disclose his badge. He did not draw a gun, but his right hand rested against his belt.

They looked back at him blankly, both started furtive movements toward their armpits, but stopped them almost immediately. Some cold assurance in the homicide man’s eyes, a waiting look which edged almost on cruelty, caused them simultaneously to reject the invitation. Slowly they raised their hands level with their shoulders.

As the two men were led away in handcuffs, Harry scooped Helen into his arms, holding her around the shoulders and under the knees as you would a baby.

“We’d have been here sooner, darling,” he said. “But Sergeant Murphy wanted to bag Big John Gault, Gerald Crane and a cop named Joe Murphree first. And since he’s a night shift cop and this is on his own time, I had to humor him.”

Helen wound her arms about his neck. “Take me back to our own apartment,” she said simply.

THE BLONDE IN THE BAR

Originally published in Manhunt, May 1954.

CHAPTER 1

After ten years as a vice-squad cop, I not only know every place in St. Louis where professional hustlers hang out, I also know all the bars where amateurs go looking for men. The Jefferson is neither sort of place.

It was a little surprising in that sedate atmosphere to have a lovely blonde slide onto the bar stool next to me and throw an inviting smile in my direction before turning her attention to the bartender. It was even more surprising when after that unmistakably inviting smile, she concentrated on ordering a drink and ignored my curious examination of her.

After a moment I decided she must have momentarily mistaken me for someone else. Wishful thinking, I told myself. Now I was beginning to imagine beautiful blondes were passing at me. Ruefully I turned from the girl to examine my reflection in the bar mirror.

Look at you, I told myself. Thirty-two, and you look forty. Why would any woman pass at you?

Dispassionately I studied the lines of disillusionment deeply etched into my face, physical evidence of the spiritual scars I had accumulated during ten years of constant association with the seamy side of life. Why did the muck a cop encountered leave scars on some and roll off the backs of others without leaving a trace, I wondered? Why was I a misanthrope at thirty-two while my partner, Jud Harrison, remained as cheerfully full of high spirits after ten years on the vice squad as he had been as a rookie?

My gaze flicked from my own reflection to that of the girl next to me, meeting her eyes in the mirror. To my surprise her lips curled in a slight smile.

“Admiring yourself?” she asked softly.

I turned from her reflection to the girl herself. She was about twenty-five, I guessed, and as sleek and beautiful as a new Cadillac. From her dress and the diamond brooch at her throat I judged she was equally expensive too.

If she was on the make, why had she picked me, I wondered? On the other side of her sat a smoothly handsome man whose perfectly tailored Palm Beach made my shapeless seersucker suit look like a sack. And dotted along the bar were a half dozen other men who were not only better looking than I, but obviously had more money.

Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I said, “Criticizing myself. I was trying to make up my mind whether to drink myself to death, or just go home and cut my throat.”

The girl moved her eyes sidewise at me. “Come on now. It can’t be that bad.”

Producing a package of cigarettes, I offered her one, but she shook her head.

“Buy you a drink?”

With the same slight smile she had thrown to me in the mirror she indicated the still nearly full highball before her. Running out of conversational subjects, I lapsed into silence.

“We can talk, though,” the girl said. “I’m not a bad listener. Why so down in the mouth? Fight with your wife?”

I shook my head. “I don’t own one. It’s nothing specific. I guess I’m usually down in the mouth.”

“Business troubles?”

I considered. “Maybe you could call it that. Not financial troubles. I’m a cop. Every once in a while I get disgusted with humanity and more disgusted with myself.”

She looked up at me interestedly. “A policeman? I might have guessed that.”

When I raised an eyebrow inquiringly, she said, “You look so strong. And you seem to have that quiet air of authority policemen are supposed to have.”

The girl actually sounded like she admired me, I thought with mild surprise. For a moment I felt a tug of suspicion, but when I studied her guileless face it died away and was replaced by an unaccustomed feeling of expansiveness. I have never been much of a ladies’ man, and it gave me a strangely pleasant feeling to find I could impress a woman as beautiful as this one.

She was no casual barfly, throwing out a line to the first man she encountered in an attempt to make a pickup, I decided. With her looks and her obviously expensive dress, she could get all the men she wanted without cruising the bars. I decided she must be a guest at the hotel, and was merely being friendly.

Noticing her glass was now nearly empty, I asked, “Can I buy you a drink now?”

“All right,” she said agreeably.

Her name was Jacqueline Crosby, she told me over the drink, and she was a dress designer from Chicago. She was in town for two weeks as her company’s representative at the national fashion show. In return I informed her my name was Sam Card and I was a sergeant on the St. Louis morality squad.

By two highballs later we were old friends. Usually alcohol only succeeds in making me more morose, but to my surprise I found that drinking with Jacqueline was making me increasingly cheerful. By eleven o’clock, when she suggested that she had better get to bed because she had to rise early, I was behaving as light-heartedly as though I were my moon-faced partner, Jud Harrison, instead of the morality squad’s eternal sourpuss.

“I live right here at the hotel,” she added. “If you want to take me up to my room, I’ll mix you a nightcap in return for the drinks you bought me.”

Her tone conveyed the barest suggestion of promise that the invitation could mean more than a nightcap. Momentarily it brought my feet back to earth as I again wondered what motive so beautiful a woman could have in scraping acquaintance with a mere cop. Then I decided that questioning motives was probably one of the reasons I had missed many of the pleasures in life, and rose to follow her without a care in the world.

Jacqueline had a suite, not just a room, I discovered when she keyed open her door and I followed her into a large sitting room. She left me there while she went on into the bedroom, and I could hear her phoning down for ice.

Then she called, “Get the door when the boy brings ice, will you, Sam? I want to change into something more comfortable.”

That did it. Up till then my opinion of Jacqueline had been swaying back and forth between regarding her merely as an impersonally friendly female and a woman on the make. But the corny line about getting into something more comfortable crystallized it. I was now suddenly sure that from the moment she sat down on the bar stool next to me, she had intended me to bring her to her suite and make love to her.

With a mixture of mounting anticipation and puzzlement I wondered if after a lifetime of being ignored by women, I had suddenly become irresistible. Walking over to a wall mirror, I studied my lace again, but it didn’t look any more like the answer to a maiden’s prayers than it had in the bar mirror downstairs.

A knock came at the door, I opened it and traded the white-coated boy in the hall a quarter for a bowl of ice. I had barely closed the door behind him when Jacqueline came from the bedroom.

More comfortable, she had said, and she had changed into about as comfortable a garment as you can imagine short of bare skin. She wore a lace negligee so filmy it was all but transparent. And beneath it there was nothing but the pink and white of her flesh. She wore nothing else.

She was even barefoot.

I watched in astonishment as she removed a bottle, siphon and two glasses from a small liquor cabinet and mixed two highballs. If there had been any lingering doubts in my mind as to what she wanted of me, that negligee would have halted them.

But why so lovely a woman would have picked me out of all the men in the Jefferson bar, I could not imagine.

The thought occurred to me that perhaps I was intended to be the victim of a badger game, but I instantly discarded it as inconceivable the girl would be stupid enough to attempt that stunt on a man she knew to be a cop.

When she neared to within two feet of me in order to hand me my drink, and the bright light of the lamp next to me penetrated her thin garment to expose her firm pink-tipped breasts as clearly as though she were naked, I stopped worrying about her motives. Setting down my glass on the mantel without tasting it, I removed hers from her hand, set it next to mine, and took hold of her.

CHAPTER 2

Approximately an hour later I discovered the reason for Jacqueline’s concentrated play for me. We were back in the sitting room by then, and I had dumped the tepid contents of our highball glasses and mixed two fresh drinks. Jacqueline sat on the sofa watching me mix them, her bare feet tucked up under her and the flimsy negligee wrapped around her so tightly it outlined her figure like a coating of cellophane.

When I passed over her drink, she patted the place next to her on the sofa in indication for me to sit down. I shook my head and looked at her without smiling.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what, Sam?”

“Why everything? Why did you bring me up here? What do you want?”

Her smooth forehead puckered in a frown. “You mean you think there’s an angle?”

“I don’t think I’m irresistible,” I told her. “For thirty-two years women hardly give me a second glance. Then the most beautiful woman I ever saw takes one look at me and goes completely overboard. Forgive my cynicism, but I’m not exactly a dunce. There has to be an angle.”

“Maybe you’re just being modest.”

“All right,” I said. “I’m irresistible.”

I chained my drink in one swallow and set down the empty glass.

“I’ll phone you tomorrow,” I said, and started toward the door.

“Wait, Sam!”

When I stopped and turned, she said softly, “Aren’t you even going to kiss me goodnight?”

“Sure. After you tell me the angle.”

She sighed. “You make it very difficult, Sam. You make me feel like… like some kind of prostitute. Like I’m trading myself for a favor. And it isn’t that way at all. I could have just asked the favor without ever leaving the bar.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said.

My voice sounded weary in my own ears. One more scar to add to my collection. Even though I had known it all along, hearing her admit it was not solely my personal attraction which made her throw herself at me did something to my ego. I suddenly experienced the vaguely unclean feeling I imagine a man gets when he hands a pro her fee.

Then the explanation spilled out of her in a rush, as though she wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

“I knew who you were before I sat next to you downstairs,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday. Only I didn’t want to contact you at headquarters. I had a friend with a connection downtown get me your home address, and I talked to your landlady on the phone. She told me you frequently spent off-duty time at the Jefferson bar, so today I checked in here to watch for you. I had been staying at the Statler, you see. I had a waiter point you out, and then I deliberately struck up an acquaintance.”

When she paused to get her breath, I asked, “Why?”

“The day before yesterday you arrested a girl named Minnie Joy for soliciting. At least, that’s the name she’s booked under. It isn’t her real name.”

“What is her real name?”

“Minerva Crosby,” Jacqueline said in a low voice. “She’s my older sister.”

I looked at her in astonishment. “Your sister is a hustler?”

She blushed clear down to her shoulders. “She ran away ten years ago,” she said breathlessly. “Our parents are dead and she couldn’t get along with the uncle who raised us. My uncle didn’t know it, but I’ve been corresponding with her ever since she ran away. She used to write me that she was a model, and it wasn’t until I came to St. Louis for this fashion show and looked her up that I discovered what she really was. And then before I could do anything about it, you arrested her. I want to help her, Sam. I want to take her back to Chicago with me and get her a decent job. But first I want to get her out of this jam.”

For a long while I merely regarded her curiously. Then I asked, “How?”

“Her case is set for the day after tomorrow. You’ll have to testify as the arresting officer. Couldn’t you say… I mean couldn’t you somehow fix it…?”

When her voice trailed off, I said dryly, “You mean give false evidence?”

“Well, it isn’t as though Min were a bad girl,” she said defensively. “She just hasn’t had the breaks.”

“This is her third tumble,” I said in the same dry voice. “There’s lots of work available for women her age these days, and there isn’t a reason in the world she has to make her living the way she does. I’m sorry she’s your sister, but she’s a chronic and hopeless delinquent.”

“I can pay you,” she said eagerly. Jumping from the sofa, she crossed to where she had thrown her purse onto a chair, unclasped it and withdrew a roll as thick as my wrist.

“I’m willing to give you five hundred dollars to get Min off,” she said, peeling fifty-dollar bills off the roll as she advanced on me. “Here.” She attempted to thrust them into my hand. The negligee she had forgotten about, and it hung wide open. Not that it made much difference, since it failed to conceal anything anyway.

A little roughly, I pushed her away. “Look, baby, if you want to help your sister, don’t go around trying to bribe cops. Show up in court and tell the judge your plans for rehabilitation. Maybe he’ll parole her to your custody.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. It would ruin me in the fashion field if anyone discovered my sister was a… was a… that kind of woman. Please take the money.”

In a definite tone I said, “I’m not a smart cop, Jacqueline, and maybe I’m not such a hot lover, but I’ve got one attribute I intend to hang onto. I’m an honest cop. I don’t take bribes and I wouldn’t lie in court to save my own mother from the gas chamber. Let’s drop the subject.”

She stood looking up at me, the bunched mass of fifties in one hand and the rest of the roll in the other. Her breasts rose and fell with her strained breathing.

“Now I’ll kiss you goodnight,” I said.

Without touching her with my hands, I leaned forward and planted a paternal kiss on her forehead. She was still standing there motionless when I slammed the door behind me.

Minnie Joy’s case wasn’t scheduled until the day after, but the next morning I had to be in police court to testify in another case. My partner, Jud Harrison, had a case that morning too, so after I finished my own business, I waited for him.

Jud was not only my partner, but my best friend. We were rookies together, made plain-clothes at the same time and worked together right on down the line. I don’t make friends easily; in fact, I know I have a reputation in the department as a kind of hard guy to get along with.

But Jud and I were buddies. We made a strange combination: I’m rather morose and withdrawn and Jud’s as jolly as a department-store Santa Claus, but perhaps the reason we hit it off so well was that we complemented each other. We were as close as brothers.

Jud’s case was a second offender booked under the name of Jean Darling. Rather boredly I listened to his testimony that the woman had approached him at the corner of Sixth and Locust and asked if he was interested in a little fun, whereupon he had arrested her for soliciting. She was represented by an attorney, and with only half my attention I was conscious that the lawyer was cross-examining Jud.

My attention perked up when Jud’s moonlike face grew embarrassed as he admitted the woman had not asked for money. He started to explain that he had jumped the gun before she could ask because he recognized her as a previous offender, but the defense lawyer cut him off. Brusquely the judge dismissed the charge for lack of evidence.

As we crossed the street together from the Municipal Courts Building to headquarters, I said, “How come an old hand like you loused up a case? You might have known that one wouldn’t stand up.”

“Just a bad day, I guess,” he muttered, still slightly red in the face.

But a moment later he was his usual breezy self. “What you got planned for tonight, Gloomy? Anything special?”

“No. Why?”

“Let’s do a little celebrating. Dinner at the Statler, a few drinks and a couple of floor shows.”

“Two days before pay day? You must be nuts.”

“On me, I mean,” he said. “It’s an invitation, Sad-eyes.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Your rich uncle die?”

“I hit a horse,” he said jubilantly.

Producing his wallet, he opened it to show me a stack of bills.

“Fifty on the nose at ten to one,” he chortled. “Five hundred solid iron men.”

CHAPTER 3

When we checked in at room 404, where the morality squad hangs out, Lieutenant Boxer told us he had a character in the showup room he wanted us to look at.

The man he wanted us to look over was a lank, sallow-faced individual of about forty, clad in a perfectly tailored gabardine suit which must have cost him as much as I earn in a month. From the lighted front of the room he peered out at his shadowy audience with an expression of amused contempt on his face.

“Who is he?” I asked.

Lieutenant Boxer said in a quiet voice, “Monk Cartelli.”

“The Chicago hood?” Jud and I asked in surprised chorus. Then, by himself, Jud inquired uneasily, “What’s he doing in town?”

“We’ve got a stoolie tip that the syndicate is trying to muscle in on St. Louis, and Monk is the advance man,” the lieutenant said. “The chief ordered him brought in for everybody to look over so we can stop him cold before he starts. We can’t hold him on anything because he hasn’t yet done anything we know about, and the chief doesn’t want to order him out of town because he’s afraid the syndicate would just substitute some other organizer we don’t know. He wants him turned loose, then hemmed in so closely he can’t make a move we don’t know about. He thinks if we can convince the syndicate it’s hopeless, they’ll give St. Louis up as a bad job.”

I said, “I get around, and I haven’t heard any whispers of syndicate activity.”

“They’re not beating a brass drum,” Lieutenant Boxer told me. “Apparently it’s a very quiet operation. Our stoolie tip says they’re just feeling around to start, sounding out sentiment among local racketeers, seeing how a few picked political candidates respond to offers of campaign contributions, maybe trying to buy a few cops here and there just to see if St. Louis cops can be bought. Incidentally, that’s one of the things the chief wants every man on the force to watch for. Any strangers who feel you out to see if you’re willing to do some minor favor for a fee, play along until you get the whole pitch, then let me know at once. We’re not at all sure how this bunch operates, so be on your toes for anything at all out of the way. And report it the minute you get it.”

“Yes, sir,” we both said.

Later, as both Jud and I sat at our desks catching up on reports, the lieutenant’s words kept going through my mind. “Be on your toes for anything at all out of the way,” he had said. Jacqueline Crosby’s offer of five hundred dollars to change my testimony against her sister was certainly out of the way, but I could hardly reconcile it with syndicate operations.

It had not even occurred to me to report her offer as a bribe attempt. Ordinarily if I were offered a bribe, I wouldn’t even bother to refuse it. I would simply drop my arm on the briber’s shoulder, march him off to headquarters and enter a charge of attempted bribery. But Jacqueline’s offer came under rather peculiar circumstances. I incline to interpret the law rather rigidly, but even to my mind it would be sticking a little too close to the letter of the law to haul in a woman on a bribery charge because in an hysterical moment she went overboard to get her sister out of a jam.

Then too, I would have had to be a little less than human to arrest Jacqueline for offering me money to fix a minor charge only minutes after she had been in my arms.

But the more I thought about it, the more clearly it dawned on me that Jacqueline Crosby had gone about offering her bribe in the only way that was absolutely safe for her if the bribe was refused. I wondered if she had deliberately planned it that way, knowing that no cop, regardless of how strict a sense of duty he had, would take any more drastic action than turning her down after the intimate hour we had spent together.

Abruptly I shoved aside my reports, muttered something unintelligible to Jud’s question as to where I was going, and went up the hall to room 406.

The card on Minnie Joy gave her birth date as 1920 and the place of birth as Blytheville, Arkansas. That proved nothing, of course, as the data would have been taken from Minnie herself, and she might have lied for any number of reasons. On the other hand, criminals who change their names seldom bother to fake such statistics as place of birth. If Jacqueline Crosby was from Chicago, as she said, it was still possible that she had an older sister born in Blytheville, Arkansas, but I began to worry about it a little.

There was no indication on the card that Minnie Joy was an alias, but again that meant nothing. Few prostitutes went under their own names.

Actually there was nothing in the record which tended to substantiate the blonde Jacqueline’s claim that Minnie Joy was her older sister, but there was nothing there to disprove the claim either.

I studied Minnie’s picture, summoned up a mental image of the woman herself, and decided there was no family resemblance between the two women at all.

I went back to room 404 and had a confidential talk with Lieutenant Boxer. When the head of the morality squad had heard my story and my interpretation of what the story meant, he took me up to the fifth floor for a private session with the chief.

The chief listened without interruption until I had finished.

Then he said, “You think this woman may have been a syndicate plant, eh, Card? I don’t quite get it. Why all the elaborate preliminaries? If they just wanted to sound you out to discover whether you’d be susceptible to bribes when they got ready to go into operation, why couldn’t she just have hinted around at the bar without dragging you off to her room? I can’t quite see your theory that she wanted to create a situation where it wouldn’t occur to you to arrest her. The way you describe it, she finally made the offer, baldly laying it on the line and even trying to thrust the money into your hand, she laid herself wide open to a bribery charge in case you weren’t as chivalrous as she hoped. She could have hinted around at the bar just enough to find out how you stood without actually making it definite enough to get herself in trouble.”

That hadn’t occurred to me, which is probably why I’m a sergeant instead of chief of police.

Rather foolishly I said, “I don’t know, sir.”

“Think you could still take her up on her offer without rousing her suspicion?” he asked.

“I could try.”

“What is this case she wanted you to fix?”

“Solicitation. An old pro. This is her third fall.”

“Probably sixty days, eh? Ninety at the most. Well, she’s going to get a break. Go along with this Crosby woman all the way. Accept the money and change your testimony in court just enough to get the charge dismissed. Can you do that without making it obvious?”

“Sure, Chief.”

“Then we’ll sit back and see what happens. If the woman is actually what she claims, there’s no particular harm done. Maybe she can rehabilitate her sister, and we’ll figure out some way to return her five hundred dollars. But if she’s working with the syndicate, you ought to hear from her again. Keep Lieutenant Boxer informed of developments. All right. That’s all, Sergeant.”

I left with Lieutenant Boxer.

When we got back to room 404 Jud Harrison watched curiously as I called the Jefferson and asked for Miss Jacqueline Crosby’s suite.

When he raised an eyebrow at me, I merely shook my head.

After a moment Jacqueline answered, but she didn’t sound very enthusiastic when she discovered who was calling.

“Any chance of seeing you again?” I asked.

Her laugh was a trifle brittle. “After the way we parted? I don’t believe so, Sergeant.”

“Last night it was Sam,” I said. “I’ve been thinking things over, and maybe we can get together on that deal after all.”

She said cautiously, “What made you change your mind?”

“Last night I was sore,” I said. “I wasn’t even thinking about the deal. All I could think of was that I thought I was making a big conquest, then all of a sudden you told me the whole thing happened because you wanted a favor. I guess my ego was hurt. Today I’m over the hurt.”

“I see.” There was a lengthy silence as she thought things over. Finally she said in a more friendly voice, “When do you want to see me, Sam?”

By the wall clock I saw it was only eleven-thirty. “How about before lunch? I’m only a couple of blocks from there. I’ll stop by now if it’s O.K.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said softly.

When I hung up, Jud said, “We going somewhere?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We can grab some lunch after I make this stop, then make our rounds instead of coming back to the office.”

CHAPTER 4

Jacqueline was wearing a red hostess gown this time. Though it was not transparent, in its own way it was just as revealing as last night’s negligee. It was cut low enough to expose the cleft between her round breasts, and the upper part fitted like a coat of paint down to below her hips. From there on down it flared outward in multiple pleats, which effectively concealed her lovely legs. She met me at the door with a kiss, then leaned backward to look up into my face, which movement simultaneously happened to thrust forward the zipper clasp between her breasts so that I couldn’t fail to see it. The zipper, I noted, ran clear down the front of her gown to her ankles, but I managed to resist the obvious invitation.

“My partner’s waiting for me downstairs,” I said. “I can’t stay.”

She looked a little disappointed.

“About your sister,” I suggested.

“Minnie Joy? Will you really help her, Sam?”

I said I would do what I could. She was across to her purse and had that thick roll in her hands again almost before I got the words out.

Just to see what would happen, I said, “You don’t have to pay me, Jacqueline. I want to do it just for you.”

“No, Sam. It’s worth it to me. And you will be taking a risk, won’t you? I mean giving false testimony. You ought to have something for that. Take this five hundred. I can afford it.”

I let her stuff the money in my pocket.

“I’ll call you,” I said. “Not tonight, because I’ve got a date with my partner to celebrate a fast horse. Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be free,” she said dubiously. “There are so many evening events connected with this fashion show. Better wait until I can call you at work.”

At the door she gave me a passionate goodbye kiss.

When I rejoined Jud in the hotel lobby, he asked, “What’s the pitch, Sam? Don’t tell me some chippie is trying to operate out of an exclusive joint like this.”

“Hardly,” I told him. “I was just making a personal call. Blonde I met last night.”

“I met a blonde night before last,” he said reminiscently. “Wait till you meet her. She’ll make that gloomy face of yours light up like a neon sign.”

The rest of that day was routine. We followed up a couple of tips on new houses that were supposed to be trying to open up, but drew blanks on both investigations. Late in the afternoon we cruised the bars along Sixth Street, Jud taking one side of the street and I taking the other. In one a girl of about sixteen made a pass at me, but she wasn’t a professional. Apparently she was just a kid looking for a little excitement, and after scaring the pants off her with a lecture, I let her go. Fortunately for the bar, she had only been drinking Coke, so all the bar keep got was a few harsh words about letting minors hang around his place.

Jud didn’t run into anything.

“We’ve got a pretty clean town for a city our size,” Jud remarked as we checked in at 404 just before going off duty. “I’d hate to see the syndicate get a hand hold on St. Louis and do to it what they’ve done to some other places.”

I told him to wait for me while I had a conference with Lieutenant Boxer. From across the room he watched curiously as I handed the lieutenant the money I had received from Jacqueline and gave him a brief report of what had happened.

When I joined Jud again, he asked, “What’s all this secret business between you and the head?”

“A little undercover work I’m doing,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

But the opportunity never came up. Jud took me to the Statler for dinner, on the way to the dining room stopping at the desk and asking to speak to a Miss Maurine Hahn. He looked both disappointed and puzzled when the clerk informed him the woman had checked out the day before without leaving a forwarding address.

“Your blonde?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He gave a small shrug. “Well, I guess she isn’t the only blonde in the world.”

Then we ran into a man from the circuit attorney’s office Jud knew, and with his usual exuberance Jud talked him into joining our party. After dinner we hit a couple of clubs, Jud insisting on picking up all the checks because of his lucky horse hit, and by the time the bars closed at one-thirty we had added a reporter friend of Jud’s and two stray brunettes the reporter knew. Alone I can cruise from bar to bar all night without having anyone but an occasional hustler so much as speak to me, but when Jud celebrates he always accumulates a retinue before the evening is over.

In the general confusion I never did get around to telling him what I had been doing for Lieutenant Boxer.

The next morning in police court I put on my little act for Minnie Joy. Since she had no defense attorney, I spoke to the judge before trial and told him that for reasons of policy connected with another case, the morality squad wanted to quash the charge against Minnie.

“Lieutenant Boxer approve this?” he wanted to know.

“It’s his idea.”

“All right,” he said, and dismissed the case.

Minnie was so surprised, an attendant had to start her toward the door before she realized she was free. Apparently she had no inkling of Jacqueline’s efforts on her behalf.

That evening, disregarding the blonde Jacqueline’s instructions to wait until I heard from her, I phoned the Jefferson.

Miss Jacqueline Crosby had checked out without leaving a forwarding address, the desk informed me.

Two days later she phoned me at headquarters.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“A friend loaned me an apartment,” she said, “so I moved from the hotel. Thanks for what you did for Minnie.”

“Don’t mention it. You made it worthwhile.”

“Busy tonight?”

“No.”

She reeled off an address on Lindell just west of Grand Avenue. “Apartment 3-C. Come about eight and we’ll spend a quiet evening at home.”

Her soft voice was so loaded with promise, I very nearly decided to play it straight and forget reporting this development to the head of the morality squad. But after ten years of practice, it’s a little difficult to go against routine. Dutifully I went over to Lieutenant Boxer’s desk and told him about the phone call.

His eyes narrowed when I mentioned the address. “Interesting,” he said. “You knew the chief was having Monk Cartelli covered, didn’t you?”

“You mentioned he intended to.”

“Well, for your information, the address for your date with your beautiful blonde is the same apartment where Cartelli is holed up.”

In a way this made me even more eager to keep the date, but not for the same reason. It effectively killed any romantic aspirations I had developed because of the promise in Jacqueline’s tone.

I suppose the normal thing for a man to do who has an assignation with a lovely blonde is to adjust his necktie a final time just before he rings the doorbell. Instead I loosened my Detective Special in its holster.

Jacqueline opened the door. For a change she was attired merely in an ordinary dress, and not a particularly sexy one at that. She didn’t offer to kiss me either. However, she gave me an intimate smile as she held the door wide for me to enter.

I wasn’t particularly surprised to find three other men in the room, but I managed to simulate surprise.

I looked from Monk Cartelli, who stood with his back to an artificial fireplace, to the two mugs who sat side by side on the sofa. Both were strangers to me, one long and thin and the other squat and chunky, but they had two things in common. Each had the deadpan expression of the professional killer.

The other thing they had in common was the .45 caliber automatic each leveled at my belt buckle. “What’s the gag?” I asked Jacqueline.

“No gag,” Monk Cartelli smoothly answered for her. “Don’t let the guns worry you. They’re just insurance that you stay quiet until you hear what I have to say. We won’t even inconvenience you by disarming you, Sergeant. Just back against the wall there and keep your arms at your sides.”

With my eyes on the nonchalantly-held .45’s, I did as ordered. Then we waited nearly ten minutes in complete silence. Once, when I started to ask what we were waiting for, Monk silenced me with an imperious gesture. All this time the two hoods watched me unblinkingly, and Jacqueline sat with her hands quietly folded in her lap, apparently perfectly at ease, though her gaze avoided mine.

Finally the door buzzer sounded. Jacqueline rose, went to the door and ushered in my partner, Jud Harrison.

CHAPTER 5

Just as I had, Jud gaped at the other occupants of the apartment in surprise, but his surprise seemed genuine. A sick feeling grew inside of me as I realized something that I suppose, in a way, I’d known unconsciously all along—that Jud’s five hundred dollars had not come from a horse bet.

“Is this your Maurine Hahn from the Statler?” I asked him cynically, nodding at Jacqueline.

His eyes flicked at the blonde, then back to me. “Yeah. What the devil you doing here, Sam?”

“The same thing you are, sucker. Only the name she gave me was Jacqueline Crosby and her supposed sister’s name was Minnie Joy. I suppose she told you that other hustler you got off in court the other day was her sister.”

Cartelli broke up further conversation by ordering Jud to stand against the wall next to me.

“I don’t want any violence, gentlemen,” he said. “As soon as you’ve listened to a couple of recordings and heard what I have to say, I’ll order my men to put up their guns. By that time I think you will have sufficiently come around to my point of view so that they won’t be necessary. Meantime I prefer to prevent argument by keeping you under control.”

Crossing to a small table containing a phonograph, Cartelli switched the machine on.

For a few seconds there was only a dull scratching sound, then what was unmistakably my voice said, “About your sister.”

“Minnie Joy?” Jacqueline’s voice said. “Will you really help her, Sam?”

Relentlessly the record continued to reel off the conversation which had taken place between me and the blonde in her hotel suite until it reached the point where Jacqueline said, “No, Sam. It’s worth it to me. And you will be taking a risk, won’t you? I mean giving false testimony. You ought to have something for that. Take this five hundred. I can afford it.”

Then Cartelli shut it off. Replacing the record with another, he turned on the machine again. This one played an almost identical scene, except that Jud’s voice was substituted for mine and the case the blonde was bribing him to fix involved a woman named Jean Darling instead of Minnie Joy.

When Monk Cartelli shut off the second record, there was a long silence in the room.

I broke it by asking without emotion, “How many other cops have you suckered into this deal?”

“No cops,” the syndicate organizer said smugly. “We netted a young assistant in the circuit attorney’s office, though, plus a young fellow in the coroner’s office. We aren’t rushing things. We’re just lining up a few people at a time.”

Next to me Jud said worriedly, “What is this deal, Sam?”

“We’ve been set up,” I told him in a cold voice. “I guess we both thought we were making an easy and safe five hundred. But it was a trap. Those records mailed to the police commissioner not only would get us bounced off the force, they’d land us in jail. The chief thought the syndicate might be feeling around to see who’d be susceptible to bribery, but apparently plans were a little more definite than that. Cartelli here is lining up cops and other officials in strategic spots who will have to take orders from the syndicate. We’re hooked, Jud. We might as well face it.”

Jud’s face was sweating. “Listen,” he said, “just because I agreed to get this blonde’s sister off the hook for a fee doesn’t mean I’m willing to play along with the syndicate.”

“Rather go to jail?” Cartelli asked idly.

Jud stared at him. The bitterness grew in me almost unbearably when I saw his face begin to go to pieces.

“What do you want of us?” I asked Cartelli harshly.

“Just your unquestioning future cooperation, for which you’ll be paid more than you ever earned before.”

“Why us?” I demanded. “We’re just a couple of unimportant cops. Why didn’t you pick on a few division heads?”

“We plan on both you men being division heads before we’re through, Sergeant. We’re just beginning to organize. When we have helped into office the officials we want, we’ll be in a position to dictate appointments and promotions in the police department. We plan long in advance, and we may not reach that point for several years. But when we do, we want men we know will cooperate. Both of you have everything to gain by being picked by the syndicate. A few years from now one of you will head the morality squad and the other will probably head one of the other squads. And what we pay you on the side will make your salaries look like peanuts.”

Jud’s expression gradually grew calmer as the syndicate organizer spoke. When Cartelli stopped, Jud looked at me questioningly, and the mixture of thoughtfulness and cupidity in his eyes made me even sicker than his panic a while before.

“You might as well tell your men to put their guns up,” I told Cartelli wearily.

Monk looked from me to Jud in an estimating way, then nodded to the two hoods, who obediently thrust their guns under their arms.

“I guess we’ll have to go along, won’t we, Sam?” Jud asked. “I mean, we haven’t much choice, have we?”

“You haven’t,” I told him. “But I happen to be a plant. The department knows all about the bribe I took.”

As I spoke I flashed my hand to my hip and came up with a cocked Detective Special.

“You’re all under arrest,” I said in a brittle voice.

Jud gaped at me. “You… you’re a department plant, Sam? But… but how about me?”

“You should have thought of that before you took a bribe, Jud.”

I said gently, “Get their guns.”

“Listen,” he said. “You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

“You took an oath when you became a cop,” I told him. “The minute you violated that oath, you stopped being my friend and became a crooked cop. I’m sorry, Jud, but you’re going in too.”

His hand stole toward his hip.

“Hold it,” I advised him, shifting my gun in his direction.

With my attention momentarily on Jud, the two hoods decided to make a break. As their hands streaked toward their armpits, I started to swing back toward them.

Jud’s shoulder caught me in the hip and sent me sprawling.

All hell broke loose.

Both gunmen’s .45’s roared simultaneously and plaster spewed from the wall. I took my time with two shots and knocked the squat man back to the couch with my first. The second caught the taller gunman in the forehead and he dropped like a stone.

Monk Cartelli had crouched behind an overstuffed chair, and now a shot crashed from that direction. Jud, still on his feet, slammed back against the wall, slid to the floor and from a seated position sent five slugs at the chair. Cartelli jerked erect and pitched over on his back.

Slowly I climbed to my feet and surveyed the damage.

Both gunmen and Cartelli were dead. The blonde cowered in a corner, unharmed but green with fright. Ordering her to stay there, I looked at Jud.

He had taken Cartelli’s single shot squarely in the chest. He was done and he knew it. Even as I watched, blood began to dribble from the corner of his mouth.

“Sam,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Sam.” Then with an effort, “The record…”

Crossing to the phonograph, I lifted the record which proved my partner a dishonest cop, broke it in my hands into a dozen pieces and tossed the pieces out the third-floor window into the street.

“You can go out clean, Jud,” I said.

He was dead before I finished the sentence.

To the blonde I said harshly, “One charge of bribery is enough to take care of you. Would you like to mention my partner Jud to anybody, and get yourself an extra year?”

She shook her head, her eyes wide and terrified.

Then she said, “Sam, you liked me a lot that—that other, night. Can’t you—isn’t there some way you can give me a break?”

I looked at her for a long minute before replying. “Sure, babe, sure,” I said finally. “I can give you a break. I’ll take you down to the can just the way you are, instead of stopping first to kick your teeth down your throat.” Then I pushed her away from me and went to the phone.

HIT AND RUN

Originally published in Manhunt, December 1954.

CHAPTER 1

At one o’clock in the morning the taverns along Sixth Street are usually full. But there aren’t many people on the street. With only a half hour left until curfew, most people don’t want to waste drinking time walking from one bar to another.

When I stepped out of the Happy Hollow, the only other person in sight was an elderly and rather shabbily-dressed man who was just starting to cross the street. And the only moving vehicle in sight was the green Buick convertible which came streaking along Sixth just in time to catch the elderly man with its left front fender as he stepped from between two parked cars. The car was driving on the left side of the street because Sixth is one-way at that point and either lane is legal.

The old man flew back between the cars he had just walked between to land in a heap on the sidewalk. With a screech of brakes the green convertible swerved right clear across the street and sideswiped two parked cars.

The crash was more terrific than the damage. Metal screamed in agony as a front fender was torn from the first parked car and a rear fender half ripped from the body of the second. The convertible caromed to the center of the street, hesitated for a moment, then gunned off like a scared rabbit.

But not before I had seen all I needed to see. That section of Sixth is a solid bank of taverns and clubs, and neon signs make it as bright as day. With the convertible’s top down, I could see the occupants clearly.

The driver was a woman, hatless and with raven black hair to her shoulders. I could see her only in profile, but I got an impression of evenly molded features and suntanned complexion. The man next to her I saw full face, for as the car shot away he stared back over his shoulder at the motionless figure on the sidewalk. He too was hatless, a blond, handsome man with a hairline mustache. I recognized him instantly.

He was Harry Cushman, twice-married and twice-divorced cafe society playboy whose romantic entanglements regularly got him in the local gossip columns.

Automatically I noted the license number of the Buick convertible was X-4 2-209-30.

The crash brought people pouring from doorways all along the block. A yell of rage from across the street, followed by a steady stream of swearing, told me at least one of the damaged cars’ owners had arrived on the scene.

“Anybody see it?” I heard someone near me ask.

Then somebody discovered the man lying on the sidewalk. As a crowd began to gather around him, I crossed the street to look at the two damaged cars. Beyond a ruined fender on each, neither seemed particularly harmed. One was a Dodge and one a Ford, and I tried to file the license number of each in my mind along with the Buick’s.

Apparently someone in the crowd had thought to call an ambulance and the police, for a few moments later they arrived simultaneously. I stood at the edge of the crowd as the police cleared a path for the City Hospital intern who had come with the ambulance and the intern bent over the injured man.

The man wasn’t dead, for I could hear the intern asking him questions and the old man answering in a weak voice. I couldn’t hear what they said, but after a few moments the intern rose and spoke in a louder voice to one of the cops.

“He may have a fractured hip. Can’t tell for sure without X-rays. I don’t think anything else is broken.”

Then, under the intern’s instructions, two attendants got the old man on a stretcher and put him in the ambulance.

“I didn’t get the guy’s name,” the cop complained.

“John Lischer,” the intern said. “You can get his address later. His temporary address for a while will be City Hospital.”

By now it was twenty after one.

I re-entered the Happy Hollow for a nightcap, and while I was sipping it I wrote down on an envelope I found in my pocket the three license numbers and the name John Lischer.

CHAPTER 2

The private detective business isn’t particularly good in St. Louis. In New York State a private cop can pick up a lot of business gathering divorce evidence, because up there the only ground for divorce is adultery. But in Missouri you can get a divorce for cruelty, desertion, non-support, alcoholism, if your spouse commits a felony, impotency, if your wife is pregnant at marriage, indignities, or if the husband is a vagrant. So why hire a private cop to prove adultery?

I have to pick up nickels wherever I can find them.

By noon the next day I’d learned horn the Bureau of Motor Vehicle records that license X-42-209-30 was registered to Mrs. Lawrence Powers at a Lindell address across the street from Forest Park. The address gave me a lift, because there aren’t any merely well-off people in that section. Most of them are millionaires.

I also checked the licenses of the Dodge and the Ford, learning their owners were respectively a James Talmadge on South Jefferson and a Henry Taft on Skinker Boulevard. Then I called City Hospital and asked about the condition of John Lischer.

The switchboard operator informed me it was listed as fair.

I waited another twenty-four hours before calling on Mrs. Lawrence Powers. I picked two p.m. as the best time to arrive.

The Powers’s home was a huge rose granite affair of at least fourteen rooms, surrounded by fifty-feet of perfect lawn in all four directions. A colored maid came to the door.

“Mrs. Powers, please,” I said, handing the maid one of my cards reading: Bernard Calhoun, Confidential Investigations.

She let me into a small foyer, left me standing there while she went off with the card. In a few minutes she came back with a dubious expression on her face.

“Mrs. Powers is right filled up with appointments this afternoon, Mr. Calhoun. She wants to know have you got some particular business?”

I said, “Tell her it’s about an auto accident.”

The colored girl disappeared again, but returned almost immediately.

“Just follow me please, sir,” she said.

She led me through a living room about thirty feet long whose furnishings alone probably cost a year of my income, through an equally expensive dining room and onto a large sun-flooded sun porch at the side of the house. Mrs. Lawrence Powers reclined at full length in a canvas deck chair, wearing brief red shorts and a similarly-colored scarf. She wore nothing else, not even shoes, and obviously had been sun bathing when I interrupted her.

The maid left us alone and I examined Mrs. Powers at the same time she was studying me. She was the same woman I had seen at the wheel of the Buick convertible. She was about thirty, I judged, a couple of years younger than me, and she had a body which started my heart hammering the moment I saw her. Not only was it perfectly contoured, her flesh was a creamy tan so satiny in texture, I had to control an impulse to reach out and lest if it were real. She was beautiful clear from the tip of her delicately-shaped little nose to the tips of her small toes. Even her feet were lovely.

But her lace didn’t have any more expression than a billiard ball.

After a moment she calmly rose from her deck chair, turned her back to me and said, “Tie me up, please.” Her voice was pleasantly husky, but there was a curious flatness to it.

She had folded the scarf into a triangle and now held the two ends behind her for me to tie together. Taking them, I crossed them in the middle of her back. The touch of my knuckles against her bare flesh sent a tremor up my arms and I had an idiotic impulse to lean down and press my mouth against the smooth shoulder immediately in front of me.

Killing the impulse, I asked, “Tight enough?”

“It’ll do.”

I tied a square knot.

She turned around right where she was, which put her face an inch in front of mine and about six inches below. She was a tall woman, about five feet eight, because I stand six feet two.

Looking up at me without expression, she said in a toneless voice, “You’re a big man, Mr. Calhoun.”

For several moments I stood staring down at her, not even thinking. I’m not used to having scantily-clad women push themselves so close to me on first meeting, and I wasn’t sure how to take her. Then I got my brain functioning again and decided she probably wasn’t used to having strange men walk into her house, take one look at her and then grab her and kiss her. Probably, despite her seeming provocation she’d scream for her maid.

I said, “Two-ten in my bare skin,” backed away and took a deck chair similar to hers. Gracefully Mrs. Powers sank back into her own.

“You’re a private detective, Mr. Calhoun?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you wanted to see me about some accident?”

“The one night before last. Involving a green Buick convertible with license X-42-209-30, a parked Dodge belonging to a man named James Talmadge, a parked Ford belonging to a man named Henry daft, and a pedestrian named John Lischer who’s currently at City Hospital in fair condition. A hit-and-run accident.”

She was silent for a moment. Then she merely said, “I see.”

“I happened to be coming out of Happy Hollow just as it took place,” I said. “I was the only person on the street aside from John Lischer, and I’m sure I was the only witness. I got a good look at both the driver of the Buick and the passenger. Good enough to recognize both. You were the driver and Harry Cushman was the passenger.”

Again she said, “I see.” Then, after studying me without expression, she asked, “What do you want?”

“Have you reported the accident?”

When she looked thoughtful, I said, “I can easily check at headquarters. I haven’t yet because I didn’t want to be questioned.”

“I see. No. I haven’t reported it.”

“What does your husband do, Mrs. Powers?”

A fleeting frown marred the smoothness of her brow, but it was gone almost instantly.

“He’s president of Haver National Bank.”

“Then you haven’t told your husband about the accident either.”

I made it a statement instead of a question.

She regarded me thoughtfully. “Why do you assume that?”

“Because I don’t think the president of Haver National Bank would let an accident his wife was involved in go unreported for thirty-seven hours. Particularly where no one was seriously hurt, you undoubtedly have liability insurance, and the worst you could expect if you turned yourself in voluntarily would be a fine and temporary suspension of your driver’s license. He’d know the charge against you would be much more serious if the police have to track you down than if you turned yourself in on your own even at this late date.”

Her face remained deadpan. “So?”

“So I think the reason you didn’t stop, and the reason you don’t intend to report the accident, isn’t because you lost your bead. You don’t impress me as the panicky type. I think the reason you didn’t stop was because you couldn’t afford to let your husband find out you were out with Harry Cushman at one in the morning.”

When she said nothing at all, I asked, “Have you tried to have your car fixed yet?”

She shook her head.

“Where is it?”

“In the garage out back.”

“How come your husband hasn’t noticed the damage?”

“It’s all on the right side,” she said tonelessly. “A smashed front fender, bent bumper and dented door. Nothing was knocked loose. We have a three-car garage and my stall is the far right one. I parked it close to the wall so no one could walk around on that side. The station wagon’s between my car and my husband’s Packard, so there isn’t much likelihood of him noticing the damage.”

“You say nothing was knocked looser Was your headlight broken?”

“No. I don’t believe I left any clues at the scene of the crime.”

I leaned back and put the tips of my fingers together. In a conversational tone I said, “You must have left some green paint on the two cars you hit. By now the police have alerted every repair garage within a fifty-mile radius to watch for a green car. Have you thought of that?”

“Yes.”

“How you plan to get around it?”

“I haven’t yet solved the problem.”

“Would you be interested in some advice?”

“What advice?” she asked.

“Hire a private detective to get you out of your jam,” I said.

CHAPTER 3

For a long time she looked at me, her expression completely blank. When she spoke there was the slightest touch of mockery in her voice.

“I was frightened when Alice said you wanted to see me about an auto accident, Mr. Calhoun. But almost from the moment you walked through the door I knew you hadn’t come to investigate me on behalf of that old man or either of the two car owners. I’m a pretty good judge of character. Out of the four people involved, how did you happen to pick me as your potential client?”

“I doubt that any of the others could stand my fee.”

Her face grew thoughtful again. “I see. What kind of service do you offer?”

“I offer to arrange a quiet payment of damages to the owners of the other two cars, so you don’t have to worry about eventual suits if they ever find out who side-swiped them. With a bonus tossed in to keep them from telling the cops there’d been a contact. And to make the same kind of arrangement with John Lischer. I warn you in advance that part will cost plenty, because on top of whatever I can get him to agree to for damages, he’ll have to be paid to keep it from the cops that there’s been a settlement. I’ll also take care of having your car repaired safely.”

“Why can’t you do just the last part?” she asked. “If no one ever discovers it was my car, why should we risk contacting the other people?”

“I’m thinking of your interest,” I said. “Once there’s a settlement, even a secret one, none of the other parties will press charges in the event the police ever catch up with you. Because I’ll get quitclaim agreements from all of them. Then if you do get caught, the probability is the cops won’t press charges on their own. And even if they do, proof that you made cash settlements with all the injured parties will be an extenuating circumstance. I doubt that any judge would give you more than a token fine and suspend your driver’s license for six months. But without settling, you’re in for a jail sentence if you ever get caught.”

“I see.” Her brow puckered in a slight frown. “And you say you can get my car repaired safely?”

“Safely,” I assured her.

“How? I wouldn’t care to have some shady repairman work on it. All he’d have to do is check the license plate like you did, and be all set for a little blackmail.”

“I said safely. Does your husband ever go out of town?”

“He flies to New York this coming Monday. A banker’s convention. He’ll be gone a full week.”

“What time’s he leave?”

“Six p.m. from the airport.”

“Fine,” I said. “As soon as it’s dark Monday night, I’ll pick up the car and drive it to Kansas City. I’ll switch plates and take it to a garage where I can get fast service. By the time your husband gets back from New York, your car will be back in the garage as good as new. Meantime, between now and Monday, I’ll arrange settlements with John Lischer and the other two car owners.”

She thought it over. Finally she said, “What is your fee?”

“Five thousand dollars,” I said.

She didn’t even blink. “I see. You’re a rather expensive man, Mr. Calhoun.”

I shrugged.

“And if I refuse to engage you?”

I said, “I have my duty as a citizen.”

“How would you explain to the police keeping silent thirty-seven hours?”

“I’d phone and ask why they haven’t acknowledged my letter,” I said blandly. “I was quite drunk that night. Too drunk for it to occur to me I ought to tell the police at the scene I had seen your license number. But the very next morning I wrote them a letter. Letters can get lost in the mail.”

She nodded slightly. “I guess you’re in a pretty good bargaining position, Mr. Calhoun. But I have one more question. Suppose this John Lischer insists on as much as a five-thousand-dollar settlement? With your fee, that would run the amount up to ten thousand. Where do you suggest I get that much money?”

I looked at her in surprise. “With this home and with three cars in the garage, I assume you’re not exactly a pauper.”

“No,” she admitted. “My husband is quite wealthy. And I can have all the money I want for any purpose I want just by asking. The only catch is I have to tell what it’s for. I haven’t a cent of my own except a checking account which currently contains about five hundred dollars. I could get the money by telling my husband what it’s for, but if I did that I wouldn’t need your services. I’m not afraid of the police. The sole reason I’m willing to engage you is to prevent my husband from finding out I wasn’t home in bed at the time of the accident.”

“Think up some other excuse. A charity donation, for instance.”

She shook her head. “My husband handles all our charity donations personally. There simply isn’t any excuse I could give him. If I told him I wanted a ten-thousand-dollar launch, he’d tell me to order it and have the company bill him. He wouldn’t give me the money for it. I’ve never in my life asked him for more than a couple of hundred dollars in cash.”

I said, “Then hit your boyfriend. Harry Cushman’s got a couple of odd million lying around, last I heard, and nothing to spend it on except alimony and nightclubbing.”

She looked thoughtful. “Yes, I suppose that would work. Harry wouldn’t want publicity any more than I would. Shall I ask him for a check?”

“Cash,” I said.

“I’ll phone him as soon as you leave. Suppose you come back about this same time tomorrow?”

“Fine,” I said. It sounded like a dismissal, so I got to my feet.

She gave me an impersonal nod of good-by. She was leaning forward and reaching behind her back to untie my square knot when I walked out of the room.

CHAPTER 4

The next day was Thursday. At noon I phoned City Hospital and learned John Lischer’s condition was charted as unchanged. Two hours later the colored maid Alice again let me into the foyer of the Powers home.

This time, instead of making me wait while she checked with her mistress, she merely said, “Mrs. Powers is expecting you, sir,” walked off and let me find my own way to the sun porch.

Thick carpeting in the big living room and dining room muffled my footsteps so that Mrs. Powers couldn’t hear me coming. I stopped at the open door of the sun porch.

Perhaps Mrs. Powers was expecting me, but apparently she had also expected the maid at least to announce my arrival, because she wasn’t exactly dressed for company. As yesterday, she was stretched out in one of the deck chairs with sun flooding her body, tier eyes were closed, though she didn’t seem to be asleep, and she wore nothing but a bra and a pair of yellow shorts as brief as the red ones she had worn the previous day.

A man can stand only so much temptation. When she looked up at me with no expression whatever on her face, I dropped a hand on each of her smooth shoulders, pulled her against my chest and kissed her.

She made no resistance, but she made no response either. She just stood there, her lips soft but unmoving, and her eyes wide open. After a moment I pushed her away.

“Was your mother frightened by an ice cube?” I growled at her.

“Maybe you’re just not the man to melt the ice, Mr. Calhoun.”

Turning, she padded across the enclosed porch on bare feet to a small table. A brightly-colored straw bag lay on the table, and she removed a banded sheaf of currency from it.

“Your fee,” she said, returning and handing me the money. “One hundred fifties.”

“How about the settlement?”

“We don’t know what that’s going to amount to, do we?” she said. “Harry wants to see the agreements releasing me from further claims in writing before he pays any more money. When you bring me those, I’ll see that you get whatever money the agreements call for.”

“Harry is smarter than I thought he was,” I remarked.

I riffled through the bills enough to make sure they were all fifties, then stuffed them in a pocket without counting them. “I’ll pay my personal expenses and the car repairs out of this, and you can pay me back when it’s all over.”

Without comment she returned to her deck chair.

“I’ll try to have all three agreements drawn up by tomorrow,” I said. “Is it all right if I take them directly to Cushman for approval instead of bringing them here?”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’d like to get that part of it settled before I take off with the car. So I won’t be in quite so much of a jam in case I get picked up driving it. By the time I deliver the agreements to you, you relay them on to Cushman and I call to get them back again, it will already be Monday.”

After reflecting she said, “I suppose that will be all right. I’ll phone Harry to expect you sometime tomorrow.”

“I’ll pick up the car about eight thirty Monday night. Leave the garage unlocked and the keys in the car.”

“Hadn’t I better phone you first?” she asked. “Suppose Lawrence changed his mind at the last minute and didn’t go?”

“Yeah,” I said after a moment’s thought. “Maybe you better.” I gave her my home number.

CHAPTER 5

My plan was to contact the injured John Lischer before I got in touch with either of the other two men as there would be no point in trying to settle with the others at all if Lischer refused to co-operate. But before even doing that, I decided it would be smart to find out just how much of an interest the police were taking in the case.

In St. Louis the Homicide Squad investigates all hit-and-runs in which there’s personal injury, even if the injury isn’t serious. This procedure is based on the sound theory that if unexpected complications happen to develop and the accident victim dies, Homicide has been on the case from the beginning and doesn’t have to pick up a cold trail.

So I dropped in on Lieutenant Ben Simmons, head of the St. Louis Homicide Squad.

I found him alone in Room 405, morosely going over a stack of case records. Ben Simmons is a big man, nearly as big as I am, with an air of restrained energy about him. He hates desk work, which makes up a good part of his job, and usually’s glad of any excuse to postpone it. While we’re friendly enough, we’ve never been intimate pals, but because my arrival gave him an excuse to push his case records aside, he looked up at me almost with relief.

“Hi, Barney,” he said. “Pull up a cigarette and sit down. I was just getting ready to take a break.” Sliding a chair over to one side of his desk, I produced a pack, offered him a cigarette and flipped another in my own mouth. He furnished the fire.

Simmons leaned back in his chair and blew an appreciative shaft of smoke across the desk. “If you came in to report a corpse, walk right out again. I’m up to my neck now.”

“Just killing time,” I said. “Thought maybe I could dig up a client from among your unsolved cases. I haven’t had a job in five weeks.”

The lieutenant laughed. Regular cops always seem to get a kick out of hearing a private cop isn’t doing so well.

“You should have stayed on the force,” he said. “Probably you’d have been a sergeant by now.”

“Probably I’d still be pounding a beat. Anything interesting stirring?”

“In unsolveds? A stickup killing and a hit-and-run is all. Unless you want to look up some of the old ones from years back.”

“What’s the hit-and-run?” I asked. “Any insurance companies involved?”

“Not for the dead guy. He didn’t have any insurance. There was a little property damage covered by insurance, but not enough to pay the insurance company to hire a private eye to track down the hit-and-runner.”

Apparently he was talking about a different case, I thought, since John Lischer hadn’t either been dead or in any immediate danger of dying when I’d last checked City Hospital at noon that day.

I said, “You’ve only got one unsolved hit-and-run?”

“At the moment. And this one I was hoping I could turn over. The thing happened about one a.m. Tuesday morning, and the guy’s condition was listed as fair up until one p.m. today. Then he suddenly conked out. I just got the call an hour ago.”

I felt my insides turn cold. Forcing my tone to remain only politely interested, I asked, “Who was he?”

“Old fellow named John Lischer. All he had was a fractured hip, but he was pushing eighty and I guess he couldn’t stand the shock. His heart gave out.”

I went on calmly puffing my cigarette, but my mind was racing. Up to this moment my actions in the case hadn’t been exactly ethical, but the most I’d been risking was my license. Once I had succeeded in arriving at settlements with the three injured parties, there wasn’t much likelihood I’d get into serious trouble for not reporting what I knew to the police, even if the whole story eventually came out.

But the unexpected death of John Lischer changed the whole picture. Suddenly, instead of merely being guilty of somewhat unethical practice, I was an accessory to homicide. For in Missouri hit-and-run driving resulting in death is manslaughter, and carries a penalty of from three months to ten years.

I asked casually, “Got any leads on the case?”

“A little green paint and a bumper guard. Enough to identify the car as a green Buick.”

That did it, I thought. So much for Mrs. Powers’s assurance that she’d left no clues at the scene of the crime. With the case now a homicide instead of merely a hit-and-run, there’d be a statewide alert for a damaged green Buick. Even Kansas City wouldn’t be safe.

Somehow I managed to get through another five minutes of idle conversation with Ben Simmons. Then I pushed myself erect with simulated laziness.

“I guess I won’t pick up any nickels here,” I said. “See you around.”

“Sure,” the lieutenant said. “Drop in any time.”

It was four o’clock when I left Headquarters. I debated returning to the Powers home at once, then decided it was too close to the time Mr. Powers would be getting home from the bank. Instead I phoned from a pay station.

The colored maid Alice answered the phone, but Mrs. Powers came on almost immediately.

“Barney Calhoun,” I said. “There’s been a development. I have to see both you and Cushman at once.”

“Now?” she asked. “I expect my husband home within an hour.”

“Arrange some excuse with Alice. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. Can you get in touch with Cushman?”

“I suppose.”

“Then both of you be at my place by a quarter of five. It’s on Twentieth between Locust and Olive. West side of the street, just right of the alley. Lower right flat. Got it?”

“That isn’t a very nice neighborhood,” she said with a slight sniff.

“I’m not a very nice person,” I told her, and hung up.

CHAPTER 6

Harry Cushman arrived first, coming in a taxi.

When I opened the door, he asked, “You’re Calhoun?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Come on in.”

He didn’t offer his hand. Following me into my small and not particularly well-furnished front room, he looked around superciliously, finally chose a straight-backed chair as the least likely piece of furniture to be contaminated.

“Helena said it was urgent,” he said. “I hope you can make it fast. I have a five-thirty cocktail date.”

It was the first time I had heard Mrs. Powers’s first name. Helena Powers. Somehow it seemed to suit her calm and expressionless beauty.

I said, “Depends on how fast Helena gets here. What I have to say won’t take long.”

The buzzer sounded at that moment and I went to let Helena Powers in. Glancing past her at the curb, I saw she had come in the station wagon.

Harry Cushman rose when she came into the room, crossed and bent to kiss her. She turned her cheek, then moved away from him and took my easy chair with the broken spring. She was wearing a bright sun dress which left her shoulders bare, open-toed pumps and no stockings. Her jet-black hair was tied back with a red ribbon and she looked about sixteen years old.

Cushman returned to his chair.

Without preliminary I said, “John Lischer’s dead.”

Cushman stared at me with his mouth open. As usual Helena’s face showed no expression.

“But you told Helena you’d been checking the hospital and his condition was listed as fair,” Cushman said stupidly.

“His heart gave out. All he had was a fractured hip, but he was nearly eighty.”

Helena asked in a calm voice, “How does this affect our arrangements?”

“It changes the whole picture,” I told her. “You can’t settle with a corpse. If you get caught now, you’ll be charged with manslaughter. You’ll be charged even if you turn yourself in.”

Harry Cushman’s face was gray. “Listen, I can’t afford to be accessory to a manslaughter.”

“You already are,” I informed him. “You were in the car that killed Lischer. If you didn’t want to be an accessory, you should have reported to the cops at once.” I let a little contempt creep into my voice. “Of course if you go to them right now, they’ll probably let you off the hook because they’ll be more interested in the driver. Mrs. Powers will take the rap…probably five years…and all you’ll get is a little bad publicity.”

He licked his lips and flicked his eyes at Helena, who stared back at him expressionlessly.

“Naturally we have to protect Helena,” Cushman said with an effort to sound protective. “What’s your suggestion?”

“They know it was a green Buick.” I looked at Helena. “Your belief that you hadn’t knocked anything loose was a little wrong. You left a bumper guard at the accident scene.” I turned my attention back to Cushman. “Now that it’s classified as a homicide instead of just a hit-and-run, every repair garage in the state and halfway across Illinois will be alerted. The risk of getting the car fixed has at least tripled. And so has my fee. I want another ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand!” Cushman squeaked. “You agreed to five!”

“Not to help cover a homicide, I didn’t. Make up your mind fast. Either it’s fifteen grand or nothing. If you don’t want to play, I’ll hand back your five right now and call the police.”

Both of them stared at me, Cushman with petulant belligerence and Helena with mild curiosity, as she might have examined an interesting bug on a flower.

Finally Helena’s husky voice said, “I don’t see what there is to argue about, Harry. Mr. Calhoun seems to be in a perfect bargaining position. He always seems to be in a perfect bargaining position.”

Cushman sputtered and fumed for a few minutes more, but finally he agreed to deliver me ten thousand more in cash at noon the next day. The money didn’t mean anything to him, of course, because he’d been left more millions than he could possibly spend in a lifetime, but I think he was beginning to wish he’d never heard of the beautiful Helena Powers. I could tell by the way he looked at her she held a terrific fascination for him, but I suspect he was beginning to wonder if she was worth the complications she was bringing into his life.

I didn’t care what he thought so long as he came up with an additional ten thousand dollars.

CHAPTER 7

Hit-and-run deaths don’t create much newspaper stir in a city the size of St. Louis, particularly where the victim isn’t important from a news point of view. The Friday papers carried a brief account of John Lischer’s death and the statement that the police were searching for a green Buick damaged on the right side. The original report of the accident had been only a paragraph back in the stock market sections, but this appeared on the second page of both the Post and the Globe. Apparently there was a dearth of other news.

At noon Cushman brought me two more sheafs of fifty-dollar bills. I took them and the original packet down to my safe deposit vault, first transferring a thousand dollars to my wallet.

Then I relaxed for the weekend, resting up in the expectation of not getting any sleep at all Monday night.

At seven o’clock Monday evening Helena Powers phoned me to say her husband had caught his plane and the way was clear for me to pick up the Buick.

“The keys in the car?” I asked.

“No. Stop at the house for them. Alice isn’t here and I’m all alone. No one will see you.”

At eight-thirty, just as it was beginning to get dark, she opened the front door to my ring. She was wearing a plain street dress and a pert little straw hat, and she carried a light jacket over her arm. Silently she locked the door behind me, then led me back to the kitchen, switching off lights as we passed through each room. On the kitchen table stood a small suitcase.

“You going somewhere?” I asked.

“With you,” she said, giving me a deadpan look.

Setting down my own bag, I looked at her in astonishment. “Why?”

“Because I want to.”

“I’ll be gone nearly a week.”

“I’ve made arrangements with Alice,” she said. “She thinks I’m driving up to my sister’s in Columbia. I gave her a week off.”

“Suppose your husband tries to phone long distance and doesn’t get any answer?”

“He never phones. He just writes a card every day when he’s gone. And I never write back.”

I shrugged. “It’s your car. I guess you can ride in it if you want.” I picked up her bag and my own, waited while she flicked out the lights and opened the back door for me. Then I waited again while she locked the door behind us.

In the garage I set down the bags and asked her for the car keys. Silently she handed me a leather key case.

“Which is the trunk key?” I asked.

She pointed to one.

I slid it into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. I tried it upside down, but it wouldn’t go in.

“The lock’s jammed,” I said.

Helena tried it with no more success than I had. Finally she said, “I’m sure it’s the right key,” and looked puzzled.

“The devil with it,” I said. “We haven’t got that much luggage anyway.”

I tossed our bags on the floor of the small back seat. The top of the convertible was still down, as it had been on the night of the accident, but I put it up before we started.

Apparently the only damage the car had suffered was body damage, because it drove perfectly. I noted with satisfaction the gas tank registered nearly three-fourths full, which should take us better than two hundred miles before we’d have to worry about refueling.

I didn’t figure there was much risk of us being stopped even in St. Louis by some cruising patrol car, because it was now six days since the accident and four days since John Lischer had died. I knew a routine order would have been issued to all cars to look for a damaged green Buick, but I had also ridden patrol enough back in my police days to know that by now this order would be filed ’way at the back of most cruising cops’ minds. They wouldn’t actually be searching for the hit-and-run car to the extent of carefully looking over every green automobile they saw. Even if we ran into a cop and he noticed the damage, there was a good chance it wouldn’t register on him immediately that our car was green or that it was a Buick.

It also helped that it was now dark and that the damage was all on the right side. Simply by keeping in the right-hand lane I could prevent any cars passing us in the same direction we were going from noticing it. The only real danger was in meeting a squad car coming from the opposite direction, for the front bumper was badly bent and the front right fender was crushed all out of shape.

To increase our odds, I skirted the congested part of town. My destination was Illinois, but instead of turning east, I took Lindell west to Skinker Boulevard, circled Washington University campus to Big Bend Road, turned right and drove north to the edge of town. Then I cut across to North Eighth, turned right again and headed toward McKinley Bridge.

Puzzled by this maneuvering, Helena said, “I thought we were going to Kansas City.”

“That was before I was accessory to a homicide,” I said. “We’re going to Chicago.”

“Chicago! That’s three hundred miles!”

“K. C is two fifty,” I told her. “K. C garages will be looking for a bent Buick. Chicago garages won’t. We’ll be there by morning.”

At that moment we had a bad break. Up to now we hadn’t seen a single radio car, but now, only five blocks from McKinley Bridge and relative safety, one suddenly appeared coming toward us. As it cruised by, it blinked on its highway lights, then lowered them again.

With my heart in my mouth I wondered if the two patrolmen in the car had noticed our damaged right front. In the rear-view mirror I saw them swing in a U-turn and start back toward us. I had been traveling at twenty-five, but I risked increasing the speed to thirty.

A siren ground out a summons to halt.

For a wild moment I contemplated pushing the accelerator to the floor and running it out. Then I realized there wasn’t any safe place to run. If I tried to dash over McKinley Bridge to Illinois, the cops would simply use the phone at this end of the bridge and we’d run into a block at the far toll gate. They’d have all the time in the world to set one up, because the Mississippi is nearly a mile wide at that point. And if I kept straight ahead instead of crossing the bridge, Eighth Street would shoot us into the most congested part of town.

I pulled over to the curb and stopped.

When the police car pulled next to us, neither cop got out. The one on the right said, “Haven’t you got any dimmers on that thing, mister?

At first his words failed to penetrate, because I was expecting some question about our smashed fender. Then I flicked my eyes at the dashboard and saw the small red light which indicated my highway lights were on. My left foot felt for the floor switch and pressed it down.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t notice I had the brights on.”

The cop nodded peremptorily and the car swung left in another U-turn to go back the way it had been going. With shaking fingers I lighted a cigarette before starting on.

CHAPTER 8

We had no trouble at the bridge. If the toll collector had been instructed to watch for a damaged green Buick, he wasn’t watching very carefully, because he didn’t even glance at our right front fender. Of course he approached the car from my side, but even then he couldn’t have failed to notice the damage if he’d looked across the hood.

Then we were in Venice, Illinois.

I took 66, driving along at a steady fifty-five so as not to risk getting picked up for speeding. We hit Springfield about eleven-thirty and I drove aimlessly up and down side streets for a few minutes.

“What are you doing now?” Helena asked.

“We need gas.”

“We passed a station right in the center of town.”

“I know,” I said. “But we’re not going to leave any record of a banged-up green Buick with Missouri plates stopping anywhere for gas. The alert won’t reach as far as Chicago for a mere hit-and-run homicide, but it’s sure to have gone this far.”

Finally I found what I wanted. A car parked on a side street where all the houses in the block were dark. Pulling up next to it on the wrong side of the street, I got out, reached in back for my bag, opened it and drew out a length of hose.

Helena watched silently as I siphoned gas from the parked car into the Buick’s tank.

When we were on the way again she remarked, “I’d never have thought of that. I’m beginning to think you earn your money, Mr. Calhoun.”

“Why so formal?” I asked. “My name’s Barney.”

In the darkness I could see her looking at me sidewise. “All right, Barney,” she said after a moment.

We stopped for gas once more in Bloomington, getting it by the same method. Then we didn’t stop again until we hit the outskirts of Chicago at seven a.m.

As I began to slow down with the intention of turning in at a truck stop, Helena said, “What do we want here?”

“Breakfast,” I said.

“Shouldn’t we rent a couple of cabins before we do anything else?”

“No,” I said. “We’ve got several more important things to do first.”

By the time we had finished breakfast at the truck stop it was eight, and by the time we got far enough into town to begin to run into small neighborhood businesses, barber shops were open. I accomplished the second of the more important things we had to do by getting a shave.

“Couldn’t that have waited?” Helena complained when I rejoined her.

“I have to look respectable for my next stop,” I told her.

Heading in the general direction of the Loop, I drove until I spotted a sign reading “Car Rentals.” I parked half a block beyond it.

“Just wait here,” I instructed Helena. “When I come by in another car, follow me.”

As usual she showed no surprise. As I got out of the car she slid over into the driver’s seat.

The car rental place didn’t have exactly what I wanted, but it was close enough. I would have preferred a Buick coupe or convertible the same color as Helena’s, but the man didn’t have any Buicks. I settled for a Dodge coupe a shade darker green than the convertible. The rate was five dollars a day plus eight cents a mile, and I told the man I wanted it for a week. I gave him the name Henry Graves, a Detroit address and left a seventy-five dollar deposit.

Only ten minutes after I had left her I pulled up alongside Helena in the Dodge, honked the horn and pulled away again. In the rear-view mirror I could see her pull out to follow me.

I led her back to the southwest edge of town, found a street which seemed relatively deserted and parked. Helena parked behind me.

In the trunk of the rented car I found a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. Helena watched with her customary lack of expression as I switched plates on the two cars.

Then she said, “I don’t think I understand.”

“Probably an unnecessary precaution, because I’m sure repair garages this far from St. Louis won’t be watching for a green Buick. But up here a Missouri plate stands out more than an Illinois one. Now when I take this thing in to be fixed, it’ll just be another local car. And on the off chance there’s ever a check to find out who it belonged to, the license won’t lead anywhere except to a car rental outfit and a non-existent guy named Henry Graves of Detroit.”

Her lip corners quirked ever so slightly. “You think of everything, don’t you, Barney?”

“I try to,” I told her. “I’ll drive the Buick now, and you follow me in the Dodge. Next stop is a repair garage.”

She remained where she was. In her husky but slightly flat voice she said, “Let’s get settled in cabins first. I want a bath and a change of clothes.”

“It won’t take an hour to locate a garage and make arrangements,” I argued.

She shook her head. “We’ve been here over two hours now. I wanted a cabin at seven, but I waited while you fed yourself, got a shave, rented-a car and changed plates. I’m not waiting another minute.” She looked at me serenely and added, “Besides, they take your license number at tourist courts. We’ll have to drive in with the Buick.”

She was right, I realized on reflection. We should have signed in somewhere before I changed the plates, as I didn’t want the Missouri plates which were now on the Dodge listed even on a tourist court’s records. Disconsolately I considered the prospect of having to change the plates back again, then decided it wasn’t necessary. There wasn’t much danger in letting some tourist court proprietor see the damaged Buick so long as it didn’t have its own plates on it.

“You win,” I said. “Follow me again.”

Helena shook her head again. “You follow me this time. I saw just the court I want when we came in on 66. Maybe you’re smart on some things, but I prefer to trust my own judgment on a place to sleep.”

Shrugging, I climbed back in the Dodge and waited for her to start the procession.

Helena drove nearly ten miles out of town on 66, passing a half dozen motels which looked adequate to me before pulling off to the side of the road suddenly and parking. I parked behind her.

“Lock it up,” she called back to me.

Winding the windows shut, I got out and locked the Dodge. When I slid into the Buick next to her, she pointed through the windshield toward a large tourist court about a hundred yards ahead on the opposite side of the road.

“That’s the one. Isn’t it nice?”

It didn’t look any different to me than the half dozen others we’d passed, except that this one had open front stalls for automobiles.

“It’s lovely,” I growled. “Let’s get it over with.”

CHAPTER 9

The place was called the Starview Motor Court and advertised hot baths and steam heat. Since the temperature hovered around eighty, neither seemed like much of an inducement to me.

Though it was probably an unnecessary precaution, I had Helena swing the car so that the left side was toward the office. With dozens of different automobiles driving in and out of the court daily, it wasn’t likely the proprietor would notice our green Buick convertible had changed to a green Dodge coupe a few hours after we checked in, but there wasn’t any point in deliberately calling attention to our smashed fender. Just possibly it would catch his notice enough to make it register on him.

The proprietor was a sad-faced man in his fifties who had an equally sad-faced wife. They occupied quarters behind the small office. For some reason both of them went along to show us cabins.

They were nice modern cabins, clean and airy and walled with knotty pine. The baths were large instead of the usual tiny affairs you find at most tourist courts, and contained combination bathtubs and showers.

“We’ll take two,” I told the proprietor. “We’ll be here a week, so I’ll pay the full week now. How much?”

He said the normal rate was nine dollars a day, but as a weekly rate we could have them for fifty-six dollars each. “With another fifty cent a day knocked off if you do your own cleaning instead of having maid service,” he added.

Helena surprised me by saying she preferred to do the cleaning herself, which caused the proprietor’s wife to give her a pleased smile. Apparently the wife constituted the maid service.

Helena stayed outside when I went back to the office to resister.

I signed as Howard Bliss and sister, Benton, Illinois, and listed the Illinois license number registered to the Dodge. Then I paid him a hundred and five dollars.

Our cabins were numbers six and seven. When I got outside again, I discovered Helena had backed the Buick into the car port between them while I was registering.

“You could have left it in front of the cabins,” I said to her. “We aren’t going to be here long.”

“We’ll be here at least a half hour. I told you I’m going to take a bath.”

“Several tunes,” I said wearily. “Which cabin do you want?”

She looked at both speculatively. The one on the right went with the car port we were using, because a door near the rear wall of the port led into the cabin.

Helena said, “I’ll take the right one.”

Getting her bag from the car, I carried it into the right-hand cabin via the car port door and set it on her bed. Then I got my own bag from the car and went into my own cabin.

Inasmuch as I was going to have to kill a half hour anyway, I decided to take a cold shower myself. I took my time under the water, letting its coldness knock the tiredness out of my muscles and wash some of the sleepiness from my eyes. Twenty-five minutes later, refreshed and in clean clothes, I knocked at the next cabin door.

“Just a minute,” Helena called. “I’m still dressing.”

It was closer to ten minutes before she appeared, and meantime I stood out in the sun letting the heat wilt my collar and undo all the good a cold shower had done me. When she finally appeared she was dressed in a white sun dress, low-heeled sandals which exposed bare, red-tipped toes, and no hat. Her long hair was pulled up in a pony tail.

Carefully she locked her cabin door-behind her and dropped the key in a straw purse.

This time I drove the Buick.

When we pulled up alongside the parked Dodge, I handed her the keys to it.

“Instead of following you, suppose we arrange to meet somewhere?” Helena suggested. “I’d like to do a little shopping.”

“You know Chicago?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Then we’ll make it somewhere simple.” I looked at my watch, noting it was nearly ten a.m. “The Statler Cocktail Lounge at two p.m.?”

“All right.”

“Be careful you don’t get picked up for anything,” I cautioned. “Even a parking ticket would put us in the soup with that Missouri plate on the Dodge.”

“I’ll be careful.”

I drove off while she was unlocking the coupe door.

I didn’t have any trouble arranging for the car to be fixed. I stopped at the first Buick service garage I saw.

The chief repairman, a cheerful middle-aged man, carefully looked over the damage. “What’s the other guy look like?” he asked.

“There wasn’t any other guy,” I told him. “My wife mistook a tree next to our drive for the garage.”

He told me he could do the whole job, including a check of wheel alignment, in three days for approximately a hundred dollars.

“That’s a rough estimate, you understand,” he said. “May vary a few bucks one way or the other.”

I gave him the name George Seward and a South Chicago address a couple of miles from the repair garage. When he asked for my phone number, I said I didn’t have a phone and just to hold the car when it was finished until I picked it up.

My business was all completed by noon and suddenly I was exhausted from lack of sleep and the strain of driving three hundred miles at night. I began to wish I had arranged to meet Helena at twelve-thirty instead of at two.

There was nothing to do but kill two hours, however. I took a taxi to the Statler, had lunch and then slowly sipped four highballs in the cocktail lounge while I waited for her. She showed up at ten after two.

“Want a drink?” I asked. “Or shall we go back to the court and collapse? I’m ready to fall on my face.”

She looked me over consideringly. “You do look tired,” she said. “We’ll pick up a couple of bottles of bourbon and some soda on the way and I’ll have my drink at the court. Maybe we can get some ice from the proprietor.”

My four drinks had relaxed me just enough so that I had difficulty keeping my eyes open. I let Helena drive.

I was just beginning to drift off to sleep sitting up when the car braked to a stop, then backed into a parking place at the curb. I opened my eyes to see we were in front of a liquor store.

Reluctantly I climbed out of the car. “You say bourbon?” I asked Helena.

When she merely nodded, I went on into the store. I bought two quarts of bourbon and a six-bottle carry-pack of soda.

When I raised the Dodge’s trunk lid to stow away my purchases. I was surprised to find the floor of the trunk was soaking wet. There hadn’t been any water on it when I had searched the trunk for tools to change license plates.

But I was too sleepy to wonder about it much. Slamming the lid shut, I climbed back in the car and let myself sink into a semi-coma again. Helena had to shake me awake when we got back to the tourist court.

I slept straight through until eight o’clock that night. Presumably Helena did the same, for when I finally looked outside to peer next door, her cabin was dark and the Dodge was still in its car port. She must have awakened about the same time I did, though, because she knocked at my door just as I finished dressing.

She was carrying the two bottles of bourbon and the carry-pack of soda.

“I thought we’d have a drink before we went out for dinner,” she said.

I found two glasses in the bathroom, but the prospect of warm bourbon and soda didn’t appeal to me.

“I’ll see it I can get some ice at the office,” I said.

But the proprietor told me he was sorry, they had only enough ice for their personal needs. When I returned to the cabin, I suggested we have our before-dinner drink at the same place we picked to eat.

“Maybe I can get some ice from him,” Helena said.

A drink didn’t mean that much to me, but since she seemed so set on one, I didn’t argue. From my open door I watched as she moved toward the office. The movement walking gave to her body would have made a corpse sit up in his casket. It occurred to me the motel proprietor would have to be made of ice himself to refuse her.

In a few moments she reappeared carrying a china water pitcher.

She stopped at her own cabin door, said to me, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Barney,” unlocked the door and went inside.

What she was going into her cabin for, I couldn’t decide, because when she reappeared a few moments later, she still carried nothing but the pitcher. Carefully she locked the door behind her and came over to my door. When she handed me the pitcher I saw it was full of cracked ice instead of cubes.

“What’s he have, an old-fashioned icebox?” I asked in surprise.

“I didn’t inquire,” Helena said. “I just asked for ice.”

We had two highballs each before going out to hunt a place for dinner.

CHAPTER 10

We dined at a place called the White Swan, a roadhouse about a half mile from the tourist court on route 66. The place had an orchestra and after dinner we alternately danced and sat at the bar until two a.m. And every time I took her in my arms, my temperature went up another degree.

I got the impression the closeness of our bodies on the dance floor was beginning to have an effect on her too. Not from anything she said, for we did remarkably little talking during the evening, but each time we danced she seemed to move more compliantly into my arms and her eyes seemed to develop a warmer shine.

When I finally drove the Dodge back into the car port, I was on the verge of suggesting she come into my cabin for a nightcap, but before I could open my mouth Helena jumped out of the car and entered her cabin by means of the car port door without saying a word to me.

Then, as I sat there foolishly looking at her closed door, I experienced a terrific letdown. I was tempted to get angry, but on reflection I realized she hadn’t actually said or done anything to make me think she had been sharing my own cozy thoughts. Maybe she just realized the direction my thoughts were taking, and wanted to leave no doubts in my mind that our relationship was strictly a business one.

Shrugging, I locked the Dodge and went into my own cabin.

Five minutes later, just as I finished pulling on my pajamas, there was a knock at the door. I put on a robe and opened it to find Helena standing there with her suitcase in her hand.

When I had stared at her expressionless face without saying anything for nearly a minute, she asked, “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

“Sure,” I said, recovering my wits enough to step aside.

Walking past me, she set the suitcase on a chair, opened it and drew out a nearly transparent nylon nightgown. Then she turned and, holding the nightgown out in front of her, examined it critically.

Her husky but flat voice said, “I’m frightened all alone over there. Am I welcome here?”

I didn’t answer because I was afraid my voice would shake. I merely closed the door, which up till then I had been too stupefied to shut, locked it and unsteadily poured out two substantial shots of bourbon.

The ice in the pitcher had all melted by now, but I needed mine straight anyway.

CHAPTER 11

The next three days were like a honeymoon. We didn’t have a thing to do but wait for the Buick to be repaired, so we simply relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. With Helena doing the housework, which consisted only of making the bed, emptying ash trays and washing our whisky glasses, we weren’t even disturbed by the proprietor’s wife coming in to clean. Daily we slept till noon, then showered, had a leisurely lunch and spent the rest of the day at the beach.

Evenings we spent dancing and drinking at the White Swan.

In looking back I can see that Helena’s attraction for me was almost entirely physical, because except for her beauty and an unexpected fiery passion, she wasn’t a very stimulating companion. We had almost no conversation aside from routine discussions of our plans for each day, and aside from such physical pleasures as sunbathing, dancing, drinking and love making, I don’t believe she had a single interest.

Two things about her puzzled me. One was her disappearance for a short time every morning. I would awaken about eight a.m. to find myself alone, drift back to sleep and a short time later be awakened again by her climbing back in bed. Her explanation was that she had to have breakfast coffee but didn’t want to disturb me, so she dressed and drove down the road to a diner alone.

The other thing that puzzled me was her ability to get ice from the motel proprietor. Both Wednesday and Thursday noon as soon as she was dressed, she left the cabin carrying the china water pitcher and returned with it full of cracked ice. But when on Friday I happened to get dressed first and took the pitcher to the office while Helena was still under the shower, the proprietor gave me an irritated look and told me he’d already informed me once he didn’t supply ice for guests.

When I returned empty handed, Helena took the pitcher and came back with it full five minutes later.

Friday afternoon I had Helena drive me to the Buick repair garage and discovered the convertible was all ready. The bill was a hundred and fifteen dollars.

“I had to put on a new bumper bracket,” the chief repairman said. “Could have straightened the other, but it would have left it weak. I put the old one in your trunk.”

“How’d you manage that?” I asked. “The lock was jammed last I tried it.”

“Ain’t now.” He demonstrated by walking behind the car, inserting a key and turning it. The lid raised without difficulty. He locked it again and handed me the keys.

I tried the trunk key myself and it worked perfectly.

When I drove out of the service garage Helena was waiting for me in the Dodge a half block away. Again I led the way to a quiet side street, where we stopped long enough for me to switch plates back to the right cars. Then I took the Dodge and Helena followed in the Buick while I drove to the car rental lot.

I had thirty-four dollars coming back from the seventy-five I’d deposited.

As we drove back toward the tourist court I said, “We may as well start back tonight. We can have the car back in your garage by tomorrow morning.”

Helena didn’t say anything at the moment. She waited until we were back in my cabin and I had mixed a couple of drinks.

Then she said, “There’s one other little job we have to do before we go back to St. Louis, Barney.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Drink your drink first, then I’ll show you.”

“Show me?” I asked, puzzled. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Drink your drink,” she repeated.

She sounded as though she meant I might need it. I looked at her dubiously for a minute, then drained my glass.

“All right,” I said. “I drank my drink. Now show me.”

Setting down her own drink unfinished, she took my hand and led me to the door. Still holding my hand, she led me to her own cabin door, unlocked it and drew me inside. Then she released her grip on me and locked the door behind us.

“It’s in the bathroom,” she said.

Now completely puzzled, I followed her. In the bathroom the shower curtains were drawn around the bathtub and a glittering new icepick lay on the edge of the washbowl. Without comment Helena drew the shower curtains wide.

Three damp burlap bags were spread over something bulky in the bathtub.

For a few moments I simply stared at the bags, the hair at the base of my neck prickling in anticipation of shock. Then I pushed Helena aside and lifted one of the pieces of burlap.

Underneath, cozily packed in what must have been more than a hundred pounds of cracked ice, was the naked body of a man. He lay on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest and his back to me. The back of his head was oddly flattened and was matted with dried blood.

Letting the burlap fall back into place, I staggered out of the room and collapsed in a chair in the bedroom. Helena followed as far as the bathroom door, then stood watching me with curiously bright eyes as I stared at her in stupefaction.

Finally I managed to whisper, “Who is it?”

“Lawrence,” she said without emotion. “My husband.”

I closed my eyes and tried to make some sense out of the nightmarish discovery that Lawrence Powers, who was supposed to be at a banker’s convention in New York City, was actually lying dead in an improvised icebox not a dozen feet away. Surprisingly it did make sense. Like the tumblers of a lock falling into place, various oddities in Helena’s behavior which had been vaguely puzzling me ever since we started the trip began to develop meaning.

Opening my eyes, I said in a dazed voice, “He was in the trunk all the way from St. Louis, wasn’t he? That’s why the key wouldn’t work. You substituted some other key so I couldn’t open the trunk, then put the right one back on the ring after you got his body out of the trunk and into your cabin.”

“It was the key to the trunk of Lawrence’s Packard you tried in the lock that first time,” she said calmly. “I had the Buick trunk key in my purse.”

“And that’s why you insisted on this particular tourist court,” I went on. “You wanted one with car ports, so you could get him out of the trunk and into your cabin without being seen. You dragged him in through the car port door while I was taking a shower.”

She shrugged. “He wasn’t very heavy. A hundred and forty. I weigh one twenty-five myself.”

Leaning forward, I put my head in my hands and mumbled, “Tell me the rest of it.”

Without a trace of emotion in her voice she said, “While you were arranging for the Buick to be fixed I located an ice house only two miles from here. I thought of ice because I knew he’d begin to smell after a few days if he wasn’t preserved. I had the man put four twenty-five pound pieces of ice in the trunk of the Dodge. He also sold me an icepick. Then I came back here and carried the pieces in one at a time.

“I left the plug out of the bathtub so the melted ice would run away, and I’ve been adding fifty pounds a day. I got it while you were still in bed and thought I was out after coffee.” She paused, then added, “The burlap bags were in our garage at home. I put them on the floor of the trunk in case he bled any.”

I thought of something. “Good God!” I said. “All you borrowed from the motel proprietor was an empty pitcher. The ice for our drinks has been coming out of that bathtub!”

When her lip corners quirked upward in the suggestion of a smile, I got to my feet, reeled into the bathroom and threw up.

When I returned to the bedroom Helena had seated herself on the bed and was serenely smoking a cigarette.

“Tell me how it happened,” I suggested dully.

“He was going to call the police,” she said. “It was all because he insisted on getting everywhere early. His plane didn’t leave until six, and I planned to start driving him to the airport at five. But he was all packed and ready to go before four. I intended taking the station wagon, figuring I’d make some excuse if he asked why I wasn’t driving the Buick. But Lawrence tried to be helpful. Without my knowing what he intended doing, he went out to the garage at four o’clock and backed the convertible out for me.”

She paused to crush out her cigarette and light another. “When I heard the car start up, I rushed out back to stop him. I did get him to drive it back in the garage, but it was too late. He’d already noticed the damage. And he guessed at once what had caused it. He used to read every inch of both papers, so he knew the police were looking for a green Buick. He didn’t even ask me. He just looked at me in a horrified way and said, ‘Helena, you killed that old man.’”

She blew twin streams of smoke from her nostrils, creating a curious mental impression on me. With her immobile face and motionless body, the smoke issuing from her nostrils made her look like a carved oriental idol.

Tonelessly she went on, “There wasn’t any reasoning with him, Barney. He was the most self-righteous man who ever lived. It didn’t mean a thing to him that I might go to jail for months or years if I was discovered. I actually pleaded with him, but he was determined to phone the police. We have five phone extensions and one of them is in the garage. He marched over to it like an avenging angel and was dialing O when I picked up a wrench and hit him over the back of the head.”

I said huskily, “Why’d you wait until now to mention all this? Why not before we started for Chicago?”

“Because I wanted to make sure you’d help me get rid of the body,” she said serenely. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to dispose of it myself. And you might have backed out of the whole deal if you’d known about Lawrence.”

“What makes you think I won’t anyway?” I asked. “I’m not an accessory to this yet. Suppose I just walk out?”

Helena yawned slightly. “Then I suppose I’d be caught. But I doubt that the police would believe you knew nothing about it. I’d tell them it was you who killed Lawrence, of course. And even if they didn’t believe me, they’d certainly never accept your story that you had nothing at all to do with it. Particularly after the motel proprietor identified you as the man who’d been with me.”

She was right, I knew. No cop would ever believe I’d transported a body three hundred miles without knowing it, or that the woman I was traveling with had kept it on ice in her bathtub for three days without my knowledge. I had to save Helena in order to save myself.

If it was possible to save either of us.

I didn’t waste any time upbraiding her. In the first place it wouldn’t have accomplished anything, and in the second place I didn’t think it would bother her in the least.

“Let’s go over to my cabin where I can think,” I said wearily.

I spent the next twenty minutes thinking, pacing up and down and chain smoking while Helena calmly watched me and sipped a highball. I had one straight shot myself. I would have preferred a highball, but I refused to use any more of Helena’s ice.

Finally I stopped pacing and faced her. “Look,” I said. “I think I’ve figured out how to get rid of him, but before we even discuss that, we’ve got to plan a story to cover you. When your husband doesn’t show up Monday, you’re going to have to act as a normal wife would. First phone his bank to ask if they’ve heard from him. Then on Tuesday wire convention headquarters in New York. They’ll wire back that he never showed, of course. Soon as you get that wire, you’ll have to phone the police and put on a worried wife act. Think you can manage all that?”

She nodded indifferently.

“Then the hard part will start. First the police will discover he never caught that plane, so they’ll know he disappeared in St. Louis…”

“I thought of that two minutes after I killed him,” Helena interrupted. “He’ll be listed on the flight.”

I stared at her. “How?”

“It was only four when all this happened,” she said. “By four twenty I had Lawrence stripped, his clothes hidden in the garage and his body in the car trunk. Then I went back inside, told Alice I wouldn’t be home for dinner after I took Mr. Powers to the airport, and she could go home. I also told her I intended driving up to my sister’s in Columbia the next morning, so she could take the week off. I had her out of the house by four thirty.”

“How’d that get your husband listed on the plane flight he was supposed to take?” I asked.

“I haven’t finished. As soon as Alice left I phoned Harry Cushman. He took a taxi to the house, picked up Lawrence’s ticket and plane reservation and went straight to the airport. He flew to New York under Lawrence’s name and took another plane back under a different name as soon as he arrived. When the police start looking for Lawrence, they’ll start looking in New York.”

CHAPTER 12

For a long time I looked at her in wonderment. Finally I asked, “How’d you ever talk Cushman into doing a silly thing like that?”

“Silly?”

“Naturally the police will question the airline personnel,” I said patiently. “The minute they get Cushman’s description from the stewardess, they’ll know somebody substituted on the flight for your husband.”

She shook her head. “In the first place, neither Lawrence nor Harry is known on the New York run. Lawrence often flies to Washington, but almost never to New York. I know he hasn’t made the trip in three years. And Harry never flies anywhere. In the second place, though Harry is ten years younger than Lawrence was and twenty pounds heavier, a rough description of either would fit the other. Both have light hair, neither is grey, both have lean builds and both wear small mustaches. In the third place the police won’t question the stewardess too closely. Just enough to satisfy themselves Lawrence was on the plane.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because they won’t suspect murder. The first thing the police do when a banker disappears is request an audit of bank funds.”

She was right again, I realized. The probability was the first premise the police would work on was that Lawrence Powers had disappeared voluntarily. And by the time a bank audit disclosed he hadn’t absconded with any funds, the trail would be too cold to pick up.

I said, “I still don’t understand how you talked Cushman into sticking his neck out.”

“He’s in love with me,” she said complacently.

I studied her broodingly, not satisfied with the answer. “Look, Helena, if I’m going to help cover up your murders, I want the whole story. Maybe Cushman’s in love with you, but he was in a blue funk over being accessory to mere manslaughter. I don’t think he’d stick his neck out for first degree homicide even for you.”

She shrugged. “Of course Harry doesn’t know Lawrence is dead.” Again I studied her broodingly Finally I asked in an exasperated tone, “What in the devil story did you tell him?”

“You don’t have to shout,” she said. “I told him Lawrence had discovered the damage to the car and guessed what caused it. I said he had threatened to call the police, but I explained to him I’d already hired a private detective to try to arrange a quiet settlement of damages, and I talked him into holding off calling the police at least until he’d discussed it with you. I said Lawrence and I went to see you at your flat, and you and Lawrence had a fight. You knocked him out and tied him up. I told Harry this was the opportunity to accomplish everything we’d planned together. For me to obtain grounds for divorce against Lawrence and marry him.”

“How did that follow?” I asked, fascinated.

“I told Harry you had agreed to hold Lawrence captive until we could get the car fixed. Then, after it was back in the garage, you’d transport Lawrence to New York in a private plane owned by a friend of yours and turn him loose in the city unshaven and in dirty clothes. When Lawrence took his story to the police, they’d think he was crazy. The flight list would show he’d flown to New York as scheduled, and when he walked into a New York police station, he’d look like he’d been on a several-day drunk. When the police came to check my car, they’d find it undamaged. Then I’d announce my husband had been suffering delusions about me for some time, I thought he was insane, and I’d file for a divorce on the ground that he constantly made me suffer indignity.”

I was conscious that my mouth had drooped open as she was speaking. “And Cushman believed that fantastic yarn?” I asked in amazement.

“Why not? He knew I’ve wanted a divorce for some time and would jump at any grounds for one. It was the divorce idea that sold him. He wants me to marry him. I don’t think he’d have agreed to take Lawrence’s place on the plane if I hadn’t included that, because he was scared silly.” She added reflectively. “Then too, Harry isn’t very bright. He’s got so much money, he’s never had to do any thinking.”

He must not be bright, I thought. But it was just as well for our chances that he wasn’t. Having taken that plane to New York under Lawrence Powers’s name, he was an accessory to murder clear up to his neck, because he’d never be able to convince the police he didn’t know Powers was dead at the time. It occurred to me that pointing that fact out to him when we got back to St. Louis ought to silence any urge he might ever develop to tell his story.

Then it also occurred to me that Helena Powers had a remarkable talent for placing her aides in positions where they had to protect her in order to protect themselves. For she had me in the identical position she had Harry Cushman. We all three had to hang together, or hang separately.

Helena broke into my thoughts by inquiring, “How do you plan to get rid of Lawrence?”

Glancing at my watch, I saw it was seven p.m. “I don’t tonight. He’ll keep in his icebox another day. But we’ve got some scouting to do. Better put on a jacket, because it may be chilly along the lake.”

I drove the car on our scouting trip. Our tourist court was not far from Berwyn Summit, and I cut straight east to the University of Chicago. Then I turned south along Lake Michigan until we began to run into beach areas.

At eight-thirty Helena said, “Shouldn’t we be thinking about dinner soon?”

“No,” I said shortly. Ever since I’d lifted that burlap bag I hadn’t been able to think of anything but the iced corpse beneath it, and the thought didn’t induce much appetite.

I drove as slowly as the traffic would let me, checking signs on the left side of the road. Finally, about nine o’clock, I spotted one which looked promising. It was on a wooden arch over an unpaved road and read: “Crcstwood Beach, Private Road.”

We were past it before I spotted it, however. I had to drive on another mile before I could turn around.

Crestwood Beach proved as promising as it had looked. The beach itself was but a narrow strip of sand, and clustered along its edge were some two dozen modest summer cottages. I noted with satisfaction lights showed in not more than a half dozen.

Parking next to one of the dark cottages, I examined it carefully before getting out of the car. Apparently its owner’s summer vacation had not started yet, for the windows were still boarded up. The cottages either side of it, each a good fifty yards away, were dark also.

I climbed out of the car and told Helena to get out also.

Together we walked the scant fifty feet down to the water. As I had hoped, each of the cottages had its own small boat dock. Nothing much, merely a series of planks laid across embedded steel rods, but adequate for an outboard boat.

“Think you can find this same place alone tomorrow night?” I asked Helena.

“If I have to.”

I pointed out over the calm, moonlit water. “I’ll be out there somewhere in an outboard. I won’t be able to tell one beach from another in the dark, so you’re going to have to signal me with the car lights. We’ll set a time for the first signal, and you blink them twice. Just on and off fast, because we don’t want any of the other cottagers out here to come investigating. Then regularly every five minutes blink them again. Got it?”

“Yes.”

We went back to the car and I drove back under the wooden arch to the main road again. A mile and a half northwest of Crcstwood Beach I stopped once more, this time at a sign which read: “Boats for rent.” This sign too was at the entrance to an unpaved road. I followed the road only about fifty yards before coming to the boat livery.

The proprietor was a grizzled old man in his seventies who chewed tobacco. He sat on the screened porch of a small cottage reading a Bible by the light of a Coleman gasoline lantern.

“They’re all taken tonight, mister,” he said as soon as I put my feet on the steps. He shot a stream of tobacco juice at a cuspidor halfway across the porch. “Everybody heard the large-mouths is biting.”

Then he let out a cackle. “Don’t know who starts them rumors. Look at that lake. Calm as glass. They’ll come in with a mess of six-inch perch.” He spat again.

“You booked up for tomorrow night?” I asked through the screen-door.

“Nope.” He got up and opened the door for me.

Walking onto the porch, I said, “Then I’d like to reserve a boat. When’s best to go out?”

“Ain’t much point till it gets dark. If you mean to use live bait, that is. Eight-thirty, nine o’clock.”

I told him I’d be there at nine and paid in advance. The price of a boat and a fifteen-horsepower motor was six dollars, a Coleman lantern fifty cents extra, and I gave him a dollar for a can of night crawlers.

When I got back to the car, Helena asked, “May we eat now?”

I stopped at a roadside eatery and let her have some dinner while I drank two cups of coffee. I hadn’t eaten since noon, but I still couldn’t develop any appetite.

CHAPTER 13

By ten the next morning we were downtown at the largest branch of Sears Roebuck. Why criminals ever buy their necessary equipment anywhere else, I can’t imagine. Police records are full of cases where kidnappers were trapped because the paper of the ransom note was traced to some exclusive stationery shop, or murderers were caught because a hammer was traced to some neighborhood hardware store where every customer is remembered. At a place like Scars you are only one of thousands of faces seen by the clerk waiting on you, and even if by some unlikely chance the item you buy is traced back to that particular clerk, the chance of his remembering anything at all about the person who bought it is remote. The chance of its being traced that far is even more remote, since identical items are sold across Sears counters all over the country every day.

In the men’s clothing department I bought the cheapest fishing jacket I could find.

In the sporting department I bought a cheap glass casting rod, a three-dollar-and-ninety-five-cent metal and plastic reel, fifty yards of nylon line, a cheap bait box and an assortment of leaders, sinkers, hooks and lures to fill up the bait box. I didn’t intend to use any of it, but it might have excited comment at the boat livery if I had showed up to go fishing without any gear.

I also bought two eight-pound rowboat anchors. I intended to use them.

In the hardware department I bought fifty feet of sash cord. Also to use.

I stowed all of my purchases in the trunk of the convertible.

The rest of the day we simply waited.

At seven thirty in the evening we started the job of disposing of Lawrence Powers’s body. First I transferred my fishing gear, the anchors and the sash cord from the car trunk to the rear seat of the car. The fishing jacket I put on. Then I carefully covered the floor of the trunk with the three burlap bags.

We hadn’t added any ice to the tub since Helena showed me the body, and it had melted away to no more than about twenty-five pounds. I managed to lift the dead man out without spilling ice all over the floor.

The body was stiffened in its prenatal position, the ice apparently having caused it to retain rigor mortis longer than it normally would have. I made no attempt to straighten it out because I would only have had to fold the knees up to the chest again in order to get it into the trunk.

There was little danger of anyone seeing me carry it the one or two steps from the car port door to the trunk, inasmuch as the car itself blocked the view from outside, but I had Helena stand in front of the stall anyway as a lookout.

The body was cold and slippery against my arms and chest as I staggered through the door with it and shoved it into the trunk. When I locked the trunk, I found I was drenched with sweat.

I let Helena drive. It was just nine o’clock when we pulled up across the road from the boat livery. I had Helena co-ordinate her watch with mine.

“I’ll give you a half hour,” I said. “Blink your lights exactly at nine thirty, and then again every five minutes after that until I dock. O.K.?”

“I understand,” she said.

Collecting my fishing gear from the back seat, but leaving the anchors and sash cord, I got out of the car. Helena drove off without a word.

The boat the old man gave me was a flat-bottomed scow about ten feet long. In addition to the motor it contained a pair of oars and a gas can with an extra gallon of gas. The Coleman lantern he furnished had a bolt welded to its bottom which fitted into one of the oarlocks.

I had to wait while he picked two dozen night crawlers from a large box of moss. I didn’t have a use in the world for them, but it would have looked peculiar to go fishing without bait.

When I was settled in the boat, the old man said, “Looks like a good night for bass.”

I looked out over the water, which was as smooth and moonlit as it had been the previous night.

“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Just a little choppy.”

He let out a cackle. “Them little six-inch perch is good eating anyway, even if they ain’t much sport. You ought to catch a bushel.”

I started the motor and pulled away while he was still cackling at his own humor.

CHAPTER 14

For about a quarter mile I set a course straight out from shore, then swung right and followed the shoreline for what I judged to be about a mile. The water was dotted with lights of other night fishermen, some farther out and some between me and the shore.

At twenty-five minutes past nine I picked a spot several hundred yards from the nearest fisherman’s light, cut the motor and let the boat drift. There was a slight inshore current, but I figured I would maintain the same relative position to the other boats because I assumed they would take advantage of the current for drift trolling instead of anchoring and doing still fishing.

At nine twenty-nine by my watch I began studying the shoreline, concentrating on the point I judged Crcstwood Beach would be. Minutes passed and nothing happened.

With my eyes straining at the shoreline, dotted here and there by cottage lights and silhouetted by the lights of moving traffic on the highway beyond it, I sat motionless for minutes more. Finally I risked lowering my gaze long enough to glance at the time, and was shocked to see it was twenty minutes to ten. By then Helena should have flashed her lights three times.

Just as I raised my eyes again, a pair of headlights blinked twice off to my right, a good quarter mile from where I had been searching for them. I only caught them from the corner of my eye, and they blinked on and off too fast for me to take a fix. There was nothing to do but wait another five minutes with my gaze centered in that direction.

Eventually they blinked twice again.

Starting the motor, I headed at full throttle toward the point where I had seen the lights. But running a boat in the dark is confusing. I was fifty yards offshore, had turned out my Coleman lantern and was heading confidently toward a narrow dock I could see protruding out over the water when the lights blinked again a hundred yards to my left.

Changing course, I cut the throttle way down and slowly chugged up to the small dock Helena and I had stood on the night before. As I tied up I could make out the dim shadow of the convertible next to the dark and boarded-up cottage.

Helena greeted me with a calm, “Hello, Barney.”

“Any trouble?” I asked.

“Not since I got here. I missed the turn and was a few minutes late. But no one from the other cottages has come out to ask why I was blinking my lights.”

Looking in both directions, I could see no one. The cottages both sides of us were still dark. Going behind the car, I lifted the trunk lid and took the dead body of Lawrence Powers in my arms.

As I lurched past the front seat with my burden, I said, “Bring the gunny sacks.”

I’m a fairly strong man, but it’s quite a chore even for a strong man to carry an inanimate hundred and forty pounds over uneven ground in the dark. Once I stumbled and nearly dropped the body, and as I started to lower it into the boat, it slipped from my grip and nearly tumbled into the water before bouncing off the gunwale and settling just where I wanted it on the bottom of the boat.

Again I found myself drenched with sweat.

When I finished wiping my face with a handkerchief, I found Helena standing on the dock beside me, the three burlap bags in her hands. Carefully I covered her husband’s body with them.

Then I returned to the car for the two anchors and the sash cord.

When I was finally reseated in the boat and ready to start, Helena still stood on the dock.

“Can’t I go along and help?” she asked.

“I’d never find this place again in the dark,” I told her. I looked at my watch, noting it was five of ten. “Pick me up at the boat livery at ten thirty.”

When she didn’t say anything, I glanced up at her. Maybe it was only an effect of the moonlight, but I imagined there was a look of disappointment on her usually expressionless face, as though I had refused her some pleasure she particularly wanted to enjoy.

“Ten thirty,” I repeated.

She merely nodded, and I started the motor and pulled away.

I headed straight out from shore at quarter speed for about fifty yards, then stopped long enough to light my lantern. I didn’t care to have the Naval Reserve pick me up for running without lights.

When I started up again, I opened to full throttle and held it until I was even with the farthest boats from shore, approximately two miles out. I didn’t want to risk calling attention to myself by going out beyond them.

There weren’t many boats out that far, perhaps a half dozen spaced several hundred yards apart. I cut my motor halfway between two.

There was no risk working under the bright glare of the Coleman lantern for since I could see nothing of the other boats except their lights, I knew it was impossible for them to see what was going on in mine. Working rapidly. I uncovered the body, cut a length of sash cord and tied one of the anchors around Lawrence Powers’s neck. The other I tied firmly to his feet after lashing his ankles together.

I was standing up in the boat and just getting ready to heave him over the side when a voice said almost in my ear, “Any luck?”

Starting violently, I lost my balance, made a wild grab for the side of the boat and sat down with a thump on the body. I took one wild look over my shoulder, expecting to see someone within feet of me, then drew a deep sigh of relief. There was a boat light slowly coming toward me, but it was still a good twenty yards away. I realized it was only the acoustic effect of sound traveling across water which had made the voice seem so near.

Since the two figures in the other boat were only faceless shapes to me, I realized they couldn’t see into my boat any clearer than I could see into theirs. Quickly I pulled the burlap sacks over the body and pushed myself up onto the rear seat next to the motor.

Only then did it occur to me I hadn’t even answered the other boat’s hail. Belatedly I called back in as calm a voice as I could muster, “Couple of small perch is all.”

The boat was now within ten yards, and I could make out the two men in it. The one in front was in his early twenties and the man operating the motor was middle-aged. The motor was barely turning over, which was the reason I hadn’t heard their approach. But they hadn’t been trying to sneak up on me, I realized when I saw a line stretching back from either side of the boat. They were moving at that slow speed because they were trolling.

They passed within three yards of me. As they went by, the middle-aged man said, “We ain’t having any luck either. We’re about ready to go in.”

Then they were past. Neither had glanced at the burlap-covered mound in the bottom of my boat.

I waited until I could see nothing of them but their light, then uncovered the body again, lifted it in my arms and heaved it into the water. It landed on its back, the sightless eyes peering straight up at me for a final second before it disappeared in a gurgle of bubbles.

I tossed the burlap bags overboard after it. Then, with shaking fingers, I lit a cigarette and drew a deep and relieved drag.

CHAPTER 15

I was halfway back to shore before it occurred to me the old man at the boat livery might think it odd if he noticed my line wasn’t wet. Cutting the motor, I tied a yellow and red flatfish to my line and made a long cast out over the water. I knew the chance of getting a strike on an artificial lure at night was remote, but all I was interested in was getting the line wet.

My usual fisherman’s luck held. If I had been fishing seriously, I could have sat there all night without a single strike. But because the last thing in the world I wanted at that moment was a fish, I nailed a northern pike which must have weighed close to five pounds. It took me nearly ten minutes to land it.

Then I had another thought. I didn’t have an Illinois fishing license. And it would be just my luck to step out of the boat into the arms of a game warden.

So I unhooked one of the nicest northerns I ever boated and tossed it back in the water.

When I pulled in at the boat livery dock, the old man asked me, “Any luck?”

“A five pound northern,” I said. “But I tossed it back in.”

He cackled. I knew he wouldn’t believe me.

Helena had parked the car just off the highway on the dirt road leading down to the boat livery. She was sitting on the right side of the seat, so after tossing my fishing gear in the back, I slid under the wheel.

“Everything go all right?”

“O.K. I even caught a fish on the way in.”

“Oh? Do you like fishing?”

“Under ordinary circumstances,” I said. “It’s my favorite sport.”

“Then why didn’t you stay out a while?” she asked seriously. “I wouldn’t have minded waiting.”

The question solidified an opinion I had already formed. Beneath her beautiful exterior Helena was almost psychotically callous. The casual way in which she had borrowed ice for our drinks from the tub containing the corpse of her husband had convinced me of that. Her suggestion that I might have enjoyed a little fishing immediately after dumping the same corpse in Lake Michigan only confirmed my judgment.

I didn’t try to explain it to her. I just said, “I wasn’t particularly in the mood for fishing tonight.”

Back at the tourist court we had one more job. I set Helena to work scrubbing out the tub which had been her husband’s bier for five days.

Then I informed her there wasn’t any reason, now that her cabin was corpseless, that she couldn’t sleep in her own bed that night. She gave me a mildly surprised look, but she made no objection.

I didn’t think it necessary to explain that musing on her homicidal tendencies had begun to give me the feeling it might not be too safe to go to sleep in the same room she was in.

I locked my cabin door that night.

My last thought before going to sleep was speculation as to what Helena’s feelings would be when she stepped into that tub for a shower the next morning. Then I stopped speculating, because I knew it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest.

CHAPTER 16

The trip back to St. Louis on Sunday was uneventful. En route I briefed Helena again on how she must behave on Monday in order to keep suspicion from herself. I elaborated a little on my original instructions and made her repeat them back to me.

“I’m to meet the plane Lawrence intended to come back on just as though I expected him to be on it,” she said tonelessly. “After it lands and everyone is off, I’m to check with the flight office and pretend to be upset because he wasn’t listed on the flight. Then I’m to wire Lawrence in care of convention headquarters in New York. When word comes back that the telegram isn’t deliverable, I’m to wire an inquiry to convention headquarters itself.” She paused, then asked, “But will anybody be there if the convention is over?”

“Conventions are always headed up by local people in the town where the convention’s held,” I told her. “Usual procedure is for the chairman to rent a temporary post office box under the convention’s name, then inform Western Union wires addressed to convention headquarters are to be delivered either to his office or home. He’ll have the same office and home after the convention.”

“I see. Well, when the wire comes back from convention headquarters saying Lawrence never reported in. I’m to phone the police and report him missing.”

“You’ve got it pretty well,” I said, satisfied that she could carry it off. “There’s only one more thing. You’ve got to get it across to Harry Cushman that if he mentions his part in this, he’s an accessory to first-degree murder. He’s going to have to know Lawrence is dead, because otherwise he may get rattled enough at his continued disappearance to take his story to the police. Don’t give him any details. Just give it to him cold that Lawrence is dead and he’d better keep his mouth shut if he wants to stay out of jail. Also tell him to stay completely away from you for the present. I don’t want the cops accidentally stumbling over him, because while I’m sure he’ll keep his mouth shut if he’s left alone, I think he’d break pretty easily under questioning. If he keeps away from you, there isn’t any reason for the cops to find out you even know him.”

“I understand,” she said. “I can handle Harry.”

We took Mac Arthur Bridge back into St. Louis. I drove straight to my flat, then turned the car over to Helena. I didn’t invite her in.

Standing on the sidewalk with my bag in one hand and my new fishing gear in the other, I said, “I’ve kept a list of expenses. But I’ll wait until the police lose interest in your husband and you get your affairs straightened out before I bill you. I imagine your money will be tied up for some time if everything was in Lawrence’s name.”

“Are you adding an additional fee for disposing of Lawrence?” she asked.

“That was on the house. Just don’t give me any more little jobs like that.”

“Will I see you again, Barney? I mean aside from when you submit your expense account.”

I shook my head definitely. “You’re a lovely woman, and except for the third party you rang in on our trip, I enjoyed the week thoroughly. But this is the end. When things quiet down, you divorce Lawrence for desertion and marry some nice millionaire. Harry Cushman, maybe, if he isn’t too scared to come near you again.”

I thought for a moment her expressionless face looked a little wistful, but it may have been imagination. Her voice was as totally lacking in emotion as usual when she spoke.

“Good-by, Barney.”

“Good-by, Helena,” I said.

She drove away.

CHAPTER 17

I had hoped that was the end of it, but at nine Monday evening Helena phoned me at home.

“Everything went smoothly, Barney,” she announced the moment I picked up the phone. “It worked out just as you said. The police were just here for a picture of Lawrence to teletype to New York. They weren’t in the least suspicious, and about all they asked me was if he’d said anything about financial troubles recently.”

Her call upset me. “Listen,” I said. “Did it occur to you your phone might be tapped?”

She was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “Could it be?”

“No,” I snapped. “They wouldn’t tap a phone on a routine missing person case. But don’t call me again. It’s an unnecessary risk.”

“I’m sorry, Barney. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Just let me know if something goes wrong,” I said. “If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’re doing fine.”

But she phoned me again at nine Tuesday night.

As soon as I recognized her voice, I said bitterly, “I told you not to phone!”

“You said I should if something went wrong. Well, something has.”

I felt a cold chill run along my spine. “What?”

“You’ll have to come out here, Barney. Right away.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. But you must come. Immediately.”

“As soon as I can get a taxi,” I said, and hung up.

All the way out to Helena’s home in the cab I wondered what possibly could have gone wrong. There wasn’t anything that could have gone wrong, I kept assuring myself. If ever a perfect murder had been pulled, Lawrence Powers’s was it. Not only was the body beyond recovery, the police didn’t even suspect there had been a murder, and probably never would.

The only thing I could think of was that Harry Cushman had gone to the police. But that seemed inconceivable to me. If I had evaluated him right, he’d stay as far away from both the police and Helena as he could get from the minute he realized he could be charged as an accessory to first-degree homicide.

My thoughts hadn’t accomplished anything but to get me all upset by the time we arrived at Helena’s home.

Helena met me at the front door. She wore a red off-the-shoulder hostess gown, and she looked as calm and unruffled as ever.

“Alice isn’t here,” she greeted me. “I sent her home at six because I expected Harry at seven.”

So it was Harry Cushman after all who was causing whatever the trouble was, I thought.

I asked, “He still here?”

Instead of answering, she led me into the front room. “Would you like a drink before we talk?”

“No, I wouldn’t like a drink before we talk,” I said, exasperated. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’d rather show you.”

The words raised the hair at the base of my neck. The last time she’d used similar words, she led me to her husband’s iced corpse. Now she took my hand, just as she had that previous time, and led me into the dining room. I followed numbly, almost knowing what to expect.

The light was off in the dining room, but the switch was by the door and Helena flicked it on as we entered. Then she dropped my hand and looked at me expectantly.

The dining room was large and had a fireplace on the outside wall. Against the wall closest to us was a sideboard containing a tray of bottles and glasses and a bowl of ice cubes.

Lying face down in front of the sideboard was Harry Cushman, the entire back of his head a pulpy and bloody mass from some terrific blow. His left hand clutched a glass from which the liquid had spilled, and near his outstretched right hand lay a siphon bottle on its side. Next to him lay a pair of brass fire tongs with blood on them.

The shock was not as great as you might expect, because I had anticipated something on this order from the moment Helena said she would rather “show” me. Glancing about the room, I saw the drapes were drawn so that we were safe from outside observation.

I said coldly, “It looks like you hit him from behind while he was mixing a drink. Right?”

She merely nodded.

“Why?”

“Because I was afraid he might give us away. He was in a panic when I told him Lawrence was dead.”

“Did he threaten to go to the police?”

She shook her head.

“What did he say?”

Helena shrugged slightly. “Nothing, really, except that I hadn’t any right to involve him in murder. It was the way he acted. He shook like a leaf.”

For a long time I looked at her. “Let me get this straight,” I said finally. “He didn’t threaten to expose us. He wasn’t going to the police. But just because he seemed to you like a bad security risk, you murdered him.”

She frowned slightly. “You make it sound worse than it was.”

“Then make it sound better.”

She made an impatient gesture. “What difference does it make now? It’s done. And we have to dispose of the body.”

Again she looked at me expectantly, a curious brightness in her eyes. And suddenly I realized something I had been aware of subconsciously for some time, but hadn’t brought to the front of my mind for examination.

Helena enjoyed watching me solve the problems brought on by murder.

It was a game to her, I knew with abrupt understanding, for the first time really knowing what went on under that expressionless face.

I said, “What do you mean, we have to dispose of the body? I haven’t killed anybody.”

Her lip corners curved upward in a barely discernible smile. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want me caught, Barney. You can only be executed for one murder. So there wouldn’t be any point in not telling the police about Lawrence if I got caught for this one. Including how cleverly you got rid of the body.”

With a feeling of horror I looked off into the future, seeing myself disposing of corpse after corpse as Helena repeatedly indulged her newly discovered thrill.

With only one result. Nobody gets away with murder forever.

I knew what I had to do then.

For a moment I examined her moodily. Then I shrugged. “All right, Helena. We may as well start now. Get some rags.”

Obediently she went into the kitchen, returning in a few moments with several large rags. Taking one from her, I picked up the tongs.

“Lift his head a little,” I said. “So I can spread a rag under it.”

Turning her back to me, she put both hands under the dead man’s shoulders and tugged upward. I swung the brass fire tongs down on top of her head with all my force.

It isn’t much harder to dispose of two bodies than it is to dispose of one. Not with a river as deep as the Mississippi so close by.

THE HAPPY MARRIAGE

Originally published in Manhunt, August 1955.

CHAPTER 1

The first time Tom Wright and my wife Nora tried to kill me, they stretched a wire across the stairway two steps from the top.

The only thing that saved me was an untied shoelace. Noticing it was untied just as I started down the stairs, I stopped with one foot on the second step, turned around and raised my other foot to the top landing so that I could bend forward and retie it.

The calf of my left leg touched the wire as I leaned forward.

Forgetting the untied lace, I turned to examine the wire. It was piano wire, almost invisible to the eye, and it was stretched tautly across the stairway about a foot above the steps.

My first reaction was simply astonishment. I was about to yell downstairs to Nora and Tom to come look at my discovery when Nora called from the front room, “George, honey! The Nelsons will he waiting for us!”

It wasn’t till then that it occurred to me the wire must have been strung for my benefit, and no one but my wife or Tom Wright could have strung it.

I closed my mouth and looked at the wire again. Then I looked down the steep stretch of stairs and imagined myself hurtling headfirst the entire length to the marble-floored foyer. Our house had eleven-foot ceilings, and there were twenty steps in the flight. I might not have been killed, but I certainly couldn’t have escaped serious injury.

Dispassionately I wondered whether it would have been Wright or Nora who would have finished me off if the fall had failed to kill me.

Nora called again, “Did you hear me, George?” and it seemed to me that a faint note of hysteria underlay the impatience in her voice.

Retreating to the bathroom door, I called in a calm voice, “Just knotting my tie, dear. About two minutes.”

Again I knelt to retie the lace which had saved my life. Then I quietly returned to the stairs and loosened one end of the wire where it was wound tightly about a baluster. When I released it, it coiled up like a loose spring against the opposite railing.

Whistling, I descended to the foyer.

Nora was only slightly pale when I entered the front room, and her facial muscles were entirely under control. In a cynical sort of way I couldn’t help admiring her recovery, for when she heard me whistling on the stairs, the shock of nothing happening must have flabbergasted her.

Tom Wright was not as good an actor, however. His expression was one of stupefaction.

Smiling pleasantly, I said, “Sorry I took so long, but the Nelsons are never on time anyway.”

Tom recovered then and managed a smile in return. “I’m in no rush. Nora’s the impatient one.”

For a moment I examined the two of them as they stood side-by-side in front of the fireplace. I knew my wife was a beautiful woman, of course, and I knew Tom Wright was an exceptionally handsome man. But until that moment I’d never considered them as a pair. It came to me with something of a shock that together they made an exceedingly handsome couple.

Under my steady gaze they both began to look slightly uneasy. Casually I said, “I’ll get the car out.” I turned to get my topcoat and hat from the front hall and went out the front door.

I took my time getting the car out, wanting to give them opportunity to recover their poise, to discover that the wire was still on the stairs and decide that one end had somehow come loose by accident.

When I finally honked from the driveway alongside the house, Tom and Nora came out at once. Apparently they had had a swift conference and decided I suspected nothing of their murder attempt, for I could detect an air of relief in both their manners.

En route to pick up the Nelsons I mulled over what action I should take. It never even occurred to me simply to confront my wife and our closest family friend with the charge that they had attempted to kill me. Nora has sometimes accused me of being unemotional, but it wasn’t just that which made me delay doing anything at all until I had a chance to think things out thoroughly. Inside I was as disturbed as any man would be who unexpectedly discovers he has been betrayed by his wife and one of his best friends. But I hadn’t built my considerable reputation as a corporation lawyer by moving before I was fully prepared. Years of negotiating business contracts and trying civil suits had conditioned me to studying problems from all angles before making even an initial move.

The only difference between this problem and the ones I was used to encountering was that this one was more important.

CHAPTER 2

As we rode along I arranged the factors of this new problem in my mind as logically as I would have the problem of a corporation merger.

First there was the inescapable fact that Tom and Nora had tried to murder me. I considered the possibility of there being some other explanation for the wire across the stairs, not for the ostrich-like purpose of trying to blind myself to reality, but because I wanted to examine all possibilities. I didn’t have to consider it long.

When I had arrived home from the office, late as usual, Tom was already there, immaculate in his dinner jacket, and Nora was also dressed for the country club dinner. Our maid Jane doesn’t live in and had already left for the evening, so no one else was in the house when I rushed upstairs to shower and dress, leaving Nora and Tom together in the front room. And there had been no wire across the stairs then.

Twenty minutes later the lethal wire had been in place.

No one but Tom or Nora could have put it there.

The situation being defined to my satisfaction, I next turned my thoughts to what could have brought about Nora and Tom’s decision to kill me. The most probable explanation was that they were in love and had decided that as an obstacle to their love I had to be removed. I examined this theory dispassionately and without jealousy.

I was forty-five, I reflected, and Nora only thirty. While I was in fair physical condition, corporate law isn’t a field which requires much exercise, and I knew I had allowed myself to grow a little flabby.

Tom Wright, on the other hand, while almost exactly my size and general build, was as leanly muscled as a cat because he got plenty of exercise. He was golf pro and tennis instructor at the country club. He was also ten years younger than I and still possessed the smooth handsomeness of a youth. Physically I was hardly much competition for as beautiful a woman as Nora.

Furthermore I had too little time for Nora. After the first year of our marriage five years before, I had become too preoccupied with building my practice to give her the attention she deserved, I now realized.

I had actually welcomed the congenial Tom Wright’s gradually increasing presence in our home and his agreeability to substituting for me as an escort for Nora to social events I wanted to get out of. It had been I who had thrown them together so much, and looking at the matter calmly, I could hardly blame them for falling in love.

I could even understand why they had attempted murder instead of asking me to divorce Nora. I don’t mean I could forgive it. I simply mean I could understand the reason. As a member of the country club board of directors, I happened to know Tom Wright’s salary was only forty-five hundred a year, which was hardly enough to clothe Nora, let alone support both of them. And Nora was not the sort of woman to sacrifice comfort for love. Naturally she would want both.

Thinking back, it was hard for me to understand why I had not even suspected the growth of Nora’s and Tom’s love before tonight. In the past year Tom Wright had gone nearly everywhere with us. His presence as a family friend was so commonly accepted, we frequently received invitations which automatically included him. And while he was often attentive to other women at parties and dances, he never escorted any woman but Nora anywhere, nor showed even passing romantic interest in any other woman.

How often, I wondered, had I stood at the country club bar with some of the men my own age indulgently watching Tom and Nora glide across the dance floor? Ruefully I recalled that my sole emotion on those occasions was relief that I didn’t have to exert so much energy myself.

Tom interrupted my thoughts by remarking, “Crisp tonight. Be nice if we had a blanket of snow Saturday to start off the deer season.”

Nora glanced sidewise at him. “I don’t think I follow that.”

“Makes tracking easier,” Tom explained. “George, want to go out to Werle’s Woods Saturday?”

I thought about being alone in the woods with a man who had tried to kill me, and the prospect didn’t much appeal to me.

Noncommittally I said, “Maybe. I’ll let you know.”

Then we were at the Nelsons, they were coming down the front steps to the car, and during the drive to the country club Velma Nelson kept up such an incessant chatter, I had no chance to return to my inner thoughts.

I didn’t have much opportunity for inward contemplation after we arrived at the club either. People were already sitting down to dinner when we arrived, and in the bustle of locating places I found myself trapped next to Velma Nelson. I have learned not to listen when Velma talks, but it’s difficult to think very constructively with a monologue going on in your ear.

After dinner, and before the music started, we as usual had an exhibition of local talent. There were the inevitable renditions by the barbershop quartet, in which Tom Wright sang baritone, and the equally inevitable piano solo by Velma Nelson. Then club president Chet Wayne called on me for my imitation act, and when the crowd set up an insistent clapping, I allowed myself to be drafted.

Mimicry is my sole party talent, and in all modesty I’m good at it. In Chet Wayne’s ponderous voice I introduced Velma Nelson, using all the superlatives our country club president is so fond of, then switched to Velma’s shrill soprano and announced I couldn’t possibly play tonight because of a cold in my little finger.

Immediately switching to the deep bass of Velma’s husband Harry, I said, “Good. Then sit down and shut up.”

The act got its usual heavy applause, particularly from Velma, who considers it a compliment to be teased.

After that we moved to the ballroom and I spent the rest of the evening standing at the bar with a group of men while Tom and Nora danced. I wasn’t able to get back to my problem again until past midnight, after I had kissed Nora goodnight and had retired to my own room.

Lying awake in the dark with my hands behind my head, I mentally reviewed the alternate actions I could take. First, I could confront Nora and Tom with their act and demand a divorce without alimony. Second. I could report the murder attempt to the police and have both arrested. Third, I could ignore the entire problem and get myself murdered when they made their next attempt.

Fourth, I could work out some plan to break up the affair between Tom Wright and Nora and force her to return to me.

After thorough soul-searching, I decided that even though she had tried to kill me, I wanted Nora to remain my wife provided I could set the terms and devise absolutely certain safeguards against her ever attempting to kill me again.

Which meant the fourth alternate action.

CHAPTER 3

The next day, Thursday, was our maid’s day off, and Nora invariably lunched downtown on that day. I figured she would have left the house by eleven, and I left my office at the same time. To be on the safe side I stopped at a drugstore two blocks from my house and phoned to make sure she had actually left. When there was no answer, I went home.

The best place for the microphone, I decided, was behind the sofa in the front room, as that was the logical place for a couple in love to sit if they had anything confidential to say to each other. And the best place for the tape recorder was where it already was: in my basement hobby room immediately beneath the front room.

In recent years I hadn’t spent much time in my hobby room, but it was adequately equipped with every tool I needed. In less than a half hour I had a high-fidelity mike fixed to the back of the sofa just below the top, and a long extension cord leading from it through a hole drilled in the floor.

Setting the recording machine on my work bench, I switched it on, went upstairs again and counted aloud from various points of the front room. When I went back down to the basement to play back the tape, I found that my normal speaking voice had recorded clearly from every test point.

Clearing the tape, I left the house again, had a solitary lunch and spent the rest of the day at my office.

Normally I arrived home between five-thirty and six. The maid being off on Thursday, Nora prepared dinner herself, and if for some reason I was going to be late, I always gave her plenty of notice. But tonight I deliberately waited until five-thirty before phoning that I had an unexpected dinner invitation from a client and wouldn’t be home at all.

“But I made pot roast!” Nora wailed. “It’s practically ready to serve.”

“Sorry,” I said. “But this is one of my biggest accounts, and I can’t possibly get out of it. Why don’t you invite somebody over so you don’t have to eat alone?”

“Who?” she demanded.

“Maybe Tom’s free. He’d probably welcome the change from restaurant fare.”

She was silent for a moment, then said in a mollified voice, “All right, dear. I’ll see if I can reach him. Will you be late?”

“Don’t expect me before nine-thirty.”

“All right, dear. Have a good time.” Her voice sounded remarkably cheerful for a woman whose husband had disappointed her for dinner.

I had a leisurely dinner downtown, then drove back to my own neighborhood and cruised slowly past the house. It was not yet seven, but the November days were getting short enough for it to be dark already. Lights were on both in the front room and the dining room.

Tom Wright’s car was parked in the driveway.

Continuing on past the house, I rounded the corner and parked on the nearest side street. Quietly I made my way up the alley, through the back gate, and let myself in the basement door. Without turning on any lights I felt my way to the hobby room, switched on the recorder and turned the gain control on full.

Then I retraced my way back to the car just as silently. There wasn’t any point in waiting in the basement, as the machine was loaded with a two-hour tape and required no supervision.

Promptly at nine-thirty I turned into my drive. Tom Wright’s car was now gone, I noted.

Nora greeted me pleasantly but without enthusiasm. Her inquiry as to what kind of time I had had was more polite than interested, and when I asked in turn if she’d been able to get hold of Tom, she merely nodded noncommittally and said he’d left about a half hour before.

With a little more animation she said, “Did you remember Tom’s birthday is Saturday?”

I hadn’t, as it happened. Wright and I had fallen in the habit of giving each other minor gifts on our birthdays. Nothing elaborate; a box of cigars or a fifth of scotch.

“I’ll get something tomorrow,” I said.

Nora announced she was tired from the previous night’s country club party and was going to bed early. She gave me a tepid goodnight kiss and moved toward the stairs.

“I’m going to read awhile,” I said. “I won’t wake you when I come up.”

I did read for about thirty minutes, until I was reasonably sure Nora’s door was closed and she was in bed. Then I quietly descended to the basement.

CHAPTER 4

The first fifteen minutes of the tape playback was meaningless, consisting merely of scraps of conversation too far away to make out. Obviously Tom and Nora were still in the dining room.

Then, clearly, Nora’s voice said, “Jane can clear the table in the morning. Let’s sit in here.”

There was a long period of silence, then Nora’s voice again, close and breathless. “Please, honey! The front drapes are wide open!”

“Close them,” Tom Wright’s voice said huskily.

“And chance George coming home early and finding them closed? Stop it, Tom! We have to talk.”

“About what?” Tom demanded. “The thing fizzled. Talk won’t change it.”

“We’ll have to try again.”

“So we’ll try again. When the chance comes. It’ll have to be a setup like last night, when we’re scheduled to go out together and George gets home late. The chance’ll come. What’s the point of talking about it?”

I could visualize Nora shaking her head. “Not that way again, Tom. I couldn’t stand the suspense. We have to think of another plan.”

“Why? The wire’s simple and safe. Nobody would suspect anything but an accident.”

After a long silence Nora said reluctantly, “I’m not sure George didn’t loosen that wire.”

“You nuts?” Tom asked. “It just came loose.”

“How? You insist you fastened it firmly. You don’t know George. It would be just like him to disconnect one end and pretend he hadn’t noticed it so he could have time to figure out what action to take. He wouldn’t run out of a burning building until he’d stopped to analyze all possible exits and decided on the most logical one.”

Incredulously Tom said, “You don’t actually mean you think he suspects we tried to kill him, and didn’t say a word about it?”

“Not really,” Nora said impatiently. “It’s just… just that he’s such a cold fish, anything’s possible. I’m just unnerved, I guess. I don’t want to try the wire again.”

“Well, what do you want to try?”

“I don’t know. I want to think about it. I want to table the whole plan until we come up with a foolproof idea.”

“I think the wire’s foolproof.”

“It failed, didn’t it?” Nora snapped. “I want a plan that will work. And that’s going to take thought. Meantime I think it’d be a good idea if we stopped seeing each other except in George’s presence.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because he’s not an idiot. Did you see the measuring expression in his eyes when he came downstairs last night? I turned cold all over. I thought he was going to announce in that calm way of his that it was obvious we’re in love and ask our suggestions on what to do about it.”

“You’re imagining things,” Tom scoffed. “George trusts me like a brother. Didn’t he even suggest you invite me for dinner tonight?”

“Well, yes,” Nora admitted. “I guess I’m hypersensitive since the wire stunt failed. But I can’t help it. I’m scared. Let’s do things the way I suggest.”

“All right,” Tom said resignedly. “I’ll stay away unless George himself invites me over. Suit you?”

The tape went on for another full hour, but nothing more definite was resolved. All it boiled down to was that Nora and Wright would independently try to think up a feasible plan, and wouldn’t contact each other until one or the other came up with one. Meantime they would keep their relationship carefully circumspect.

It was a mild relief to know I didn’t have to be on the lookout for booby traps for at least the immediate future.

Returning upstairs, I disconnected the microphone, went back to the basement and pulled the cord through the hole in the floor. I closed the machine up and stored it back in its locker beneath my workbench.

After I climbed in bed I lay awake for a long time attempting to work out a plan of my own. Tom Wright’s invitation to go deer hunting crept into my mind, and at the same time I suddenly remembered that Saturday was not only the opening of deer season; it was Tom’s birthday.

The conjunction of the two dates gave me my plan.

CHAPTER 5

Friday evening when I came home from the office, I brought a sealed pasteboard suit box with me. Opening it in the front room as Nora watched, I took out a brand new jacket and a peaked woolen cap. The jacket was a brilliant red. The cap was made up of four wedge-shaped panels, like pieces of pie, the ones on each side the same color as the jacket and the front and rear ones bright green. The peak was divided down the center, red on one side and green on the other.

Removing the sales tags, I slipped both on.

“It’s certainly a gay outfit,” Nora said dubiously.

“It’s supposed to be,” I told her. “Even with the woods full of amateurs, nobody ought to mistake me for a deer.”

“Oh, you’re going deer hunting?” she asked.

“If I can rake up a partner. Got time to make a phone call before dinner?”

When Nora said I had, I dialed Harry Nelson’s number. Nora stood watching me speculatively.

Apparently she recalled Tom Wright’s invitation to me to go hunting and assumed I was phoning him, because she looked surprised when I said, “Harry?”

“Speaking,” Harry said.

“George Wharton. Got your deer license yet?”

When Harry said he had, I said, “How about taking a crack at Werle’s Woods in the morning?”

“Sure,” he said. “What time?”

I told him I’d pick him up at five a.m.

When I hung up, Nora said, “You told Tom you’d let him know if you wanted to go hunting.”

“I tried to reach him from the office,” I told her. “He wasn’t home.”

Shrugging, Nora left for the kitchen to check up on the progress of dinner. The minute she was out of earshot, I picked up the phone again and dialed Tom Wright’s number. He answered at once.

“About tomorrow,” I said. “Still want to try for a deer?”

“Sure thing, George. When you didn’t call, I was planning to go out alone in the morning.”

“Pick you up at five-thirty.” I told him.

I slept with Nora that night. Deliberately, so that she’d have no chance to use her bedside phone to contact Wright.

It wasn’t until after we were in bed that I remarked in a tone of afterthought, “I tried Tom’s place again while you were helping Jane get dinner, and finally got hold of him. He’s going along with Harry and me.”

She didn’t make any comment.

* * *

When the alarm buzzed at four-thirty, I let it buzz long enough to arouse Nora before shutting it off.

She watched sleepily as I dressed in breeches and boots and pulled on the brilliant red jacket. When I put on the bright red and green cap, she made a face and closed her eyes. She had drifted off to sleep again before I left the room.

Downstairs I took off the new jacket and cap and neatly repacked them in the box they had come in. From the hall closet I got out my old black and white checkered hunting jacket and my solid red cap.

There was no danger of Nora awakening and seeing from her window that I had changed clothes, for her window was on the opposite side of the house from the garage.

Harry Nelson was waiting on his front porch when I got to his house. But Tom Wright wasn’t ready when we reached his small apartment, of course, because we arrived twenty minutes earlier than I had told him we would. He came to the door buttoning his flannel shirt.

“I thought you said five-thirty,” he complained.

“I did. We’re a little early. Happy birthday.”

I handed him the suit box.

“Oh, thanks.”

Leading us into the front room, he laid the box on the sofa and opened it. His eyes widened in surprise as he drew out the jacket and cap.

“Cripes, George,” he said. “You shouldn’t have spent this much.”

“I got them for a special price and didn’t want to pass it up,” I said. “See if they fit. I figured you were almost exactly my size, so I used myself as a model.”

Both the jacket and cap fitted perfectly.

Grinning at himself in a mirror, Tom made almost the same remark I had made to Nora the evening before. “I guess nobody will mistake me for a deer in this outfit.”

CHAPTER 6

Werle’s Woods was only about eight miles from town. The area consisted of a strip about three miles wide by ten long, bordered by a nearly impassible dirt road on one side and a railroad track on the other. It was a rough section, pitted by ravines and with much underbrush, so that it had to be worked slowly, but it was full of deer, and occasionally some hunter even flushed a bear.

At the south end of the woods was a ramshackle frame building containing a restaurant and bar where hunters invariably had coffee before starting out and a drink or two at the end of the hunt. It bore no sign to indicate its name, but was known to its patrons as “Joe’s Place.”

While we were having coffee at the counter, I excused myself and went to the phone booth in the far corner of the restaurant.

It was only a minute or two after six a.m. and Nora was still in bed. She sounded half asleep when she answered the phone.

Calling on my talent for mimicry, I said in Tom Wright’s voice, “Nora?”

She came fully awake at once. “What is it?” she asked. “Where are you?”

“At Joe’s Place, at the edge of Werle’s Woods. Listen fast, because I haven’t much time. This is it, honey. The opportunity we’ve been waiting for.”

“You mean… Tom! Don’t do anything dangerous!”

“This is the safest plan we’ll ever find, honey. It’s a natural. Can you get hold of a rifle?”

“A rifle?” She sounded scared. “I guess. George has three, and I don’t suppose he took more than one with him. Why?”

“Can you shoot?”

“I have. I’m not an expert.”

“Could you hit a man at a hundred yards?”

“Of course. Anyone could. But what…”

“Then listen close,” I interrupted. “George, Harry and I will follow the standard procedure of one of us taking a stand while the other two drive game ahead of us. You know where Highway Sixty curves in toward the trestle over Fallon Creek?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a high knoll covered with evergreen about a hundred yards from the trestle. It’s a perfect spot for a stand because it covers a ravine where there’s a deer trail. I estimate we’ll reach there about ten, and I’ll arrange for George to be on the stand. You can get to within fifty yards of that trestle with your car, slip under the trestle, get off a shot and be back in your car and gone before Harry and I get anywhere near the place.”

Nora drew a deep and frightened breath. “But won’t Harry…”

“Suspect me? How can he? I’ll be right with him and he’ll know I didn’t shoot. It’s a cinch to pass as just another hunting accident. A stray shot from some unknown hunter.”

“But suppose… suppose you can’t get him to take the stand?”

“Then don’t shoot,” I said impatiently. “You can’t mistake him very well. With that red jacket and red-and-green cap, he’ll show up like a Christmas-tree ornament.”

“All right,” Nora said in a low voice. “We’ll try it.”

I hung up and went back to finish my coffee.

CHAPTER 7

On my suggestion Tom Wright took the first stand while Harry Nelson and I drove through the brush. The procedure was simple enough. Tom walked alone along the tracks for a half mile to a pre-designated spot we all knew, as we were all three familiar with the woods. When Harry and I figured enough time had elapsed for Tom to get into position, we started moving toward him through the woods. Tom’s stand was in sight of a deer trail, and our hope was that any game we startled would take that trail.

The going was rough and, for me, a little ticklish, for I had to take into consideration the possibility that Tom might decide to open fire on me when he spotted me in the underbrush and claim it had been an accident. After all, there was no reason to believe he too hadn’t been considering the unique opportunity a hunting trip offered for an “accident.”

To minimize the risk I stayed within sight of Harry, and as we neared the stand I made a point of keeping the boles of trees between me and it. When we finally came within sight of Tom, and Harry halloed to warn him of our presence, I fell in behind Harry as we worked forward the last hundred yards.

Tom told us we had flushed two does, but no bucks.

Again at my suggestion, Harry took the second stand. In a different way this left the situation just as ticklish, for I was now alone in the woods with Tom. It would be a simple matter for him to stumble over a stick and accidentally discharge his rifle while it was pointed at me.

The only defense against this possibility was alertness. Carefully refraining from getting ahead of my drive partner, I constantly kept him in the corner of my eye, ready to drop flat the moment his rifle started to swing in my direction.

But if Tom had any homicidal plans, apparently he was not yet ready to put them in operation. He concentrated strictly on the hunt, paying more attention to the ground ahead than he did to me. We reached Nelson’s stand without incident.

This one had been a dry run, for Harry hadn’t even spotted a doe.

The third stand was mine, and under ordinary circumstances I would have bagged my buck. I had barely been settled ten minutes when a big ten-pointer bounded along the trail not fifty yards from me. But I hadn’t been watching the deer trail. I had been scanning the underbrush for Tom Wright, and the buck was past before I even realized I had a target.

When Harry and Tom rejoined me, I didn’t mention the chance I had missed.

Now it was Tom’s turn again to take a stand, and we were less than a half mile from the knoll I had described to Nora. Tom knew the knoll too, and I didn’t even have to suggest it to him.

When Harry asked him where he meant to set up, Tom said, “You know the trestle over Fallon Creek? There’s a hill covered with evergreen about a hundred yards straight out into the woods from it. I’ll be there.”

I looked at my watch as he started off. It was just nine-thirty.

We gave him twenty minutes to get into position, then started our drive toward him. As we moved through the underbrush I imagined Tom crouched on top of the knoll, sufficiently screened by evergreen to make his identification impossible from a hundred yards off except by means of his brilliant red jacket and red-and-green cap.

We had made about half the distance to the knoll when we heard a single rifle shot.

“Sounds like he got a crack at one anyway.” Harry remarked.

“Yeah,” I said.

But I knew different. The shot had a hollow reverberation to it, as though it had been fired from beneath a bridge.

CHAPTER 8

It was nearly three in the afternoon when I drove the car into the garage. Nora must have been watching from the window for someone to come and report my death, for she met me at the kitchen door.

Unbelievingly she looked me over from head to foot, her eyes widening with the beginnings of shocked understanding as she took in the checkered jacket and red cap I wore.

“That was Tom Wright in the red jacket,” I said casually.

Her face was already pale, but now it turned dead white. For an instant she closed her eyes, then opened them again and stared at me.

“It passed as a hunting accident,” I said. “The coroner’s already issued a verdict. There won’t even be an inquest. Hunting deaths are pretty cut and dried.”

Nora said nothing.

“I want to show you something in the basement,” I said, taking her arm again.

Again she offered no resistance, but it was like piloting a drunk. She was so unsteady on her feet, I had to grip her bicep forcibly to prevent her from falling down the stairs.

In my hobby room I left her standing in a corner while I got out the recording machine, plugged it in and started the playback. At first she simply stared at the rotating dials without understanding, but as the meaning of the recorded conversation penetrated, she swayed on her feet and gripped her hands together until the knuckles turned white.

“On the phone,” Nora whispered. “That was you!”

“Right,” I agreed. “But you’d never prove it in a million years, in case you get the urge to sacrifice yourself just so you can take me along as an accessory. On the other hand, the case can be proved against you. Ballistic tests will establish it was one of my rifles which killed Tom, and I have a witness that I couldn’t have fired it. The new will I made yesterday leaves the keys to my safe-deposit vault to the district attorney. It’ll be to your advantage to make sure I don’t drop dead. Because if I do, you’ll fry in the electric chair.”

Nora shook her head as though to clear it. “How can you… You mean you still want me?”

“Of course,” I said. “Where else could a man my age find such a beautiful woman?”

In a dead voice she said, “It’s horrible. You don’t love me. You never have. You’re just being vengeful.”

Smiling, I shook my head. “I’m merely preserving my happy home.” Approaching her, I tipped up her head with one hand and looked down into her face.

“Kiss me,” I commanded softly. “You may as well get in the habit of being a loving wife, because you’ve got a lot of years to go.”

She stood like a lifeless thing when I kissed her, as unresisting as a stick of wood. When I released her, her face grew pinched and she walked stiffly from the workroom.

I took time to light a cigarette before leisurely following. When I came out into the main part of the basement, I discovered she was over in the far corner of the basement, where I kept my gun rack.

I stopped still as she swung around with the same deer rifle in her hand with which she’d killed her lover.

Neither of us said anything as she drew back the bolt to throw a shell into the chamber. I just stood there frozen, my only thought being that I had overlooked one thing.

I had forgotten to make allowance for an unpredictable factor.

SAUCE FOR THE GANDER

Originally published in Manhunt, February 1956.

CHAPTER 1

Except that his right earlobe was missing, there was nothing arresting about the tall, sunburned man until you looked closely. He was as quiet-mannered and as sleekly-dressed as any patron of Club Rotunda.

But Sam Black, the club’s assistant manager, made a habit of looking closely at every new customer. This one, he decided after only momentary study, was carrying a gun under his arm.

The man told Black that his name was Larry Eaton, that Judge Bernard had said to mention his name and he’d like to go upstairs to the gaming rooms. The assistant manager furrowed his forehead as though searching his mind for a Judge Bernard. He shook his head regretfully.

“Afraid I don’t know the judge,” he said. “Anyway, there’s nothing upstairs but Mr. Ross’s apartment.” He glanced across the room at Oscar the headwaiter, who wasn’t even looking his way. “Excuse me, Mr. Eaton. The headwaiter’s signaling me about something. Nice to have met you.”

As Black walked away, the sunburned man shrugged and moved toward the bar.

Beneath the deliberate stupidity of Sam Black’s expression was a lightning-quick mind. His snap decision to brush off the man who said his name was Larry Eaton was actually the result of careful consideration, even though the thought process took only seconds.

A dozen times nightly the stocky assistant manager had to decide whether or not to allow first-time visitors to the club upstairs to the casino. And what had brought about his decision in this case was recognition of a type. Though he had never before seen the sunburned man, nor heard the name Larry Eaton, instinct warned him this was a high-caliber hood. Possibly the man was merely out for a good time. But also, possibly he was gunning for someone.

At the end of a half hour Larry Eaton decided to leave. At the archway giving off the foyer where the cloakrooms were, he paused to glance reflectively at the mirrored elevator doors across the room.

At that moment they opened and a thin, slightly stoop-shouldered man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a brief case stepped from the car. Black recognized Benny Stoneman, the club bookkeeper, and shifted his gaze back toward Eaton again.

During the part of a second the assistant manager’s gaze had been settled on the elevator, the sunburned man had disappeared through the front door.

The bookkeeper went out the front door also. Black shrugged and turned to wander back among the tables. He had barely taken three steps when a rapid series of shots sounded from immediately in front of the club.

Black was racing forward before the last shot stopped echoing. One hand thrust the glass door outward while the other drew a short-barreled revolver from beneath his arm. He landed in the center of the sidewalk in a crouch, his gaze sweeping the surrounding area in one quick but thorough glance before settling on the crumpled figure lying on the concrete just outside the door.

There was not a pedestrian in sight and the only vehicle in motion was a block away. Black caught only a glimpse of twin taillights before it turned the corner and disappeared.

Sheathing his gun, he knelt next to the crumpled figure.

“You hurt bad, Benny?” he asked.

The thin bookkeeper didn’t answer. He was beyond answering.

CHAPTER 2

Except for a brief phone conversation with Clancy Ross upstairs, Sam Black didn’t have a chance to talk to the club proprietor before the police arrived. He was too busy quieting the downstairs customers and Ross was too busy closing the casino and herding the gambling customers downstairs to tables in the night-club portion of the building.

Nor did he have a chance to make a report to Ross after they arrived, since Lieutenant Niles Redfern, who was in charge of the investigation, kept the gambler at his side while he supervised the photographing of the body, finally released it to the morgue wagon, and satisfied himself that the only witness who knew anything at all was Sam Black.

Detective Lieutenant Niles Redfern was a lanky, middle-aged man with a lean intelligent face and a perpetually morose expression. He was a dedicated law officer and an efficient one, but he had one defect which prevented his rise beyond a lieutenancy in a police department run the way St. Stephen’s was.

Unfortunately for his career, he was incorruptible.

His assistant this evening was Sergeant James Morton, a thick-bodied unimaginative man who also would probably never earn further promotion. But not for the same reason, for Morton had no compunction about accepting graft, and was one of the police on the Rotunda’s payroll. He remained a sergeant because even in a corrupt police department there have to be minimum standards of ability.

Oddly, Clancy Ross liked Niles Redfern who would have closed down the club with pleasure if he ever got the opportunity, and had nothing but contempt tor police who accepted payoff.

When the last of the club patrons had been allowed to go home after having their names and addresses recorded by Sergeant Morton, the four men took seats at the bar, Ross and Sam Black in the center, and the two detectives flanking them.

“Drink?” the gambler offered.

Sergeant Morton looked expectant, but his expression faded when the lieutenant shook his head.

“Tell me about this Benny Stoneman,” Redfern said. “How long’s he worked here?”

Clancy Ross’s eyebrows, a startling black in contrast to the uniform silver of his prematurely gray hair, hunched together thoughtfully. He fingered the thin scar which formed the slight cleft in his chin.

“Around a month,” he said finally. “Maybe five weeks.” He looked at Sam Black for confirmation.

“Four weeks and three days,” Black said.

“He was your bookkeeper?” the lieutenant asked Ross.

The gambler nodded.

“How’d he happen to be working so late? Don’t night-club bookkeepers work nine to five just like office bookkeepers?”

“The payroll.” Sam Black answered for Ross. “Tomorrow’s the fifteenth.”

The lieutenant’s gaze shifted to Black. “You were the first one outside after it happened. Sam? And nobody was in sight?”

“Not immediately. A car was just wheeling around the next corner, but it was too dark to catch the number and make. About two minutes later the street was full, though. The shots emptied every building in the neighborhood except ours. I blocked the front door, told the customers to get back to their tables, then put guards on both the front and side doors to make sure nobody left.”

“Quick thinking,” Redfern commended. “Made it a lot easier for us. Ross, where’d this Stoneman come from before you hired him?”

“Chicago.”

“Oh? Know his antecedents?”

“I checked references before I hired him.”

“And?”

“Nothing in his past record suggested he was hot. At the time.”

The lieutenant asked on a rising note, “At the time?”

“He kept books for Big John Quinnel before coming here,” the gambler said briefly.

The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “Quinnel. Isn’t he syndicate stuff?”

“He’s just been indicted for income-tax evasion,” Ross said. “I remember wondering when I read it the other day if Uncle Sam would be dragging my bookkeeper off to Chicago to testify, and leave me in a hole.”

The lieutenant digested this. “You think Quinnel might have had the guy bumped just because he was a potential witness against him in a tax case? Seems a little raw even for the syndicate.”

“What’s this Quinnel look like?” Sam Black asked suddenly.

All three of the others looked at him.

“Why?” Redfern asked. “Think you might have seen him hanging around here?”

Black shrugged. “I wouldn’t know unless you told me what he looked like. I see hundreds of people hanging around here.”

Ross said, “I’ve never met the man.”

The lieutenant shrugged in indication that he hadn’t either, but Sergeant Morton said unexpectedly. “He’s about six-four and weighs around two-fifty. That’s why they call him Big John.”

It was the sergeant’s turn to be looked at.

“He’s staying over at the Park Plaza.” Morton said.

Lieutenant Redfern scowled at his assistant. “He’s actually in town? You’ve seen him?”

“Sure. He’s down here on vacation. Been here all week. Somebody pointed him out to me the other night.”

The lieutenant’s scowl deepened. “It occur to you the department might be interested in learning that a known out-of-town hood is visiting here?”

Morton looked surprised, indicating that it hadn’t. The lieutenant dropped the subject as hopeless.

“Know anything about Stoneman’s private life?” he asked Ross.

The gambler said he knew the man had been married, but had never met his wife. “He did show me her picture. Quite a dish for a guy like Benny. Looked about half his age. They lived over on East Stoyle somewhere.”

He looked at Sam Black, who said, “Seven thirty-four.”

The lieutenant made a note of the address.

“One more thing, Ross,” he said, rising. “Knowing you, I suppose you’ll feel impelled to prove to whoever bumped Stoneman that it’s not healthy to knock off your employees. If you do any prying on your own and learn who gunned Stoneman, I’m warning you right now that the law has first call. Try taking matters into your own hands, and I’ll run you down as fast as I would any killer.”

Ross grinned at him. “When did I ever take the law into my own hands, Lieutenant?”

When the two detectives had departed, Sam Black said, “Now you ready to listen to my report?”

Ross said, “Go ahead.”

“A tall guy about thirty years old came in at eight. Had a brand new sunburn, a missing right earlobe, wore a two-hundred-dollar suit and a gun. He wanted upstairs, but I gave him the brush on general principles. He was looking for somebody, but he didn’t find him. He left just as Benny got off the elevator, and I’m pretty sure he spotted him getting off. He walked out not fifteen seconds ahead of Benny.”

Ross thought this over. “He fit Morton’s description of Big John Quinnel?”

“Not by three inches and sixty pounds. But hoods in Quinnel’s economic bracket don’t do their own gunning, do they?”

“Not likely. Maybe you’d better check up on Quinnel to see if your friend’s one of his gunnies.”

“Not me,” Black said. “I just quit.”

Ross’s eyebrows raised.

“This Quinnel is syndicate stuff,” Black explained. “But you haven’t got any sense. You’ll breeze in and start pushing him around just like you push around local hoods who step on your toes. You’ve got to be independent. You won’t tie in with Bix Lawson so we’d have an army of goons behind us. You’d rather pay three times as much protection and be on your own. Just so you don’t have to take orders from anybody. So what’s it get us? It leaves me and you all alone when the syndicate gets sore and decides to blow up the club. I’ll send you a card from Cuba.”

Ross glanced at his wristwatch. “Ten-thirty,” he said, completely ignoring his assistant’s outburst. “There’s still time to get started tonight. Morton said Quinnel’s staying at the Park Plaza. Get on over there and see what you can dig up.”

CHAPTER 3

It was two a.m. before Sam Black returned from his mission. He found Clancy Ross still awake in the front room of his apartment, which was on the third floor of the club.

Black said gloomily, “Big John’s been in town five days. Probably just vacationing, because he hasn’t had any conferences with local shots insofar as I could learn. Bix Lawson lives at the Park Plaza too, you know, but he hasn’t been to Quinnel’s suite or Quinnel to his, though they’ve had a few drinks together in the bar. The only visitors to Quinnel’s suite have been a succession of dolls. Usually in groups of three. Quinnel brought two bodyguards with him, and they’re all shacked up together in the same suite. It cost me twenty bucks to the bell captain to pry that much out. You can add it to my next pay check if either of us live till next payday.”

“See either of the two bodyguards?” Ross asked.

Black shook his head. “The bell captain told me a party had been going on in the suite since noon. Usual intimate size. Big John, the two bodyguards and three babes. Lieutenant Redfern and Sergeant Morton interrupted it for a time shortly before I got there, but were only upstairs about fifteen minutes. And nobody stirred out of the suite while I was there.”

Ross frowned at him. “Didn’t you ask the bell captain for descriptions of the two bodyguards?”

“Yeah, sure,” Black said reluctantly, and when Ross merely waited with patience, added in a resigned voice, “One of them is pale and skinny and answers to the name of Bugsy. But he’s registered as Earl Windt. The other is a tall, sunburned guy with a missing right earlobe. But his name’s not Larry Eaton. It’s Larry Horton. Probably a coincidence. There must be hundreds of tall, sunburned guys with missing earlobes.”

“No doubt,” Ross said, smiling slightly.

But there was no humor in the smile. It struck his assistant as anticipatory, and Black was afraid he knew what the gambler was anticipating.

“Listen,” Black said. “Benny was a nice guy. I liked him. But he was only here a month and he wasn’t much more than an acquaintance to either of us. If somebody bumped me, or Oscar the headwaiter, or one of the old-time housemen, I’d expect you to get mad. I’d get mad myself. But this is silly. Quinnel’s only got two guns with him, but just by lifting a phone he could probably have a hundred more in town within hours. We can’t fight a whole syndicate.”

Rising, Ross switched off the TV set. “Might as well get some sleep,” he said mildly. “Probably have a tough day tomorrow.”

“Oh, the hell with it,” Black said. “You’ve got a head like a brick. See you in the morning.”

By “morning” Black actually meant the next afternoon, as Club Rotunda didn’t open till four p.m., and the assistant manager customarily arrived only an hour beforehand. He had finished his usual check of the kitchen, bar and dining room before Clancy Ross came downstairs at a quarter of four.

When the gambler announced that he was going out and didn’t know when he’d be back, Sam Black went to the cloakroom and returned with his hat.

“I won’t need you,” Ross said.

“The hell you won’t,” Black told him. “If you insist on committing suicide, I want to be around to claim your body.”

“I’m only going down to police headquarters.”

“I’ll still go along. Maybe I’ll apply for a job on the force. Even big-time racketeers like Quinnel think twice before they bump cops.”

CHAPTER 4

Lieutenant Niles Redfern was working the four to midnight trick and had just arrived at his office when Ross and Black walked in. He told them that the lab report on Benny Stoneman showed five thirty-eight-caliber bullets in the stomach, all spaced so closely together a palm could cover them.

Ross asked, “Get anything from Quinnel?”

“I talked to him,” Redfern said. “He, two other guys and three women were having a party in his suite. They all swore it had started the previous noon and none of them had been out of the suite since. Which gave everybody alibis.” Neither Ross nor Black made any comment.

Lieutenant Redfern said he had also talked to the murdered bookkeeper’s widow, who was as beautiful as Ross had indicated. As a routine check the lieutenant had asked for an accounting of her movements, and her only alibi was that she had been home alone all evening.

The gambler asked, “Any suggestions from her about who might have gunned Benny?”

“One,” Redfern answered laconically. “She says he had a mistress.” Both Ross and Black looked surprised.

“Benny?” Black asked incredulously. “A dream of a wife and a mistress? Why the guy was at least forty-five and looked like Ichabod Crane.”

“He must have had something,” Redfern said. “His wife doesn’t know who the mistress was, but she’s sure he had one. From little bits of evidence like lipstick on handkerchiefs, always the same shade, and blonde hairs on his coat lapel. The wife’s a brunette.”

As this seemed to be all the information the lieutenant had, Ross and Black left. Outside, Black climbed into the right-hand seat of Ross’s Lincoln and watched with a scowl as his employer started the car.

CHAPTER 5

As they crossed the lobby of the Park Plaza toward the elevators, Ross and Black spotted two men and a woman coming from the bar. Both the men were huge without being fat. One, a stranger to Ross, was at least six feet four, with thick shoulders and a broad chest. He had a square, strong-jawed face with a blue-black chin, hairy eyebrows and thick, oily black hair.

The other man, nearly as tall and thick-chested, was Bix Lawson, local political boss and ruler of most of St. Stephen’s rackets. The woman, a sizzling brunette in her late twenties, looked vaguely familiar to Ross, but he couldn’t quite place her.

“Think that man with Lawson might be Quinnel?” he asked Black.

Black looked that way and shrugged. Just then a thin, pale-faced man who had come from the barroom a step or two ahead of the others and had paused to give the lobby a quick onceover, circled the group and placed himself protectively at the tallest man’s rear.

“It must be Quinnel,” Ross decided. “Paleface answers the description you got of his bodyguard Bugsy.”

“I guess,” Black said without enthusiasm.

They watched as the quartet crossed the lobby toward the main entrance to the hotel. When Ross made no move to intercept them, Black looked at him questioningly.

“It’s the other bodyguard I want to talk to,” Ross said. “Since Bugsy seems to be on duty, maybe he’s still up in Quinnel’s suite. If Quinnel and Bugsy take off somewhere, it will give us a clear field.”

Bix Lawson separated from the others at the door after bowing to the woman and giving his huge friend a comradely slap on the shoulder. He started back toward the bar while the others went on out, the pale bodyguard going first.

Ross moved on toward the elevators and Sam Black gloomily trailed him.

As Ross had hoped, they found the second bodyguard alone in suite seven-o-seven. The man with the missing earlobe looked a little startled when he saw Sam Black, then shifted his gaze to Clancy Ross.

“I’m Clancy Ross,” the gambler told him. “You’ve met Sam Black and know he could blow your alibi for last night higher than a space ship. Let’s have some conversation.” The sunburned man considered things only a moment before stepping aside and holding the door wide open. Ross and Black walked into a large room furnished with a sofa, several easy chairs, a television set and a small portable bar. Other rooms gave off it on either side.

Ross selected an easy chair, sank into it and lit a cigarette. Black dropped his hat on an end table and seated himself in the center of the sofa. The sunburned man remained standing, his back to the door.

“Is your real name Eaton or Horton?” Ross asked.

“Horton. What do you want?”

“Just some conversation. You walked out of my club just before my bookkeeper was gunned down last night. You either did it yourself or saw it done. I dropped by to find out which.”

Horton gazed at the gambler expressionlessly for a long time before saying, “You guys didn’t say anything to the cops about my being at the club, did you?”

“What makes you sure of that?”

“The boss checked up. On you, I mean, not with the cops. You wouldn’t spill to the cops because you like to wash your own laundry.”

Ross gave him a bright smile. “Since you know how I operate, we can save a lot of explanation. I imagine you deny gunning Stoneman yourself.”

The sunburned man’s lips formed a cynical grin. “You imagine right, mister. Isn’t that a sort of dumb question?”

“Because you d give the same answer even if you had killed him? I don’t think so. As I said before, either you killed him or saw it done. You walked out too closely ahead of the shooting to be more than yards from the entrance when it happened. Since you claim you didn’t kill the man, you must have seen who did. All you have to do to convince me you’re innocent is give me a description of the real killer.”

The bodyguard snorted. “I don’t know a thing, mister. I was gone before the shooting started.”

Ross shook his head. “I don’t think you understand,” he said patiently. “You had to see the shooting if you didn’t do it yourself. If you can’t describe the killer, I’ll have to assume you’re it. I don’t think you’d like that.”

Horton’s face abruptly lost all expression. “Is that a threat?”

“Of course,” Ross said easily. “Were you people under the impression you could walk into town and start bumping off my employees without risking a hearse ride back to Chicago?”

After staring at Ross in astonishment, the bodyguard emitted a deliberately humorless laugh. “Who you think you’re talking to, buster? We know all about you. You’re an independent. You’ve got no backing from Bix Lawson, and Bix wouldn’t lift a hand to help you out of a jam. Matter of fact, I think he’d be pleased to see you go down. You better scram out of here before I get mad. And don’t come back.”

He started to pull the door open as Ross punched out his cigarette and came to his feet. With a resigned expression on his face, Sam Black folded hands in his lap and leaned back comfortably.

Walking over to the door, Ross pushed it shut again with one hand and casually gave Horton a backhand slap with the other.

With a grunt of anger the bodyguard lashed out with a left hook. Easily the gambler deflected it with his right palm, whooshed the air from the man by sinking his left into his stomach, then grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head downward at the same time he brought up a knee. When the gambler flung him back to smash against the wall, blood spurted from both Horton’s nostrils.

Without giving the man time to recover, Ross grabbed his necktie with one hand, put the other behind his head and hurled him halfway across the room to crash headfirst into an easy chair. When Horton fumbled at his armpit and groggily tried to scramble back to his feet, Ross’s open palm caught him full across the mouth, knocking him back to a seated position. The man made no further attempt to reach for a gun.

Fastidiously the gambler wiped his bloodied palm on the bodyguard’s shoulder. “Now how about that description?”

Horton glared up at him with hate, his jaws clenched. Unemotionally the gambler slapped him twice more, full swings which jolted the sunburned man’s head first one way and then the other, spattering droplets of blood in either direction.

Ross waited inquiringly for a moment, when the man still showed no inclination to speak, cocked his right fist and reached for a handhold in his hair.

“Hold it,” the bodyguard said thickly. “It was a woman.”

Ross let his hands drop to his sides. “Know her?”

Horton shook his head, his expression enraged but wary. Ross waited while he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and sopped up some of the blood flowing from his nose.

“It was dark out and I only glanced at her once,” Horton mumbled through the handkerchief. “I don’t even remember if she was a blonde or brunette. She was maybe in her late twenties, not bad looking, but I couldn’t give any more description than that if you beat me all night. She was double-parked in a blue sedan. A Ford, I think, though maybe not. All these new cars look alike to me. My car was at the curb right behind her. I got in, waited for her to move so I could drive out, and then this guy came out of the club. She leaned over to the right-hand window, let him have it and drove away. I scrammed after her.”

“Catch the license?”

The man shook his head. “I didn’t want any part of it.”

“Now,” Ross said, “we come to the jackpot question. What were you doing at the club last night?”

“Just looking for a good time.”

Ross shook his head. “You were hunting for someone. Who?”

Horton looked up at him and Ross let his china-blue eyes grow opaque.

The bodyguard estimated his chance of getting away with sticking to the story that he had merely been out for a good time, decided he didn’t have any.

“Benny Stoneman,” he said sullenly.

“Oh? Why?”

“Don’t you read the papers? The boss is in line for an income-tax rap. Stoneman used to be his bookkeeper. Big John wanted me to talk to him to make sure he said the right things if he was ever called to testify. He didn’t want to look him up personally, because if the Feds ever got wind of a contact between him and Benny, they’d probably yammer about coercion. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t,” Ross said. “I pay my income tax. So why didn’t you just ask for Benny?”

“Because if the Feds ever checked to see it he’d been got to, it would look bad if they turned up that somebody from the organization had been inquiring around for him. Big John told me to make it look like an accidental meeting.”

After consideration Ross decided the story was logical. Though Horton hadn’t mentioned it, obviously a death threat would have accompanied the instructions to the bookkeeper to “say the right things,” and just as obviously Big John Quinnel wouldn’t want anyone other than Stoneman to know there had been a contact.

“I guess that’s all for the moment,” the gambler decided. “If I think of any more questions, I’ll be back.”

CHAPTER 6

As it was now near the dinner hour, Ross dropped Sam Black off at the club to attend to business, and made his next call alone.

Seven thirty-four East Stoyle was a neat one-story frame cottage in a middle-class residential district. A woman of about twenty-eight came to the door.

She was a brunette, dark and torrid-looking in a skin-tight black dress which no one could have guessed was supposed to signify mourning, for it outlined every curve of her finely-developed body. A rather full lower lip, an attractive but slightly flat nose and dark eyes which seemed to slant a trifle upward gave her a slight oriental flavor.

Ross was startled when he saw her, but it didn’t show in his face. Now he knew why the woman he had seen with Quinnel had looked vaguely familiar. Benny Stoneman had once showed him his wife’s picture.

“Mrs. Stoneman?” Ross asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Clancy Ross.”

“Oh,” she said. “Come in.”

She led him into a small but well-furnished front room and asked him to sit. After a standard expression of sympathy from Ross and an equally standard expression of thanks from the woman, she examined him with bright interest.

“Benny spoke of you a lot,” she said. “He had a good deal of admiration for you.”

“I liked Benny too. Which is one of the reasons I’m here.”

She looked a question and the gambler explained, “This isn’t entirely a sympathy call. I’m playing cop. Trying to run down Benny’s killer.”

“Oh? Well, I’m afraid I told the police everything I knew.”

“I know. But maybe if we kicked it around a while, you’d remember something you didn’t tell them. A clue to the identity of this mistress you think he had, for instance.”

She hushed slightly. “I see you’ve been talking to the police.”

“Some. Had dinner yet?”

She shook her head. “We… I usually eat about seven.”

“Then suppose you have it with me. We can talk while we’re eating.”

“In public?” she asked. “With my husband dead less than twenty-four hours? Oh, I couldn’t.”

The objection struck Ross as more a sop to convention than a symptom of grief. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t detect any grief in the woman.

“We’ll pick a quiet place where you won’t be known,” he said.

She considered. “You think it would be all right? Maybe your being Benny’s employer and all…”

“It will be all right,” he assured her.

He took her to Romaine’s, where the only illumination was candlelight and the clientele was small but select. He learned her first name was Helene, and before dinner was over he was calling her Helene and she was calling him Clancy.

After dinner Ross ordered drinks, and it developed that Helene Stoneman had an affinity for double bourbons and soda. As Ross drank only his usual weak scotch and water, by ten p.m., when they finally left Romaine’s, Ross was still dead sober, but Helene Stoneman was hilariously drunk.

By now she had completely forgotten her widowhood. As soon as they were seated in the Lincoln, she leaned against him, gave him a moist kiss on the cheek and then nestled her head on his shoulder.

When they reached her home, he had to help her from the car. Though he steadied her with one hand gripped to her bicep, she staggered all over the walk on the way to the front porch. Leaning her against the door, he took her purse and searched it for her key. He gripped her bicep again when he opened the door, to prevent her falling inward with it.

The gambler was a little irked with himself for letting her get so drunk. When he had discovered her liking for bourbon, he had deliberately shelved talking about her husband’s murder in the hope that he could first loosen her tongue with alcohol. But in her present state it was unlikely he could get any sense out of her at all.

Leading her into the front room, he switched on a lamp and steered her toward the sofa. But instead of sitting, she suddenly spun against him, threw her arms about his neck and dragged his mouth down to hers.

He found it wide open.

For the next few moments Ross merely hung on while the woman’s body undulated against his and her mouth greedily worked at his lips. Finally he forcibly broke the kiss and held her away by the shoulders. She fought his grip, attempting to struggle back into his arms.

“Hold it, Helene,” he said. “I’ll play with you when you’re sober, but I don’t take advantage of drunken women.”

“I am sober,” she said in a strained voice. “That sobered me like a jolt of electricity.”

Looking down at her, he realized with astonishment that she was telling the truth. Only moments before she had hardly been able to stand, but she had sobered as abruptly as she had managed to get drunk.

“Don’t just stand there looking at me!” she said. “For God’s sake, kiss me!”

And hanging his detaining grip from her shoulders with an outward movement of her hands, she was back at him like a wildcat, twining her arms about his neck and moving her body passionately against his. Ross made another halfhearted attempt to disengage himself, but her almost animal abandon was too much for him.

Giving up the fight, he grabbed her as roughly as she was grabbing at him and threw her onto the couch.

CHAPTER 7

Later, as they sat side-by-side on the sofa quietly smoking cigarettes, Helene seemed impelled to offer some explanation for her startling performance.

“I’m not a nympho, Clancy,” she said in a subdued and entirely sober tone. “But you don’t know how long I’ve been pent up. Benny and I… Well, there just wasn’t anything there any more. I knew he had another woman, so I wouldn’t…” She let it trail off. “Did you expect the evening to end like this?”

“It got a little off the track,” Ross admitted. “All I planned was a bit of discussion about Benny.”

“Do we have to talk about him?”

He looked down at the top of her head. “Don’t you want your husband’s killer caught?”

She shifted a little uncomfortably. “Well, yes, I suppose. But you must know I wasn’t in love with him.”

Ross asked casually, “What were you doing with Big John Quinnel this afternoon?”

Straightening up, she looked at him. “What?”

He repeated the question, then added, “I happened to see you together at the Park Plaza. At the time I didn’t know who you were.”

Helene frowned. “Why did you wait so long to ask me?”

Ross shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t think it was important. Is it?”

The question made her pause. “Of course not,” she said finally. “Big John was Benny’s employer in Chicago, you know, so I got to know him quite well. When he saw about Benny’s death in the paper, he phoned to offer sympathy. Then he asked me to drop by the hotel because he wanted to talk to me. I met him in the bar for one drink. All he wanted was to know if I needed help. Money help, he meant. I said no and he brought me home.”

Ross said nothing for a few moments. Then he asked, “Have you gone through Benny’s things yet? Papers and so on?”

She shook her head. “I’m supposed to tomorrow morning. With a Lieutenant Redfern. He thinks maybe he can find a clue to the identity of Benny’s mistress. Though what good that will do him, I don’t know.”

“It might solve the case,” Ross told her. “A witness who saw the shooting claims a woman did it.”

“Oh? Do the police have a description?”

“The police don’t even have the witness. I dug him up. Anyway, about the only description he could give was that she was female. Incidentally, what kind of car do you drive?”

“A blue Ford sedan. Why?”

“Nothing. Just checking.”

She frowned at him. “What kind of car did this witness see?” she demanded.

“A black coupe,” he lied in an easy voice.

Her lower lip stuck out petulantly. “I don’t think that was a very nice question to ask.”

“I’m not a very nice guy,” Ross conceded cheerfully. “Do me a favor tomorrow, will you?”

“What?”

“If you and the lieutenant turn up the name of Benny’s mistress when you go through his papers, phone it to me.”

“All right,” she said. “If you’re looking for a woman suspect, I’d just as soon you’d look away from me.”

CHAPTER 8

It was nearly midnight when Ross pulled into his reserved place in the parking lot behind Club Rotunda.

The lot was on the opposite side of the alley from the club and in the center of the block. Club patrons had to walk approximately a hundred feet to the alley mouth, turn right and walk half the length of the building to the side entrance. Clancy Ross, having a key to the alley door leading from the club kitchen, had to walk only half that distance.

Even before he caught the glint of light on metal, Ross sensed a shadowy figure crouched in the alley. Instantly he dropped flat, his right hand darting beneath his left arm as he fell. A streak of fire probed out above his prone body, the sharp crack of the pistol echoing from the building walls a micro-second later.

So close behind the first shot that it seemed a continuation of the sound, his own .38 automatic roared. With a pained grunt the figure in the areaway slammed backward, careened from one of the brick walls and tumbled to the ground.

The gambler was up as instantly as he had dropped, his gun pointed at the downed man and ready to fire again at the slightest movement. The man lay on his back, but the areaway was too dark to make out his face. The gleam of metal on the ground several feet away told Ross he had dropped his gun.

The downed man emitted a single low moan, then began to make a bubbling noise which brought a grimace to the gambler’s face. Stepping back from the areaway, Ross glanced both ways along the alley.

At that time of night the two office buildings were deserted, and no one on the streets seemed to have noticed the shots. After listening for a moment Ross returned to the area-way. The man hadn’t moved his position and the bubbling noise had stopped.

Sheathing his gun, Ross flicked on his lighter and held it to the dead face. It was the thin pale bodyguard he had seen with Big John Quinnel, the man registered at the hotel as Earl Windt, but more familiarly known as Bugsy.

Leaving him there, Ross crossed to the club’s rear door and let himself into the kitchen. He found Sam Black in the downstairs club.

“Got a job for you,” he told the assistant manager. “Quinnel’s boy, Bugsy, just took a shot at me as I walked up the alley.”

Black frowned. “I told you so, Clancy. What’d you expect, pushing around an employee of a guy like Quinnel. He missed this time, but…” He paused to give Ross closer examination. “He did miss, didn’t he?”

“He missed. He’s lying in the area-way between the two office buildings out back.”

“Dead?”

Ross nodded.

“Self-defense,” Black said. “Want me to phone the cops?”

“No. I want you to go over to the warehouse, get a panel truck, some kind of big bucket or tub and some cement. Plant his feet in the cement, drive down to the old quarry pool at the south edge of town and dump him in a hundred feet of water.”

Black looked at him in astonishment. “We’re playing like 1920 gangsters now? What the hell for? You wouldn’t have any trouble making self-defense stick if he shot at you first.”

“I want to give Quinnel something to worry about.” Ross said.

Black thought this over, started to frown and grinned instead. “I guess it might disturb Big John’s sleep a little,” he said.

He started off in the direction of the alley door. Ross went up to his apartment, changed into a dinner jacket and went down to the casino to take over his role of host.

At one a.m. the gambler was called away from a poker game to answer the phone. It was Helene Stoneman calling.

“I decided to look through some of Benny’s papers tonight after you left,” she said. “I think I found it.”

“His mistress’s name?”

“Well, her address. It’s a letter from a woman, addressed to him at the club. The letter’s only signed ‘M’ but there’s a return address on the envelope. Nineteen twenty-two Park. The postmark is two weeks old.”

“What’s it say?”

“It’s kind of funny. It’s sort of…well, affectionate, but it doesn’t sound much like a love letter. It mentions enjoying some evening they had together and asks if he could come to dinner the following Tuesday. That’s about all. It’s signed, ‘Affectionately, M.’”

“I see. There’s only one letter?”

“All I found. Want me to show it to Lieutenant Redfern?”

“Let him find it himself about noon.” Ross said. “That will give me a chance to get in my pitch first. Thanks for calling.”

“Don’t mention it. Miss me?”

“Already? We haven’t been parted two hours.”

“You could still miss me a little,” she pouted.

“All right,” he said. “I miss you a little. Good-night, Helene.”

“Wait a minute, Clancy. When am I going to see you again?”

“I’ll call you. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” she said reluctantly.

Though the downstairs club closed at one thirty in conformance with local liquor laws, the gambling rooms stayed open until four. At three a.m. Ross was called to the phone again.

“Hello,” Helene’s voice said. “I’m still not asleep.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just can’t seem to sleep. I keep thinking about tonight.”

“Take a pill,” Ross suggested.

“You’re not very romantic,” she complained. “I knew you’d still be up, because Benny told me the upstairs stays open till four. What are you doing?”

“Playing poker.”

“You winning?”

Ross fingered the scar on his cheek a trifle irritably. “It’s a seesaw game. Is that all you wanted; to know if I’m winning?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice. Will I see you any more before the funeral? That’s day after tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll call you. Good-night.”

After he hung up, he stood staring at the phone puzzled a few moments before returning to the game.

He got one more call before the club closed for the night. Sam Black phoned to report that his mission was accomplished.

CHAPTER 9

The phone next to his bed awakened Ross at eight a.m., and when he answered it a female voice he didn’t recognize asked, “Mr. Ross there?”

“Speaking,” the gambler said.

“Mr. Clancy Ross?”

“Right.”

The woman hung up.

At first the incident puzzled him, but then light dawned. Big John Quinnel, having heard nothing from his gunman Bugsy, had taken this method to learn if Ross were still among the living.

Ross grinned to himself.

At nine, just as he was getting ready to leave the apartment, the phone rang again. This time it was Helene Stoneman.

“Did I get you up?” she asked.

“No. I’ve been up an hour.”

“Would you like to come over here for a home-cooked dinner?”

“Tonight?” Ross said. “I really ought to stay at the club, Helene. I missed most of last night, and this place doesn’t exactly run itself.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a few moments. “You mean you won’t be able to get away any evenings any more?”

“I take nights off,” Ross said patiently. “Just not two in a row.”

She said, “Oh,” again, then, “The funeral’s tomorrow, you know. Logan’s Funeral Home. Are you going?”

“I planned to. What time?”

“Two p.m. There won’t be any relatives, so you can sit with me. You being Benny’s employer, it will be quite proper, won’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” she said in a soft voice.

She made it sound like a rendezvous. Ross thought as he hung up, torn between irritation and amusement at the idea of a lovers’ tryst taking place at the funeral of the husband of one of the lovers—

* * *

Nineteen twenty-two Park Street was the right half of a two-story duplex house in a neighborhood of about the same economic level as Helene Stoneman’s, but much older. There was no name plate on the letterbox.

A plump, plain-faced woman of about thirty answered Ross’s ring. She was an ash blonde with a round Dutch-girl face which looked as though it would normally be cheerful. At the moment it was woebegone and the eyes were reddened from weeping.

Ross said, “Hi. I don’t know your name, but does your initial happen to be ‘M’?”

The woman looked at him blankly. “I don’t think I understand.”

“I’m Clancy Ross. Benny Stoneman worked for me. That mean anything to you?”

Now the woman looked startled. She examined the slim gambler from his prematurely gray hair to his brightly polished shoes.

Finally she asked, “How’d you find out about me?”

“A letter Benny left lying around. You are M, aren’t you?”

She shrugged hopelessly. “Come in, Mr. Ross.”

He followed her into a large living room comfortably but old-fashionedly furnished with mohair furniture, marble-topped end tables and beaded lamps of the same vintage as the house. Ross chose an over-stuffed chair and the woman wearily seated herself in the center of a huge sofa, her hands folded in her lap.

“Mind telling me your name?” Ross asked.

“Marion Vandeveldt,” she said. “It’s Dutch. What is it you want with me, Mr. Ross?”

“I’m trying to find out why Benny was killed. I’m working on my own, not with the police. You don’t have to talk with me.”

She reflected. “I don’t mind talking to you. I suppose the police know about Benny and me anyway, since you do.”

“Not yet,” Ross said. “But they will in a couple of hours. You’ll probably get a visit from a Lieutenant Redfern this afternoon.”

He studied the woman, wondering why a man with a wife as attractive as Helene Stoneman would pick such a plain mistress. While Marion Vandeveldt was pleasant-looking enough in a well-scrubbed spinstery sort of way, Ross could hardly visualize her making a man’s blood hammer in his veins.

He asked, “You live here alone, Miss Vandeveldt?”

“Yes. My folks have been dead for some years. It’s just as well. If they were still alive, this scandal would kill them.”

“Not necessarily,” Ross said. “How long have you known Benny?”

“About six weeks. He moved here from Chicago a full month before he went to work for you, you know. We met at an open-air concert at Fallon Park. Benny loved music as much as I do, but his wife wouldn’t go to concerts with him.”

Mutual interest in music, Ross thought, mentally recording one clue at least to the mystery of the bookkeeper straying.

He said, “Excuse me if this sounds unnecessarily personal, but Benny didn’t strike me as a Lothario. Yet he had a beautiful wife and an attractive mistress, both at least fifteen years younger than he. Just what was his attraction?”

Her expression became one of inward contemplation, as though searching for an answer herself. Presently she said, “Ever see him smile?”

Ross reflected. “I suppose. I don’t really recall.”

“He didn’t often,” the woman said. “There wasn’t much in his life to smile about. But when he did, he was a different person. His face grew young and sort of wistful, like a small boy looking at a red bicycle in a store window. It turned your heart over when he smiled. I doubt that any woman could have resisted Benny’s smile. Except his wife.”

“He wasn’t happy with her?”

“Would he have turned to a mistress if he had been?” she asked. “I’m no competition physically to a woman as beautiful as Helene Stoneman. I’ve seen her picture and I look in mirrors. He came to me for the things he couldn’t get at home. Companionship, and interest in the things he was interested in. Benny would never have looked at me if he’d had anything at home. Or even with nothing at home if his wife had at least been true physically. He felt justified in taking a mistress on the basis of what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

“His wife had a lover too?”

The woman gave a brittle laugh. “She chases everything in pants. Benny moved here from Chicago to break up the affair between Helene and his former boss.”

“Big John Quinnel?” Ross asked in surprise.

“I don’t know the Chicago employer’s name. But Benny said he thought the man was relieved when Benny decided to quit his job and move here. According to Benny, Helene always throws herself so hard at the men she picks, once the novelty wears off, she becomes a nuisance. She tries to envelope her lovers, wanting to monopolize their full attention twenty-four hours a clay, seven days a week. Benny said the affairs never last long, because the men begin to struggle away as soon as they learn what they’ve gotten into.”

“Why the devil did Benny put up with her?” Ross asked.

“He defended her by saying she was sick,” the woman said wearily. “He’d had her to a couple of psychiatrists who gave him a lot of high-sounding words about her man chasing being a compulsion she couldn’t resist, stemming from too early physical development and too much popularity with boys when she was very young. The psychiatrists’ explanation was that she was frantically grasping for a return of her teen-age popularity, so when men stopped chasing her after she married, she had to chase them.”

Ross said dubiously, “I still don’t understand why he put up with it.”

“Well, their entire married life wasn’t as bad as I’ve painted it. Benny told me that under psychiatric treatment she’d get better for a while and start acting like a normal wife. Then along would come a new man and the merry-go-round would start all over again. I’m surprised you escaped her. Mr. Ross, being Benny’s employer.”

“I never met her until yesterday,” Ross said.

A little ruefully he considered Helene’s three phone calls since they had met in the light of what he had just learned, and he looked into the future without much enthusiasm.

Ross had very little additional conversation with the woman, but he did manage to learn that she also owned a blue sedan, in this case a Chevrolet. As he drove back to the club, he wondered if it had even occurred to Marion Vandeveldt that she was a suspect in the case.

CHAPTER 10

At a quarter of four that afternoon Ross was just taking Sam Black’s report that the downstairs club was all set for business when the first customer arrived. It was Helene Stoneman.

Going directly to Ross, who stood talking to Sam Black near the bar, she gave him an expectant smile and asked. “Surprised to see me?”

In view of his talk with Marion Vandeveldt, Ross wasn’t.

Unsmilingly he said, “Hello, Helene. What do you want?”

“I knew you wouldn’t be busy so early. I thought you might buy me a drink.”

She looked at Sam Black, awaiting introduction. Deliberately Ross ignored the hint. Taking her by the arm, he led her toward the front door.

“I don’t mix business with pleasure, Helene,” he said. “And right now I’m working. I also don’t like to be chased. Go home and wait till I call you.”

He half expected her to leave without even replying, but instead she said in a small voice, “Didn’t last night mean anything to you?” Studying her, Ross decided without emotion to test just how hard she was to discourage.

“No more than a hundred other nights with a hundred other women,” he said with deliberate cruelty. “I’ll call you if I decide I want to see you again.”

And turning, he stalked toward the elevator.

A half hour later he was called to the phone.

“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry I upset you by coming to the club,” Helene’s voice said. “Are you still mad?”

Despite what Marion Vandeveldt had told him, Ross was astonished. “Are you apologizing because I was rude?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

“Then don’t call me any more. If I want to see you, I’ll call you.”

“All right,” she said in a penitent voice. Then after a pause, “Would you like me to stop up to your apartment after the club closes to-night?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Ross said disagreeably, and hung up.

At seven, while Ross was having dinner downstairs, he was called to the phone again. It wasn’t Helene this time, however. It was Lieutenant Niles Redfern.

“Got somebody here who wants to talk to you,” the lieutenant said. “Mrs. Stoneman.”

Incredulously Ross wondered if the woman had resorted to police influence to get to him. “What the hell for?” he asked.

“She’s allowed one five-minute call,” Redfern said. “Instead of a lawyer, she wants you. Ballistics tagged a gun I found at her house as the murder weapon, and we have a witness who saw her shoot her husband. Want to talk to her?”

“Never mind,” Ross said. “I’ll be down and talk to you both.”

At headquarters Ross found Lieutenant Redfern in his office with a young redheaded woman the lieutenant introduced as Renee Desiree. This was obviously a stage name, and after glancing at the woman’s figure, Ross guessed that her field was burlesque. She was tall, probably five-ten, with long, full-calved legs, a flat stomach, well-padded hips and an enormous torso. She wore a green knit dress under which there seemed to be nothing but skin, at least no brassiere, for her fine, upstanding breasts jiggled like molded Jell-O with every movement.

She must have been proud of both their size and their ability to hold themselves up without artificial support, for even seated she held herself in an erect, shoulders-back posture which thrust them out in front of her like twin battering rams.

“Miss Desiree’s the witness I mentioned over the phone,” Redfern explained. “She was coming from the Tailspin Cocktail Lounge right across the street from your place when Stoneman got it.”

Ross looked at the woman and she gave him a brilliant, white toothed smile.

“Why’d you wait so long to report what you’d seen?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to be involved in it if I didn’t have to,” she said glibly. “The notoriety, you know. I’m an actress, you see, and…” She let it drift off into a charming shrug which made Lieutenant Redfern’s eyes jump to her jiggling torso.

“Then why’d you report it at all?” Ross inquired.

She gave him another brilliant smile. “I hoped the police would catch the woman without my help. I gave them forty-eight hours, then decided I had to tell my story.”

Turning to the Lieutenant, Ross said, “Sam Black was outside seconds after the shots. He didn’t see anybody across the street.”

“I ducked back into the Tailspin,” Renee Desiree said quickly. “I didn’t want anybody to see me.”

Ross glanced at her, then back at the lieutenant. “You said something over the phone about a gun.” Reaching into a drawer, Redfern brought out a .38 revolver and laid it on the desk.

“Ran across it in one of Benny Stoneman’s dresser drawers while Mrs. Stoneman and I were going through his things,” he said. “Ballistics tagged it as the murder weapon.”

“What did Mrs. Stoneman have to say about it?”

“The gun, you mean?” Redfern shrugged. “Denied ever seeing it before. Says she’s certain her husband never owned a gun. But I wired Chicago at noon, and the gun’s registered up there in Benny Stoneman’s name.”

Ross reflected for a moment, then asked, “Doesn’t it strike you as silly for her to insist it isn’t Benny’s gun if she really thought it was? What would it get her?”

“Nothing. She’s just being contrary. Records don’t lie.”

“I’ll bet they did this time,” the gambler said. “Just as your witness here is lying.”

The woman’s gaze jerked at him angrily. Ross smiled at her. No one said anything for a few moments, Finally the lieutenant, in an obvious attempt to get Ross alone in order to have him explain his last remark, said, “You want to go back to the women’s section and talk to Mrs. Stoneman?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Ross said. “I already know everything I have to. This is a frame, Lieutenant. If you’d like to take a little ride, I’ll introduce you to the framer. If my hunch is right, you’ll have your killer in an hour. If it’s wrong, I’m not sticking my neck out for defamation of character. Take it or leave it.”

Because he couldn’t do anything else, the lieutenant decided to take it.

CHAPTER 11

Before the three of them left headquarters, Ross phoned Marion Vandeveldt using the public booth in the lobby because he didn’t want Redfern to hear the conversation.

When the woman answered the phone and the gambler had identified himself, he asked, “Were you in love with Benny, Miss Vandeveldt?”

“Of course,” she said. “Would I have been his mistress otherwise?”

“Willing to help trap his killer?”

“Certainly,” she said without hesitation. “I’ll do anything I can.”

For five minutes Ross explained what he wanted her to do, and why.

At the end of that time she said in a steady voice, “All right, Mr. Ross, if you think that’s the only way they can be brought to justice. I’m willing to tell the lie.”

“Turnabout’s fair play,” Ross said. “They told some pretty whopping lies in trying to frame Helene Stoneman. Got the suite number okay?”

“Seven-o-seven. And I’m to wait in the hall until you come out to get me.”

“You’ve got it right,” he said, and hung up.

They took Ross’s Lincoln instead of a police car, Ross, the lieutenant and Renee Desiree all three riding in front. Ross drove straight to the Park Plaza.

There was no conversation as they crossed the lobby to the bell captain’s desk, Ross leading the way and the lieutenant following with the red-haired woman.

The bell captain, a trim, middle-aged man with an alert expression, said, “Evening, Mr. Ross. Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Take a look at this woman,” Ross said without preliminaries. “Ever see her before?”

The bell captain had already looked her over thoroughly as she approached. He nodded without hesitation.

“She’s been in and out of seven-o-seven all week,” he said. “So have a million other women, but I couldn’t forget this one. Not with those…uh…she’s an exceptionally good-looking girl, and I couldn’t help noticing her.”

The redhead said icily, “What’s this supposed to prove? Any law against ladies attending parties in this hotel?”

Ross grinned at her. “It proves this. You’re one of Big John Quinnel’s girl friends. One among dozens. Now let’s go upstairs and see Big John.”

CHAPTER 12

The door to suite seven-o-seven was cautiously opened by the sunburned man with the missing earlobe. When he saw Clancy Ross his face turned startled and his right hand darted toward his armpit. Then he saw Lieutenant Redfern behind Ross, and froze in that position, his hand halfway out of sight.

“Little jumpy, aren’t you, Horton?” the gambler asked dryly.

Redfern pushed forward then, shoving the door wide open so that the bodyguard had to step back to avoid getting it in the face. As the lieutenant strode inside, Horton looked sullenly from him to Ross, then spotted Renee Desiree still standing in the hall, and his expression turned wary.

Ross motioned the girl in, pushed the door shut and pointed after the lieutenant, who had stopped in the center of the room and was looking inquiringly at the closed doors on either side.

“Where’s Quinnel?” he asked the bodyguard.

Horton crossed to the door on the left and discreetly knocked on the panel. Renee Desiree seated herself in an easy chair. Ross and the lieutenant remained standing.

A heavy voice from within the other room called, “What the hell you want?”

“Lieutenant Redfern’s here,” Horton called back. “With Clancy Ross and some dame.”

There was the sound of creaking bedsprings, a lengthy silence, then the door opened. Big John Quinnel came out buttoning his coat. Under it he hadn’t bothered to button his shirt and he wore no tie. His oily hair was mussed and there was a streak of lipstick on one check.

After surveying the trio of visitors silently, he turned and growled back into the bedroom, “Hurry it up and scram. Looks like I got business.” Another few moments passed before a vivid blonde with a body nearly as interesting as Renee Desiree’s came from the bedroom. Her hair was a little mussed too, but apparently she had taken time to put her makeup in order. As she came into the room she was pulling a fur coat on over a flaming red evening gown.

With an embarrassed glance around, the blonde went straight to the door, pulled it open and then looked back at Quinnel.

“Call you tomorrow,” the big man said heavily.

As the door closed behind the blonde, Quinnel said to Larry Horton, “Get the other one out too.” The bodyguard crossed to the second door, opened it, looked in and crooked his finger. A lissome brunette, fully dressed including a fur coat, came out.

“Party’s over,” Horton said. The brunette didn’t look around embarrassedly as the blonde had. She walked out without a glance at anyone.

When the door had closed behind the second woman, Quinnel nodded to the lieutenant, barely flicked his eyes over Clancy Ross, then looked at the redhead without a sign of recognition.

“Pretty good act,” Ross commented. “But we already established downstairs that she’s been popping in and out of this place like a jack-in-the-box all week.”

The big man looked at the redhead again. “Has she?” he asked without interest. “So damn many dolls been in and out of here the past week, I wouldn’t recognize half of them.”

“You recognize this one,” Ross assured him. “She’s the one you paid to claim she saw Helene Stoneman shoot her husband.”

CHAPTER 13

Quinnel looked at the woman steadily and she said in an urgent voice, “He’s shooting at the moon, John. I didn’t even tell him I knew you. He got that from the bell captain.”

Without heat Quinnel said, “Clam up and stay that way.” Then he looked at Redfern. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant? I don’t have to answer any questions by this tinhorn, but you got anything to ask, go ahead.”

Ross said, “I wasn’t planning on asking questions. Quinnel. I’m going to do all the talking.” He turned to the lieutenant. “Remember how Quinnel, his two bodyguards and three women all swore alibis for each other for the time of the shooting?”

Redfern nodded.

“This guy,” Ross said, pointing at Larry Morton, “walked out of the Rotunda not fifteen seconds ahead of Benny Stoneman. Sam Black can testify to that in court.”

Lieutenant Redfern scowled first at the sunburned man, then at Ross. “You waited a nice long time before dropping this bit of news.”

Big John Quinnel said suavely, “I guess we shouldn’t have held out on you, Lieutenant. It’s true Larry saw the shooting. But he couldn’t give any description of the killer except that she was a woman. He wouldn’t of been much help to you, and getting himself tied up as a murder witness would of loused up our whole vacation. I’ll admit we was wrong in rigging him an alibi, but it wasn’t because he had anything to do with the shooting. I just wanted him to keep his nose clean.”

Lieutenant Redfern’s face was like a thundercloud, but Ross held off the storm with an upraised palm. “You didn’t coach Horton well enough, Quinnel. He should never have admitted to me that he saw the woman.”

When the big man merely looked at him without expression, Ross said to the lieutenant, “Horton here is one of Quinnel’s personal bodyguards. If the woman he claims he saw kill Benny Stoneman was Helene Stoneman, he couldn’t have helped recognizing her the minute he saw her. She used to be his boss’s mistress. That’s why Stoneman moved here from Chicago. To break up the affair. Horton must have seen her dozens of times.”

Horton said uncertainly, “It was dark that night…” then clamped his jaw shut at a look from his employer.

“The motive for the killing was the one I first suggested to you, Lieutenant,” Ross went on cheerfully. “But Quinnel wanted a patsy to take the rap, because if the killing went unsolved, suspicion would point straight at him. He probably picked Helene Stoneman because he wanted to get her out of his hair anyway. Helene is the kind of gal who hangs on to a man long after he wants to shake her. Matter of fact she’s so persistent, she’s been to psychiatrists in an attempt to get herself cured of running after her lovers so hard. She was still chasing Quinnel the day after her husband died. I saw them come out of the bar downstairs together. Probably that’s when he planted the gun. He took her home that day, and it would have been simple to slip into the bedroom and plant it while Helene was in the kitchen mixing drinks, or repairing makeup in the bathroom.”

Quinnel snorted, “You’re talking through your hat,” and Redfern said dubiously, “The gun was registered to Stoneman.”

“With this guy’s influence in Chicago, he could get any record fixed,” Ross said. “All he had to do was pick up a phone. He practically runs the political machine up there.” While the lieutenant thought this over, Ross went on, “Every bit of evidence points to Quinnel ordering the killing and Horton pulling it. Five shots placed in a circle you could cover with your hand. No one but a professional gunnie is that good. Point two: Quinnel tried to have me bumped after I pounded an admission out of Horton that he’d seen a woman kill Benny. He wouldn’t bother to finger me just in revenge for bouncing around his bodyguard. He wanted me cut down because he’s smarter than Horton, and he knew the minute the story of Helene’s arrest came out, I’d recognize it as a frame because Horton should have been able to recognize her if she’d actually been the killer. Point three: Quinnel had a strong motive both for the kill and the frame-up. Point four: his gunnie was right on the scene and later rigged an alibi.”

When the gambler stopped, there was a long period of silence.

Then Quinnel said heavily, “Prove it, tinhorn. I gather from what you’ve been spouting that this woman here positively identified Helene Stoneman as the killer and that the gun’s registered in her dead husband’s name. So prove different.”

“Oh, I have proof,” Ross said in an offhand manner. “Hold things for a minute.”

Going to the door, he disappeared into the hallway and returned with Marion Vandeveldt.

“Meet Miss Marion Vandeveldt,” he announced generally. “A regular patron of Club Rotunda.” He designated Lieutenant Redfern. “Miss Vandeveldt, this man is a police officer. Tell him about the night before last.”

The woman said, “I was on the club’s second floor, and I went over to the front windows for a breath of air. I looked down at the street just as a man coming from the front door of the club was shot. I saw everything quite clearly, including the face of the person who did the shooting.”

“Who was it?” Redfern asked. Slowly she looked around the room, her gaze merely flicking over Renee Desiree, lingering only briefly on Big John Quinnel, and finally settling on Larry Horton.

She made sure of the sunburned complexion and the missing earlobe Ross had described over the phone before saying in a tone of certainty, “That’s the gunman right there.” The instant she spoke Larry Horton’s hand dived for his armpit. Lieutenant Redfern’s motion was just as fast, but he started later. Clancy Ross started later too, and his movement didn’t seem nearly as hurried as those of the other two men.

Its easy flow was deceptive, however. The lieutenant was just beginning to draw his gun, and Horton’s was just centering on Ross’s chest, when the gambler’s .38 automatic spoke.

Horton slammed backward, stumbling over an easy chair and smashing to the floor on his back with his legs up in the air. Ross’s gun arched sidewise just as Big John Quinnel’s cleared its holster. The gambler waited until the muzzle of Quinnel’s gun had nearly steadied on him, then very deliberately placed a shot precisely between the big man’s eyes.

Lieutenant Redfern stood with his pistol muzzle drooping downward, staring from one dead man to the other and back again. After moving his head back and forth several times, he glared at Clancy Ross.

“You could have put one through Quinnel’s shoulder,” he accused. “You had plenty of time.”

“I guess I got rattled,” Ross said. “It scares me to have people point guns at me.”

The lieutenant, belatedly realizing that the gambler had deliberately created a situation which would end in gunplay, when he could just as easily have turned over the information he had to Redfern and have let an orderly arrest be made, also realized that there wasn’t much he could do about it aside from swearing a little.

He decided to do that.

A LITTLE SORORICIDE

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1957.

Samantha Withers wasn’t reticent about showing her feelings. “Can’t you remember anything, you idiot?”

Homer Withers was a small, round, mild-appearing man, and he seemed to shrink even smaller under the blast from his spinster sister. Though she routinely treated him as though he were a mental incompetent, it never occurred to him to fight back. For too many years he’d been conditioned to her domineering manner.

Samantha Withers was a head taller than Homer, thirty pounds heavier, and as muscular as a man. Though she’d never actually offered him physical violence, she often seemed on the verge of striking him, and the thought made Homer cringe. He was quite certain he’d be defenseless against her in a physical battle.

“The policy won’t lapse,” he said in a placating tone. “The agent sends in the premium money when it’s due, you see, and I simply repay him. I’ll mail the check right after dinner.”

“You’ll mail it right now, if you expect any dinner,” Samantha snapped. “And don’t forget it’s the mailbox you’re heading for.”

“I’m entirely capable of mailing a letter without detailed instructions,” Homer said with unaccustomed asperity. Then he wilted under the glitter of his older sister’s eyes.

He rarely rebelled enough to give her a tart reply, and invariably wished he hadn’t on the infrequent occasions he drummed up enough courage to do it. For usually she made his life miserable for days afterward.

He scooted out before she could open up her heavy artillery, but she managed to get in a parting shot. As he went down the porch steps, she shouted through the screen door, “Look both ways when you cross the street, stupid. Coming back I don’t care. Once the premium’s mailed, you can…”

Homer had heard it before—you can drop dead, for all I care. Those were the words, he knew, which he didn’t wait to hear.

Homer sighed. She probably would be glad if he were dead. Why did he put up with her constant carping? Discouragedly he answered the mental question as soon as he asked it. He put up with it because of unbreakable habit.

As long as he could remember his sister had dominated him, even while their parents still lived. Since their death fifteen years earlier, the domination had gradually increased until at middle age her grip on his whole life was an enveloping, suffocating thing which had squeezed from him the last ounce of resistance and the last drops of individuality.

“It’s not right for a person who’s so carefully avoided marriage to be the most henpecked man in town,” he thought, automatically following Samantha’s instructions to look both ways before crossing the street.

He reached the other side and walked vaguely past the mailbox in the direction of the drug store; he wondered what it would be like to die and be free of Samantha. He almost hoped that her repeated suggestion would come true when suddenly a new thought occurred to him. Wouldn’t it be nice if Samantha died?

This thought was so pleasant, he lost himself in it and nearly passed the drug store. He halted to consider what Samantha had sent him for, found his mind a blank and finally grew conscious of the envelope in his hand. Shamefacedly he retraced his way to the mailbox, dropped the letter and re-crossed the street. The dream persisted, however. As he strolled back up the street, he envisioned how pleasant it would be to return from work each evening to an empty and silent house, one where he could smoke in the front room, sit around without a necktie, or even in his undershirt if he chose. He could even have beer in the refrigerator.

He completely lost himself in the reverie. He had mentally gone through the ordeal of Samantha’s funeral, had completed the necessary period of mourning, and was busily converting her bedroom into a masculine den when he opened the front door. The daydream was so real, he let out a gasp when he saw Samantha standing there.

Samantha snapped at him, “What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re going to throw up.”

“I…I don’t feel too well,” he said.

He went upstairs to wash, jolted from his dream world into full awareness of reality. As he examined his pale face in the bathroom mirror, he realized how intolerable that reality was as long as Samantha was alive.

The idea of killing his sister came to him effortlessly and with no sense of shock. His sole emotional reaction was surprise that he’d never thought of it before.

* * *

Unfortunately Homer Withers discovered there was a vast gap between reaching a decision to kill and carrying out the decision. He didn’t discover this at once, however. That evening, as he prepared the hot chocolate he made for his sister each night, his plans took shape with remarkable ease.

Any plan as violent as strangulation was out of the question for the simple reason that Samantha was larger and stronger than he. Shooting or stabbing were ruled out because he had no desire to hang for Samantha’s murder. He toyed with the idea of staging a fatal accident but discarded it for the same reason he had discarded strangulation. He wasn’t at all sure that if he attempted to push Samantha out of a window or down a flight of stairs, he wouldn’t end up being the victim.

By the process of elimination he arrived at poison as the most practical means. A few minutes after he had carried Samantha’s hot chocolate into the front room, he knew how to administer the poison. He watched as she took a sip to test the temperature, then set the saucer on the floor and poured some of the chocolate into it from the cup.

Roger, Samantha’s cat, dropped from the window ledge, stalked majestically over to the saucer and sniffed at it. Roger licked tentatively, then sat down to wait for it to cool.

Homer decided that his sister took her chocolate so heavily sweetened it ought to disguise the taste of nearly any poison. It also occurred to him that her habit of sharing it with the cat presented a complication, but not a serious complication. Samantha liked her chocolate hot, while Roger preferred his cool; her cup always was empty before the cat lapped from the saucer.

He could simply wait until his sister had drunk the poison and died, then take the saucer away from Roger.

The next day Homer used his lunch hour for a visit to the public library, where he did some research on poisons. He decided on potassium cyanide for two reasons: it was quick and sure, and the death symptoms resembled those of a heart attack.

Up to this point his planning had proceeded without a hitch. He didn’t run into a snag until he attempted to obtain the poison.

In a vague way Homer supposed that the law established certain restrictions against the indiscriminate sale of poisons. He was quite prepared to be questioned about its intended use when he bought his cyanide, and he expected to be asked to sign a poison register of some kind. For this reason he went to a downtown drug store where he was unknown, intending to give a fictitious name.

However, he wasn’t prepared to encounter a blank wall.

The druggist, an affable middle-aged man, chuckled indulgently when Homer told him in a diffident voice that he would like some potassium cyanide to use as a rat poison.

“You can’t buy cyanide without a doctor’s prescription, mister,” he said. “You can’t buy any poison without a prescription. It’s a federal law. Here’s what you want for rats.”

He produced a small, round tin labeled: Rat Poison. Homer looked at it doubtfully. “Do I need a prescription for this too?”

The druggist shook his head with a smile. “You only need a prescription for poisonous drugs which might be taken internally by a human.”

“Mightn’t this be taken by a human?”

The druggist shrugged. “Sure. Might even kill him. But chances are he’d throw it up. Rat poison contains white phosphorus, which is a deadly poison, but difficult to keep down. It works on rats because they don’t know how to vomit. Anyway, the main reason for the federal law is to prevent murders. I guess they figure a suicide would find some way to kill himself even if he couldn’t get poison. You might commit suicide with this, if you managed to keep it down, but you’d have a hard time poisoning anybody on the sly. The first sip would burn so bad, they’d spit it out without swallowing.”

“I see,” Homer said. “How much?”

As he left the store with the small tin in his pocket, he felt thankful that the druggist had been so informative. The thought of Samantha tasting her hot chocolate, spitting it out and realizing he had meant to kill her, sent him into a cold sweat. She would be quite capable of forcing him to drink it.

A block from the drug store he took the tin from his pocket, looked at it ruefully and rolled it into a sewer opening.

Not being a very resourceful person, this incident brought Homer’s murder plan to a dead stop. Aside from purchasing it in a drug store, he hadn’t the faintest idea of how to obtain poison. Murder remained in his mind, but it ceased to be an active plan. He relapsed into his dream world, and except that he had a new fantasy to entertain him, his life went on much as it had before he ever thought of murder.

For twenty-five years Homer had held the title of “chief clerk” at the law firm of Marrow and Fanner, a designation which implied more prestige than the job actually involved. He was chief clerk because he was the only clerk; his real status was that of an exalted office boy.

Five days a week he did routine office work for the law partners, each Friday faithfully brought home his pay and handed over half of it to Samantha. What was left barely covered his expenses, including carfare and personal needs and the monthly insurance premium.

On the surface this routine continued, but secretly Homer began to live an entirely different life. By a sort of schizophrenic process he succeeded in imagining, whenever he was away from home, that the murder was an accomplished fact and that he now lived in carefree isolation. Riding the streetcar to and from work, he would plan how he meant to convert Samantha’s old room into a den, would mentally frame newspaper ads for a cleaning woman to “come in” once a week, and would wrestle with the problem of what he ought to prepare for dinner that night.

However, he carefully avoided losing himself in the fantasy as completely as he had the evening Samantha’s murder first occurred to him, for he had no desire to repeat the experience of being frightened into a near faint by seeing his sister’s ghost. Each evening, just as he reached the porch steps, he automatically returned to reality in time to greet his sister without surprise. The fantasy would then take a slight twist; instead of the murder being fait accompli it would become a deed planned for the next day.

But, of course, the next day never arrived.

It was within Homer’s capacity to live in reasonable contentment with this fluctuating dream for years without taking any positive action and he probably would have if Samantha herself hadn’t unsuspectingly furnished the impetus necessary to jar him into action.

Samantha developed a cold accompanied by a hacking cough which required the services of the family doctor. By the time Samantha let him go, it was past ten p.m. The local drug store was closed when Homer arrived with the prescriptions. The other two drug stores also were closed.

Homer didn’t work on Saturday and he went out again with the prescriptions immediately after breakfast. Idly he looked them over.

The doctor had written both before tearing them from the prescription pad, then had ripped them off together so that they were still attached to each other by the glued top edge. Apparently he had flipped one sheet too many after writing the first, for there was a blank prescription sheet between them.

The top one was a prescription for some kind of nose drops. The bottom read:

Tab codeine XXX TT ½ gr.

Sig one tab. Q 3 H.

Though he was unacquainted with pharmaceutical shorthand, Homer recognized the word “codeine” from his research on poisons. He couldn’t recall whether or not it was a dangerous drug, but he did remember that it was some kind of opiate. Simultaneously it dawned on him that he had a blank prescription sheet, and with the original as a model, it would be a simple matter to forge a duplicate.

Instead of stopping at the drug store, he walked on two blocks to a branch public library, drew out a textbook of materia medica and retired with it to the reading room.

He discovered that one of the primary uses of codeine was to lessen coughing, which explained why the prescription had been written. He also learned that it was a compound of morphine and was one of the active alkaloids of opium. It was listed as a safer drug than morphine, and he searched every indexed reference to the drug without finding an indication of how much constituted a fatal dose, or even any indication that it was a dangerous poison.

However, he was certain it would be fatal in a large enough dose, for it was included under the general heading of “Brain and Spinal Cord Depressants,” along with opium, morphine and the illegal drug, heroin.

Rechecking the prescription, he deduced that the figure “XXX” probably meant thirty tablets. At a half grain each, this came to fifteen grains, certainly enough of any opiate to kill a person.

Satisfied that he had a poison which would work, he took out his fountain pen and carefully duplicated the prescription on the blank sheet. He forged a reasonable facsimile of the doctor’s signature, not taking too great pains with it because he knew it would not be subjected to the same scrutiny a bank might give a check. The office heading and the fact that the terminology was authentic were enough to make it acceptable to the average druggist.

He walked six blocks to another drug store where he was unknown to get the forged prescription filled. Then he returned to his own neighborhood drug store to have the two filled which the doctor had written.

When he finally got home, he received a sound tongue lashing from his sister for taking so long, but he accepted it stoically. For consolation he fingered the extra bottle in his pocket.

For the first time in weeks Homer didn’t retreat into his world of fantasy. For now he had the reality of definitely planned action to replace his dreams. He was in such a state of anticipation all weekend he could hardly wait to get home Monday evening.

If there had been any lingering qualms in Homer Withers’ mind about committing sororicide, they were extinguished by Samantha’s reception. Her normal unpleasantness had been aggravated by her cold until she was impossible.

She greeted him with an ominous, “I suppose you forgot to mail the insurance premium again.”

Time had on more than one occasion flitted by Homer unnoticed—it was a genuine surprise to him that a full month had passed since he had belatedly mailed the last premium.

Samantha launched into such a blistering attack on his mental shortcomings, he retreated headlong up the stairs in the middle of her tirade. His hands shook as he wrote the check. He was downstairs again and on his way to the mailbox before his sister could get her second wind.

The incident spoiled all chance of their last evening together being a pleasant one. Dinner was accompanied by a monologue by Samantha on her favorite subject: why didn’t Homer do her the favor of dropping dead? Afterward, as they sat in the front room, she froze him with a silence so forbidding, he was afraid to open his mouth.

It was a relief when she finally indicated it was near bedtime by saying, “I’ll have my chocolate now, if you think you have sense enough to put it together properly.”

Homer had the hot chocolate all made and poured into a cup before he realized his oversight. It would have been better to have crushed the thirty codeine tablets into a powder so that they would dissolve more easily. He swore mildly at his chronic forgetfulness. Pouring some of the tablets into his hand, he stared at them blankly for a moment. Then he got down an empty cup and began crushing them one at a time with a spoon.

It was a slow process; he was but two-thirds finished when Samantha’s impatient voice called from the front room, “What are you doing, dreamer? Staring off into space?”

His heart hammering in fear she would enter the kitchen, he called back, “It’s almost ready, Samantha. Just one more minute.”

As rapidly as possible he crushed the remaining tablets, scraped the powder into the chocolate and stirred it vigorously. When it was completely dissolved, he touched his tongue to the solution and was panic stricken to find it faintly bitter. He shoveled in two extra teaspoonfuls of sugar, stirred it and tasted it again. It now tasted normal.

He carried the cup and saucer out to Samantha who, after accepting it with a grunt, went through her usual ritual of pouring some into the saucer for Roger.

Immediately the cat dropped from his favorite spot on the window ledge, padded to the saucer and tentatively explored the chocolate’s temperature. Then, instead of sitting back to wait for it to cool, he lapped the dish clean.

Homer stared in horror, realizing that the time consumed in crushing the codeine tablets had allowed the chocolate to cool sufficiently to please the cat. Homer watched, fascinated, as the animal licked its whiskers, stretched and mooed itself against Samantha’s calf.

Samantha took a sip from the cup, and exploded.

“You idiot!” she screamed at Homer. “Can’t you do anything right? This chocolate is merely lukewarm!”

Homer gulped, his eyes on Roger. Roger looked up at him.

“Take it back to the kitchen.” Samantha ordered. “Heat it up. You know I want hot chocolate.”

Homer took the cup and carried it to the kitchen. Dumping the contents into a sauce pan, he turned the gas on full. Just before it boiled he removed the pan from the flame, poured the chocolate back in the cup. He got back to Samantha just as fast as he could.

For once Homer did an efficient job. Too efficient. The chocolate was too hot to drink. After sampling it by taking the barest sip, Samantha set the cup aside to let it cool.

As Homer watched the cat in an agony of apprehension, precious minutes dragged by. He knew he could never get Samantha to pick up the cup.

Roger was back on the ledge, purring, begging, Homer felt sure, for more chocolate. If Roger would just die quietly there, Samantha would never know.

Homer took a deep breath as Samantha finally raised the cup to her lips. She paused, said in an impatient voice, “Oh, all right, Roger, you may have a drop more.”

The cat sprung off the window ledge, wobbled on his feet, looked up once more at Homer. The animal took a step toward the saucer, and suddenly his front legs collapsed.

Samantha stared at Roger in puzzlement, and Homer watched in terror, as the cat struggled to his feet, took another aimless step and fell over on his side. His eyes rolled and his breathing began to grow heavy.

Samantha glanced from the cat to her brother. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “You drink my chocolate this evening, Homer.”

Homer gibbered an unintelligible refusal. Roger’s heavy breathing stopped.

“You actually meant to kill me, didn’t you?” she said in a tone of soft satisfaction.

Homer gazed at her without immediate understanding. She added gently, “My dear brother, two can play at that game.”

He understood her sudden air of satisfaction then. His act had given her the moral excuse she needed to turn her often-expressed hope into reality, and Homer knew he was lost. He had no idea of where to obtain more poison, and no murder plan aside from poison.

But Samantha was different. She was efficient. She would be able to devise any number of alternate plans.

Any of which would work.

THE PRICE OF FAME

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1964.

Harry Cannon always cased his jobs carefully. For ten days he had studied the layout of Gilbert’s Liquor Store. He knew what time the place opened in the morning and when it closed at night. He knew the busiest hours of the day, and that the period just before the nine p.m. closing was the deadest. He knew what hours the two clerks worked and that the second-trick clerk left at eight p.m., leaving proprietor Arthur Gilbert alone for the last hour. One night he had even followed Arthur home to Long Island, so that he knew where the man lived.

But best of all he knew that Arthur Gilbert went to the bank only on Friday morning. Which meant that Thursday night, somewhere in the place, an entire week’s receipts were hidden.

Cannon pulled up in front of the liquor store at exactly 8:55 p.m. Through the glass front window he could see the plump, balding proprietor checking out the cash register. There were no customers in the place.

From the seat alongside of him Cannon lifted a false rubber nose attached to some black frames without lenses. When he fitted the frames over his ears, his appearance totally changed. His thin face seemed broader, and the contraption gave him a bulbous-nosed, owlish look in place of his usual pinched, scowling expression. It also added ten years to his bare twenty-eight.

It was both an effective disguise and a safer one than a mask, for from a distance it didn’t look like a disguise. There was always the danger of a mask being spotted from some nearby window or passing car. As he was, casual passers- by, unless they got too close, would merely take him for a rather ugly man.

Slipping from the righthand door of the car, Cannon shot a quick glance in both directions, straightened his lanky form and strode briskly into the liquor store. The plump proprietor glanced up from his register with a customer-welcoming smile which disappeared the moment it began to form. His expression turned wary and he slowly raised his hands to shoulder height even before Cannon drew the thirty-eight automatic from his pocket. The instant reaction made Cannon feel a bleak sort of pride in his growing reputation.

“I guess you know who I am,” he said between his teeth, stepping behind the counter and aiming the gun at the proprietor’s belt buckle.

“Yes,” the plump man said without fright, but still wearing a wary expression. “I won’t give you any trouble. The money’s right there in the drawer.”

Contemptuously Cannon motioned him through a door immediately behind the counter, followed as the man backed into the storeroom, his hands still at shoulder height. After a quick glance around the room to make sure no one else was there, Cannon pushed the door partially shut to block the view from the street but still allow him a view of the main part of the store.

“Turn around,” he ordered.

The man presented his back. “You won’t have to shoot me,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to try anything.”

“You think I shoot people for nothing?” Cannon inquired sourly.

When there was no reply, Cannon said in a sharp voice, “Well, do you?”

“I know you have shot people,” the plump man said carefully. There was no fear in his voice, but it was extremely cautious. “I was merely pointing out that you have no cause to shoot me. I intend to cooperate fully.”

“Well, now. Then you can start by putting your hands down.”

Slowly, carefully, the man lowered his hands to his sides.

“Get on your stomach,” Cannon directed.

Without haste, but without delay either, the man dropped to hands and knees, then stretched full-length on the floor.

“Stay there until I tell you different,” Cannon directed.

Glancing through the partially open door of the storeroom, he saw that no one was passing on the street. Opening the door wide, he thrust the gun into his belt and stepped out to the cash register.

The counter blocked the view of the prone man by anyone who might pass the front window, or even come into the store, but Cannon could still see him from the register. He kept flicking glances that way as he scooped bills from the open drawer and stuffed them into his suit-coat pockets. He ignored the change.

When the register was empty of bills, Cannon stepped back into the storeroom and partially closed the door again.

In a cold voice he said, “I guess you’ve read about me in the papers, haven’t you, mister?”

“Yes,” the man admitted.

“Tell me what you’ve read.”

After a momentary hesitation, the man said, “They call you the Nose Bandit.”

“I mean everything you’ve read.”

“Well, you’ve held up a lot of places. I believe you’ve killed three people.”

“You’d better believe it. What else?”

“The police advise not to resist you in any way.”

“That’s right. Why?”

The prone man said quietly, “I have no desire to make you angry.”

“The only way you’ll make me angry is not to do exactly as I say. Why do the cops advise people not to resist?”

With a sort of resigned caution, the man on the floor said, “They say you’re a psychopathic killer. That you’ll kill on the slightest provocation.”

“Now you’re coming along,” Cannon said with approval. “Do you believe that?”

“I only know what I’ve read. If you want me to believe it, I will. If you don’t, I won’t.”

“I want you to believe it,” Cannon said coldly. “That psycho stuff is window dressing because the fuzz is too dumb to catch me, but you’d better believe I’ll kill you if you give me any lip. You know why we’re having this little conversation?”

“I have no idea.”

“Because I figure it will save me a lot of time in the long run. You wouldn’t refuse to tell me anything I wanted to know, would you, Mr. Gilbert?”

“I doubt that it would be safe,” the proprietor said quietly.

“You are Arthur Gilbert, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I cased this job real thoroughly, Arthur. You keep a money box with the real cash in it. That chicken-feed in the register was just today’s receipts. You bank once a week, on Friday, and this is Thursday night, so that money box ought to be real full. I figure I’ll get to it faster if you tell me where it is than if I have to hunt for it while you lie here dead on the floor. But it’s up to you. I’m going to ask you once. If I don’t get a fast answer, I’m going to blow your brains out. Understand?”

“Perfectly. It’s behind the cognac on the bottom shelf over there in the corner.”

“Point,” Cannon instructed. Raising one hand from the floor, Gilbert pointed.

Cannon had to remove two rows of cognac bottles before he found the square metal box behind them. It wasn’t locked, so he was spared the irritation of having to make Arthur Gilbert produce the key. There was nearly five hundred dollars in bills in it, plus a stack of checks. He pocketed the bills only.

Walking over to the storeroom door, he glanced out, then drew back again when he saw a young couple slowly walking past the plate-glass front window. He waited a few moments, looked again and saw that the street in front was now clear of pedestrians. Pulling the door wide open, he momentarily turned back to the man on the floor.

“You stay in that position for five minutes, Arthur,” he instructed. “If I see your head above the counter, I’ll blow it off. Understand?”

“I understand,” Gilbert said.

Without hurry Cannon walked from the store, climbed into the car in front of the store and drove away. A quarter block away he removed the fake glasses and false nose, folded them and put them into his inside breast pocket. Six blocks farther he abandoned the car in an alley across the street from a subway entrance, first carefully wiping the steering wheel and shift lever with a handkerchief. Ten minutes later he was on a subway to Brooklyn.

Within a half hour of the time he had left the liquor store, Cannon was ascending to the street from the Fulton Street station. He found his car parked where he had left it, a dozen yards from the subway entrance. He parked in front of his rooming house exactly at ten p.m. Tiptoeing past his landlady’s room, he went up the stairs without her hearing him. He always left for a job surreptitiously and returned as quietly. You never knew when a landlady’s testimony that you had been in your room all evening might come in handy.

In his room he counted the take. It came to five hundred and sixty-two dollars. It wasn’t exactly in a class with the Brinks robbery, he thought, but with his simple needs it would carry him for weeks.

* * *

Part of the enjoyment Harry Cannon derived from his chosen profession was the newspaper writeups he got. There was a scrap-book in a suitcase at the back of his closet containing news clippings of every job he had pulled. There were twenty-two news accounts in all, the coverage on each progressively more detailed. The first, dated a little more than two years earlier, was a back-page, one-paragraph item describing a Bronx drugstore stickup by a man wearing a dime-store false nose and lensless frames. The latest was a full-column front-page spread headlined: NOSE BANDIT STRIKES AGAIN.

Cannon spent many quiet evenings in his room reading over his scrapbook. He particularly enjoyed comparing the sensational treatment his more recent exploits received with the routine coverage of his early jobs. Three kills had made him about the hottest news copy in town.

On Friday morning he was up early to buy all the New York papers. Back in his room again, he went through them one by one with growing puzzlement.

There wasn’t a single mention of last night’s robbery.

After some thought, it occurred to him that it was possible Arthur Gilbert had died of a heart attack after he had left the store, his body had been found and no one knew there had been a robbery. The man hadn’t appeared particularly frightened, but that may have been mere surface control. Beneath it, he may have been scared to death. Then too, he had read that fat people were more subject to heart attacks than others.

He searched all the papers again, this time for obituaries. There was no mention of Arthur Gilbert.

At noon he went out to buy the noon editions, again for the late afternoon editions, and later for the evening papers. There was still no mention of the robbery and no obituary item on Arthur Gilbert.

By then he was so puzzled, he would have been tempted to drive over to Manhattan and drive past the liquor store to see if Gilbert was still in evidence, except for one thing; he couldn’t have gotten there before nine-thirty p.m., and he knew the store would be closed. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

Saturday morning he bought all the papers again. When there was still no report of the robbery, he searched through each paper item by item to see if there was mention of Arthur Gilbert’s death, for he could conceive of no other reason that it hadn’t been reported. He didn’t find an obituary on the liquor store proprietor, but he did find something of interest in the personal column.

The item read: “If N.B., who visited my liquor store at closing time Thursday night will phone Circle 1-62006, he will learn something of great financial advantage. —A.G.”

“N.B.” could stand for nose bandit, Cannon reflected. “A.G.” could be Arthur Gilbert. Checking the other papers, he found the same ad running in all of them.

In the hallway outside his room there was a pay telephone, and on a small table next to it was a stack of telephone directories. He checked the Manhattan liquor store, and there it was: Circle 1-62006. He returned to his room to think the matter over.

It was evening before he came to the decision to phone the number. By then his curiosity was so aroused that he couldn’t resist. But, in the event that it was some kind of police trap, he took the subway to Grand Central Station and phoned from one of the booths there. He made the call at 8:45 p.m.

When a pleasant voice said, “Gilbert’s Liquor Store,” Cannon said tersely, “I saw your ad.”

There was a swift indrawing of breath, then Arthur Gilbert said with a peculiar mixture of relief and eagerness, “There’s no one else here, so we can talk.”

“Then start talking.”

Gilbert said, “You noticed there was nothing in the papers about our—ah—meeting, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t report it. As a demonstration of good faith in case you saw the ad. I have a business proposition for you.”

“Yeah? What kind?”

“A job for you. No risk, and the take is twenty thousand. We split fifty-fifty. Interested?”

Cannon was silent for a moment. Then he said, “This is a new one. A victim wanting to go partners with the guy who knocked him over.”

In a reasonable tone the liquor dealer said, “You’re the only person in your—ah—profession I’ve ever had contact with. If I had known how to contact someone with your talents, I would have done it long ago, because this plum has been waiting to be plucked for some time. I risked forgetting the amount you took the other night in the hope that I could get in contact with you. It was a real risk too, because it’s going to take some fancy bookkeeping to cover the shortage.”

There was another silence on Cannon’s part. Then he said, “Why didn’t you mention this job the other night?”

Gilbert said dryly, “You have a reputation for being rather trigger quick. I thought of it, but I’m a cautious man. I thought it probable that if I tried to shift the subject of conversation, you’d put a bullet in my back before you understood what I was getting at.”

“I might have,” Cannon admitted. “I like people to listen and not interrupt when I’ve got a gun on them.”

“I was still thinking of it five minutes after you left, and regretting that there was no way to get in touch with you. Then, just as I was reaching for the phone to call the police, I thought of placing a personal ad.”

Cannon said abruptly, “We’ve talked enough for now, in case you’ve got cops tracing this call. I’ll phone you Monday.”

He hung up.

Back in his room Cannon considered the conversation from all angles. If the police were using Arthur Gilbert to set a trap, it seemed a rather far-out scheme. Cannon had never heard of a case where a victim was employed in an attempt to gain the confidence of a stickup artist.

The more he thought about it, the more he was inclined to believe that Arthur Gilbert actually was prepared to finger some job. Trying to put himself in the liquor dealer’s place, he was unable to find any illogic in the man’s actions. Convinced that all men were as basically dishonest as himself, it didn’t seem in the least odd to Cannon that a seemingly law-abiding merchant would make himself accessory to armed robbery providing he had to take no personal risk. Cannon sincerely believed that fear of consequences was the only thing which prevented many ostensibly honest men from employing his own method of making a living.

Perhaps Arthur Gilbert had often daydreamed of how easy it would be to knock over the twenty grand he was now prepared to finger. He wouldn’t have the guts to do it himself, of course, or, as he had pointed out over the phone, the underworld contacts to pass on his information to anyone who could use it. The thought of all that easy money would merely lie in the back of his mind, awaiting an accidental encounter with a real pro to give it concrete substance.

It was worth checking out in any event, Cannon decided. Providing he could make contact with Arthur Cannon without risk.

Turning his thoughts to this problem, it didn’t take him long to work out a plan for making safe contact. If it was a police trap, by now Gilbert would have reported to the police that the Nose Bandit had promised to phone again Monday. The fuzz would expect no further attempt at contact before then, and they certainly wouldn’t expect it in any way other than a phone call at the store.

The only defect he could see in his plan to make contact was that it involved letting Arthur Gilbert see his face without disguise, something no other victim had ever done. But there was a solution to that. Once their business was finished, he could make another call at the liquor store some night and dispose of Gilbert.

He tabled the matter until Monday morning.

Though Cannon knew what commuter train Arthur Gilbert took home in the evening, because he had once followed him home and had sat two seats behind him on the train, he didn’t know which train he took in the morning. It couldn’t be a very early one, though, as the man didn’t arrive at the liquor store until noon.

To be on the safe side, Cannon was parked at the station on Long Island at nine-thirty a.m.

When Cannon had followed the liquor dealer home, Gilbert had climbed into a parked station wagon when he got off the train. Lacking a car to follow him the rest of the way, Cannon had to content himself with checking the phone book. As only one Arthur Gilbert was listed on Long Island, he knew the man’s address, but on the chance that Gilbert’s home was under police surveillance, he thought it safer to wait at the train station rather than attempting to trail him clear from his home.

It seemed that Gilbert caught the ten a.m. train, for it was nearly a half hour before Cannon spotted his station wagon pulling into the parking area. The man was alone, and, since no other car followed him into the area, he didn’t seem to be under surveillance.

Cannon reached the gate a step behind the liquor dealer. He was on his heels as the plump man entered a car. When Gilbert took a rear seat next to the window, Cannon sat next to him. The liquor store proprietor gave him a casual glance, then opened a morning paper.

As the train started to move, Cannon studied the other nearby passengers. At this time of day there were as many women as men, most of them having the appearance of housewives off on shopping trips. The men all appeared to be businessmen, and none so much as glanced at Gilbert. By the time the conductor had come by to collect Cannon’s fare and punch Gilbert’s commuter ticket, Cannon was satisfied that no police officer had the liquor dealer under observation.

In a quiet voice Cannon said, “Let’s resume our conversation.”

Gilbert gave him a startled look. Carefully he folded his newspaper and laid it on his lap. He studied his seat-mate with fascinated eyes.

“Don’t look a hole in me,” Cannon said.

The liquor dealer emitted held breath. “You gave me a jolt, Mr.—ah—I don’t suppose you want to mention your name. It’s going to take me a moment to get used to you. I’m not a very courageous man, and frankly you scare me silly.”

“You didn’t act very scared the other night,” Cannon said suspiciously. “And you don’t look scared now. In fact, you look pleased.”

“Oh, I am,” Gilbert assured him. “But nevertheless you make me uneasy. I just conceal my emotions rather well.”

This seemed logical to Cannon. Since he had begun to gain news headlines, most of his victims trembled with terror the moment he appeared. Gilbert’s calmness had bothered him a little, and he was glad to know it was all front. He liked to be feared.

He asked, “What is this job?”

“Robbing my home.”

Cannon stared at him. “Come again?”

“First I had better explain my circumstances,” Gilbert said. “My wife has all the money in our family.”

“Yeah?”

The liquor dealer gave his head a wry nod. “When you marry for money, Mr.—I keep forgetting you have no name—you earn every cent of it. That little liquor store I run was financed by my wife, a sort of a bone she tossed me to give me something to do. Once a month her brother comes down to audit the books. If there’s a nickel short, she knows it. That’s what I meant when I told you I was taking a real risk in covering a shortage of over five hundred dollars. The total receipts are turned over to Emily and I get doled out an allowance. The house is in her name, the boat, the station wagon and the other car. Everything.”

Cannon frowned. “How come you put up with that? No guts?”

Gilbert flushed slightly. “It isn’t quite as bad as I make it seem. I have the use of everything she owns. Plus membership in an exclusive country club. Plus charge accounts in a dozen stores, so I can buy all the clothes I want. But cash I don’t have. You’ll never find me with more than fifty dollars in my wallet. Just once I’d like some real money of my own to spend without supervision. I’d like to spread my wings a bit before I’m too old to enjoy spending.”

Cannon said without cynicism, “You’ve got some doll lined up, huh?”

Gilbert smiled a trifle sheepishly. “I’d rather not discuss my precise need for money. At any rate, my wife keeps a substantial sum in the house at all times, seldom less than twenty thousand dollars. It’s in a wall safe in her bedroom.”

“I’m no safe cracker,” Cannon said dubiously.

“You don’t have to be. I’ll give you the combination.”

Cannon’s eyes narrowed. “If you know the combination, why don’t you lift it yourself?”

“Because she’d know I took it. No one but the two of us know it. She’d throw me out of the house.”

“With twenty grand, you could afford to be kicked out.”

Gilbert smiled bitterly. “You don’t know my wife. She would have me prosecuted and thrown in jail. And even if I got away with it, it wouldn’t be worth it. I’m her sole heir and she’s worth three-quarters of a million dollars. She’s also not well. I prefer to stay in her good graces.”

Cannon nodded. “Okay. What’s the setup?”

“My wife is a semi-invalid and spends most of her time in her room. She had a slight stroke a couple of years ago and is paralyzed from the waist down. She has a practical nurse to take care of her when I’m not there, but Miss Prentice goes home as soon as I get in from work. Late at night the two of us are usually alone in the house. We seldom have a guest.”

“I see. You want me to walk in some night and stick you up?”

“Not when I’m there,” Gilbert said dryly. “It’s going to be a little more complicated than a simple stickup. We’ll set a specific time and I’ll arrange to be over next door at her brother’s. She doesn’t object to my leaving her alone for short periods, as long as she knows where I am. She has a bedside phone, so she can always reach me, you see.”

Cannon gave him a bleak grin. “All right. Set a time.”

Gilbert pursed his lips. “How about tonight? I get home about eleven p.m. and the practical nurse leaves as soon I get there. Don—that’s Emily’s brother—never goes to bed until the late show is over, so there will be nothing odd about my dropping in him at midnight. I do it often. Emily watches it too, as a matter of fact. You’ll probably find her in her wheelchair in front of the portable in her room when you walk in. I’ll leave by the side door. If you take a station by the garage, you’ll see me leave and can use the same door to enter the house. I’ll leave it off the latch.”

“How do I get to her room?”

“The side door is on the east side of the house. Walk straight ahead down a hall to the stairs. At the top of the stairs turn right. Emily’s bedroom is the second door on the right and the safe is behind the picture on the north wall. A word of caution, though. Don’t let her hear you until the instant you open her door. That shouldn’t be difficult, because there is wall-to-wall carpeting throughout the house. But walk softly anyway. She keeps a gun in her bedside stand, and I don’t want any shooting. In spite of her strictness about money, I’m really rather fond of the old girl. I want your promise that you won’t harm her.”

Cannon said, “I never harm anybody who behaves.”

When Gilbert looked a little dubious, Cannon said, “If you’re thinking about those three, I had reasons. That smart punk in the filling station tried to jump me. The woman in that drugstore started to scream her head off. And the old man in the delicatessen wouldn’t tell me where he kept his cash box. I don’t use my gun unless it’s necessary.”

Cannon’s reasons for killing didn’t seem to reassure Gilbert much. He continued to look dubious. He said, “Well, it can’t possibly be necessary in this case. She can’t jump you because she can’t move from her chair without assistance. And she can’t scream because she speaks only in a bare whisper. Her stroke partially paralyzed her vocal chords. I want your assurance that you won’t harm her or the whole deal is off.”

“I told you I don’t gun people for nothing,” Cannon said irritably. “That psycho killer stuff is just to make news. What’s the safe combination?”

Gilbert gave his head a slow shake. “You don’t get that until the last minute. You might get the idea to walk in before I got home and clean the safe without cutting me in. I wouldn’t want you to try it with Miss Prentice there. She might try jumping you or screaming. And I don’t want anyone killed. You meet me when I walk out the side door and I’ll give you the combination.”

Cannon shrugged.

“Now you can’t simply walk to the safe and open it,” Gilbert said. “Emily would wonder how you knew the combination. You’ll have to fake being a professional safecracker. Put your ear to the safe as you turn the knob and so on. Will you do that?”

“I’ll put on an act,” Cannon agreed.

“You won’t have to worry about Emily giving an alarm even after you leave,” Gilbert said. “If you cut the phone cord in her room, she’ll be quite helpless. Hers is the only extension on the second floor, and she can’t get downstairs in her wheelchair. She can’t even scream. She’ll simply have to wait until I return. I’ll stay over at Don’s until one a.m. in order to give you plenty of time for a getaway. All you have to do is lift the ten thousand dollars from the safe and walk out.”

“Ten thousand?” Cannon said with a frown. “I thought it was twenty grand.”

Gilbert smiled slightly. “You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of trust, but how do I know you’d arrange to get my split to me? I haven’t the slightest idea who you are or how to get in contact with you. I’ll remove my half before you arrive. Emily always wheels her chair to the stairhead with Miss Prentice when she leaves, so I’ll have an easy opportunity.”

Cannon’s last lingering doubts about the liquor dealer’s good faith evaporated. Though his manner hadn’t indicated any distrust of the arrangements, ever since the conversation started Cannon had been searching for some hint that the whole thing might be an elaborate police trap. The realization that Gilbert didn’t trust him any more than he trusted the liquor dealer settled his suspicions once and for all.

There was one factor Gilbert apparently hadn’t considered though, Cannon thought with a grim inner smile. What was to prevent him from cold-cocking the liquor dealer as he came from the side door, relieving him of his ten thousand, then going inside for the rest?

A moment later he was startled to learn that Gilbert had considered this factor. The plump man said casually, “Incidentally, in case you have thoughts of getting the entire twenty thousand, the excuse I plan to use for going over to Don’s house is to show him my new shotgun. It’s a double-barrelled ten-gauge. I’ll have it in my hands when I walk out of the house. Loaded. As I mentioned before, I’m not a very courageous man, but I really wouldn’t have much fear of going up against a pistol with a shotgun. It would be a pretty one-sided duel.”

In spite of himself Cannon began to feel grudging respect for the careful planning Arthur Gilbert had done.

After a moment Gilbert added, “On the other hand, you don’t have to fear my double-crossing you by blasting with the shotgun when I walk out. The only way I can stay clear of suspicion is for you to rob the safe and get away clean.”

Cannon nodded. “I guess we understand each other. We’ll pull it off tonight.”

it would have been pointless for Cannon to ride the train all the way back to Long Island to pick up his car, drive it back to Brooklyn, then have to drive to Long Island again that night. He simply left the car there all day and caught the evening train which left an hour before the one Arthur Gilbert took. This gave him an hour to case the layout before Gilbert arrived home.

The home was a broad, two-story brick building set well back from the street with a good fifty feet of lawn between it and the houses on either side. Driving past it slowly, Cannon noted only two rooms were lit. One, on the lower floor, was probably the front room. The other was a front corner room upstairs. He guessed this to be Emily Gilbert’s room.

Though he had abandoned all suspicion of a police trap, he searched the shadows beneath trees as he passed anyway. There was no sign of a stakeout. A several-years-old car was parked in front of the house, but he saw it was empty as he passed. He assumed it probably belonged to the practical nurse.

Cannon circled the block, parked a half block away and cut through several back yards to reach the double garage behind Gilbert’s home. The garage doors were open and he could see a large sedan parked in the stall which wasn’t vacant.

There was a half moon, but a huge elm near the garage cast the east side of the building in deep shadow. Cannon leaned against the side of the garage and waited. From this point he had a perfect view of the side door fifty feet away.

A few minutes before eleven headlights swung into the driveway. Cannon faded behind the garage until the station wagon drove into it, then moved back to his former position.

A car door slammed and footsteps sounded on the concrete floor. Then Arthur Gilbert’s plump form rounded the corner and the man peered toward him in the darkness.

“That you?” Gilbert inquired cautiously.

Cannon said, “Uh-huh.”

The liquor dealer made a relieved noise. “All set?”

“Uh-huh,” Cannon repeated.

“Just wait here until I come out,” Gilbert instructed. “I’ll come to you. I’ll try to make it by eleven-thirty.”

“Okay,” Cannon said laconically.

Turning, the plump man walked away and entered the house by the side door. Cannon leaned his back against the garage and waited.

Harry Cannon was a patient man, which was one of the reasons he was so successful in his field. He was capable of standing for hours without boredom, studying the comings and goings of customers, when casing a potential job. The wait the next half hour didn’t bother him in the least. He didn’t even feel the need of a cigarette.

A few minutes after Gilbert went indoors, a woman in white uniform came from the side door and walked down the driveway to the street. A moment later he heard the car parked in front drive away.

It was just eleven-thirty when the side door opened again. The plump figure of Arthur Gilbert appeared and moonlight glinted from the twin barrels of the shotgun under his arm. Cannon straightened as the man approached. When Gilbert got within a few feet of him, the barrels raised to center on Cannon’s stomach.

“What’s that for?” Cannon asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Just precaution,” Gilbert said quietly. “I’m going to give you the combination now, and I’ll feel safer having you covered once you have that. I plan to keep the ten thousand I have in my pocket.”

“You think of all the angles, don’t you?” Cannon said coldly. “What’s the correct combination?”

“R-3, L-27, R-4, L-2. Better repeat it to yourself a few times.” Cannon soundlessly began moving his lips. After a time he said aloud, “R-3, L-27, R-4, L-2.” He gave Gilbert a questioning look.

“You have it,” Gilbert said with approval. “Emily is in her chair watching television. Do you have your disguise?”

Reaching into his inside breast pocket, Cannon drew out the false nose and fitted it into place. The shotgun continued to bear on him.

With a frown Cannon said, “Well, get started next door.”

The liquor dealer’s teeth showed in the darkness. “I don’t think I want to turn my back on you, friend. I’ll go next door after you’re inside.”

“You’re a trusting soul,” Cannon growled.

He circled the man and the shot-gun moved with him. He was conscious of it still aimed at his back when he reached the side door. Trying the door, he found it unlocked, pushed it open, then glanced back toward the garage. Gilbert stepped from shadow into moonlight, the shotgun now aimed downward. Lifting one hand in a salute, the man moved off across the lawn toward the house next door.

Cannon entered the house and quietly shut the door behind him.

There was only a dim light on in the hall, which bisected the house from one side to the other. At its far end he could see the stairs. His feet moved soundlessly on the thick carpeting as he went the length of the hall and climbed the stairs to the upper floor. There was a night light on in the upper hall too. Without sound he moved to the second door on the right and placed his ear against it. Inside he could hear a television set going.

Drawing his gun, he flicked off the safety, placed his hand on the knob, turned it and slammed the door wide open.

Directly facing him was a middle-aged, gray-haired woman seated in a wheelchair. She wore a robe over a nightgown and her eyes were burning with rage. Her lips were moving soundlessly in what seemed to be mute curses. Both hands rested on the arms of the chair and the right one held a revolver, its butt firmly set against the wood of the chair arm. The muzzle pointed straight at the doorway.

Cannon reacted faster than he had ever reacted in his life. His finger was squeezing the trigger before the knob of the door crashed back against the wall.

The bullet caught the woman squarely in the heart. Her mouth popped open and her right arm jolted from the chair to hang downward, still gripping the gun. She made a gurgling noise in her throat and her head slowly slumped to her chest.

With one stride Cannon was across the room and had jerked her head up by the hair. One look was enough. She had died instantly!

Flicking on his safety, he shoved the gun into his belt and moved to the picture on the north wall. Jerking it from its hook, he flung it aside. Behind it, just as Gilbert had said, was a small wall safe.

Mouthing the numbers aloud, he rapidly spun the dial. Within a matter of seconds the safe was open. His eyes lighted with satisfaction at the thick stack of currency inside. He didn’t bother to count it, ramming it into various pockets as rapidly as he could. It took both coat pockets and both side pockets of his trousers to hold it all.

Within a minute and a half of the time he had entered the room, he strode out again and ran toward the stairs.

He came to an abrupt halt as he rounded the corner and reached the top of the stairs. On the landing below him stood Arthur Gilbert with the shotgun aimed upward. He was smiling quite calmly.

Cannon’s last thought was the indignant realization that Arthur Gilbert had lied to him. The liquor dealer had said he wasn’t a courageous man. In that final moment Cannon could tell by the expression on his face that he was as cold-blooded and emotionless as Cannon himself, no doubt about it.

He made a frantic grab for his belt, got the gun halfway out just as both barrels of the shotgun blasted. He felt a searing flash of pain which seemed to encompass his whole body, then he felt nothing.

Stepping over the dead man, Arthur Gilbert moved to the open door of his wife’s bedroom. Viewing the scene inside with satisfaction, he leaned his shotgun outside the door and went inside.

He had some difficulty prying her stiff fingers away from the gun, nearly as much as he had had earlier when he forced them around it. When it was free, he dropped the gun into the drawer of the bedside stand and closed the drawer.

Then he left the room and went downstairs.

The side door burst open just as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

A tall, lean man of about fifty rushed in, came to an abrupt halt and stared at Gilbert. Moving toward him like a sleepwalker, Gilbert allowed his face to assume an expression of dazed shock.

“For God’s sake, what was all the shooting?” the lean man inquired.

Gilbert said dully, “The Nose Bandit, Don. Miss Prentice must have left the door unlatched when she left. I was in the basement cleaning my new shotgun when I heard the shot. I loaded it and rushed upstairs just in time to meet him coming down. He’s dead. I let him have both barrels.”

“What about Emily?” his brother-in-law asked.

“That was the first shot,” Gilbert said, his face squeezing into an expression of grief. “Her bedroom safe is wide open and she’s dead. He killed her.”

“Oh, no!” the lean man said in a horrified voice. “Poor Emily!”

FALSE ALARM

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Feb 1965.

I got to Rover about four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Rover was a good name for the place, because it was really a dog. The only reason I stopped was because it was hot, I felt like a beer and the next town, according to my map, was twenty miles farther on.

I came in on a street called East Central Avenue and drove past block after block of identical square gray houses. Occasionally I spotted a small neighborhood store of some kind, but I saw no tavern signs at all. Nor did I see many people. The place gave the impression of being almost deserted, which was odd, inasmuch as a dilapidated sign at the edge of town had claimed a population of ten thousand.

I discovered the answer when I reached the center of town. There was a town square with a crumbling courthouse in its center, and all the major businesses in town were crammed along the four sides of the square.

It was no wonder the rest of the town had seemed deserted, because it seemed to me the bulk of the population must have been crowded into the square. For the most part the men wore blue coveralls and the women gingham dresses. Friday afternoon must be farmer’s shopping day, I thought.

I drove into the square before I realized what I was getting into. Two lanes of automobiles were circling the square at dirt-track speed, presumably all hunting parking places. More kept surging in from the feeder streets centering each of the square’s four sides. The standard method of gaining entry into the stream of circling traffic from the side streets seemed to be to close your eyes and bear down on the horn.

I made the circle twice with my heart in my throat, then escaped by one of the side streets and found a parking place a block away.

During my circling I had managed to spot a sign at the northeast corner of the square which read: Fat Sam’s Bar and Grill. When I got back to the square on foot, I headed directly for it.

Inside, there was a single large, cool room with a bar running the length of one wall and with a lot of round wooden tables spread around the remaining space. It seemed to be strictly a man’s bar, because there wasn’t a woman in the place. Only about half the tables were filled, but the bar was lined two deep.

As on the street, most of the men wore blue coveralls, though there was a sprinkling of younger men in slacks and jackets. I was the only one there in a coat and tie.

There was no table service. I managed to squeeze in at the end of the bar long enough to get a schooner of beer from the perspiring bartender, backed out and carried it over to one of the empty tables.

A young man of about twenty-one, neatly dressed in tan slacks and a light jacket, and also carrying a schooner of beer, reached the table at the same moment I did. We both stopped and looked at each other.

Then I grinned. “Guess there’s room for both of us. Sit down.”

Returning my grin a trifle abashedly, he pulled out a chair and sat. I took the one across from him. We each took a pull at our beer.

Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he examined my necktie and said, “Visitor?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, examining him in return.

He was a thin, narrow-shouldered lad weighing only about a hundred and thirty pounds with close-set eyes and a rather shifty look. He would have made a lousy heist artist, because he looked too much like one. Which didn’t mean he was, of course. Most successful heisters look honest.

“Why would anyone visit this miserable town?” he inquired.

“Just passing through,” I told him. “Why do you call it miserable? It looks pretty lively to me.”

“Lively? Know what the teen-age kick is here? They turn in false alarms. There are so many false alarms, it’s almost an emergency situation. There’s nothing else for the kids to do.”

I said, “There seems to be a lot of adult activity.”

“Oh, on the square, sure. This joint is always crowded. But there’s no place to go except the town square, and look what you’ve got for companionship. A lot of dull-witted miners, drinking beer.”

“Miners?” I asked, glancing around the room. “I thought they were farmers.”

“Naw. They’re all employees of the Rover City Copper Mining Company, our sole industry. If the mine ever peters out, this town will dry up and blow away.”

When our schooners ran dry, I offered to buy two more if he would go after them. He accepted with such alacrity, I suspected he didn’t have much money.

Over the second beer he introduced himself as Andy Carr. I gave the name of George Snyder instead of my real one of Charles Gagnon. While it was hardly likely that a want for a couple of liquor-store heists would have spread this far, why take chances?

I asked, “You work in the mine, Andy?”

“Naw. That’s for morons. My old man does, though.”

“What’s your line?”

“Well, nothing right now,” he said, flushing a little. “I had a store job for a while, but they don’t pay nothing. Unless you’re in business, the only way to make a living around here is in the mine.”

Still living off his father at twenty-one, I thought. Here was a potential bum.

Glancing at the clock over the bar, he said, “A minute to five. In exactly sixty seconds old Sam will lug out his money bag. You can set your watch by him.”

“Who’s old Sam?” I asked.

“Fat Sam Cooney, the owner of this joint. Watch that door next to the kitchen door.”

I looked in the indicated direction. Just as I glanced that way the door opened and an enormous fat man of about fifty stepped out. During the moment that the door was open, I could see that beyond it was a small office.

The fat man was carrying a large canvas sack. He walked right past us and went out the door.

I gave Andy Carr an inquiring look.

“The week’s receipts,” Carr said. “The bank stays open until six on Friday, and Sam leaves here to make his deposit exactly at five every week. There were about twenty-five hundred bucks in that bag.”

The tone in which he said this made me look at him sharply. There had been a note of wistful envy in it. I wondered if perhaps his larcenous appearance accurately denoted his character after all.

I’m always on the lookout for possible scores, and twenty-five hundred clams was worth at least inquiring into.

I said idly, “Probably mostly in checks, huh? I imagine a lot of the miners cash their pay checks here.”

He shook his head. “The mine makes up its payroll in cash. Maybe there were a couple of small personal checks in that bag, but most of it was good old spendable cash.” Again I caught the note of wistful envy, as though he had often contemplated some means of relieving Fat Sam of one of his bags.

I sent up a trial balloon. “I should think some joker would knock the joint over some quiet night, with all that money lying around.”

He snorted. “What quiet night? This joint is always jammed like this from the minute it opens until it closes at midnight. The mine runs two tricks, and the off trick is always in here, because there’s no place else to go. I wouldn’t want to chance pulling a gun in the middle of fifty to sixty crazy miners. Those guys are too nuts to be afraid of a gun. They’d take it away and make you eat it.” Both his tone and his words suggested he had considered the possibility of a holdup. Perhaps it had been mere idle speculation as to how some professional might work it, with no thought of making an attempt himself, but you never know.

I said, “There would be nobody here in the middle of the night. I’m surprised some burglar hasn’t taken a crack at it.”

He almost laughed. “Did you notice the front door when you walked in? It’s three-inch oak and a bar goes across it from inside at night. The rear door has an inner door of steel bars and a burglar-proof lock. The windows are all barred. And if you got past all that, the money’s kept in a combination safe bolted to the office floor.”

He had analyzed all the possibilities of getting his hands on the money, I thought. Possibly it had been merely mental exercise for his own amusement, in the same way that some people dream up elaborate plans to rob Fort Knox without ever really intending to try, but more and more I was beginning to think he had real larceny in his soul.

I said, “Some joker could catch him at the rear door as he was locking up, force him back in and make him open the safe.”

“Yeah, except the back door opens onto the parking lot of the sheriff’s office and the lot’s lighted with floodlights. The desk of the night-duty deputy faces a window looking right at the tavern’s back door, and every night as he locks up, Fat Sam and the deputy wave to each other. I’ve checked.”

I gave him a quizzical smile and he flushed. “I mean I happened to be back there one night and I saw it,” he almost stammered. “I didn’t mean—” He let it die and averted his gaze when he saw my amused expression.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “You’ve figured all the angles you could think of, and so far have batted zero. Don’t be embarrassed. I wouldn’t mind taking a stab at it myself.”

His face jerked toward me. “You’re kidding.”

With my eyes fixed on his, I gave my head a slow shake. “Were you just casing the lay to amuse yourself, or were you in earnest?”

After a moment of astonished silence, he said, “Are you—I mean is your business—”

When his voice trickled off to nothing, I said quietly, “Never mind what I am, or what my business is. Are you interested in a partnership?”

He licked his lips and glanced furtively around. He would have made an excellent movie villain. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t have considered him as a possible partner in anything. In a strange town he probably would be picked up on suspicion by the first cop who saw him.

In this setup he had the advantage of having thoroughly cased the lay, though, which made him indispensable.

When he was satisfied that no one was eavesdropping, he asked in a suddenly husky voice, “Are you serious?”

“Totally.”

He had to look around again before saying, “Fifty-fifty?”

“Right down the middle. If you don’t quit gazing around as though you just picked a pocket, somebody’s going to wonder what’s eating you. Cut it out and just act natural, huh? Nobody’s close enough to hear us.”

“Sorry,” he said with a gulp. “This kind of takes the wind out of me. I mean I’ve dreamed about it, but I never expected—” His voice trailed off again.

I said, “Let’s get on with the discussion. I’m no safe cracker, so burglary is out. Hitting him in here is out too, if what you say is true. I’ve no more desire than you have to be torn apart by a bunch of crazy miners. That leaves hitting him between here and the bank. How far is the bank?”

“Right next door. And at five p.m. on a Friday there are as many miners wandering up and down the sidewalk as there are in here. We’d be up against the same thing.”

The problem was beginning to compare with knocking over Fort Knox. I was contemplating forgetting the whole thing and driving on when there was a rending crash of metal from outside.

Instantly customers began streaming out the door. Andy Carr jumped up too and joined the exodus. As the only windows in the place were small, barred squares too high to see out of, the only way to learn what all the excitement was about was to trail along.

I was the last customer out of the place, leaving only the bartender behind. And even he came as far as the doorway to peer out.

On the far side of the square a couple of cars had collided. All traffic had stopped and a couple of hundred people were converging on the scene from all directions.

By the time I reached the edge of the crowd, a solid mass of humanity covered that whole side of the square. The low wall which boxed in the courthouse lawn was crammed with spectators on that side, gaping above the heads of the crowd. Others stood on the lawn and courthouse steps.

I couldn’t see anything, but I did locate Andy Carr.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just a couple of smashed fenders, I guess,” he said, disgusted that it wasn’t more serious. “See what I mean about this dead town?”

“How’s that?”

“Everybody rushes to see anything at all that happens. It’s because there’s so little else to get excited about.”

His words popped an idea into my head. If the accident had occurred ten minutes earlier, just as Fat Sam Cooney carried his money bag from the office, only the proprietor and the bartender would have been left in the place.

I turned to look back toward the tavern. On that side of the square some people were staring from the windows of the bank next door to the tavern, and a number of businessmen and clerks were peering from the doorways and through the show windows of stores, but there wasn’t a soul on the sidewalk. Everyone who wasn’t working seemed to have rushed to see the accident.

If a similar distraction could be arranged the following Friday, just as Fat Sam emerged from his office—

I said to Andy, “How do I get in touch with you?”

“You going?” he asked.

“I want to check into a motel. Can we get together tonight to resume our conversation?”

“Sure. At Fat Sam’s?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think we ought to get too thick in public. Got a phone?”

“Yeah. It’s listed under my dad’s name. Joseph Carr on Bodie Street. It’s in the book.”

“I’ll phone at exactly nine p.m.,” I said. “Make a point of answering personally.”

“Okay. The best motel is the Shady Lane, about a mile from the square out North Main.” He pointed to the street bisecting the north side of the square.

I gave him a nod of thanks and walked off.

If the Shady Lane Motel was the best in Rover, I pitied the guests at the others. It consisted of a row of paintless square cabins with flat, tarpaper roofs which absorbed sunlight, converted it into heat, and poured the heat into the rooms below. The rugless floor of my cabin creaked, and the shower dripped.

It was clean, though, and it was certainly reasonable. I paid twenty-five dollars for a full week.

There was no phone in my cabin, so I lingered at the restaurant where I had dinner until nine o’clock, then phoned Andy Carr from the restaurant booth. He must have been waiting at the phone, because he answered in the middle of the first ring.

“Andy?”

“Yeah.”

“George Snyder. Do you have a car?”

“No.”

“Hmm. How far are you from the Shady Lane Motel?”

“Only about a half-mile. I can walk it.”

“Good. I’m in cabin five. Don’t check for me at the office. Just come straight there.”

“Right,” he said. “See you in about twenty minutes.”

By the time I got back to my cabin, it had cooled sufficiently for it to be quite comfortable. A knock sounded at nine-twenty-five. I opened the door, to find Carr standing there.

Letting him in, I closed and locked the door. I had already drawn the shades.

Glancing around, he said nervously. “This thing has already got me jumping out of my skin.”

“Want to drop it?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “I’ll be all right.”

“Then sit down and we’ll talk it over. Want a drink?” I indicated a bottle of whiskey on the dresser.

He said he did, and I poured shots in both water glasses with which the cabin was furnished. “There’s no ice and no mix. Want water in it?”

“That’s okay.”

Carrying both glasses into the bathroom, I added water to each. When I came out again, he was seated in the only chair with his head cocked to one side, listening. I paused to listen too. All I could hear was a siren in the distance.

“Fire engines,” he said, grinning at me. “Probably kids again.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you heard someone coming.”

I handed him a drink and sat on the bed.

After we had sampled our drinks, I asked, “You’re sure you’re in this all the way? I don’t want to waste a lot of time planning this score, then have you chicken out at the last minute.”

“I’m in,” he said sincerely. “I’d do anything for enough money to blow this burg. I need a break.”

“Okay. Then I’ve got a tentative plan. Did you notice how fast Fat Sam’s place cleared today when that accident happened?”

“Sure. They even run out like that when a jet goes over. I told you there was nothing to do here.”

“Well, suppose we staged a similar diversion about one minute to five next Friday, so the place would empty just as Sam came from his office?”

His eyes grew round. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?” he breathed. “What kind of diversion?”

“I haven’t thought that far. It’s just a tentative idea. But we have a week to work on it. Now, the next question is, do you care if, after the event, everybody in town knows you were involved?”

This apparently hadn’t occurred to him, because he looked startled. His brow creased in a frown.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said. “I’m a stranger here, nobody knows my real name, and I don’t care if I ever come back again. But this is your home town. Fifteen minutes after the heist there will be radiograms about us going all over the state. All they’ll have on me is a description, and I’m a pretty average-looking guy. But your real name will go out, your known habits—everything. What about that?”

He asked uncertainly, “Couldn’t we wear masks?”

I gave him an amused smile. “You mean sit around in the joint wearing them, waiting for the diversion? Even if we did, if you disappear from town, everybody’s going to know why.”

It began to register on him that I was working up to something. “So what’s your suggestion?” he asked.

“I don’t think you ought to bug out. After the job, I think you ought to sit pat for a couple of weeks before you take off.”

“But suppose I’m recognized?”

“You won’t be there. I can handle Sam and the bartender alone. We’ll give you the safer job of creating the diversion.”

He eyed me fishily. “Then how do I collect my cut?”

“We’ll work that out some way. Arrange to meet somewhere in a couple of weeks.”

He gave his head a slow shake. “You mentioned a minute ago that nobody around here knows your real name, which, I suppose, includes me. It isn’t George Snyder, is it?”

“Nope,” I admitted cheerfully.

“Then I’d never find you if you left me holding the bag. I’m gonna stick right by your side until we split.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t really expected him to be that much of a patsy, but it had been worth the try. “Okay. I never skin a partner, but if you don’t trust me, we’ll work out something else. What’s your suggestion?”

He didn’t have any suggestions, so I made another one. I suggested we sleep on it.

As I unlocked the door to let him out, I said, “I want to case the lay some more. If you come in to Fat Sam’s tomorrow and see me there, don’t do any more than nod to me. Some of the customers may have noticed us talking today, and might think it funny if you completely ignored me. But we don’t want anyone to suspect we’re thick. We’re just casual acquaintances.”

All right,” he said. “You planning to park on the square tomorrow?”

“I’m not even going to drive onto it, if I can help it.”

“Then I’ll give you a tip. Lock your car. It would be safe on the square, because there’s always a lot of people around there, but not on a side street. Not even on a parking lot. The teen-agers in this town carry ignition jumpers. When they’re not turning in false alarms, they’re joy-riding in swiped cars. They always abandon them somewhere in town, so the owners get them back, but it’s a nuisance. Then, too, every so often they crack one up.”

“I’ll remember,” I said. “Now on further contacts, when’s the best time to catch you at home?”

“We eat at six. If you phoned at five of, you’d always catch me.”

“All right. I’ll make a point of calling you at five of six every evening, whether anything has developed or not. If something has, we’ll arrange another meeting.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll expect your call tomorrow then.”

I let him out and went to bed.

Saturday morning I put on a sport shirt and jacket so as to be less conspicuous in town. I skirted the square by taking the streets a block away from it and making a complete circle around it. There were parking lots behind the buildings on all four sides, I discovered the one immediately behind Fat Sam’s Bar and Grill was for the sheriff’s office, but on the east side there was a lot behind a supermarket. An alley running east and west cut into the northeast corner of the square and ran right past the parking lot, so that the tavern entrance wasn’t more than a hundred feet from the lot.

That would be the best place to leave the car while pulling the job, I decided. The next step was to carefully plan the escape route.

On the opposite side of the lot from the alley was East Central, the street by which I had entered town. I recalled that it was a stop street, clear to the edge of town, with no signal lights to slow you down.

Getting out a road map, I located a secondary road about a half-mile beyond the east edge of town which cut south for about two miles, then linked to a main highway which ran southwest. Southwest was the general direction in which I had been heading ever since I left New York.

I drove out East Central to the secondary road, cut across to the main highway, and turned right. I stayed on the highway for a good thirty miles to make sure no construction was going on which would sidetrack me into detours. Then I pulled into a station for gas, turned around, and drove back.

It would be unnecessary to heist a car for the job, I decided. Neither Fat Sam Cooney nor his bartender knew what mine looked like, and no one was likely to pay any attention when I drove off the parking lot after the job, because I planned to arrange things so that no alarm would be raised for some minutes afterward. I figured I should be thirty miles on my way before the cops could get road blocks set up or trace my car.

Parking on the supermarket lot, I carefully locked the car and walked up the alley to the tavern. I timed the walk by the sweep hand of my watch. It took me twenty-five seconds.

The square wasn’t as crowded as it had been yesterday, but there were still a lot of people roaming the sidewalks. Fat Sam’s was just as crowded, though.

Andy Carr wasn’t in the place.

I had one beer. Then, as it was now approaching noon, I crossed the square to a restaurant for lunch. I got back about one p.m. and sat at a table the rest of the afternoon.

The crowd never abated. As fast as customers left, others filtered in. As my partner had indicated, there was no period slack enough to make a heist feasible.

About four-thirty Andy Carr came in, gave me a distant nod and went to the bar, where he got into conversation with a miner. He was learning, I noted with satisfaction, because he didn’t throw a single furtive look in my direction.

He left again at five-thirty. I waited another twenty-five minutes, then phoned him from the tavern’s booth. He answered immediately.

All day I had been musing over what kind of diversion we could plan to take place at exactly a minute to five on Friday, but nothing had jelled. I said, “No ideas so far. How about you?”

“I haven’t figured anything.”

“Then I’ll call you again tomorrow,” I said, and hung up.

The tavern was closed on Sunday, which I didn’t discover until I had driven downtown in the afternoon and found the square deserted. I killed the day by checking the escape route once again, this time taking the main highway a full hundred miles southwest without running into any construction.

If only I could think of a practical diversion, it would be in the bag.

The idea hit me on Monday. After lunch, as I was leaving the restaurant across the square from Fat Sam’s, I noted a small crowd gathered at the southwest corner and ambled over to see what was going on.

I must be picking up the habits of the townspeople, I thought ruefully, when I discovered what the attraction was. Like them, I was beginning to rush to rubberneck at anything which might relieve the boredom.

A workman was removing a fire-alarm box from a post and installing a new one.

I had walked away before the idea hit me. The alarm box was diagonally across the square from the tavern. Fire trucks pulling up there with their sirens whining would certainly empty the tavern. And that was something which could be timed almost to the second.

When I phoned Andy Carr at the usual time that night, I said, “Meeting tonight, same time.”

Again he showed just before nine-thirty. When I had mixed drinks for both of us, I got down to business.

“I’ve figured out the diversion,” I said. “You know that fire-alarm box at the southwest corner of the square?”

After thinking, he shook his head. “I never noticed it.”

“Well, there’s one there. Friday, just before five o’clock, you’re going to turn in a false alarm.”

His eyes widened. “In front of everybody? The square’s jammed at that time.”

“You’d be surprised at what you can get away with in a crowd, if you act natural,” I said. “If you just casually reach out and pull the hook as you walk by, I doubt that you’ll even be noticed.”

“But there’s a glass you have to break first,” he objected.

“You can take care of that late Thursday night, when the square’s deserted. Nobody’s likely to notice the glass is missing, because they just installed a new box today. They won’t be checking it so soon.”

After thinking this over, he became a little more enthusiastic. “Yeah, it should work. When fire engines come tearing into the square, the tavern should empty like magic.”

“We’ll have to figure just how long it will take engines to get to the scene. Where’s the fire station?”

“Out West Central, six blocks from the square. I’d guess it would take them about three minutes.”

“We’ll have to time it exactly,” I said. “Do you happen to know where there’s an alarm box six blocks from the station in some other direction than the square?”

He thought about it, finally shook his head. “I never went in for false alarms like the other kids when I was younger. I don’t know where any of them are.”

“I’ll drive around and check tomorrow,” I told him. “Meanwhile, we may as well work out the other details. Can you drive?”

“Sure.”

“Then here’s the plan. I’ll handle the inside work, and you’ll do the getaway driving. The car will be parked on the lot behind that supermarket on the east side of the square. It’s a gray Plymouth sedan with New York plates. After you pull the alarm, walk without hurry over to the lot, get the engine started, and face the car toward the exit onto East Central. When I come along with the money bag and jump in, head up East Central at a normal rate of speed.”

“I’ll need the keys,” he said. “How do I get them?”

After a moment’s thought, I said, “I’ll drive onto the lot at four-thirty. You be there. I’ll toss you the keys and head for the tavern. You head for the southwest corner of the square. Okay?”

“All right,” he agreed. “What happens after we take off?”

“Nobody will know you were involved in the heist, so I think you ought to follow my original suggestion and stay right in town. I’ll divide the loot as we’re driving up East Central, you can pull over and get out with your cut, a few blocks from the scene. I’ll slip over in the driver’s seat and keep going.”

The plan seemed to please him, for he smiled. “That sounds smooth.”

“That’s all for now,” I told him. “I’ll phone you again tomorrow at the usual time.”

After he was gone, I considered means of taking off with the whole take. As I would have a gun and he wouldn’t, it would be simple merely to force him out of the car empty-handed when he stopped on East Central.

I finally decided against this, though. It probably would make him sore enough to phone the sheriff an anonymous tip describing my car and giving the license number. It seemed better just to short-change him. As I would be doing the splitting and his attention would be on driving, it would be easy to count most of the big bills into my stack and drive off with two-thirds of the loot. As he wouldn’t know exactly what the bag contained, he could never be sure he’d been short-changed, no matter what he suspected when he counted his cut.

Tuesday I reconnoitered the area immediately around the fire station. Aside from the one at the square, there were no alarm boxes exactly six blocks from it. I found some at four-block distance and at eight-block distance, but I wanted exact timing.

Finally it occurred to me how to get it without needing an alarm box.

That evening when I phoned Carr, I set up another meeting. When he arrived at the usual time, I explained how we would make the test.

“There are no alarm boxes at the right distance from the station,” I said. “But you can phone in an alarm as easily as you can pull a hook. At exactly five minutes to five tomorrow, I want you to phone the fire station and report a fire at West Central and Clark. That’s exactly the same distance as the square, but in the opposite direction. How good a watch do you have?”

“Pretty good. It loses about a minute a month.”

“That’s only two seconds a day,” I said. “Mine gains about the same, so I’ll set it four seconds slower than yours. Let’s coordinate watches.”

After we had adjusted our watches, there was nothing to do until the next day.

At ten of five on Wednesday I parked at the corner of Clark and Woodrow, which was a block north of West Central and gave me a good view of the intersection of West Central and Clark.

At four minutes of five I heard a siren begin to sound from the direction of the firehouse, which meant it had taken just one minute after the alarm for the first engine to get rolling. A minute and forty seconds later a pump truck pulled up at the intersection with its siren tapering off to a moan.

Andy’s guess of three minutes had been within twenty seconds.

We wanted the first engine to arrive at the square at one minute to five on Friday. An earlier arrival might cause Fat Sam to run to see what the excitement was, along with the customers, before he took the money from the safe. A later one would allow him to get out of the tavern while it was still full of customers. As a few seconds one way or the other wouldn’t matter, however, I decided that if Andy pulled the hook at four minutes to five, the timing would be just about right.

There was no point in holding another meeting just for that. When I phoned Andy at the usual time, I said, “All set. I’ll give you the exact time when I see you at the parking lot Friday.”

“Okay,” he said. “Until four-thirty Friday, then.”

I stayed away from the tavern the next day. At four-thirty p.m. on Friday I pulled onto the supermarket parking lot and backed into a slot. Andy Carr strolled over from the alley as I got out of the car.

I locked the car before tossing him the keys. He would have plenty of time to unlock it, and I didn’t want to chance some teen-ager lousing us up by deciding to take a joy ride at the crucial moment.

“Did you take care of that glass last night?” I asked.

“There wasn’t any. It’s a new type of box that just has a little door you lift. When shall I pull it?”

“Exactly at four minutes to five. Let’s check watches again.”

They were together to the second.

Minutes later I was seated at a table in Fat Sam’s with a beer before me. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to me that, while Andy and I had coordinated time, we hadn’t checked to see if we agreed with the tavern clock. Hurriedly I glanced at my watch, then at the clock over the bar.

I relaxed when I saw that they were within seconds of each other.

At a quarter of five the fat proprietor came from behind the bar carrying a stack of bills, which I assumed represented the day’s receipts so far. When he entered the small office, for an instant I thought he was going to jump the gun and spoil all our plans. But as time passed without the door reopening, I realized he was probably counting money and making up a deposit slip.

At four minutes to five my heart began to pump, as it always does just before a job. Andy would be pulling the hook right now, I thought. And now he’s walking toward the parking lot.

At three minutes to five there was the growl of a siren some blocks away. Conversation ceased, and customers cocked their heads to listen. As the siren neared, one or two began to drift toward the door.

At a minute and twenty seconds to five the scream of the siren rose to a crescendo, then died off as the first engine entered the square. Customers scrambled toward the door in a body.

My partner would be in the car by now, I thought, and would probably already have the engine going.

Because the patrons could crowd through the door no more than two at a time, it took a little longer than I anticipated for the room to empty. But it worked out just right. The door swung closed behind the last one exactly at five.

The bartender moved from behind the bar and started to walk toward the door at the same moment the office door opened and Fat Sam stepped out carrying a canvas money bag.

Standing up, I drew my gun and said, “Freeze, both of you!”

Both stared at me with their mouths open. The barkeep slowly raised his hands.

“Drop the bag, Sam,” I said, aiming the gun at the fat man.

The sack hit the floor with a plop, and his hands shot overhead.

“Into the office, both of you,” I ordered, gesturing with my gun.

They didn’t give me any trouble. Both scurried into the room, eager to please.

Standing in the doorway, I glanced around the room. The only window was identical to those in the barroom, high and barred.

I said to Sam, “Get up the key to this door. And do it fast.”

He dropped his right hand, still leaving the left raised, and felt in his pants pocket. Producing an old-fashioned key, he tossed it to me.

Backing out, I locked them in and dropped the key into my pocket.

When I hit the street, carrying the canvas sack, no one at all was on this side of the square. The opposite side was jammed, though.

Unhurriedly I walked up the alley. The car was parked exactly where I had left it.

But Andy Carr wasn’t in the driver’s seat, and the car was still locked.

I turned cold. Even if I had been able to get into the car, I had nothing with which to make an ignition bridge. Rapidly I strode back down the alley and gazed at the crowd across the square. What the devil had happened to the idiot?

Returning to the car, I stood next to it in frustrated indecision for a couple of minutes. When Andy still failed to appear, I started checking cars parked nearby. All of them were locked.

Too much time was passing for it to be safe to linger any longer. At any moment the first customers would be drifting back into Fat Sam’s.

In desperation I headed on foot up East Central, hoping that I could flag down a ride and take over the car at gunpoint.

There was a lot of traffic on East Central, but it was all heading for the square. I had plodded six blocks before a shiny black sedan going in my direction came along. When I signaled with my thumb, it pulled over to the curb.

Too late I saw the small round sheriff’s department insigne on the front door. Before I could reach for my gun, I was covered by the deputy seated next to the driver.

I let the sack fall and raised my hands.

On the way back to the sheriff’s office, I asked bitterly, “What went wrong?”

“A couple of things,” the deputy who had handcuffed me said. “For one, while it was smart of you to lock Sam and his bartender in the office, you neglected to notice the phone on his desk. He was phoning us about you as you walked out the door.”

After glumly considering this, I said, “What was the other thing I did wrong?”

“Your choice of a partner. Andy Carr is locally known as the gutless wonder. The minute we realized the false alarm had been turned in to clear the tavern, we knew Andy had to be your accomplice. It took us roughly two minutes to break him down and get the whole story.”

“But how did you catch up with him?” I inquired.

The deputy laughed. “We didn’t have to. He waited for us. We’ve had so much trouble with false alarms around here, the fire department just installed a new type of alarm box. When you pull the hook, a manacle automatically closes around your wrist and holds you there until the battalion chief arrives with a key.”

ERRAND BOY

Originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, March 1965.

“Do you have to go out again tonight?” Phyllis Stroud asked petulantly.

Barney Stroud tilted up her chin to give her an apologetic kiss on the nose. “Do you think I like leaving you alone, baby? You know I’m nuts about you.”

This wasn’t just husbandly flattery. Even after two years of marriage Barney was still astonished at having managed to snare a wife such as Phyllis. She was not only the most beautiful woman he had ever known, with a lovely, sensitive face surrounded by a halo of honey blonde hair, and possessing a figure which popped men’s eyes, but she had class. Though her parents were now broke because of some unwise investments by her father, Phyllis was a Caldwell, and in St. Vincent the name Caldwell was equivalent to Cabot or Lodge in Boston.

Phyllis was a Vassar graduate. Barney had grown up in the slums of St. Vincent and had quit school at sixteen. He not only loved his wife, he was deeply awed by her background.

A lot of people were. If they hadn’t been, Phyllis could hardly have lifted her racketeer husband into her own elite social set, but instead would have been summarily dropped from the social register for marrying so far beneath her. But in St. Vincent a Caldwell could do no wrong. Barney was quite aware that he was tolerated by St. Vincent high society solely because he was Phyllis’ husband.

The only thorn in his Garden of Eden was that he didn’t know how to handle his wife when she became condescending. Before he met and married Phyllis, Barney had always practiced the role of the dominant male. If one of his old flames from the south side had ever spoken to him half as belittlingly as Phyllis often did, he would have slapped her silly. But you can’t treat a goddess the same way you treat a tramp. Even when his wife sometimes informed him that the only reason she had married an unschooled racketeer was because he had money, it only made him miserable instead of angry. He wasn’t about to do anything which might cause Phyllis to walk out on him.

“What is it tonight?” she asked with a touch of ice. “More errand running for Johnny Nash?”

Barney had given up trying to explain to Phyllis that as third man from top in the Drennan-Nash combine he was considerably more than an errand boy. Because she disliked Johnny Nash, she seemed to have the peculiarly fixed idea that the man deliberately cut in on Barney’s evenings by dreaming up unnecessary chores for him to perform.

Oddly, she never made similar objections when he was called out at night by Nash’s partner, Mark Drennan. She seemed to like Drennan, or at least to accept him socially.

Of course Drennan had a veneer of breeding which put him at ease in Phyllis’ social set, while Johnny Nash looked and talked like what he was: a successful gangster. Furthermore Mark Drennan, who was a bachelor, never showed up at Phyllis’ social affairs with a feminine partner who didn’t fit in, whereas Johnny Nash always did on the rare occasions he was invited. He couldn’t avoid it, because his feminine partner was always his wife, a beautiful but ungrammatical woman who gave away her ex-stripper background every time she opened her mouth.

As one of her husband’s bosses, Johnny Nash and his wife had to be invited to at least some of Phyllis’ parties, but she hated to have either one in the house.

Barney said pacifically, “Johnny’s not even in town. I have to drop some tally sheets by Mark’s place.”

“Oh,” she said, mollified. “Will you be long?”

“Not more than an hour,” he assured her.

As he drove away from the house, Barney thought aggrievedly that he wasn’t as bad a catch as Phyllis liked to make out. Maybe he didn’t have the education and social grace of her friends, but he was more of a bargain physically than any of them. He stood six feet two, without an ounce of fat on him, and the girls on the south side had considered him about the handsomest guy around. Anyway, under Phyllis’ tutelage, he had managed to develop enough surface polish and to straighten out his grammar enough so that her friends seldom, any more, looked down their noses at him.

And he certainly had more money than most of her friends. Phyllis had a hundred-thousand-dollar home in which to entertain, she drove her own Lincoln convertible, wore Paris fashioned clothes, owned a couple of minks and nearly as much jewelry as Tiffany’s. Which wasn’t bad progress for a young man of twenty-six who had owned only one pair of pants ten years before.

Of course, as Phyllis liked to point out, he had come to a dead end. The only move upward left to make would be to take over top spot from the Drennan Nash partnership, and neither partner was likely to retire voluntarily for at least another twenty-five years.

At sixteen Barney Stroud had started running numbers for the Drennan-Nash combine, which at that time was just beginning to organize the city’s divergent rackets into a single centrally-controlled organization. Mark Drennan and Johnny Nash, respectively only twenty-four and twenty-five themselves, had moved in on existing rackets with a combination of brashness, muscle and organizing knowhow which left the combine in undisputed control of local rackets by the time Barney could vote.

He had moved right along with it, rising from runner to muscle man, then to district manager and, finally, to “thumb man” in charge of all collections and payoffs.

Barney was already third man from top when he met and married Phyllis. He had been pretty proud of that position until she began belittling him as an “errand boy.” But now he did considerable dreaming about eventually moving into top spot. His dreams weren’t inspired by ruthless ambition, for actually he was quite content with his lot. It was just that he envisioned commanding his wife’s respect if he was in a position to give orders instead of taking them.

It was only idle dreaming, though. Mark Drennan was now only thirty-four and Johnny Nash thirty-five. By the time either decided to retire, Barney would be in his mid-fifties himself.

Of course premature retirement could be effected with a gun, but this was impractical.

The dream had become persistent enough to make Barney think of resolving his problem with a gun, but he had discarded the idea almost as soon as he thought of it. This wasn’t the roaring twenties, when an ambitious young hood could blast his way to the top. Modern rackets were conducted as businesses, with a minimum of headline-making violence. The general public no longer stoically accepted gang killings, and the politicians, without whose protection rackets couldn’t exist, were leery of aroused public opinion. The local officials who accepted the combine’s payoff to prevent the police from interfering with its activities would never stand still for anything even remotely resembling old-fashioned gang warfare.

Barney knew that even if he managed to beat the raps legally, he couldn’t win by using his gun on Drennan and Nash. The finger would point straight at him, and the local administration wouldn’t require legal evidence to dump him. As nobody, regardless of the guns behind him, could take over without political backing, anything as crude as murder would bounce Barney right out of the picture altogether.

So Barney Stroud merely dreamed of how nice it would be to become top dog. He didn’t really plan to do anything about it.

* * *

It was about nine p.m. Barney parked in front of Mark Drennan’s house. Ordinarily he delivered tally sheets to Johnny Nash, as Nash handled the routine business end of the partnership, while the more suave Drennan was the contact man who lined up and paid off the necessary officials. But tonight Johnny Nash was out of town and Barney had instructions to deliver tallies to Drennan whenever Nash wasn’t available.

Although Mark Drennan was a bachelor, he maintained a seven room ranch style house on Shannon Drive in one of St. Vincent’s most exclusive sections. Barney supposed it was because he liked to entertain, though most of his parties were rumored to consist of only himself and some lone woman. Drennan had the reputation of being something of a Casanova.

The front of the house was dark when Barney came up the front walk, but he noted light streaming through some French doors at the side. As he knew the French doors gave onto a small play room where there was a bar, he guessed that Drennan was there and walked around to the side.

As he approached the French doors, he saw a man and woman standing in front of the bar clasped in each other’s arms. The man, tall, lean and darkly handsome, half faced the doors so that Barney could see he was Mark Drennan. As the woman’s back was to him, he could see only that she was a slim and shapely brunette.

Barney paused, not wishing to interrupt such an intimate scene. Then the woman disengaged herself from the embrace and picked up one of two drinks setting on the bar. The movement placed her profile to Barney.

With a sense of shock Barney recognized her as Nina Nash.

He stood still, momentarily appalled at Mark Drennan’s perfidy. Even though Drennan was a notorious woman chaser, it would never have occurred to Barney that he would poach on the domain of his own partner, who was also supposed to be his best friend.

Quietly he faded back toward the front of the house. After standing indecisively for a few moments, he mounted the porch and rang the front doorbell.

A couple of minutes passed before a light went on in the front room and the door opened. There was a frown on Mark Drennan’s handsome face when he peered out, but his expression cleared when he saw who his visitor was.

“Hi, Barney,” he said. “What’s up?”

Beyond Drennan, Barney could see that the doorway to the playroom had been left open, but the room was now dark. He said, “Just the week’s tally sheets. Johnny’s out of town, you know.” He held out the manila envelope containing the tally sheets.

“Oh, yeah,” Brennan said, accepting the envelope. “I’d forgotten that.”

Forgotten it, hell, Barney thought. He’d taken full advantage of it.

“Come in for a drink?” Brennan asked without moving aside. His tone was more polite than enthusiastic.

Barney was tempted, just to see what evasive action Nina Nash would take, but he decided against it.

“No thanks,” he said. “Phyllis is waiting for me at home.”

During the drive back home Barney brooded over what he had seen. And as the shock abated, it gradually dawned on him that he had stumbled onto something which might move him right into the top slot.

No one would suspect Barney if one of the partners was gunned and the other was convicted of the crime. The idea had tentatively occurred to him once before, but he had rejected it because he couldn’t think of any motive the police would swallow. The partners got along too amicably for the police to accept that either would gun the other merely to take over control of the combine alone.

But a love triangle offered a perfect motive for murder.

When he entered the house, Phyllis was in the bar off the front room working on the invitation list for her next party. Offering a cool cheek for his kiss of hello, she asked preoccupiedly. “How’s Mark?”

“Fine,” he said.

She added a name to the list, then glanced lip. “Do you think we can skip Johnny and Nina again this time?”

Walking over behind the bar to mix himself a drink, Barney said, “They’re going to start suspecting how you feel about them, hon. And, after all, I have to get along with Johnny.”

“Yes, I suppose an errand boy can’t afford to offend the boss,” she said, making a face. “I wish you didn’t have to take orders from that man. I would have more respect for you if you quit the whole setup and went into some honest business.”

He poured soda on top of whisky. “You knew what I was when you married me.”

“Not exactly, darling. I knew you were some kind of gangster, which held a certain fascination for me, because I’d never known an underworld character before. But I didn’t realize you took orders from such a crude boor as Johnny Nash. It’s not your profession I object to. It’s probably the only one in which you could make enough money to suit me. It’s just your status in the profession that turns my stomach.”

Barney stirred his drink and sampled it. Resting his elbows on the bar, he gazed at his wife’s profile.

“You wouldn’t fuss so much if I was top dog, huh?”

She was busy with her list again. Preoccupiedly she said, “I wouldn’t fuss at all.” Barney came to a decision. He was going to take advantage of what he had learned tonight.

He lay awake and thought about it long after Phyllis had gone to sleep. The first step, he decided, was to make sure the motive would come to light immediately after the murder, before the police had time to look in any other direction. And the surest way to accomplish that was to let the affair between Mark Drennan and Johnny Nash’s wife become known to the police in advance.

He could hardly just inform them. But there was a way to let information seep to the police naturally without leaving any trace of its source. A rumor planted in the underworld grapevine would eventually reach some informer, who in turn would relay it on to the police.

Of course if the rumor also reached either Drennan or Nina Nash, caution might cause them to break off the affair. But he was reasonably certain that none of the principals would hear the gossip, because those talked about are always last to hear.

The next morning Barney entered a pool hall on lower State Street. Singling out a tall, lanky man of about forty who was idly watching a snooker game, Barney called him aside.

“I’ve got a little private job for you, Bulletin,” he said. “Can you keep your mouth shut?”

Bulletin Willie Gloff nodded eagerly. “Sure, Barney. You know me.”

Barney did know him, which was the reason he had picked him. Bulletin Willie got his nickname from his chronic eagerness to be the first to pass on gossip. As he worked as a leg man for a half dozen of the combine’s bookies, he had daily contacts with a lot of people. No one could spread a rumor faster than Bulletin Willie Gloff.

“This is strictly confidential,” Barney said. “I don’t want you to mention it to a soul.”

Bulletin Willie raised his right hand. “I’m a clam, Barney.”

“Okay. This has to do with the good of the organization. I’m a little worried about Johnny.”

“Johnny Nash?”

“Nuh-huh. You know how nuts he is about his wife.”

“Sure. Something happen to Nina?”

“Not yet. And I want to make sure it doesn’t. I got wind that she’s doing a little drifting.”

The lanky man emitted a soundless whistle. “Johnny’ll knock her ears off. Who with?”

“That I didn’t hear. I want to make sure the scoop is right before I got off half-cocked by giving her the Dutch uncle bit. Johnny would blow his lid if I stuck my nose in and it turned out there was nothing to it.”

Bulletin Willie nodded sagely. “Yeah, I can see how it’d be a kind of delicate spot for you. You’d like to nip it, but you can’t just walk up to Nina and start accusing her. If she’s innocent, she’d run crying to Johnny and he’d come down on you with both feet.”

“You get the picture. I have to know for sure before I make a move. If it’s a bum steer, I’ll keep my trap shut, but if she is drifting, I want to know it. You follow me?”

“Sure. You want me to do some tailing.”

“I want you on her every night. Days don’t matter, because she won’t be playing footsie while the sun’s out, but you have her staked out by dusk every night. I want to know everywhere she goes and everybody she sees.”

“You can count on me, Barney. I’ll stick to her like a can tied to a cat’s tail.”

Barney took out his wallet and removed a fifty-dollar bill. “Here’s something for your trouble. Do a good job and I’ll match it.”

That took care of that, he thought as he left the pool hall. Even if the rumor was traced back to its source, which was unlikely, no one could say that Barney Stroud had ever mentioned Mark Drennan and Nina Nash in the same breath. All he had to do now was relax and let nature take its course.

Four nights later, on a Sunday, Bulletin Willie phoned him at home.

“Anybody listening?” he asked.

“Yes,” Barney said. Phyllis was seated not ten feet away.

“Then I’ll hold it until morning. About nine o’clock at the pool hall?”

“Okay,” Barney said, and hung up.

“Who was that?” Phyllis asked.

“Business,” he said, which killed her interest.

At nine Monday morning he found Bulletin Willie waiting for him at the pool hall. The lanky man was so bursting with news, he could hardly contain himself.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “But it’s gospel truth. Saturday she spent the whole blame night at a guy’s place.”

“What guy?”

Bulletin Willie grinned, drawing it out in order to increase the suspense. “You’re never going to believe it.”

“Try me,” Barney said impatiently.

The lanky man let a pause build before saying with relish, “Mark Drennan.”

Barney let his eyes register shock, then narrow. After a moment of silence, he took out his wallet and gave the man another fifty-dollar bill.

Bulletin Willie pocketed the bill. “Johnny will kill him,” he commented.

“Not if he never finds out,” Barney said. “I’ll take it from here. Just keep your mouth shut.”

“Sure, Barney. I wouldn’t say anything.”

Except to your friends, in strict confidence, Barney thought. He gave the gossip three days to spread all over the grapevine.

His estimate was conservative. Within two days he had heard the news from three different sources that Mark Drennan was carrying-on an affair with Nina Nash.

The following Saturday was Phyllis’ party, and both the Nashes and Mark Drennan were there. In public Nina and Drennan were being very cautious, Barney noted. Except for one duty dance, Drennan didn’t go near the woman all evening.

Johnny Nash, big and wide-shouldered and somehow rumpled-looking despite his perfectly pressed two-hundred-dollar suit, as usual spent most of the evening at the bar. About midnight Barney drifted over next to him.

“Having fun?” he asked.

The big man shrugged. “You know me, Barney. These friends of yours ain’t exactly in my class. I come because Nina likes to rub shoulders with the aristocracy.”

“Oh, they’re not so bad when you get to know them,” Barney told him. “Buy you a drink?”

“Sure,” Nash said, draining his glass and setting it on the bar.

The white-coated bartender Phyllis had hired for the evening was snowed under. Barney walked behind the bar and personally mixed Nash a new drink, using a fresh glass.

As he handed it to Nash, he said, “Nina seems to be having a good time.”

Nash turned to look toward his wife, who was dancing with a portly stockbroker named Myron Wood. With a paper napkin protecting his fingers, Barney quickly lifted the used glass and set it in the waste receptacle beneath the bar. He dropped the napkin over it.

He hadn’t definitely devised a murder plan yet, but a glass with Johnny Nash’s fingerprints on it might come in handy.

Hours later, after everyone had gone home, he retrieved the glass and hid it behind some bottles in the liquor storage cabinet.

Before he was able to devise a workable plan, Barney had to postpone the whole thing. The syndicate which furnished the combine its turf news and form sheets announced a hike in price. The syndicate was headquartered in Kansas City and the local branch printery claimed it had no control over the decision. Mark Drennan sent Barney to Kansas City to register an objection and try to dicker the price back down. It took him three weeks to work out a compromise deal.

The evening he got back, he found Phyllis all dressed to leave the house.

“Where we going?” he asked. “I planned to spend tonight at home.”

“You are,” she told him. “Mother’s not feeling well. She asked me to spend the night with her.”

Phyllis’ father had died about six months before, and her mother wasn’t in very good health. With increasing frequency the old lady asked her only daughter to spend nights with her. Barney could hardly object, but he often wished Phyllis would be as conscientious about his welfare as she was about her mother’s.

His first night back he had to sleep alone.

The front for the combine’s business ventures was the Drennan-Nash Realty Company in downtown St. Vincent. Mark Drennan didn’t show up the next morning, and as operation costs was something in Drennan’s province instead of Nash’s, Barney phoned his home at noon. Drennan sounded as though he had been awakened from a sound sleep.

“I was in an all-night poker game,” he informed Barney. “Tell Johnny I won’t be in today. Want to drop by here tonight to make your report?”

“All right,” Barney said. “See you about nine.”

Phyllis didn’t make her usual objection to his going out at night when she learned his business was with Drennan instead of Nash. Barney arrived promptly at nine and found Mark Drennan at home alone.

“Come in,” Drennan said cordially, and led Barney back to the play room. “Drink?”

“A little bourbon and soda,” Barney said.

Drennan went behind the bar to mix two drinks, then rested his forearms on the bar.

“Any success?” he inquired.

“Some. They’re willing to split the difference. They claim rising printing costs.”

Mark Drennan pursed his lips. “Everything’s going up,” he conceded. “But how do we know they won’t hike the price again a month from now?”

“I got a two-year contract.”

Drennan’s expression cleared. “That’s pretty good work, Barney. I guess you were worth developing. I told Johnny when you first came to work for us that you were a sharp kid.”

Barney merely smiled modestly.

By the time he had explained the new contract in detail, their glasses were empty and Drennan mixed another drink. “Long as you’re here, Barney, want to do me a favor?”

“Sure, Mark. What?” Coming from behind the bar, Drennan disappeared into the other room. He returned carrying a German Borchardt-Luger. Drawing back the slide to lock it open, he checked to make sure it was empty and handed it to Barney.

“Just picked this up,” he said. “Isn’t it a beauty?”

After examining it, Barney clicked the slide shut. “Sure is.”

“Mind dropping by police headquarters and registering it for me tomorrow?” Drennan asked. “Have my permit switched over from my thirty-eight to this too.”

The combine was careful not to lay its members open to possible concealed weapons charges. With its political influence, it didn’t have to risk such minor infractions of the law. Every member of the combine who was authorized by Drennan and Nash to carry a gun had it registered and had a gun permit.

“Sure,” Barney said, dropping the gun in his pocket.

The phone rang and Drennan went into the front room to answer it.

At that moment the plan Barney had been seeking for took shape in all its details.

His tentative idea had been to gun Drennan and let Johnny Nash take the blame. But now he realized that the jealousy motive would fit just as well if Drennan was framed for Nash’s murder. And he had just been handed the means to frame the kill that way.

In the front room he could hear Drennan talking on the phone. Quickly rounding to behind the bar, he placed a fresh glass on it, took out his handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprints and poured Drennan’s drink from the old glass into the new. Three steps took him to the French doors. Easing one side open, he slipped outside and set the glass containing Drennan’s fingerprints on the grass to one side of the doorway.

He was back inside again, leaning against the bar, when Drennan returned.

“Johnny Nash, giving me mild hell for goofing off today,” Drennan said with a grin.

When Barney finished his second drink, he said, “I’d better run along, Mark. I’ve hardly seen Phyllis yet since I got back. Thanks for the drinks.”

Outside he slipped around the side of the house, carefully staying close to the building so that he couldn’t be seen through the French doors, and retrieved the highball glass, again using his hand kerchief.

At home he concealed the glass in the same place as the one containing Nash’s fingerprints. He was pleased to note that the glasses were identical in size and shape.

The following morning Barney dropped by police headquarters, handed over the Luger so that the record clerk could copy off the serial number and had the gun registered in Mark Drennan’s name. He also had the carrying permit changed to the new gun.

When he left headquarters he drove to a sporting goods store and bought a Borchardt-Luger exactly like the one he had just registered. When he got to the Drennan-Nash Realty Company, he delivered the second Luger to Mark Drennan. The one which was registered was locked in the glove compartment of his car.

He had to wait two more weeks before the precise set of circumstances necessary to carrying out his plan developed. Two factors were necessary: Johnny Nash had to be home alone and Mark Drennan must have no alibi.

Both circumstances developed on a Friday. Johnny Nash announced that his wife’s mother in Chicago had died, and that Nina had flown to Chicago that morning. She planned to be gone a week, Johnny said. Hardly fifteen minutes later Mark Drennan told Barney he intended to spend the weekend at his cabin on Mud Lake.

“Alone?” Barney asked.

“Sure. I always fish alone. Every once in a while I need the solitude. You have the phone number up there in case you have to get in touch with me, haven’t you?”

Barney nodded. “Yeah, I have it. When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

Things worked out even better than Barney could reasonably have expected. Saturday afternoon Phyllis announced that her mother was again ill and that she was spending the night with her. Barney didn’t figure he would need an alibi, but it was convenient not to have a witness who could testify that he was away from home at the time of the killing.

He said, “Okay, hon. I’m kind of bushed anyway. I’ll hit the sack early and get a decent night’s sleep for a change.”

The Nashes employed two servants, but neither lived in. To make sure they would be gone for the evening, he waited until ten p.m. before phoning the Nash home. Johnny Nash answered.

“You going to be home for a while?” Barney asked.

“I was planning to go to bed. Why?”

“A little business. I’ll stop over in about a half hour.”

“Okay,” Nash said. “I’ll wait up for you.”

Barney hung up and dialed station-to-station to Drennan’s Mud Lake cabin.

When Drennan’s voice said, “Hello,” Barney said, “I get you out of bed?”

“Oh, hello, Barney. Yeah, but I wasn’t asleep yet.”

“Anybody listening?”

“No. I’m all alone.” Barney’s sole motive in phoning was to make sure Drennan had no alibi witness, but he had to give some excuse for the call. He said, “Hank Brassard, who runs the book at Fourth and State has been holding out, I just found out. I planned to run over and lean on him a little, but I thought I’d better check first.”

“Couldn’t you have checked with Johnny?”

“He seems to be out.”

“Oh. Well, use your own judgment. You’re a big boy. You don’t have to check stuff like that with me.”

“Okay,” Barney said. “Hope you catch a fish.”

Carrying a briefcase, he arrived at the west-side mansion where Johnny Nash lived at ten thirty. Nash, wearing a robe and slippers, admitted him and led him into the huge front room.

“Drink?” he asked.

“No thanks,” Barney said. “Anybody here?”

When Nash shook his head, Barney opened the briefcase and took out the Luger, now equipped with a silencer. Johnny Nash’s eyes were just beginning to widen when the bullet crashed into his heart.

Without haste Barney detached the silencer, replaced it in the briefcase and wiped the gun clean. Dropping it on the floor, he lifted Nash’s body to a seated position on the sofa. Positioning a chair on the opposite side of a low cocktail table from the sofa, he wrapped his handkerchief around his hand and removed two highball glasses from the briefcase one at a time, setting them side-by-side on the cocktail table.

Going behind the bar, he carried a bottle of whisky and a seltzer siphon over to the cocktail table. After dribbling a little whisky into each glass, he squirted an ounce of seltzer on top of it. He carefully wiped off the bottles before replacing them where he had found them.

The glasses behind the bar were not the same type as the ones he had brought, he noted. It was a good thing he had come equipped with two, as different sized glasses might have struck the police as odd. He felt a touch of uneasiness that no other glasses on the backbar matched the ones on the cocktail table, then decided that probably no one would notice, since the two on the table matched.

He left the front-room lights on and opened the front window drapes before letting himself out. He drove directly home and phoned the police.

“I was just driving by a house when I heard a shot from inside it,” he said. “It’s at twelve twenty-four Urban Drive in the Chensworth district.”

“Who are you?”

“A neighbor from up the street.”

The murder occurred too late to make the Sunday morning papers, but it was on the air. The announcer said that as the result of an anonymous phone call reporting gunfire at Nash’s home, police had visited the place. When there was no answer to their ring, an officer had peered through a window into the lighted front room, had spotted Nash’s body and the police had then broken in.

Beyond these bare details, the police had as yet issued no statement, but the news commentator surmised that inasmuch as Johnny Nash had been a known racketeer, it had been a gang killing.

At three p.m. Barney got the first of a series of phone calls from combine personnel wondering if he had heard the news. Pretending that he hadn’t, he phoned police headquarters for details.

As the combine had pretty good relations with the police, the desk man was cooperative enough, but he didn’t have much information to pass out. He told Barney that they had the murder weapon and were running a check on it and that they also had the killer’s fingerprints, but a make hadn’t as yet come back from the R. and I. bureau. He also informed him that a wire had been sent off to Nash’s wife in Chicago.

Phyllis came home at four p.m., completely unaware of what had happened. She exhibited more surprise than shock at the news, and her first reaction was eminently practical.

“How will this affect you?” she asked.

“It won’t. Mark will just start running things by himself. He’s hardly likely to elevate me to partnership.”

“Well, at least the police can’t look your way then. My first thought was that maybe you had gotten ambitious.”

Barney felt a tingle move along his spine. “What kind of a crack is that?”

“I was just searching for a motive. Somebody obviously had one. But since you don’t stand to gain anything, you shouldn’t fall under suspicion. Has Nina been informed?”

“The cops sent her a wire,” he said shortly.

Monday morning Barney and Phyllis were at breakfast when the district attorney’s secretary phoned. She asked Barney to come down to the office and bring his wife with him.

“Why my wife?” he inquired.

“Mr. Eland didn’t say, but he wants you both.”

When Barney informed Phyllis of the call, she frowned. “I suppose it’s about Johnny Nash, but why do they want me?”

“Eland’s secretary didn’t know, but she was pretty definite about it.”

When they arrived at the district attorney’s office, they were escorted right into Maurice Eland’s private office. Mark Drennan was already there. He smiled at both Barney and Phyllis as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

Short, plump District Attorney Maurice Eland was plainly uncomfortable, which didn’t surprise Barney. Since the man was on the payroll of the combine, there were two factors in this affair to upset him. He wouldn’t like the headlines about Johnny Nash’s death being a gang killing, and he wouldn’t be enthusiastic about having to prosecute one of the men who lined his pockets. He bustled about nervously placing chairs before his desk for his trio of visitors before seating himself behind the desk.

“We have a pretty embarrassing situation here,” he announced. “I’m hoping you can straighten it out, Barney.”

Barney hiked his eyebrows, but remained silent.

Mark Drennan said offhandedly, “They’re trying to pin Johnny’s kill on me, Barney. Seems my gun was found at the scene and checked out as the murder weapon. There was also a highball glass with my fingerprints on it.”

Phyllis emitted a little gasp. “Mark! You didn’t!”

Drennan gave her a reassuring smile. “Hardly. When I was picked up, I was carrying a gun exactly like the murder weapon, but it seems it wasn’t registered to me. Somewhere along the line there was a switch.”

Maurice Eland cleared his throat. “If Mark did commit this crime, he seems to have been incredibly sloppy about it. Which inclines me to give credence to his claim that it’s a frame. That’s why you’re here, Barney.”

“What do I know about it?”

“Time of death has been pretty definitely established as around ten thirty Saturday night,” the D.A. said. “The body was discovered only an hour later, so they were able to cut it pretty close. Mark has advanced an alibi, and if it stands up, he’ll be in the clear despite the circumstantial evidence against him. He says you’re his alibi, Barney.”

Barney put a puzzled expression on his face. “At ten thirty Saturday night I was home in bed.”

“Mark claims he got a phone call from you at his Mud Lake cabin at ten Saturday night. If you can verify that, he obviously couldn’t have been in St. Vincent a half hour later. It’s a good hundred mile drive.”

Barney looked at Drennan, who had a waiting expression on his face. Barney let his own expression become dubious.

“Well?” Drennan asked. “What are you waiting for?”

Barney slowly shook his head. “Sorry, Mark. I’d do a lot for you, but not perjury.”

Mark Drennan seemed more regretful than disturbed. He said quietly, “You’re denying you phoned me. Barney?”

“I have to, because I didn’t.”

Drennan shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll have to spring my other alibi witness. I was hoping I wouldn’t. Tell Mr. Eland, honey.”

Barney’s gaze swung to his wife. Her sudden flush sent a shock wave through him.

When Phyllis remained silent, her eyes avoiding everyone in the room, Drennan said gently, “You have to talk, honey. Barney set this up, because he was the only one in a position to switch guns on me. The frame will work if you don’t talk.”

Phyllis’ flush deepened. After one quick glance at Barney, her eyes moved straight ahead to the space between Barney and Drennan. In a metallic voice she said, “I was at the cabin when my husband phoned. I had been there about an hour. I was still there until twelve noon on Sunday. Mark wasn’t out of my sight the whole time.”

Barney gaped back and forth from his wife to Drennan in stunned disbelief. “But—but Nina was the one—”

His voice trailed off.

“Not since your trip to Kansas City,” Drennan said calmly. “You haven’t any kick. All I stole was your wife. You tried to steal my life.”

Maurice Eland said with distaste, “It does seem pretty obvious that you tried to frame Mark, Barney. Which makes it equally obvious that you killed Johnny Nash.”

Barney pulled himself together enough to throw Phyllis a murderous glance. “Try to prove it,” he spat.

“Oh, I doubt that we could. I was just interested in seeing Mark cleared. What happens now is up to him.”

Mark Drennan came lazily erect, took Phyllis’ hand and drew her to her feet. Ignoring Barney, he said, “Shall we go, baby? I think we’re finished here.”

The chill didn’t begin to hit Barney until the door closed behind them.

Then he said huskily, “What do you mean, what happens now is up to Mark?”

“You ought to know that,” Eland said. “Johnny was his best friend.”

There were twenty-two members of the combine with gun permits, Barney thought. He was staggering slightly when he rose from his chair and left the office…

THE MOST ETHICAL MAN IN THE BUSINESS

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1965.

In my business it isn’t often that I get two assignments in the same month, let alone on the same day. I average about four contracts a year, which at my standard fee of five grand each just barely carries me.

You might think that twenty grand a year tax free would be enough to keep any bachelor in luxury, but I have an expensive hobby: girls. So I need all the business I can get.

The first of the two assignments came through regular channels and in the usual manner. It came by first-class mail in the inevitable thick manila envelope, addressed simply to Spencer Quade, with no Mr. preceding the name, and with no return address.

Inside were the usual 50 one-hundred-dollar bills wrapped in a single sheet of bond paper. There was also the key to a Yale lock, which isn’t as usual, but had happened once or twice before. On the paper was typed:

Date: Friday, March 6

Time: 8:30 p.m.

Place: Apt. 3-C, Grandview Apts., Sterling Road, Brooklyn (key enclosed) Description: Male Caucasian, age 35, hgt. 5’10”, wgt 165

Plan: It will be arranged for subject to win a substantial horse bet on the afternoon of March 6. He will be instructed to pick up his winnings at the above place at the above time. The apartment has been rented in an untraceable false name, so it will be unnecessary for you to clean up afterward.

There was, of course, no signature or any other means of identifying the sender.

It always gave me a lift to get a stack of hundred-dollar bills in the mail. Not just for the money, you understand, although I always needed that. The real lift came from pride—pride that my reputation for professional ethics was solid enough to bring me full payment in advance.

I knew there were a couple of others in the business who got half in advance, but I was the only one The Arranger trusted so completely that the whole fee arrived with the assignment.

It had taken a long time to build a solid enough reputation to earn that kind of respect. You don’t merit trust from The Arranger until you’ve proved over and over that you always deliver the goods and that you hit clean. There was a tacit understanding, of course, that if for some reason I was ever unable to finish an assignment, all the money would immediately be mailed back; but I had never had to do that and I never expected to. I didn’t want even any minor stains on my record and reputation as the most ethical man in the business.

I put the money in my money belt and strapped it under my shirt until I could get to the bank that afternoon. After memorizing the instructions, I burned the paper and ground out the ashes.

This was on the morning of Monday, March 2. That afternoon I visited the bank and transferred the five grand to my safe-deposit box. For current expenses I removed a couple of hundred from the rapidly shrinking amount previously in the box. Until I had completed my assignment, I wouldn’t touch the new five thousand even if the box became otherwise empty, because there was always the remotest possible chance that I’d have to return the fee.

At about 8:30 that evening my door chimes sounded. When I answered the door, I found Joey Thomas standing in the hall.

“Evening, Speck,” he said, giving me an uncertain smile. “Can I come in?”

Shrugging, I stepped aside to let him enter. I had nothing against Joey Thomas, but he was no bosom pal either. As a freelance legman and sometime strong-arm man for a half dozen bookies, he was more or less on the inside; but he didn’t carry enough weight to make him worth cultivating. I like to mingle socially only with the top echelons.

He stood in the center of my front room with the same uncertain smile on his face until I told him to sit down. When I asked if he wanted a drink, he accepted so eagerly that it was obvious he needed it.

I only mixed one, because I don’t drink myself. Not good for business.

When he was settled with a bourbon highball he said, “This isn’t a social call, Speck. It’s business—strictly business.”

I frowned. I hadn’t been aware that he was far enough on the inside to know my business. Of course, even those on the fringes could guess, from my known associations, that I must be in pretty solid with a lot of big people; but only those really high up were supposed to know precisely what my function was.

I said, “What makes you think I have any business?”

He downed most of his highball before speaking, presumably to give himself courage. “I heard some rumors—you know how it is—and finally figured it out. You’re not going to get sore at me, are you?”

I said irritably, “Even if I do, all you’re risking is a bawling out. What the devil are you so scared of?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you practicing your specialty on me.”

I made my voice cold. “If I had a specialty, as you call it, I’d practice it only for money. I wouldn’t waste it on a personal grudge.”

He breathed a little easier. “You do work for the—ah—The Arranger, don’t you?”

Practically everybody in the know has heard of The Arranger, so his reference to the Big Guy didn’t surprise me. It would have surprised me, though, if he knew who The Arranger was—because even I didn’t know that.

I said, “If I did, what business would it be of yours?”

“I want to hire you, Speck.”

After contemplating him for a moment I said, “The rumors you heard were all wrong. If you have business for The Arranger, go through proper channels. You must know some contacts.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “Only through proper channels the fee is ten grand, and I can’t raise that much. I figure your cut must be about half. So why don’t we eliminate the middleman? I can go sixty-five hundred, so we’d both be ahead.”

Before I tied in with The Arranger I used to free-lance, which had required working out my own deals. Nothing in my unwritten contract said I couldn’t take on an outside job, and I could certainly use the extra money. It was at least worth hearing out.

I said, “Bargain-basement shopping, huh? Go ahead and talk. I’m listening.”

He took a deep breath and said, “It’s my wife, Joan.”

Already I didn’t like it. I have no objection to hitting women, but I prefer these matters on an impersonal plane. When I get an assignment from The Arranger, I never even know the subject’s name—which is the way I like it.

In the old free-lance days I had frequently known who I was hitting, but I hadn’t worked a freelance job in a long time and had gotten in the habit of liking things the way they were. I even carried my preference for anonymous subjects to the point where I deliberately avoided newspapers, and radio and TV news reports, for days afterward—so I wouldn’t ever learn who the subject was.

I not only knew Joan Thomas, but I rather liked her. I didn’t know her well of course, but I had talked to her at parties and had even danced with her once or twice. She was a busty blonde in her late twenties, with slanting green eyes and a come-on smile which had started my heart pounding the first time I met her—until I learned she was married. Then I had backed off fast, because I never play around with married women. There is enough risk in my business without sticking my neck out for trouble in other areas.

I said, “I thought you and Joan got along pretty good.”

“She’s playing around with Gyp Fallon. She doesn’t even try to hide it. She spends more nights in his apartment than she does at home.”

“Then why don’t you get a divorce?” I suggested. “If what you say is true, it would be easy to get the evidence.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Drag Gyp Fallon into court as a correspondent? Are you kidding? I might as well commit suicide.”

He had a point there. Gyp Fallon was a big-time bookie who had a small army of goons. He was nothing for me to worry about, because nobody pushed any of The Arranger’s boys; but I could understand how a small-timer like Joey wouldn’t want Gyp on his tail.

I said, “So why don’t you just kick her out and let her move in with Gyp full time?”

“Because I’ve got someone else on the string too. And I’m gonna lose her if I don’t get legally free of Joan soon. Joan would go for a friendly divorce, all right, but she wants an arm and leg. She’s asking twenty grand outright, plus five hundred a month alimony.”

I formed my lips into a silent whistle. “You got that much?”

“I average about twelve thousand a year, Speck, which means I’d have to turn over half my income. As for the cash settlement, I own some lots I could sell for twenty grand, but in another five years they’ll be worth two or three times that. She knows that’s all I own and wants to clean me out.”

“If that’s all you have, how do you plan to get the sixty-five hundred you mentioned?”

“Oh, I’ve got about two grand in the bank. I plan to borrow another five on the lots. That way I’ll still own them.”

I rose to mix him another drink while I considered the proposition. If he had asked me to hit Gyp Fallon instead of his wife, it would be automatically out, because you don’t hit people of Fallon’s status without an okay from The Arranger. But Joan Thomas was nobody the upper echelon would care about. She was just a cute little blonde who used to work in a chorus line and was now married to a minor cog in the setup. Gyp Fallon might care, but while the top boys might frown on Gyp himself being hit without advance clearance, they wouldn’t give a hoot in Hades what happened to one of his female playmates.

There was the consideration that I was acquainted with the woman, which intruded a personal element I didn’t like, but $6500 more than counterbalanced that small annoyance.

When I handed Joey the fresh drink I said, “How soon can you come up with the money?”

“How soon can you do the job?” he countered.

“Let’s get something straight,” I said coldly. “I get paid the full amount in advance. Those are the terms. We don’t even discuss when I do the job until the money’s in my hand.”

He flushed slightly. “The full amount?”

“Every cent,” I assured him. “Apparently you didn’t hear those rumors from a very hep source.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you had you’d know I always get paid in advance.”

After considering this he said, “I did hear you never let a client down. But suppose something goes wrong? Then I’m out six and a half grand for nothing.”

“My jobs never go wrong. If, by some remote chance, this one does, you get your money back. Satisfaction guaranteed—clean hit or full refund.”

When he continued to look doubtful I said testily, “I’ve never crossed a client yet. I have a reputation for professional ethics to maintain. I don’t accept money and then fall down on the job. If you don’t like my conditions, go find yourself another boy.”

“I believe you,” he said quickly. “It may take me a few days to raise the money, though. How about Friday afternoon?”

Friday evening was when my other job was scheduled. I said, “Make it before five or I won’t be here. Bring it in hundred-dollar bills.”

“Okay,” he said, finishing his drink and rising. “Then the deal’s definitely on?”

“It’s on,” I assured him.

That evening I waited until after midnight, then made a reconnaissance of the address listed in my instructions from The Arranger.

The Sterling Road apartment house was near Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The name Grandview was a grandiose misnomer, because the only view from it was an identical apartment building on either side and another across the street. They weren’t exactly tenement buildings, but they weren’t high-class either. It was a typical workingman’s neighborhood, neither classy nor slummy.

There was no one on the street at that time of night and the March weather was too cold for anyone to be sitting outdoors on the stoops. I entered the building without anyone seeing me, bypassed a self-operated elevator, and took a flight of stairs to the third floor.

The Yale key let me into 3-C. It was a furnished apartment consisting of a front room, kitchen, bedroom, and bath. It was heated by hot-water radiators, and whoever had rented the place had adjusted the valves so that the rooms were comfortably warm.

There was no back door, which I didn’t much like—it’s always nice to have a choice of exits. However, there was never any trouble when The Arranger planned things, so it didn’t worry me too much.

I knew the planning had been thorough. For instance, I didn’t have to worry about the possibility of the subject arriving accompanied by some friend, because The Arranger would take care of that. How was none of my concern. Perhaps it was known that the subject never picked up winnings in front of witnesses—maybe because he owed too much money and didn’t want his creditors to find out he’d made a killing. Whatever the reason, The Arranger never left such matters to chance.

Without removing my thin leather gloves, I took out the .38 automatic I had brought, fitted the silencer to it, and put it in the top drawer of the dresser in the bedroom. A gun with a foot-length silencer attached to it is a pretty bulky object, and I preferred not to bring it in with me the next time I came to the apartment, which would be early in the evening. There was always the chance that at that time I might be seen by some tenant in the hall, and that big bulge under my coat would make me remembered.

After thoroughly checking the place, I turned off all the lights and left as quietly as I had arrived.

* * *

About four p.m. on Friday afternoon Joey Thomas showed up as he had promised. He counted out 65 one-hundred-dollar bills.

When I had recounted them, I took them into my bedroom, put them into my money belt, then strapped the belt around my waist under my shirt.

Back in the front room I said, “All right. Now tell me something about your wife’s habits. You can skip any hen parties she goes to. I’m interested only in times and places she’ll be alone.”

He thought this over for a while, then said, “Daytimes she’s home alone most of the time. Friday afternoon you’d be sure to find her. That’s when she washes her hair.

“Good. What’s your living setup?”

He described the Manhattan apartment where they lived. It was a fifth-floor apartment in a building so large that hardly anyone would know any of the other tenants, and no one would be likely to pay any attention to a stranger passing in the halls. Besides, I knew how to be unobtrusive, so there was little chance of my being noticed even if I did meet a tenant or two.

“Got an extra key?” I asked.

He said dubiously, “Won’t the cops think it funny if you get in by key?”

“They won’t know it,” I told him. “They’ll figure I rang the bell, then forced my way inside when she answered the door. Don’t worry. When I leave, things will look as though it was done by a prowler. How about the key?”

He produced a key ring; removed a key, and handed it to me. “I’ll have to ring to get in this afternoon. My extra key’s in a dresser drawer. Hope Joan’s home.”

“Isn’t she always on Fridays?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, his face clearing. “About now she’s putting her hair up in rollers. She won’t show her face on the street until it’s all dry and combed out.”

“Now about your alibi,” I said. “That’s important because the husband is always an automatic suspect when a woman gets hit. Can you arrange to be out of New York next Friday?”

“How far out?”

“The farther the better. Why don’t you fly down to Miami next Thursday? Let it be known that you plan to spend a week down there. Then just sit tight until the cops contact you to break the news. You can casually let a few friends know where you’re staying, so that you can be traced easily. Be sure to be seen in public—in the hotel bar or dining room—every minute of Friday until at least midnight. There should be no question about your actually being in Miami.”

“You really do take your clients interests to heart, don’t you?” he said. “I think I can swing that. Joan will be glad to get me out of her hair for a week. She’ll figure it’ll give her a chance to spend every night at Gyp’s place.”

“Then that’s that,” I said. “Don’t come here again and don’t phone me. If there’s any hitch, I’ll contact you. Otherwise, as of this minute, we no longer even know each other.”

“Suits me,” he said in a tone suggesting he felt more relief than disappointment at losing me as an acquaintance.

It was past 4:30 when he left. My bank was open until six on Friday, but I didn’t want to take the time to go all the way uptown before driving out to Brooklyn. The bank could wait until Monday. I like to get to my assignments a couple of hours in advance whenever it’s feasible.

It took me nearly an hour to drive out to Flatbush. I stopped at a crowded restaurant where I wouldn’t be noticed for dinner, which killed another hour. On the way out of the restaurant I bought a newspaper.

I parked on Underwood, just around the corner from the Grandview Apartments, and walked the rest of the way. Again I took the fire stairs, and was lucky enough not to meet anyone in the third-floor hall.

It was just 6:30 when I let myself into apartment 3-C. I left the door unlocked.

I threw my topcoat and hat on the bed in the bedroom, but kept on my thin leather gloves. Removing the silenced automatic from the dresser drawer, I carried it into the front room.

I didn’t have to rearrange any furniture, because the sofa was facing the front door. I switched on a bridge lamp and adjusted it so that it hit the door like a spotlight; then I turned off the overhead light: The sofa was still sufficiently illuminated so that I could have read the paper I had brought if I had been in the mood; but anyone entering by the door was going to have to shade his eyes against the bridge lamp to see me clearly.

I sat on the sofa with the gun lying alongside of me and the newspaper folded in my lap and waited.

Time dragged by. I am very patient, though. Waiting is part of my job.

Exactly at 8:30 the doorbell rang. Picking up the gun, I unfolded the paper with my other hand and held it in front of me as though I were reading. It effectively concealed the gun from the view from the doorway.

“Come in,” I called.

The door opened and a man wearing a topcoat and hat entered. He squinted against the light in his face as he pushed the door closed behind him.

To my surprise it was Joey Thomas.

Letting the top half of the paper fold toward me on my lap, but still concealing the gun, I said, “What the devil are you doing here?”

Joey moved farther into the room, out of the glare of the bridge lamp, and gazed at, me with equal surprise. “I might ask you the same thing. Since when did you hook up with Kuznicki?”

I got it the instant he mentioned the name Kuznicki. The moment I realized it was Joey who had come into the apartment, I assumed that for some unknown reason he had followed me here; but now I realized that he fitted the description of my subject exactly.

Anton Kuznicki was a runner for Gyp Fallon. Therefore, the winning bet the subject had been allowed to make had been arranged by bookie Fallon.

It might have amused me to realize that Gyp Fallon’s plans for Joey were identical with Joey’s plans for his wife—if I possessed that type of sense of humor. But I dislike complications. They turn clean jobs into messy ones.

I said, “You’d better sit down, Joey. We’ve got a problem.”

He gave me a puzzled look, then walked over to adjust the lampshade downward before taking an easy chair about four feet in front of the sofa. The moment he sat down he realized what the problem was, and his face suddenly drained of color.

“You just got it, huh?” I said.

He started to get up, but quickly sat down again when I pushed the newspaper aside and let him see the silenced gun.

Licking his lips, he said huskily, “I thought you were a square guy, Speck. They all told me you were a square guy.” He was beginning to babble.

“I am,” I said. “I didn’t know you were the subject until you walked in. It complicates things. I can’t hit one of my own clients.”

That seemed to make him feel better. After a prolonged silence during which his gaze never wavered from the gun he asked, “Who set me up?”

“I never know, but in this case I can guess. It seems pretty obvious that Gyp Fallon bought the hit. Kuznicki’s one of his runners. Apparently Gyp thinks more of your wife than you do—enough to want her a widow.”

“Why, that dirty rat,” he said indignantly.

“How much were you supposed to have won?” I asked curiously.

“Twelve hundred clams. The only good tip I was ever handed, and it turns out to be a phony! I wondered why the payoff had to be all the way out here, but for twelve hundred I would have driven clear to Albany.”

I said, “The problem is that Gyp went through regular channels. I can’t hit a client, yet I can’t back down on an assignment handed me by The Arranger. You see that, don’t you? It’s a hell of a problem.”

“Mind if I leave while you figure it out?” he asked, making a cautious move to rise.

I let the mouth of the silencer move back and forth. He quickly subsided in his chair. I creased my brow in thought and we sat in silence for some minutes.

Finally my expression cleared. Without lowering the gun, I unbuttoned my shirt with my left hand, reached inside, and loosened the buckle of my money belt. Drawing out the belt, I tossed it in Joey’s lap.

“Take all the money out of that, I said.

Puzzled, he opened the belt and drew out all the bills.

“Count it,” I instructed.

Placing the stack on one knee, he rapidly fingered through it. When he looked up he said, “Why, this is what I paid you this afternoon—sixty-five hundred bucks.”

“Uh-huh. Put it in your pocket—all of it.” He got it then, and he turned dead white. He held the money out at arm’s length toward me.

“No, Speck! We have a contract. I’m your client. You said so yourself!”

“How could you be?” I asked reasonably. “I’ve returned your money, just as I agreed I would if I didn’t go through with the assignment. So you’re no longer my client.”

The sound wasn’t any louder than the pop of a burst balloon.

My instructions had said it wasn’t necessary to clean up, which meant I could leave the body right there. I paused only long enough to clean up the spilled money, though.

While I’m scrupulously honest in my dealings with clients, I don’t see anything ethically wrong in stealing from a deceased non-client. Do you?

HONEYMOON CRUISE

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1966.

When the employment office sent me down to the Miami Yacht Club to be interviewed by the owner of the Princess II, I had no idea she was tin heiress Peggy Matthews. I was told to ask for a Mrs. Arden Trader.

The Princess II was moored in the third slip. It was only about a thirty-five footer, but it was a sleek, sturdy-looking craft which appeared as though it could weather any kind of seas. No one was on deck or in the wheelhouse.

I climbed on deck, stuck my head down the single hatch behind the wheelhouse and yelled, “Anyone aboard?”

A feminine voice from below called. “Be right up.”

A moment later, a slim brunette of about twenty-five came up the ladder. She wore white Capris and a clinging white blouse that showed off a lithe, extremely feminine figure, thong sandals that exposed shapely feet with carmine toenails, and a white sailor hat. Her features were slightly irregular, her nose being a trifle aquiline and her chin line being a little short, but her face was so full of vitality and there was such an aura of femininity about her that she was beautiful, anyway. Lovely dark eyes, a suggestion of sensuality about her mouth, and a creamy suntan probably helped the general effect.

I recognized her at once from news photos I had seen. Only a few months before, on her birthday, she had come into full control of an estimated fortune of twenty million dollars, which had been left to her in trust until she was twenty-five by her widower father, tin magnate Abel Matthews. Matthews had been dead about ten years, but until Peggy’s last birthday the terms of the trust fund had required her to struggle along on the piddling sum of about a hundred thousand a year. Now she was one of the richest women in the world.

“Aren’t you Peggy Matthews?” I asked.

“I was,” she said with a smile which exposed perfect white teeth. “I’ve been Mrs. Arden Trader for the last couple of days. Are you from the employment agency?”

“Yes, ma’am. My names Dan Jackson.”

She looked me up and down, and suddenly a peculiar expression formed on her face. Even now I can’t quite describe it, but if you can imagine a mixture of surprise and gladness and apprehension, that comes close.

I think there must have been a similar expression on my face, except for the apprehension, because I was having an odd emotional reaction, too. Just like that, on first meeting, static electricity passed between us so strongly, it seemed to crackle like twin bolts of lightning.

I still don’t believe there can be such a thing as love at first sight, but I learned at that instant that there can be an almost overpowering physical attraction between a man and a woman the first moment they look at each other. I had experienced it a few times in much milder form but never with this sort of thunderous impact.

We stood staring at each other in mutual dismay, hers probably from guilt, mine because she was already married. It was incredible that this should happen with a bride of only two days, but it was happening. There was no question in my mind that my impact on her was as strong as hers on me.

We gazed at each other for a long time without speaking. Finally, she said in a shaken voice, “Did the employment agency explain the job, Mr. Jackson?”

I took my eyes from her face so that I could untangle my tongue. “I understand you need someone with navigational and marine engine experience to pilot the Princess II on a Caribbean cruise and also double as a cook.”

She turned and looked out over the water. “Yes,” she said in a low voice. “It’s to be a honeymoon cruise. My husband can pilot the boat all right, but he’s not a navigator and knows nothing about engines. Neither of us is a very good cook, either. Incidentally, our marriage is to remain a secret until after the honeymoon because we don’t want to be met by reporters at every port.”

“All right,” I agreed, still not looking at her.

I did risk a glance at her left hand, however. She was wearing both a diamond and a wedding band. I wondered how she expected to keep it a secret when people were bound to recognize her at every port of call. But that was none of my business.

She suddenly became brisk and businesslike. “May I have your qualifications and vital statistics, Mr. Jackson?”

“In that order?”

“As you please.”

“I’ll give you the vital statistics first,” I said. “Age thirty, height six-one, weight one ninety; single. Two years at Miami U. in liberal arts with a B average, then I ran out of money. My hobbies are all connected with water: swimming, boating, fishing, and as a chaser for rye whiskey. No current romantic entanglements.”

“I’m surprised at the last,” she said. “You’re a very handsome man.”

I decided to ignore that. It didn’t seem a good idea to involve myself as a third party on a honeymoon cruise if the situation were going to become explosive. I wanted to know right now if we were going to be able to suppress whatever it was that had sparked between us at the instant of meeting and keep our relationship on a strictly employer-employee basis.

“Now for qualifications,” I said. “I did two years in the navy, the second one as chief engineer on a destroyer. I took an extension course in navigation and chart reading, intending to buck for a reserve commission, but changed my mind before my hitch was up. I finished the course, though, and am a pretty good navigator. I’m also an excellent marine mechanic. I had my own charter boat out of Miami Beach for two years. I lost it in moorage when Betsy hit, and there was only enough insurance to cover my debts, so I’ve been unable to finance another. Since then I’ve been odd-jobbing at any sea job I could get.”

I looked directly into her face as I spoke, and she gazed back at me levelly. Whatever had caused the lightning to crackle between us was gone now, I was both disappointed and relieved to find. Her manner remained the brisk, almost brittle one of a businesswoman conducting a personnel interview. She still held an immense physical attraction for me, but now that she wasn’t sending out rays of static electricity, I wasn’t responding by sending them back.

She asked, “How about your cooking ability?”

“I’m no chef, but I’ve been cooking for myself for some years and have managed to remain healthy.”

“That’s not too important so long as you’re adequate,” she said. “We’ll probably dine either with friends or in restaurants at our ports of call. You can furnish references, I presume?”

“They’re on file at the employment office, which has already checked them. All you have to do is phone.”

“Very well,” she said. “I think you’ll do, Mr. Jackson. The salary is five hundred dollars plus your keep for a one-month voyage. Is that satisfactory?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning about ten. Our first port will be Southwest Point in the Bahamas, which should only take about four hours because the Princess II cruises at twenty-one knots. I’ll outline the rest of the voyage after we’re under way. Now, would you like to look over the boat?”

“Sure. Where’s Mr. Trader?”

“Shopping for some last-minute supplies. We’ll start below with the engine.”

I judged the boat to be a couple of years old, but it was in excellent shape. I started the engine and listened to it for a time, and it seemed to be in top condition. There was a separate generator engine for the lights when we were in port, and the main engine was idle.

The galley was clean and shipshape, with an electric range and electric refrigerator, the latter well stocked with food. The food cabinet was well stocked with canned goods, also. There was a bunk room that slept four, and off it was a small head and a saltwater shower.

Just she and her husband would occupy the bunk room, Peggy Trader explained. There was a leather-covered bench in the pilothouse which folded out into a fifth bunk, and I would sleep there.

Her manner was entirely impersonal as she conducted the tour. Once, as we were moving from the bunk room into the galley, she accidentally crowded against me in the close quarters, but I sensed no reaction from her at the physical contact.

She merely said politely, “Excuse me,” and continued through the hatch.

I knew the instantaneous physical attraction between us hadn’t been just my imagination, but apparently she had decided, after her one brief lapse, to bring the matter to a screeching halt. I couldn’t help feeling a bit rueful, but at the same time I was relieved. I needed the money badly enough so that I probably would have risked taking the job even if she had thrown herself into my arms, but I preferred not to break up a marriage before it was even fairly under way. If she could restrain herself, I knew I could.

I reported aboard at nine the next morning. Peggy’s husband was present this time. Arden Trader was a lean, handsome man of thirty-five with dark, curly hair and a thin mustache. He had an Oxford accent and treated his bride with the fawning indulgence of a gigolo.

Later, I learned he had been the penniless younger son of an equally penniless English duke and had been existing as one of those curious parasites of the international set who move from villa to villa of the rich as perennial house guests.

I knew he was a fortune hunter the moment he flashed his white teeth and gave me a man-to-man handshake. I wondered why Peggy had allowed herself to be suckered into marrying him. I learned that afternoon.

The plan for the cruise was to sail east to Southwest Point the first day, a distance of about a hundred miles. After a two-day layover, we would head for Nassau, and after a similar layover there, we would cruise to Governor’s Harbor. From there we would island hop to Puerto Rico, then hit the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Point Morant on the east tip of Jamaica, then head back northeast through Windward Passage to Port-de-Paix on the northern coast of Haiti.

The last would be our longest single jump, a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles. With a cruising speed of twenty-one knots, we could make it in about ten hours, however, so no night sailing would be required during the whole voyage.

After Port-de-Paix, we would touch at the island of Great Inagua, island hop from there back to Governor’s Harbor, then cruise nonstop back to Miami. With all our scheduled stops, ranging from one-day layovers to two or three days, we would spend more time in port than at sea during the one-month voyage.

At noon the first day out, I called Arden Trader to take over the wheel while I went below to prepare lunch. When it was ready, as we were in no hurry, we cut the engine, threw out the sea anchor, and all lunched together.

After lunch, I pulled in the sea anchor and got under way again. The sea was rolling a little, but it wasn’t rough, and the sun was shining brightly. We were clipping along at cruising speed when Peggy came into the wheelhouse wearing a red bikini swimsuit.

“Arden wants to try a little fishing,” she said. “Will you cut to trolling speed for a while?”

Obediently, I throttled down until we were barely moving. Glancing aft, I saw Arden Trader seated at the stern rail with a sea rod in his hands. Peggy made no move to go back and join him after delivering the message.

“He probably won’t troll more than fifteen minutes if he doesn’t get a strike,” she said. “He bores rather easily.”

I didn’t say anything.

She moved over next to me in order to look at the chart book lying open on the little ledge between the wheel and the pilothouse window. The nearness of her scantily clad body made my pulse start to hammer so hard I was afraid she could hear it.

“Where are we?” she asked.

I pointed silently to a spot a little more than halfway between Miami and Southwest Point.

She said. “We should be in by cocktail time, then, even if Arden decides to fish as long as an hour, shouldn’t we?”

“Oh, yes.”

There was no reason for her to remain where she was now that she had seen the chart, but she continued to stand so close that our arms nearly touched. I didn’t have on a shirt. In fact, I was wearing nothing but a pair of my old Navy dungarees and a visored yachting cap, not even shoes. She was so close I could feel the warmth of her body on my bare arm.

Although the sea was fairly calm, our decreased headway caused the boat to roll slightly. One swell a little larger than the rest caused a heavier roll to port. Instinctively, I leaned into it, and at the same moment she lost her balance.

She half turned as she fell against me. My right arm went around her waist to steady her as she grabbed for my shoulders. Her full bosom, covered only by the thin strip of the bikini halter, crushed against my bare chest. The bolts of lightning that crackled between us made that of yesterday morning seem like summer lightning. We remained rigid for several seconds, staring into each other’s faces. Her lips parted, and her eyes reflected the same mixture of surprise and gladness and dismay I had caught when we first glimpsed each other. Then she straightened away from me and glanced out the aft pilothouse window. I looked over my shoulder, too. Her husband was fishing with his back to us.

“I shouldn’t have hired you,” she said quietly.

I faced forward and gripped the wheel with both hands.

“I knew I shouldn’t have when I did it,” she said. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“We’ll head back for Miami tomorrow,” I said. “You can have the employment agency send you another man.”

“No, I don’t want to. It’s too late.”

With her gaze still on her husband, she readied out and gently squeezed my bicep. I tingled clear to my toes.

“It’s ridiculous,” I said tightly. “You’re a bride of three days. You must be in love with him.”

Her hand continued to caress my bicep. “I’m not going to try to explain it, Dan. I was in love with him until you came aboard yesterday. I took one look at you, and everything turned topsy-turvy. It did for you, too. I could see it in your eyes. I can feel it in your muscles right now.”

“Stop it,” I said, keeping my gaze rigidly fixed ahead. “It’s impossible. Why did you marry him?”

“Because I hadn’t met you,” she said simply.

“That’s no answer. You must have been in love.”

Her hand left my arm and dropped to her side. “I went into it with my eyes wide open,” she said. “I’ve had a hundred offers of marriage—women with money always do—but I’d given up ever finding the man I dreamed of. The rich ones were all fearfully dull, the charmers all fortune hunters. I’m twenty-five and tired of being single. I hardly needed a rich husband, so I decided to settle for a charmer. Arden has been pursuing me for a year. Last week at a house party in Mexico City, I gave in. We were married there, then flew to Miami to pick up my boat for a honeymoon cruise. On my second day as a new bride, I had, finally, to meet the man I’ve been looking for all my life.”

I continued to grip the wheel and stare straight ahead. The whole situation was incredible. A series of wild thoughts ran through my mind.

I’d always considered myself a confirmed bachelor, but suddenly the thought of having Peggy for a wife was so appealing, I’ve never wanted anything more. Her money had nothing to do with it, either. I would never marry for money because it had been my observation that men who do usually earn it. It had never occurred to me that I might fall in love with a rich woman.

I wasn’t sure this was love, but no woman had ever held as strong a physical attraction for me, and I was sure I wanted to many her. And it was hardly a disadvantage that she was one of the richest women in the world. Would it be sensible to turn her down merely because a few villas scattered around the world, a few yachts and foreign cars went with the deal?

Then the bubble popped. She already had a husband.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. Do you plan an annulment?”

“From Arden? Impossible. He would hold me up for a half million dollars.”

“Can’t you afford it?”

From the periphery of my vision, I could see her frown. “Nobody can afford to throw half a million dollars down a hole. My father spent too many years building his fortune for any of it to be tossed away capriciously. It’s not a matter of being able to afford it; it’s a matter of principle.”

“Then I guess you’ll just have to stay married to him,” I said.

There was a yell from the stern. “Strike!”

I cut the engine and looked over my shoulder. Trader was straining back in his seat, and a hundred yards behind the boat a sailfish broke water.

Peggy said, “We’ll postpone discussion until later,” and hurried aft to stand by with the gaff.

There was no opportunity to resume discussion that day, however. Trader lost his fish, and it discouraged him from further fishing. He devoted his attention to his bride for the rest of the day.

About five p.m. we berthed at Southwest Point. Trader and Peggy dressed and decided to go into the settlement for dinner. Trader invited me to go along, but I knew the invitation was only politeness, so I refused.

I had a lonely meal and afterward sat on the stern rail smoking a cigarette. The night was warm enough so that I didn’t bother to put on any more than I had worn during the day. I had finished my cigarette but was still seated there bare-chested and barefooted when they returned about nine.

Arden Trader had donned a white linen suit to go to dinner. Peggy had put on a dress but hadn’t bothered with stockings. She wore thong sandals on her bare feet.

There were two inflated rubber mats with removable canvas back rests on the stern deck. Without the back rests you could lie full length on them for sunbathing. With the back rests in place, they made deck-level lounging chairs. Peggy sank onto the one right in front of me, leaned against the back rest, and kicked off her sandals.

“Let’s enjoy the moonlight for a while,” she said to her husband. “How about a cigarette?”

He knelt beside her with his back to me, placed a cigarette in her mouth, and lit it. After taking one draw, she took it from her mouth, put her arms about his neck, and drew him to her.

Ever since she had left the wheelhouse that afternoon, I had been stewing about what transpired there. I had finally decided that if she wasn’t going to leave her husband, we were not going to have just an affair.

I still wanted her as a wife more than I’ve ever wanted anything, and maybe if she had been married ten years, I might have settled for having her just as a mistress. But I wasn’t quite rat enough to cuckold a groom on his honeymoon.

Apparently, my soul-searching had been for nothing. I could think of no reason for her deliberate show of affection in front of me other than that she had decided to let me know in definite terms that the scene in the wheelhouse had been a mistake. I looked away, not wanting to see her kissed by Trader.

I felt something touch my left foot and glanced down. My pulse started to pound when I saw her right foot rubbing against my instep. Her carmine-tipped toes waggled in urgent demand for some response.

With her arms wrapped around her husband, the gesture seemed more likely to be an invitation for a clandestine affair than a signal that she wanted a more permanent relationship. Since I had already decided against settling for that, my conscience told me to withdraw my foot.

My desire for her was stronger than my conscience. I raised my foot and pressed its sole against hers. Her toes worked against mine and along the sole of my foot in a lascivious caress, all the time her arms tightening around her husband’s neck until finally it was he who broke the kiss.

As he started to rise, her foot drew away from mine, and I dropped mine back flat on the deck. Trader sank onto the other mat and lit a cigarette.

“I’m beginning to like this married life,” he said to me with a grin. “You ought to try it, Dan.”

“I may if I ever meet the right girl,” I said, getting to my feet. “Think I’ll turn in. It’s been a long day.”

“Good night, Dan,” Peggy said softly.

“Night,” I said without looking at her, and headed for the wheelhouse.

The following morning when I climbed down on deck, Arden Trader was screwing some kind of bracket to the timber immediately right of the hatchway which led below.

“Morning,” I said. “What’s that?”

“Morning, Dan,” he said affably. “I’m installing an outside shaving mirror I picked up in town last night. The head’s too small and too poorly lighted to get a decent shave.”

He lifted a round shaving mirror from a paper bag and slipped the two small vertical shafts at its back into holes in the top of the bracket. Then he moved the bottom of the mirror in and out to demonstrate that it could be adjusted to suit the height of anyone using it.

“Now all I need is a basin of hot water and my shaving equipment,” he said as he started below. “You can use it when I’m finished if you want.”

I did use it from then on.

I had no opportunity to be alone with Peggy during the two days we were in port because Trader was playing the attentive groom. By the second day, I couldn’t stand his constant little attentions to her and, since I wasn’t needed aboard because they were taking their meals in town, took the day off and spent it on the beach by myself.

On the third day, we pulled out for Nassau. As the trip would take six hours, we got under way at eight a.m. About ten, Peggy came into the pilothouse, again wearing a bikini.

“He’s taking a nap,” she said, and with no more preamble moved into my arms.

I spiked the wheel so as to have both arms free. Hers went about my neck, and her body pressed against mine as our lips met. We were both trembling when she finally struggled from my arms and stepped back. It was none too soon.

She backed clear to the pilothouse door. We were both so out of control, if her husband had walked in at that moment, neither of us could have concealed our naked emotion from him.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered.

My good resolutions lay in shreds. I didn’t care what we did so long as it meant being together in some way. If she wanted to shed Trader and marry me, I would be happiest. But now I was willing to settle for just an affair if she wanted that. If she had suggested solving our problem by holding hands and jumping over the rail, I would have at least considered it.

I jerked out the spike and gripped the wheel with both hands in an effort to control my trembling. “What do you want to do?”

“Do you love me?”

“Do you have to ask?” I demanded.

“I want to hear you say it.”

I took a deep breath. “I love you. I’m absolutely nuts about you.”

She closed her eyes. “I love you, too,” she said almost inaudibly. “I’ve never felt such overwhelming love. Do you want to many me? Answer me truly, Dan.”

“There’s nothing I want more,” I said in a husky voice.

Her eyes opened, and she seemed to get a little control of herself. In a more normal tone, she said, “I couldn’t just have an affair, Dan. Despite my behavior, I’m really a quite moral person. I’m not a prude. If I were single, and we were alone out here and planned to get married when we reached port, I wouldn’t insist we wait until the proper words were spoken. But there’s some Puritan strain deep within me that makes it impossible for me to violate my marriage vows.”

“We aren’t going to have an affair,” I told her. “I’ve already told you I want you for my wife.”

“But I have a husband.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble getting an annulment after this short a marriage. Why do you think it would cost you a half million?”

“Because I know Arden. I know him so well, I made him sign a premarital agreement waiving all claim to my estate except whatever I decided to leave him in my will. I didn’t think it wise to put him in a position where he could become rich if I died.”

I turned to stare at her. “If you thought him capable of murdering you, why in the devil did you marry him? What possessed you?”

“Oh. I really didn’t think he might try to kill me. But he’s a fortune hunter, and you don’t place temptation in the hands of men such as Arden. Because he is a fortune hunter, I know he’ll hold me up if I ask for an annulment. My guess that his price for cooperating will be a half million is based on sound experience. That’s exactly what it cost each of two women friends of mine to shed fortune-hunting husbands.”

“Wouldn’t your premarital agreement cover that?”

“That only applies in case of my death,” she said. “Actually, I could get out of paying him a red cent if I wanted a legal battle. No court would grant him any kind of settlement. But there’s a pattern of blackmail men such as Arden use. If I refuse to pay him off, Arden will fight me in court with every dirty tactic he knows. He’ll drag my reputation through the mud by filing countersuit for divorce and accusing me of infidelity with a dozen men. The tabloids will have a field day.”

I said sourly, “You knew all this in advance of marrying him. How the hell did you bring yourself to do it?”

“I assumed it was going to last, Dan. How was I to know you would come along?”

I took my gaze from her and looked ahead again. “If you don’t get rid of him, how are we going to marry?”

“Oh, I intend to get rid of him,” she said softly.

“By paying him off?”

“There’s a much simpler way, Dan. Who would suspect anything if a brand-new groom fell overboard and was lost at sea on his honeymoon? The wife might be suspected after a ten-year marriage or even after a year—but not after just a week. Dan.”

A sudden chill doused the warmth I still felt from having her in my arms. “Murder?” I said shakily.

“There wouldn’t be a chance of suspicion. Who could suspect a love triangle when I’m on my honeymoon and you and I have only known each other a few days? It’s even incredible to me that we’re in love. How could the thought ever enter the heads of the police?”

The logic of what she said was penetrating my mind even as I was rejecting the thought. Under the circumstances, who could possibly suspect? My throat was suddenly so dry I had to clear it.

“There would be some suspicion after we announced our marriage.”

“Why? No one knows you’re only a temporary employee. I’ll simply keep you on in some permanent capacity—say as my social secretary. I’m the only woman in my set who has never had one, and it’s about time I acquired one. You’ll show sympathy for my bereavement, and I’ll show appreciation for your sympathy. Gradually, your sympathy and my appreciation can ripen into love. It won’t be the first time a sympathetic male friend has ended up marrying a grieving widow. I think it would be safe at the end of as little as two months.”

Again her argument was so logical I had no answer, except that it takes more than mere certainty that you won’t be caught to condition your mind to murder.

“It has to be that way or not at all,” she said in a suddenly definite tone. “I’ll leave you to think it over.” She turned and left the pilothouse.

I was still thinking it over when it came time for the noon mess. By then, we were passing through Northwest Providence Channel. I had deliberately kept to the center of the channel, and land was barely visible on the horizon on both sides. The water was calm, with only a slight roll, and the sun was shining brightly. There wasn’t another vessel in sight.

Arden Trader had emerged from below in swim trunks about eleven o’clock, and both he and Peggy were lying on the inflated mats at the stern, deepening their already rich tans. I yelled for Trader to come take the wheel while I prepared mess. He rolled off his mat, leaned over Peggy, and gave her a long kiss. Jealousy raged through me so hotly I had to turn my back to get control of myself. When he came into the wheelhouse, it was an effort to keep my voice calm while I gave him his bearing.

The sight of his kissing Peggy had brought me to a decision. Peggy came into the galley only a moment after I got there and stood looking at me expressionlessly. “All right,” I said.

Her nostrils flared. “When?”

“Right now if you want.”

“How?”

“Why don’t you go out and suggest a swim before lunch? The water’s calm enough. I’ll do the rest.”

Without a word, she turned and left the galley. I waited a moment, then followed, pausing astern while she climbed to the pilothouse. A moment after she entered, Trader cut the engine, then they both emerged.

“Okay, Dan,” Peggy called. “You can throw out the sea anchor.”

I was already standing next to it. I tossed it over-board and let down the wooden-runged ladder strung with rope so that swimmers could more easily get back aboard ship. “Think I’ll have a dip with you,” I said. “I’ll put on my trunks.”

When I came back out on deck, Trader and Peggy were already in the water. Trader was floating on his back about four feet from the boat, his arms outstretched and his eyes closed. Peggy was treading water near the rope ladder. I motioned her aboard. Quietly, she climbed up on deck. Trader opened his eyes and looked up at her.

“Be right back, honey,” she said, and ran below.

Trader closed his eyes again.

It had been my intention to swim up behind him and give him a judo chop, but his outstretched position made him vulnerable to a safer form of attack. Taking a running jump, I launched myself feet first at his stomach, bringing my knees to my chest and snapping them straight again with terrific force just as I landed. The air whooshed out of him, and he was driven deeply under water in a doubled-up position.

I must have caught him in the solar plexus with one heel, temporarily paralyzing him, because when I reversed myself and dove after him to grab his shoulders and push him even deeper, he barely struggled. I forced him down and down until my own lungs were nearly bursting, then reversed again, got my feet against him, and gave a final shove which drove him deeper and shot me toward the surface.

I made it only a microsecond before I would have had to breathe in water myself. Starting under with no air in him, I was sure Trader couldn’t possibly survive. But when I recovered my breath and had climbed aboard, I crouched at the rail and studied the water for a good ten minutes just to make absolutely certain. Then I called Peggy from below.

When she came up, her face pale beneath its tan, I said tonelessly, “There’s been an accident. I think he had a cramp. I was on deck with my back turned and didn’t see him struggling until I happened to glance around. I tried to reach him, but he went under before I got there. I kept diving for nearly an hour in an attempt to spot him, but he must have sunk straight to the bottom. That’s my story for the record. Yours is simply that you were below when it happened.”

She stared at the gentle swell of water in fascination. “Will he come up?” she whispered.

“Eventually, if something doesn’t eat him first, which is more likely. Not for days, probably.”

She gave a little shudder. “Let’s get away from here.”

“We have to stick around for at least an hour,” I said. “I spent an hour futilely diving for him, remember? If we head straight on, somebody just might check to see when we left Southwest Point and when we arrived at Nassau. It would look fishy if there weren’t enough of a time gap to allow for our hour of waiting around.”

“Why say we waited an hour?” she asked. “We’d know after ten minutes he wasn’t coming up.”

“You’re a brand-new bride,” I said. “You wouldn’t give up hope after ten minutes. We’ll do it my way.”

“Do we have to kill the time right here?” she asked nervously. “There’s no mark on the water where he went clown. Run a few miles and throw out the sea anchor again.”

With a shrug, I hauled in the sea anchor, pulled up the rope-strung ladder, and went tops to start the engine. Peggy went along with me and stood right next to me, with our arms touching, as I drove the boat through the water at full throttle for about five miles. Then I reduced speed until we were barely making headway, scanned the horizon in all directions to make sure no other vessel was in sight, and finally cut the engine altogether. I went aft, tossed out the sea anchor, and lowered the ladder again, just in case another vessel came along during the next hour and I actually had to start diving.

Peggy followed me from the pilothouse. She emitted a deep breath of relief and threw herself into my arms, clinging shakily. We were only about two hours out of Nassau. We arrived about three-thirty p.m.

No one showed the slightest suspicion of our story. As Peggy had surmised, it didn’t even occur to the police that it might be a love-triangle murder when they learned she had been a bride for less than a week and she had never seen me until two days after her marriage. Their only reaction was sympathy.

Since we said we had waited in the area for a full hour after Trader went down, they didn’t even bother to send ships to look for the missing man. A couple of helicopters scanned the general area for a couple of days in the hope of spotting the floating body, but it was never spotted, and Arden Trader was finally listed as missing at sea, presumed dead.

Since Peggy’s secret marriage wasn’t revealed to the press until the drowning of the groom was simultaneously announced, both got wide news coverage. But again there wasn’t the slightest intimation that it could have been anything but a tragic accident.

Peggy owned a half-dozen villas in various parts of the world, and one of them was at San Juan. When the police at Nassau released us, we continued on to Puerto Rico, where the grieving widow went into seclusion. News reports said that the only people accompanying her to the villa were a female companion and her personal secretary, neither of whose names were reported.

The “female companion” was a middle-aged housekeeper who spoke nothing but Spanish. I, of course, was the personal secretary.

The villa had its own private beach, and we spent an idyllic two months on a sort of premarital honeymoon. Long before it was over, there was no question in my mind about being in love. The physical attraction was just as strong, but that wasn’t Peggy’s only attraction anymore. I was as ludicrously in love as the hero of some mid-Victorian love novel.

At the end of two months, Peggy thought it safe to emerge back into the world and for us to be quietly married. She had been in correspondence with one of her several lawyers meantime, and the day before the ceremony was to be performed, she presented me with a legal document to sign, a waiver of all rights to her estate except what she voluntarily left me in her will.

“You think I might murder you for your money?” I growled after examining it.

“It’s my lawyer’s idea,” she said apologetically. “While I’m not legally bound to follow my father’s re-quest, it was his expressed wish in his will that if I had no heirs, I leave most of my estate to set up a research foundation. If we have children, naturally the bulk of the estate will go to them, and of course I’ll see that you’re well taken care of. But just suppose I died the day after we married? I have no other living relatives, so you would inherit everything. Would it be fair for my father’s dream of a Matthews Foundation to go down the drain?”

“I’m not marrying you for your money,” I told her.

“If you died the day after we married, I’d probably kill myself, too. But it’s not worth arguing about.” I signed the document.

The ceremony was performed before a civil judge in San Juan, with our housekeeper and the court clerk as witnesses. Peggy wanted only a plain gold band, and it cost me only twenty-five dollars. The diamond she wore, I discovered, had not been given her by Arden Trader but had been her mother’s engagement ring. She said she preferred to continue to wear it instead of having me pick out another.

As in the case of her previous marriage, Peggy didn’t want the news released to the press until we had completed a honeymoon cruise so we wouldn’t be besieged by reporters at every port of call. I pointed out that she was too well known to escape all publicity, and unless she wanted to pretend deep gloom at each stop, people were bound to guess we were on a honeymoon. She said she didn’t plan to withhold the news from friends and acquaintances but was going to request them not to relay it to any reporters, so there was a good chance we could keep the secret from the general public until we completed the cruise.

“It won’t be a tragedy if reporters find out,” she said. “I just want a chance for us to be alone as long as possible.”

For our cruise we decided to complete the circuit of the Caribbean we had already started. This time there would be only two of us aboard, however.

We got as far as the island of Great Inagua when we ran over a floating log in the harbor, broke a propeller shaft, and lost the prop. The spare parts weren’t available anywhere on the island, but I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble finding them back at our previous stop, Port-de-Paix.

A packet ship plied every other day from Great Inagua to Haiti, then on to the Dominican Republic and finally to Puerto Rico. I checked the schedule and discovered that if I caught the one on Friday, I could catch the return ship from Port-de-Paix to Great Inagua on Saturday.

Peggy knew some people named Jordan on the small island where we were laid up, and as they were having a house party on Friday night, she decided not to accompany me.

I got back with the new propeller shaft and propeller about four o’clock Saturday afternoon. The private boat slips were only about fifty yards from the main dock, and I could see the Princess II as we pulled in. A slim feminine figure in a red bikini was on the bow waving to the ship. I doubted that she could make me out at that distance from among the other passengers lining the rail, but I waved back, anyway.

When I lugged my packages aboard the Princess II, Peggy was no longer on the bow. She was leaning back into the canvas back rest on one of the air-inflated mats on the afterdeck. A tanned and muscular young man of about twenty-five, wearing white swim trunks, was seated on the stern rail.

As I set down my packages, Peggy said, “Honey, this is Bob Colvin, one of Max and Susie Jordan’s house guests. My husband Dan, Bob.”

The young man rose, and we shook hands. He inquired how I was, and I said I was glad to meet him.

“Bob was planning to take the Monday packet ship up to Governor’s Harbor, then fly from there to Miami,” Peggy said. “I told him if he wasn’t in a hurry, he might as well leave with us tomorrow and sail all the way home. He can sleep in the pilothouse.”

Counting our two months in seclusion at San Juan, our honeymoon had now lasted long enough so that the urgency to be completely alone had abated somewhat for both of us. I don’t mean that my love for Peggy had abated. It was just that both of us were ready to emerge from our pink cloud back into the world of people. My only reaction was that it would be nice to have someone to spell me at the wheel from time to time.

“Sure,” I said, and knelt beside my wife to give her a kiss.

She kissed me soundly, then forced me to a seated position next to her and pressed my head onto her shoulder. Smiling down into my face, she began to stroke my hair.

With my face in its upturned position, I could look right over her shoulder into the shaving mirror attached to the timber alongside the hatch leading below. By pure accident it was slanted slightly downward to reflect the deck area immediately in front of the inflated mat.

In the mirror I could see Bob Colvin’s raised bare foot. Peggy’s bare toes were working lasciviously against his and along the sole of his foot.

THE MONSTER BRAIN

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1966.

Modern society has become so automated, it’s amazing how many of the things one does are later scrutinized by an electronic computer. For example, for some time now our state headquarters of the National Association of Underwriters has been routinely feeding punch cards into a computer for every insurance policy issued, and for every claim filed in the state. The data which comes out is mainly useful for statistical purposes, but once in a while something will spill out which suggests a possible insurance fraud. When that happens, the information is relayed to the association’s investigative division, which is where I work.

One Monday morning in mid-October I came to work in a bad mood. Anita and I had gone round and round again the night before about getting married. As usual, the argument had centered about the lack of future in working for a salary and ended with the ultimatum that she would never marry a man who couldn’t support her in luxury.

Sally, our blonde receptionist said, “If that’s a hangover you’re suffering, Mr. Quinn, you’d better get over it in a hurry.”

“It’s not a hangover,” I said, glowering at her. “It’s just the normal distasteful expression I can’t keep from my face every time I look at a member of the female sex. And why should I get over it, even if it were a hangover?”

“You had another fight with your girl,” she said. “The chief wants to see you.”

I smoothed my expression before I entered the chiefs office. He doesn’t like to see anything but happy faces.

Ed Morgan is chief of the investigative division. He’s a grizzled, barrel-chested man of sixty who has headed the division for twenty years and has the reputation of being able to smell an insurance fraud clear across the state. I had been working under him for seven years, since I got out of college, and had become his most trusted investigator.

“Sit down, Tod,” he said. “I’ve got a routine investigation for you. I doubt that anything will come of it, because I can’t work up much of a hunch about it, but the computer people sent some data over, and we have to check it out.”

If Ed Morgan didn’t sense a possible fraud from whatever it was the computer had divulged, there probably wasn’t any. But a lot of our investigations are based less on outright suspicion than on mere thoroughness. We turn up the number of fraud cases we do because we investigate everything which seems even a little off key in insurance claims.

“What did the monster brain turn up this time?” I asked.

“Well, as you know, one of the items keyed on every punch card involving claims is cause of death. Some statistician was tabulating causes of death throughout the state for the past twelve months, and seems to think he found something interesting when he came to typhoid fever. Typhoid is rare these days; there were only seven deaths from it last year in the whole state. Five of them were in the same community. Each was insured by a different carrier, but through the same insurance broker. Each policy happened to be for the same amount too: ten thousand dollars. Headquarters thought the coincidence of cause of death, the insured amount and the broker being identical in all five cases might interest us.”

He handed me a couple of sheets of paper on which a resume of the data from the punch cards had been typed.

The five decedents who had been insured were an eighty-year-old man whose beneficiary had been his son, three women whose beneficiaries had been their husbands, and one eighteen-year-old boy whose beneficiary had been his father. All five policies had been written on different companies by a broker named Paul Manners. The deaths had all taken place during a period of about a month from the middle of July to the middle of August. The addresses of both the deceased and the beneficiaries in all cases were either R.D. 1 or R.D. 2, Heather Ridge.

“Obviously a rural community,” I said. “Where’s Heather Ridge?”

“I didn’t know either until I looked it up,” the chief said. “It has a population of seven hundred and is the seat of Heather County.”

“I don’t know where Heather County is either,” I said.

Morgan grinned. “I’m not surprised. It’s back up in the hills with the moonshiners. The population of the whole county is only about twenty-five hundred. There isn’t even a paved road in the county, although the map shows a couple of presumably good gravel roads. There’s no railroad line to Heather Ridge, and a bus only twice a week, so if you find you have to go there, you’d better drive.”

I glanced at the resume again. “Whoever sent this over has a hole in his head. So the place had a typhoid epidemic this last summer. That’s the logical time to have one. This Paul Manners wrote all the policies because a place that size wouldn’t have more than one insurance broker. And the amounts being the same don’t mean anything. Ten thousand dollars is the most common amount of life coverage.”

“Exactly my reasoning, but we’ve turned up frauds with less to start on. It shouldn’t take you more than a few days to check it out. You may decide after examining the claim correspondence that you don’t even have to visit the place.”

“Okay,” I said, rising. “I’ll get on it right away.”

In the outer office the blonde Sally said, “You look a little more cheerful now, Mr. Quinn. Is your opinion of the female sex improving?”

“It’s just that I have a happy assignment,” I told her. “If things work out the way I hope, I’ll be able to send a lovely young widow to the gas chamber.”

She made a leering face at me.

The insurance carriers all had branch offices in Blair City, fifty miles away. I drove over and by mid-afternoon had examined the files on all five cases.

Everything seemed in order. There was a certified copy of the death certificate in each case, all stamped with the notary seal of an Emma Pruett of the Heather County Clerk’s Office. Each had been signed by the same doctor, Emmet Parks. Checking the policies, I discovered all had been taken out during the previous January and February, and all physical exams had been made by Dr. Emmet Parks. Again this wasn’t too coincidental. It was hardly likely a town of seven hundred would have more than one doctor.

The relatively short time the policies had been in force made me decide to check a little more deeply, though. I revisited each insurance office and asked to look at the canceled claim-payment checks. I was startled to discover that in each case the checks had been endorsed to Dr. Emmet Parks and then cashed by him at the same bank in Holoyke.

I checked my road map and discovered Heather Ridge was about sixty miles from Holoyke. Now why were the checks all endorsed to the doctor, I wondered, and why did he go sixty miles to cash them instead of cashing them in Heather Ridge?

By the time I got back to the state capital, it was too late to do any more that day. I phoned Anita to see if she were interested in going out to dinner, but she was just as icy as the night before. She hung up on me.

I spent a miserable evening brooding over what kind of business I could go into which might make the kind of money Anita demanded. I couldn’t think of any. My education was in liberal arts, and my total experience was in insurance investigation. I finally gave up and went to bed.

The next morning I was at the office of the State Medical Society when it opened.

Dr. Emmet Parks proved to be a member in good standing, and had been for twenty years. He was fifty years old, and had never practiced anywhere but Heather Ridge. He was the only physician in all of Heather County.

If there was fraud connected with the five insurance claims, the only way I could see it had been worked was by mass murder. It seemed highly unlikely that a reputable physician would be a party to that, and equally unlikely that even a rural physician would misdiagnose five murders in a row as typhoid fever. Besides, since each beneficiary was different, it would involve the collusion of all five in murder.

Still, Parks’ signature on all the claim-payment checks bothered me. I decided to keep checking.

When I left the State Medical Society Office, I visited the licensing bureau at the Capital Building. Insurance broker Paul Manners had passed his state examination and had been licensed only the previous November, which made the relative newness of the five policies considerably less suspicious. Since he couldn’t have started selling insurance earlier than November, all it seemed to indicate was that he was a pretty hot salesman.

Checking his file, I discovered he was married but had no children, had a high school education and had been a part-time farmer for the past twenty-five years. During the same period he had worked half-time as a farm appliance salesman in a store in Heather Ridge. According to his application, he planned to continue his part-time farming, but drop his extra job when he became an insurance broker.

A certified true copy of his birth certificate, again bearing the notary stamp of Emma Pruett, showed he had been born in Heather Ridge.

His three references rated his character high. One was from a Reverend Donald Hartwell, one from County Judge Albert Baker, the third from Dr. Emmet Parks.

While it was standard procedure for people to give their family physician’s name when references were required, the frequency with which I was running into Dr. Emmet Parks’ name began to intrigue me.

I took rather detailed notes of the information about Paul Manners contained in his file.

From the Capital Building I went back to association headquarters and gave a computer operator a question to ask the monster brain. Its answer lessened my suspicion. In addition to the five typhoid cases, Paul Manners had placed twenty other policies with various carriers since he had been in business, and all of these insured were still alive. It looked more and more as though the insurance broker had merely had the misfortune to start business in a territory where previously no one had ever been approached by an insurance salesman, had done remarkably well with his virgin territory, but had immediately run into an epidemic.

If it hadn’t been for Dr. Emmet Parks’ signature on all the claim-payment checks, I would have dropped the matter right there. But I had to check that out. I decided to visit Heather Ridge.

I drove up on Wednesday, arriving in the middle of the morning. The town was a good forty miles from the nearest main highway, back up in the hills in rugged, sparsely settled country. The last thirty miles I traveled on washboard gravel road, and I didn’t see a single other car. As a matter of fact, except for power and telephone lines strung on poles alongside the road, I saw few signs of civilization. Occasionally I spotted a farmhouse or a barn, but most of the time the view from the winding mountain road was of steep hills densely covered with pine.

I didn’t see any heather, and Heather Ridge itself turned out to be in a valley instead of on a ridge, although there was a sharp, jagged ridge just north of it.

Later I learned the town and the county had been named after Amos Heather, a trapper who back in the mid-1800s had stood off an Indian attack from it for seven days before he finally lost his scalp.

The town was like something from the last century. There was a town square with a squat, one-story, redbrick courthouse in its center. A half dozen overalled old men chewing tobacco lolled on the low wall edging the courthouse lawn. There were a few tired-looking business establishments ringing the square, but there were no shoppers on the street. Only two vehicles were in sight, both parked in front of the courthouse. One was a 1932 pickup truck, the other a Model T.

The tobacco-chewing old men regarded me with silent speculation when I parked and entered the courthouse.

There was a long corridor running the length of the building, with offices off it on either side, labeled with the familiar titles you see in any courthouse. Most of the doors stood open so that I had to pause and look in to read the lettering on the doors. The sheriff’s office was to the left just inside the main entrance, and directly across from it was the district attorney’s office. Both were empty. I passed other empty offices labeled TAX ASSESSOR, REGISTRAR OF MOTOR VEHICLES, COUNTY RECORDER, COUNTY CLERK and CORONER. Opposite the coroner’s office was an empty office labeled COUNTY JUDGE, and a small, equally empty courtroom.

By then I was halfway down the corridor, and I finally found some sign of life. In a small alcove, behind a counter flush with the left wall of the corridor, a young woman sat before a telephone switchboard. She was a rather plain-featured brunette of about twenty-one or two. A sign hanging above the counter said INFORMATION.

“Morning, miss,” I said. “Is the courthouse closed today?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Where is everybody?”

“Oh, they’re all available.” She indicated the switchboard. “I can have any official you want over here in ten minutes. They don’t hang around here because we have so little business.”

She laughed at my quizzical expression. “Kind of throws you at first, doesn’t it? It took me some getting used to when I first came here. I’ve been in this job only a year. I’m from Holoyke. When I answered the ad for a secretarial position, I didn’t realize I’d be practically running a whole county, but I’m clerk of the court, secretary to the D.A., the county clerk, the county recorder and the coroner, registrar of motor vehicles, switchboard operator and information clerk. My name’s Emma Pruett.”

The woman whose notary seal had been stamped to all the death certificates, I remembered. I said, “Doesn’t anybody but you work around here? You’re the staff?”

“When it’s necessary. The population of the whole county is only about twenty-five hundred, and all the county jobs except mine and the sheriff’s are part-time. The D.A. has his private law practice, for instance, and so does the county judge. The recorder of deeds runs a general store. The coroner’s a practicing physician, and so on. The salaries of none of them are more than a few dollars a month. They hired me to coordinate things. I always know where to reach everybody when something comes up. The sheriff’s usually around, but he happens to be over at the coffee shop at the moment.”

It seemed a rather loose way to run a county government, but with such a small tax roll, it was a lot more practical than paying the salaries of a lot of fulltime employees who had nothing to do.

I said, “If you’re secretary to the county cleric, I guess you won’t have to phone anyone. I just want to look up some death records to establish some insurance claims.”

I handed her one of my cards and she studied it with interest. Then she got up from her chair, raised a gate in the counter and stepped out into the corridor. “Just follow me, Mr. Quinn.”

She led me to the door labeled COUNTY CLERK and into the room. Moving behind a counter there, she asked, “What year?”

“This one. July and August.” I took out my list and looked at it. “The first one is Herman Potter, died July ninth.”

“I remember that name,” she said, lifting a large ledger from beneath the counter. “He was the first typhoid death. Only eighteen years old, too.” She located the proper page and reversed the book so I could examine it.

After studying the entry, which matched my notes in every detail, I said, “Next is Mrs. Henrietta Skinner, July fifteenth.”

She found that entry for me and it also checked out. Mrs. Martha Colvin, Mrs. Helen Jordan and Abel Hicks, who had died respectively on July twenty-first, August third and ninth, also checked out.

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you happen to know an insurance broker named Paul Manners?”

She furrowed her brow, then shook her head. In an apologetic tone she said, “No. I know all of the townspeople by sight, but I still don’t know all their names. Does he live in town?”

“His address is R.D.”

“That would be Ridge Road,” she said. “He probably lives on a farm out that way. I don’t know many of the farmers around here.”

“Where do I find Doctor Emmet Parks? Is his office nearby?”

“Doc? Just go east on Main Street one block. It’s a big frame house on the left. You can’t miss it, because it’s being remodeled into a new clinic and there’ll be workmen around. It’s also right next door to the post office.”

I thanked her again, left the courthouse and drove one block east on Main. It wasn’t hard to spot the doctor’s house. The framework of a long, one-story addition was attached to one side of it and a couple of workmen were lathing the inside walls. Just west of the house, on the side opposite the new addition, was a small, one-room frame building with a sign above the door reading U.S. POST OFFICE.

Parking across the street, I went over and climbed the porch steps. The two workmen stopped pounding and one of them called, “If you’re looking for Doc, he’s next door at the post office.”

At that moment a thin, elderly man carrying a cloth bag emerged from the post office. He was followed by a stocky, gray-haired man with a thick chest. The latter was in shirtsleeves and was smoking a pipe.

As the elderly man tossed his cloth bag into the back of a jeep parked in front of the post office and climbed under the wheel, the pipe smoker said, “See you this afternoon, Joe.” Then he glanced over at the porch and spotted me. As the jeep drove off, he came over and mounted the porch steps.

I asked, “Are you Dr. Emmet Parks?”

He took his pipe out of his mouth to examine me, then gave me a pleasant smile. He radiated such good nature, I instinctively liked him on sight.

“That’s right, young fellow. What can I do for you?”

I handed him a card. “I would like to discuss some death certificates you recently signed in connection with some insurance claims.”

After studying the card, he dropped it into his shirt pocket. “We can’t talk over all this pounding,” he said, indicating the two workmen, who had resumed nailing lath to the inside walls. “Come inside.”

He led me into the house. The front room was set up as a waiting room, but no one was in it.

As we passed through this room to an office, he said with a touch of ruefulness, “I’m not snowed under by patients, despite being the only physician in this county. The people around here are too infernally healthy.” Inside the office he rounded a battered old desk to seat himself behind it and waved me to a chair. Beyond the office wall we could still hear the pounding of nails, but it was muffled enough so that we didn’t have to raise our voices.

After relighting his pipe, he said, “I’d guess you’re about twenty-seven, Mr. Quinn. That close?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Married?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Don’t wait too long,” he advised. “Eventually you reach a point where you suddenly realize your chance to marry is gone. I’ve reached it. It gets rather lonely rattling around all alone in this big house. And it’ll be even bigger when the clinic’s finished. It’s too late for me to start hunting for a wife now, so all I have to look forward to is a lonely old age. Don’t make my mistake.”

I thought of Anita, and wondered if I would still be trying to talk her into marrying me when I reached the doctor’s age. “I’m agreeable to marriage,” I said. “But my girl doesn’t think I make enough money. She wants me to go into some kind of business for myself before she’ll say yes.”

“Beware of women with expensive tastes, Mr. Quinn. The more money you make, the more expensive their tastes become.”

“This one is worth it,” I assured him.

“The romantic faith of youth,” he said with a rueful smile. “I won’t burden you with more advice, because you wouldn’t take it anyway. Now what death certificates do you want to ask me about?”

“Five deaths from typhoid this last July and August. Herman Potter, Henrietta Skinner, Martha Colvin, Helen Jordan and Abel Hicks. They were all insured for ten thousand dollars, each by different carriers, but through the same insurance broker, Paul Manners.”

Pie took a puff of his pipe. “Uh-huh. What about them?”

“You were the medical examiner for each application, and also signed all five death certificates.”

“Naturally. I’m the only physician in the county. You’ll also find my signature on the coroner’s reports if you want to check. I’m county coroner.”

“It wasn’t that which brought me here.” I said. “All five claim-payment checks were endorsed to you and later cashed by you at a Holoyke bank. Can you explain that?”

Instead of seeming offended, the doctor looked amused. “You came all the way from the state capital just to ask about that, young fellow? They were cashed in Holyoke because that’s where I have my account. Heather Ridge doesn’t have a bank, and Holoyke is the nearest one. As to why they were endorsed to me, you don’t know much about this country, do you?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “It strikes me as a little backward.”

“It’s a century behind the times, Mr. Quinn. Back here in the hills people like lots of room, and don’t trust the outside world. The farms in this area are huge, and largely uncultivatable. Three-fourths of the land is either heavily wooded or straight up and down. Geographically we’re the seventh largest county in the state; in population we’re the smallest. Farmers around here sometimes go months without seeing anyone but their own families. They’ve largely been forgotten by the outside world. Social workers never come prying into the hill country to make sure kids are attending school. Our illiteracy rate is probably fifty percent, although I don’t believe anyone has ever bothered to make a survey. Begin to understand?”

“I’m afraid not,” I confessed.

“Hill people don’t put their money in banks. They hide it under the flooring. That’s why there’s no bank here. It wouldn’t have enough customers to support it. Most hill people wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about cashing a check. They endorsed them over to me so I could cash them in Holoyke and bring back the cash in hundred-dollar bills.”

“Oh,” I said. The explanation was that simple.

After a moment of thought, I said, “I guess that clears it up. I may as well see Paul Manners while I’m here, though. How do I find him?”

“You don’t. He and his wife are in Florida for the winter.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do people from around here ordinarily vacation in Florida?”

He grinned. “Only Paul. He hit a windfall by becoming an insurance broker, because this is virgin territory. A lot of the townspeople have carried insurance for years, of course, but I doubt that any of the people back in the hills have ever before been approached by an insurance salesman. They wouldn’t have bought from a stranger anyway. Paul was born and grew up in this area, and knows everybody in the county, so they trust him. I guess his commissions financed his Florida vacation.”

“Well, I suppose it isn’t really necessary to see him,” I said. “Everything seems to be on the up-and-up.”

“You may as well complete your investigation while you’re here,” Dr. Parks said. “It would be too bad if your superiors weren’t satisfied, and sent you all the way back to dig some more. I have to make a call near the Potter place. Suppose you ride along and talk to the father of the Potter boy?”

Ed Morgan liked investigations to be thorough, and I thought I should interview at least one of the five beneficiaries to make sure the doctor was telling me the truth as to why all the checks had been endorsed to him.

“All right,” I agreed.

Dr. Parks had to make a call at a farm a few miles out Ridge Road, where a child was in bed with measles. I waited in the car while he was inside. Afterward we drove about four miles farther on, to a well-kept farmhouse.

A tall, knobby-jointed man of about forty-five came from the barn when the doctor drove into the yard. I could also see a woman peeking through the curtains of a kitchen window, but she must have been too shy to come outside, because she stood there without moving all the time we were in the yard.

Dr. Parks introduced the man as Sidney Potter. He shook hands with me diffidently, obviously ill at ease in the presence of a city man.

“Mr. Quinn is an insurance investigator, Sid,” the doctor explained. “He wants to ask some questions about young Herman.”

Sidney Potter’s expression became sad. “The boy was only eighteen, Mr. Quinn. I only took out the insurance on him to save money for him to buy his own farm some day. I got another boy twenty, and I couldn’t leave them both this farm. Doc advised me as how insurance was a way to save, not just get death benefits. I bought it for that, not to make a profit on my own boy’s death.”

“I understand,” I said.

“We all tooken sick, but the Lord chose to save me and Minnie and our older boy, and just took Herman. Doc says the fever was from the well. He had me put some stuff in it, and we ain’t had no trouble since.”

“All the others were traceable to well water too,” Dr. Parks said to me. “I’ve had them all treated and have been regularly testing the water, as well as the water from other wells all over the county. I’m county health officer, among my other duties.”

I wanted to nail things down completely, since I had gone this far. I said, “You got your ten-thousand-dollar insurance payment all right, didn’t you, Mr. Potter?”

The man gave me a suspicious look.

“Mr. Quinn works for the insurance company which sent you the money,” Dr. Parks explained, not quite accurately. “He merely wants to make sure you got the check.” He turned to me. “We don’t have much theft around here, but naturally no one advertises keeping a lot of money around the place. No one aside from me knows Sid was paid an insurance claim. He’s naturally a little hesitant about admitting it to strangers.”

“I see. I won’t tell anyone but my office, Mr. Potter. You did receive the check then?”

“Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “Ten thousand dollars, for which I thank you kindly. I had Doc cash it for me over to Holoyke. It’s hid real good, so you don’t have to worry about nobody but me and Minnie ever finding it.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” I told him. “I guess that winds up my investigation, Doctor.”

As we drove away, the woman was still peering through the kitchen curtains. Glancing back, I saw a boy of about twenty emerge from the barn, from where he apparently had been watching us all the time we were in the yard. When I called him to the doctor’s attention, he glanced over his shoulder.

“That’s Sid Junior,” he said. “The older boy. He’s as shy of outsiders as his mother. You noticed her standing in the kitchen window, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I can understand how an insurance salesman from outside wouldn’t stand a chance in these parts.”

It was time for lunch when we got back to town. The doctor invited me to lunch with him and took me to a coffee shop on the square, presumably the same one where the sheriff had been when I visited the courthouse.

Dr. Parks knew every customer there, and introduced me to all of them. I met the sheriff, a fat, elderly man named Tom Gaines, District Attorney Charles Hayes, who was a middle-aged balding man, and an assortment of fanners and merchants. We sat at a table with the sheriff and the D.A.

Emma Pruett came in as we were ordering. “Hi, boss,” she said to Dr. Parks, then smiled at the district attorney. “Hi, boss.”

We all rose and the sheriff pulled up a chair for her to join us.

“Sheriff Gaines is about the only person at the courthouse who isn’t my boss,” she said to me. “I’m everybody’s secretary or assistant.”

“That’s right, you do work for Dr. Parks, don’t you?” I said. “You told me you were secretary to the coroner, among your other duties.”

“Plus secretary to the county health officer and the county clerk,” she said. “He’s all three.”

“You’re county clerk?” I asked the doctor in surprise.

“We all wear multiple hats around here,” he said with a grin. “County clerk is quite an important job. It pays a hundred and twenty dollars a year.”

“Doc is also postmaster,” District Attorney Hayes said. “He practically runs the county.”

I gave the doctor another surprised look.

“That’s a tough job too,” he said. “The mail truck from Holoyke arrives at ten each morning. Sometimes there are as many as a dozen letters and packages. I sort the mail from about ten to ten-fifteen, and an old fellow named Joe Husbands delivers it. Joe’s on duty at the post office, except when he’s delivering the mail, to weigh packages and sell stamps. He gets maybe six customers a day.”

“This is a real active place,” Sheriff Gaines said sardonically. “I made eight arrests last year, all either for public drunkenness or disturbing the peace.”

After lunch Dr. Parks drove me back to his house, where I picked up my car. I was entering the square, with the intention of driving around it and continuing on out of town, when I suddenly remembered a remark Sidney Potter had made, and also a comment the doctor had made while we were at the farm. A fantastic thought occurred to me. Changing my mind, I parked in front of the courthouse.

This time Sheriff Gaines was in his office. He gave me a smile of welcome.

“Sheriff, do you know Paul Manners?” I asked.

He looked blank. “Manners? No, I don’t believe so.”

“He’s an insurance broker. Lives out on R.D. 1, or so I was told.”

He gave his head a puzzled shake. “Only one I know around here who sells insurance is Doc Parks. He even sold me my policy.”

My thought hadn’t been so fantastic after all. In fact, it had been the logical answer.

“Thanks,” I said, and left the office.

Emma Pruett was again behind the information counter.

“May I bother you to look at some more records?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a relief to have something to do for a change.”

We returned to the county clerk’s office. Consulting the notes I had taken on Paul Manners, I first looked up his birth registration. He was recorded as having been born on April 2, 1918. On his application for an insurance broker’s license, he had listed his wife’s maiden name as Gertrude Booker and her birth date as June 4, 1920. Sure enough, that record was on file too.

Just to see how thorough the doctor had been, I had Emma check for their marriage record. I didn’t know the supposed date of marriage, but I guessed it would be no earlier than 1936, as Gertrude would have been sixteen then. Starting with that year, Emma checked forward. The record showed they were married in 1940.

I had Emma check for the birth records of all five persons whose death claims had been paid, and found them all in order too. I had no doubt that in the cases of the eighty-year-old grandfather and the three married women, I would find birth records of their spouses and marriage records, but I didn’t bother to look for them.

“Is there more than one undertaker in town?” I asked Emma.

“No, just Gerard Boggs. He’s out past Doc Parks on East Main about a block and a half.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

I had a brief visit with the undertaker, then returned to the doctor’s house. He seemed a little surprised to see me, but he courteously invited me into his office.

When we were both seated and he had his pipe going, I said, “I was on my way out of town when something Sidney Potter said, and something you said a few moments later, recurred to me. Potter said you had advised him that insurance was a way to save, and not just get death benefits. He didn’t say Paul Manners advised him. He said you. I might have passed that, merely assuming Potter had come to you for advice after being contacted by the insurance salesman, if you hadn’t mentioned a few moments later that no one but you and Potter knew he had received an insurance check. Now why wouldn’t Paul Manners, who sold the policy and no doubt helped Potter prepare his claim, know that he’d received payment?”

The doctor puffed at his pipe and gazed at me through the smoke. “I forgot about Paul. Of course he’d know.”

I grinned at him. “You’re going to fight until you’re counted out, are you, Doctor? I’ve been back to the courthouse since I last saw you. You did a remarkable job on the records. It’s a matter of legal record that Paul Manners and his wife were both born, grew up and married. All five of those typhoid cases have their lives carefully recorded too. On paper they were all born, grew up, married and died. Except for young Herman Potter, of course. He was just born, grew to eighteen and died.”

The doctor hiked his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

“I just came from Boggs’s Funeral Home. He remembers conducting a funeral for Herman Potter, but he never heard of the other four typhoid victims.”

Dr. Parks pursed his lips.

“Furthermore, neither Emma Pruett, Sheriff Gaines nor Gerard Boggs ever heard of Paul Manners, which is a little odd considering he’s the only insurance broker in the county, was born here and lived here all his life. Sheriff says you’ve been selling insurance.”

“Hmm,” the doctor said.

“It was quite clever of you to take me to see Mr. Potter. Herman Potter actually did die from typhoid, didn’t he? I suppose that’s what gave you the idea for the others. You created your own little typhoid epidemic by insuring, and later killing off, people who never existed except on paper.”

Dr. Parks’ pipe had gone out. He relit it and puffed it slowly.

“Why did you risk taking me to see Potter, Doctor? I was ready to leave town. You must have sweated it all the time we were there, hoping I wouldn’t mention Paul Manners. And later, at the coffee shop, you must have sweated even harder.”

He took his pipe from his mouth and regarded me with rueful sadness. “Impulse, Mr. Quinn. I hadn’t thought it through. It seemed wise at the time to lull your suspicions completely, in case future claim payments in this area later came to your attention. The danger of your mentioning Paul Manners to Potter simply didn’t occur to me until after I had extended the invitation. Inviting you to lunch was another mistake. I really didn’t want to, but unfortunately I’m innately courteous, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.”

I studied him with a mixture of amusement and admiration. “This is the most brilliant insurance fraud I’ve ever run into, Doctor. You rightly guessed that insurance companies wouldn’t be suspicious of claims where the doctor who originally examined the applicant also signed the death certificate, particularly from a community this small. But you knew they would never stomach the doctor also being the man who sold the policy. You created a Paul Manners on paper, boned up to pass the state insurance exam and took it in his name. As postmaster you catch every bit of mail coming into Heather Ridge. When letters addressed to the people the fake Manners had given as references came from the state licensing bureau, they were never delivered. You simply forged answers and sent back glowing recommendations. In two cases, that is. You had also given yourself as a reference, so you didn’t have to forge that answer. In the same way, you caught the claim payment checks mailed to the mythical beneficiaries of the four mythical decedents. How many of the other policies you’ve written are on mythical people?”

“About half,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve actually sold only eleven. Up until now the others are rather a financial burden. I’ve been planning to record a few more deaths.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “A doctor shouldn’t be that hard up for money.”

He snorted. “In this area the doctor gets paid in eggs and chickens and other produce. Up until now I’ve really needed my salary as postmaster and the fees from my various county jobs. Besides, I wanted to build my clinic.”

After a pause, he added candidly, “A little greed entered into it too. I’ve set aside only half the money, so far, for the clinic. I’ve earmarked the rest for the traveling I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t suppose you’re open for bribery?”

I examined him for some time, and silence built between us. Finally I said softly, “Try me.”

“Hmm,” he said. “How much?”

“Let’s consider the service I can render, in addition to merely keeping my mouth shut, before we arrive at a figure,” I said. “If I go back and give Paul Manners a clean bill of health, it’s extremely unlikely you would ever be caught again. Even if something roused the association’s suspicion again, almost certainly I would be the investigator sent, since I’m already in on the ground floor.”

He gave me his most charming smile. “Your readiness to be bribed leads me to suspect you’re thinking of your expensive young lady. It won’t solve your problem, of course, because no matter how much you earn, she’ll always want more. That’s your affair, however. How much?”

“Fifty-fifty, including the forty thousand you’ve already taken.”

He pursed his lips. “I’ve earmarked twenty-five thousand of that for the clinic. Also the premiums on my fictional policy holders are quite a drain, and I don’t feel expenses should come all from my share. There’s only about ten thousand left to divide.”

“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll settle for five thousand now and fifty percent of all future take, less premium costs. That suit you?”

“It’s considerably better than going to jail,” he said with a smile.

I rose and held out my hand, palm up. “Now if I may have my first five-thousand-dollar fee, I’ll be on my way. I’ll be in correspondence with you.”

Parks got the cash from the bedroom, and we parted cordially a few minutes later, me with five thousand dollars in my pocket and considerably richer future prospects.

THE JOLLY JUGGLERS, RETIRED

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1967.

They could hear the car coming long before its headlights would appear around the curve circling Indian Butte, because the clear desert air carried sound a remarkable distance. By the sound, it was traveling along the narrow gravel road at an unsafe speed.

“Must be city folk,” old Ed Jolly said to his wife. “Be here in ten minutes at the speed they’re going, if they don’t hit one of them potholes in the road. If they do, might not get here at all.”

His head cocked for listening, he preoccupiedly lifted four apples from a box lying on the counter on the grocery side of the combination General Store, snack bar, and tavern, and began expertly juggling them. He was still lean and erect despite his 75 years, and his hands were almost as supple as they had been 30 years ago.

Mary Jolly, only a few months younger than her husband, was also in excellent health for her age. Her body had thinned out and lost its once lissome figure, but there was still a twinkle in her eye and the vestiges of a spring in her step.

Standing several feet away, she eyed the arcing apples as they circled in the air from one hand to the other. Suddenly she raised her left hand and chanted, “A-one and a-two and away and go!”

Grinning, Ed continued to toss and catch the apples until the last word of the incantation; then they suddenly sped toward his wife in such a rapid stream that two were in the air all the time. Expertly plucking each apple from the air as it reached her and tossing it upward, she started juggling them. When Ed raised his hand, they streamed back to him. He juggled them twice, then caught them and dropped them back into the box.

“We could still wow them if there was any vaudeville left,” he said. “I better get outside.”

By its sound he judged the car was now just beyond Indian Butte when he switched on the gas pumps. He knew it would stop, because cars coming from the east always did. Except for ranch houses, the Jollys’ filling station and General Store was the only sign of civilization for the 125 miles from Ripple City in that direction, and for the 65 miles to the nearest town west.

Headlights appeared from around the curve circling the butte just east of the store. The car slowed and swung into the filling station. It was a new but dust-laden four-door sedan with four men in it.

Bringing the car to a stop before the gas pump, the driver said, “Fill ’er up, Pop.”

The four men got out to stretch. They were all somewhere between 30 and 40 and all were dressed in darkly conservative business suits.

As Ed inserted the hose nozzle into the tank vent, the driver, a lean thin-faced man with a large nose, said, “How far’s Hooker’s Gap, Pop?”

“Sixty-five miles.”

The driver glanced at a wrist watch, then turned to a stocky man with heavy features and thick flat lips who had climbed from the back seat. “It’s not quite ten yet, Mark. We’ll be in well before midnight.”

The stocky man nodded. He said to Ed Jolly, “You’re really isolated out here, old-timer. How do you make a living?”

“Oh, a dozen or more cars a day take this toad,” Ed said. “Everyone stops, because there’s no place else to go. Most generally they have a drink or a snack besides buying gas, and a lot of them buy stuff from the store. We have a little grocery department, mainly for the convenience of nearby ranches, but tourists buy stuff too. Then we got a couple of sleeping rooms that people rent now and then.”

“A drink, you say?” a gaunt, emaciated, and chinless man asked. “You got a bar here?”

Before Ed could reply, the stocky man said in a definite tone, “Nothing doing, Sliver. There’ll be no drinking until our business is finished.”

The fourth man, short and burly and red-faced, said, “You live out here all alone, Pop?”

“No, my wife Mary’s inside, in case you want a snack and some coffee.”

No one took the suggestion. The stocky man named Mark gazed around. Noting the dim outline of the big structure behind the store, he asked, “What’s that building?”

Following the direction of his gaze, Ed said, “Barn. We don’t use it, except to garage our pickup. Fellow owned this place before us raised a little livestock on the side. We keep a few chickens, is all.”

The stocky man continued to gaze around, his expression contemplative. “You have two sleeping rooms, you say?”

“Uh-huh. One double bed and one twin bed, so folks can take their choice on how they want to sleep. Five dollars a night per person, with breakfast thrown in.”

The tank overflowed. Ed cut the valve and hung up the hose. He cleaned the windshield, then asked, “Check under the hood?”

The lean driver said, “No, it’s okay,” and glanced at the amount registered on the pump.

It registered $3.10. The driver handed Ed four $1 bills.

“Keep the change, Pop.”

“Well, thanks,” Ed said. “Mighty good of you.”

“Let’s get moving,” the stocky man said crisply, and climbed in back.

As though they were soldiers obeying the command of a superior officer, the other three immediately climbed in too. Ed watched the twin taillights out of sight, then shut off the gas pumps and went back inside to report the ninety-cent tip to Mary.

“Must be businessmen going to a conference somewhere,” he guessed. “Stocky fellow seemed to be the boss at least, the others all snapped when he spoke up. Probably the company president, and the others all work for him.”

He plucked an apple from the box on the counter, tossed it in the air, caught it behind his back, then started eating it.

* * *

Just before 4:30 the following afternoon the sound of a car traveling at high speed came from the west. Ed, who had nearly perfect pitch although he had never attempted to develop his potential musical talent, recognized the engine sound.

“Those business fellows coming back,” he said to Mary. “Maybe this time they’ll have a snack.”

He was waiting at the pumps when they drove in. The car didn’t pull up before the pumps, however. It swung in before the entrance to the General Store. Three of the men got out, the driver remaining behind the wheel. The stocky Mark carried a black, obviously heavy satchel.

“Get our overnight bags from the trunk,” Mark ordered the two who had got out of the car with him. Then he said to the driver, “Park it in the barn, Joey, and be sure to close the door.”

Ed, who had come over from the pumps, looked at the stocky man inquiringly.

“We’ve decided to rent your two sleeping rooms,” the man said. “You don’t mind if we use your barn as a garage, do you?”

“Course not,” Ed said. “Plenty of room. There’s nothing in it but our old pickup.”

Joey, the driver, had handed his keys through the window to the emaciated and chinless man called Sliver. The latter unlocked the car trunk, lifted out four overnight bags, slammed the trunk lid, and handed back the keys. The burly, red-faced man picked up two of the bags, Sliver picked up the other two, and they went into the store.

Joey started the car engine, backed and swung into the dirt lane leading to the barn. Ed followed the stocky Mark inside. The other two had set down the overnight bags just inside the door, but Mark hung on to the heavy satchel.

Mary was behind the snack counter.

“This here is my wife, Mary,” Ed said. “My name’s Ed Jolly, incidentally. Mary, these gentlemen and a fourth one who’s putting the car in the barn want to stay the night.”

“How do you do, gentlemen?” Mary said courteously.

The red-faced man and the gaunt Sliver muttered barely audible greetings. Mark said, “Glad to know you, Mrs. Jolly. My name is Mark Jones. This is Sliver Smith and Puffy Brown.” He indicated first the gaunt, chinless man, then the red-faced one. “The guy who will be along in a minute is Joey Black.”

Mary smiled acknowledgment of the introductions and came from behind the counter. “I’ll show you the rooms and let you decide who sleeps in which.”

Mary led the way through the door leading to the back hallway off which were their own bedroom, the two guest rooms, and the bath. Sliver Smith and Puffy Brown picked up the four overnight bags and followed. Mark brought up the rear.

The lean thin-faced Joey came in the front door.

“My wife is showing the others the rooms,” Ed said. He pointed to the door leading to the rear hallway. “You’ll find them through there, Mr. Black.”

“Huh?” Joey said. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

He disappeared through the indicated doorway. Ed rubbed his chin and frowned.

When Mary reappeared, alone, a few minutes later, she was delightedly clutching two $100 bills.

“They’re going to stay several days,” she said breathlessly. “Mr. Jones paid me ten days in advance and said if they leave sooner, we can keep the change. I tried to tell him we’d adjust the rate for so long a period, but he said never mind.”

Ed was still frowning in the direction of the rear hall. After 55 years of marriage, Mary was sensitive to his moods almost to the point of being able to read his mind.

“What’s the matter?” she asked quickly.

“That fellow Joey—the driver. His name isn’t Black. When I called him Mr. Black, he looked blank. Then he caught on that the stocky fellow had told me that name and covered up.”

Mary gazed at him puzzledly. “You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh. Think about the other names—Jones, Smith, Brown. Funny that four fellows traveling together should all have such common names. And why would they want to spend several days here? There’s no hunting or fishing around here, nothing to do but look at the desert.”

Mary studied his face with dawning understanding. “You think—you think they may be criminals hiding from the law?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’ll phone the Sheriff’s office and ask somebody to come out and give them a look-see.”

The stocky Mark returned trailed by his three companions. He stopped before Ed and Mary while the other three took seats at the bar.

“You say about a dozen cars a day stop here, Mr. Jolly?”

“About,” Ed said.

“Then I think we’d better have a little rehearsal before the next customer arrives. We’re very retiring men, Mr. Jolly. We hate a lot of people around, so we prefer that no one learns we’re your guests. Understand?”

Ed was afraid he did, but he let his face assume a puzzled expression. “No.”

“I’ll make it plainer. As far as possible I want you to service your customers outside—keep them out of the store. To tourists you can just explain that the place is closed down for alterations. Anybody you happen to know well enough so that the news might surprise them, let them come in and serve them. State Troopers or Deputy Sheriffs, for instance. We’ll remain out of sight in the back, and you won’t mention our being here. All clear?”

Ed narrowed his eyes. “Why should I steer business away?”

The thick flat lips spread in a humorless smile. “Because if you cooperate, nothing will happen to your wife. While you are serving customers, Mrs. Jolly will remain with us, Mr. Jolly. If anyone inquires about her during daylight hours, just say she’s taking a nap. After dark just say she’s in bed for the night. Any attempt to pass on a message for some customer to relay to the cops will have most unfortunate results. I guarantee it.”

He turned toward the bar. “Sliver, show the Jollys your favorite plaything.”

The gaunt, emaciated Sliver dipped a hand into his coat pocket and brought it out again. There was a click and a thin razor-edged blade seven inches long sprang into view.

“Get the point?” the stocky Mark asked.

Mary’s gaze was fixed on the blade in fascination. Ed gulped.

“I get it,” he said.

“Fine. Now if you cooperate, nobody will get hurt. We’ll be here a few days, then take off. Of course we’ll have to cut your phone line and take along the distributor cap of your pickup truck so that we can get a reasonable head start before you run to the cops. But we’ll pay you generously for your trouble.”

Ed felt a sense of relief. At least the men planned no physical harm unless he and Mary attempted to cross them. He decided the safest course was to do as the man called Mark said.

The sound of a car engine came from the west.

Mark said crisply, “Sliver, take Mrs. Jolly in back. Joey, you and Puffy get out of sight too. I’ll keep watch from the window to see how the old man behaves.”

The three men herded Mary before them into the rear hallway. The stocky man drew a black automatic from beneath his arm and let his eyes glitter at Ed.

“I’ll have my eye on you when you go out there, Mr. Jolly. If whoever that is wants to come in, and it’s somebody who might get suspicious if you said the store was closed, okay. But I’ll be in that back hall, right alongside the door, listening. Just keep thinking of Sliver’s little plaything.”

“I will,” Ed assured him.

He went outside just as the approaching car pulled into the gas station. His heart began to thump when he saw it was a State Trooper’s car.

There were two uniformed men in the car, and Ed knew them both.

They were from the barracks just outside of Hooker’s Gap. The driver, a young man named Ross Miller, was a sergeant. His companion, a muscular man named Harry Forbes, was a lieutenant.

The car pulled clear of the pumps, parking near the store entrance. Both officers got out.

“Hello, Ross,” Ed said. “Hi Lieutenant.”

Both men gave him friendly greetings. The Lieutenant said, “Seen anything of a car with four men in it Mr. Jolly?”

“Today?” Ed asked.

“Uh-huh. They’d have been coming from the direction of Hooker’s Gap.”

Ed shook his head. “Only been four cars from that direction so far today, Lieutenant. Two was couples with kids, one had two women together, and the other was Burt Lacey from the Double-Bar ranch.”

“Any cars go by without stopping?”

Ed shook his head again. “Seldom happens way out here. I’d have known even if I was inside. You can hear them miles away.”

Lieutenant Forbes reached into the front seat to lift out the dashboard mike and briefly reported in that the suspects hadn’t gone by way of the road past the Jollys’ store. After hanging up the mike, he suggested to his partner that they have a cup of coffee before heading back to Hooker’s Gap.

Ed’s heart was in his throat as he led them inside. The store was empty, but the door to the rear hall was open a crack. Silently he went behind the snack counter and poured two cups of coffee.

As he set them before the State Troopers, Ross Miller asked, “Where’s Mrs. Jolly?”

“Taking a little nap,” Ed said. “What you looking for these fellows for?”

“They knocked over the bank at Hooker’s Gap just at closing time, couple of hours ago. Killed a teller and got away with forty-two thousand dollars. There was so much on hand because Friday is the day the bank makes up the payroll for the Bishop mine. We don’t know what they’re driving, because they stole a local car for the job. We found it abandoned on the north road out of town, where they apparently switched cars. Probably they headed north. It would have been dumb to head this way, because there’s no place to turn off for two hundred miles and we’ve got a roadblock set up at the far end. But we had to check it out.”

The bank robbers had been clever, Ed realized. They had deliberately taken an apparently suicidal escape route because they knew the police would pay little attention to it other than bottling up its far end. And now that the police were convinced the men had not come this way, probably the roadblock at Ripple City would be lifted and the robbers could drive on through in perfect safety.

“What these fellows look like, in case they come by here?” Ed asked.

The Lieutenant shrugged. “Just four men of assorted shapes and sizes in dark suits. Two were heavy-set, two skinny. Nobody saw their faces because they wore nylon stockings over their heads. The taller of the heavy-set men shot the teller. No reason for it either. Just because he didn’t move as fast as he was ordered to. Cut him down in cold blood. Young fellow who’d only been married three weeks.”

Ed felt a chill climb along his spine. The description of the killer fitted the leader of the gang, Mark. And if he was that callous a killer, his reassuring words about merely cutting the phone line and taking along the pickup’s distributor cap had been designed only to lull Ed and Mary into more willing cooperation.

Ed suddenly thought of something which he reproached himself for not having thought of before. Disabling the pickup and cutting the phone line wouldn’t assure the bandits any head start. A customer might appear within minutes of the fugitives’ departure, and while the nearest town was sixty-five miles away, there was a ranch house with a phone less than ten miles from the General Store.

Mark certainly would have thought of this. Ed became certain that the stocky man had no intention of leaving two live witnesses behind when the gang departed.

He was frantically searching his mind for some way to tip off the State Troopers that the fugitives were in the building without getting both police officers shot down when they simultaneously drained their cups and tossed dimes on the counter.

“They won’t be coming this way now,” the Lieutenant said as he headed for the door. “So you don’t have to worry. See you, Mr. Jolly.”

Ross Miller, following the Lieutenant, called over his shoulder, “Give Mrs. Jolly my regards.”

Then they were gone and so was Ed’s opportunity to signal that something was wrong.

As the State Troopers’ car drove away, Mark came from the back hall, putting away his gun.

“You did fine, old man,” he said. “Just keep up the good work with any other customers.”

Ed silently resolved to use the first gas customer who came along as a means of getting word of the Jollys’ danger to the police. Mentally he rehearsed how he would stand with his back to the store, so that the watching Mark couldn’t see his lips moving, and what he would say.

“Please don’t glance toward the store,” he would say. “There’s a man with a gun covering us through the window. Don’t try to answer me. Just listen. Get to the nearest phone and call the police.” (Here he would give directions to the nearest ranch, depending on which way the car was headed.) “Tell them the four men who robbed the bank in Hooker’s Gap are hiding out here. They’ve threatened to kill my wife if I don’t cooperate, so warn them to move in cautiously.”

That should do it, he thought. There was the risk that Mark would realize that Ed had violated orders and would kill him and Mary in revenge, but he was convinced the man intended to kill them anyway. This way they would at least have a fighting chance.

Ed never had an opportunity to put his plan in operation, because no other cars came along. By dark he had lost hope. They sometimes had customers after nightfall, and even occasionally were awakened to serve someone in the middle of the night, but it was a rare occurrence. Few people cared to travel the isolated desert road at night, for fear of becoming stranded in darkness miles from any possible help.

Nightfall was early at this time of year. It was already dark when Mary served dinner for everyone at 6:30. After dinner, as Mary washed dishes behind the snack counter, the four men sat at the liquor bar.

“You can serve us one drink each, Mr. Jolly,” Mark said. “That’s going to be the limit, boys, because we’re moving on at midnight.”

As he walked behind the bar, Ed again felt a chill climb his spine.

That meant he and Mary had only five hours to live. And he hadn’t even had a chance to warn her of what was coming, because they had never been allowed to be alone.

The red-faced Puffy said, “I thought we was gonna hole up here for a couple of days.”

“We were, until those state cops radioed in that we hadn’t come this way. The roadblock at Ripple City’s probably been lifted by now. It’s a cinch to be lifted by the time we hit there.”

Ed said huskily, “What do you want to drink?”

They all ordered bourbon straight, with water chasers. Ed poured the drinks and waited. No one made any effort to pay. Apparently now that his cooperation was no longer essential, the pretense of being paying customers was over.

Probably they would take back the $200 and clean out the till when they left, Ed thought. Not that it would make any difference.

Mary came from behind the snack counter and went over to the grocery department, where she began scanning the shelves.

“We’re most out of pork and beans, Ed,” she called. “Better bring out about six cans.”

Restocking the canned goods shelves was a nightly game they played, but tonight Ed wasn’t in much of a mood for games. Dispiritedly he went into the store.

When he emerged, he was juggling six cans of pork and beans. The four men at the bar watched in astonishment as the cans made a blurred circle in the air from one hand to the other.

When he had walked to within twelve feet of the waiting Mary, juggling the cans on the way, she chanted, “A-one and a-two and away and go!”

The cans suddenly took a horizontal motion, forming a continuous streak toward her. Rhythmically she plucked each from the air as it arrived, flipped it into her other hand, and plunked it onto the shelf.

The men at the bar were staring open-mouthed. All four had swung around on their stools with their backs to the bar.

Mark said, “That’s the damnedest thing I ever saw. Where’d you old codgers learn a trick like that?”

“You’re all too young to remember The Jolly Jugglers,” Ed said with an air of dignity. “We were vaudeville headliners before you were born.”

“With that act you still could be,” Mark said. “What happened?”

Ed made a wry face. Mary said, “A thing called talking pictures. Our last good year was 1929. Our last theater booking was in 1932. We played carny for a few years after that, but it was really all over.”

“What the devil is carny?” Sliver asked.

“Carnivals,” Ed said.

Mark said, “We’ve got several hours to fool away. We might as well have some amusement. How about you folks putting on your whole act for us?”

The two old people looked at each other. Mary smiled.

“Why not?” she said. “We haven’t performed before an audience in years.”

Ed had a sudden wild thought. If only he could get Mary alone long enough to explain what he had in mind, it just possibly might work.

“All right,” he said to her. “Come help me carry in the props.”

“Sliver can help you,” Mark said. “She stays here.”

That quashed that. As he preceded the gaunt Sliver back to the bedroom that he and Mary shared, Ed decided to go ahead with his plan anyway, and hope that somehow he could get across to Mary what he had in mind.

In the bedroom Ed opened the closet door and dragged out the box containing the Indian clubs. It was pretty heavy, because it contained a dozen of the tapered, round-ended wooden clubs. Sliver helped him carry the box back into the store, then resumed his seat at the bar.

Mary looked puzzled when Ed drew four of the brightly painted clubs from the box and handed them to her. The Indian clubs had always been the finale of their act, but he had left the juggling balls, dishes, and rods in the closet.

Ed gazed at her steadily, hoping she wouldn’t ask why he hadn’t brought the other paraphernalia out first. Her near ability to read his mind worked. Obviously she didn’t understand it, but he sensed that she understood he didn’t want her to question him.

Removing four more clubs from the box, he positioned himself at one end of the bar and about six feet away from it. Mary positioned herself at the other end.

“We used to juggle all twelve,” Ed said in an apologetic tone. “But we’re getting a little old. Eight still isn’t bad. A lot of juggling teams never got over six.”

“Get on with the show,” Mark said impatiently.

Ed held three clubs in his left hand, one in his right. He flipped the single one end-over-end into the air, quickly transferred another to his right hand, and flipped it. The third and fourth followed these into the air also, the last one leaving his right hand just as gravity brought the first one down into his left hand.

The spinning clubs formed a colorful pinwheel which Mary watched until its rhythm was established in her mind. Then she began to juggle her four clubs in similar rhythm so that her right hand was tossing a club into the air at exactly the same instant one left Ed’s right hand, her left hand catching one at the same instant his did.

“A-one and a-two and away and go!” she chanted.

At the word go the clubs took on a horizontal motion, shooting in a tumbling stream from her right hand to Ed’s left, while a stream from his right hand shot toward her. Back and forth the eight clubs spun, forming a glittering pattern in the air.

“Hey rube at the count of go!” Ed chanted.

He could see Mary’s eyes widen at the carny expression, “Hey rube”—the traditional call for help when the carnival was threatened. Her eyes sought his, read his mind, and she nodded.

“A-one and a-two and away and go!” Ed intoned.

Both shifted their feet to half face the bar and the twin streams of spinning clubs suddenly spurted in that direction. Mark, seated nearest to Ed, took the heavy butt of the first one squarely in the center of his forehead and tumbled to the floor like a poled ox. Sliver, next in line, slid from his stool with incredible swiftness, ducked the second club, and darted a hand beneath his coat. The third club smashed between his eyes.

With the fourth club poised for throwing, Ed looked to see how Mary was doing. Joey the driver was unconscious on the floor. The red-faced Puffy was on his knees wearing a groggy expression, but still conscious enough to claw for the gun beneath his arm.

Ed’s fourth club went spinning end-over-end and thunked solidly against Puffy’s temple. Puffy pitched forward on his face.

Ed and Mary nodded sadly.

“I’m getting old,” she said. “I didn’t connect solidly with any but the first throw. I hit him with the other three, but they were all glancing blows.”

“We’re both a little rusty,” he agreed. “Go call the Sheriff. I’ll collect their guns.”

He stooped over each unconscious man, relieved him of his gun, and carried them all behind the bar. The Indian club which Sliver had ducked had sailed into the backbar, smashing a couple of bottles of whiskey, and now lay on the floor behind the bar.

Ed picked it up, came from behind the bar, and gathered up the other seven clubs. He lay four on the end of the bar and held the other four, three in his left hand, the fourth in his right.

He had never trusted guns. He felt safer with the Indian clubs.

When Mary returned from the phone, she picked up the four clubs from the bar and aligned herself next to him. They were still standing there when Sheriff’s Deputies arrived.

All four of the bank robbers had regained consciousness by then, but they still lay on the floor. As each had awakened he had decided against moving as soon as Ed and Mary began juggling their clubs.

AN ELEMENT OF RISK

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1972.

When I learned my brother-in-law was going to be out of town for a whole week, I got pretty upset about my sister being alone for seven nights when a psychotic killer was running around loose. I was having Sunday dinner with them at their place when Lyle casually mentioned he was flying to Chicago the next morning.

“For how long?” I asked.

“I’ll be back the following Monday.”

“Seven days!” I said so loudly that I startled young Tod into dropping a spoonful of mashed potatoes and gravy onto his high-chair tray. “You’re going to leave Martha alone in the house for seven days!”

The moment the words were out, I wished I hadn’t raised my voice. I liked Lyle, but he was so touchy you had to be careful how you talked to him. I had seen him abruptly withdraw from conversation at some imagined slight and sit without uttering a word for hours.

Martha was having the same thoughts, because she threw him a concerned glance, but this time he seemed undisturbed.

Relieved, she said lightly, “I’ll have Tod to protect me.”

Big deal. My namesake nephew was two-and-a-half-years old.

The boy, whose high chair was between me and my sister, looked from me to his mother and inquired, “Why Unkie Tod talk so loud?”

“Because he has a vivid imagination,” she told him. “Eat your mashed potatoes.”

My fears were hardly imaginary, though. The wraith known as the Stocking Killer had so far strangled six local women with their own stockings, and incidentally had inspired a couple of other nuts in Kansas City and Chicago to imitate him by each killing one victim. All six St. Louis women had been young, attractive married women, alone in their homes when murdered. In two cases their husbands had been out of town, but in the other four they had merely been out for the evening.

The M.O. had been the same in each case. The killer had obtained entry after his victim was asleep, had searched the house until he found a pair of stockings recently worn by the victim but as yet unlaundered, then had strangled the woman with one stocking and had carried the other away.

There had been no evidence of sexual attack in any of the cases, and no strange fingerprints were ever found, leading the police to believe the killer wore gloves. The only clue was that a female witness had seen the man who probably was the killer, just after he left the home of one of the victims.

Unfortunately she had seen him only from the back and by moonlight. The victim and her husband had lived in the lower flat of a two-family building and the witness lived in the upper. At two-thirty in the morning the witness had gone down the back stairs to let in her squalling cat, and as she opened the back door she saw a man just disappearing through the rear gate into the alley.

Aside from describing his dress and approximate size, she hadn’t been able to tell the police anything about him. He had been dressed all in black, she said, with matching slacks, sweater and cap. She had estimated his height as from six feet to six-two and his weight at 180 to 200.

In a more moderate tone I said, “I’m serious. One of those killings was less than a mile from here.”

Martha said, still in a light tone, “He might be in for a surprise if he picked me. Don’t forget I had judo training as an Army nurse.”

“Yeah, about two lessons, wasn’t it?” I said dourly. “And how do you know the Stocking Killer doesn’t know judo too?”

Martha elevated her chin. “We trained an hour a week for twelve weeks. I could toss you all over the room, big brother.”

I made a dismissing gesture. “I’m out of condition from eating my own cooking. The one witness who saw this guy described him as being as big as Lyle, and you can’t weigh over a hundred pounds.”

“Ninety-nine,” Lyle said. “But she’ll lock the doors after dark, and I’ve instructed her not to open to anyone until she’s established his identity.”

I leaned forward in order to emphasize what I was saying. “Listen, Lyle. I’ve been on this story since the first murder, and I know a few things the general public doesn’t. The police asked the press to sit on it, because they’re afraid of public panic, but from crime-lab examination of the barrels of the door locks of a couple of the victims, they’ve decided he’s expert with a picklock. It seems a picklock leaves certain distinctive scratches that show up under a microscope.”

Martha looked at her husband. Lyle frowned. “Maybe there ought to be draw bolts on the doors,” he conceded, “but I have to catch a plane tomorrow morning before any hardware stores will be open.” After a pause, he said, “Would you have time to pick up a couple of bolts tomorrow and install them, Tod?”

“I could take the time, but that still wouldn’t be enough protection. In one case, where the woman had her doors bolted from inside, the Stocking Killer used a glass cutter to make a neat little hole next to a window catch. That was the one where the published report was that he gained entry by breaking a window. The cops were afraid that if the public knew what an efficient break-in man he was, the warning might make some woman jittery enough to shoot her husband when he came home late and keyed open the door. How necessary is this trip of yours?”

“The company’s sending me. It’s the annual electronics manufacturers’ convention, and all the new products will be on display.”

Lyle worked as a parts-procurement agent for an electronics firm, a job which periodically took him out of town, but usually only for a day or two at a time. He also supplemented his income by doing a little TV repair work evenings. He had taken a correspondence course in television repairing under the G.I. educational program after he came out of service.

Actually, when he took the course he had intended to go into that business, but had ended up in his present job instead. Nevertheless it came in handy as a means to make extra money. Although his salary was nearly ten thousand a year, inflation had made that just barely enough for a family of three to exist on, these high-priced days.

In a definite tone I said, “Then I’m going to move in here with Martha and Tod while you’re gone.”

Lyle shrugged. “It’s all right with me, if you don’t mind the daybed in the den.”

“Reporters can sleep anywhere,” I told him.

Little Tod said, “You stay for a visit, Unkie Tod?”

“Yeah,” I said. “For a whole week.”

Martha said, “Actually, if it won’t inconvenience you, I would feel better with you here. Not that he’d be very likely to pick on me. So far he’s only picked pretty women.”

Cocking an eyebrow at her, my brother-in-law said loyally, “That includes you, honey.”

She gave him a fond smile, but she knew that if he meant it, she was pretty only in his eyes. The best adjective to describe my sister was plain. She certainly wasn’t ugly, but no one except a man blinded by love could possibly have considered her pretty. She was thin, with match-legs, and had the unfortunate Conner nose. It was thin and pointed and too long, making her rather resemble a bird.

In short, she looked like me, except I was eight inches taller. At the paper I’m known as Nose Conner. The editor who nicknamed me claims he thought up the sobriquet because of my skill at nosing out stories, but I suspect most of my colleagues associate it with my appearance.

Martha was one of the sweetest, most understanding women around, though, and there was no doubt about Lyle being nuts over her, so maybe he did think she was pretty.

Although they did their best not to show it, I’m sure most of our friends were astonished when Martha returned to St. Louis with such a handsome husband in tow. Lyle Barton was tall and muscular, with blond, curling hair and the features of some mythical Greek hero. He also had a certain charm about him that made both women and men instantly like him, despite his occasional moodiness and his tendency to be oversensitive to people’s remarks.

As fond as I was of my baby sister, I have to confess I was surprised too, until I learned some of the details of their romance.

Martha had been serving as a psychiatric nurse at the Fort Ord Army Hospital when Private Lyle Barton was shipped back from Vietnam with combat fatigue. He had also been wounded slightly, but had fully recovered from his physical wound before he arrived at Ord.

It seems that many emotionally disturbed patients tend to reach out desperately for love and understanding. According to Martha, patients in psychoanalysis usually develop parent complexes about their analysts when both are of the same sex. If they are of different sexes, it is almost routine for patients to go through periods during treatment when they fall in love with their analysts.

Also, according to Martha, in military hospitals the case loads of psychiatrists are generally so large that they have to concentrate most of their time on the more severely disturbed patients, usually seeing those with less serious problems only briefly on their periodic visits through the wards. The result is that these patients never establish the rapport with their doctors that almost always develops during analysis, but the need is still there, so the less disturbed patients tend to fall in love with their nurses.

While Lyle was pretty disoriented when he first arrived at the hospital, he was deemed by his assigned psychiatrist to require merely rest and tranquilizers instead of psychiatric treatment. Martha was his day nurse.

She told me in confidence that she was quite aware of the psychological reasons that made Lyle think he was in love with her. As a matter of fact, she had gone through similar experiences with a number of previous patients who eventually recovered from their infatuations at the same time they recovered their mental health, but she had an odd and disturbing premonition that Lyle’s feeling for her wasn’t going to change when his condition improved.

She couldn’t explain why, but she candidly confessed that it might have been merely wishful thinking, because she had fallen hopelessly in love with him too. She waited to see how he felt when he recovered before committing herself to anything, though.

When he was discharged from the hospital, and simultaneously received an honorable discharge from service, he was still insisting he loved her. At the time, Lyle was twenty-six, the same age as Martha, which she figured was too mature an age for it to be puppy love. Nevertheless, she was still afraid it might be only an unusually prolonged attachment of the usual sort common in nurse-patient relationships, and she insisted that he take more time.

Lyle had no parents, but the uncle and aunt who had raised him were still alive and lived in Wisconsin. He had some terminal leave coming, so Martha suggested he visit his uncle and aunt for thirty days, and told him if he still felt the same at the end of his visit, she would marry him.

He arrived back at Fort Ord on the twenty-ninth day, and they were married a week later.

Lyle had only a high-school education, and under the G.I. educational program he could have gone to college with all expenses paid, plus $200 a month for living expenses, but he preferred to go to work. He took a civilian job at the post exchange.

Since he was so set against college, Martha didn’t push that, but she hated to see him throw away entirely his veteran’s benefits. It was largely at her urging that he took a correspondence course, in television repair, because he had always had an interest in electronics.

Lyle had barely finished the course when Martha requested release from active duty because she was pregnant. His PX job wasn’t important enough to worry about leaving, so they came to St. Louis for Lyle to look for another job. Until he found one I put them up in the single bedroom of my bachelor apartment and took over the front-room sofa.

Lyle quickly discovered that the field of television repair was lucrative only if you owned your own shop. No one wanted to offer a decent salary for an assistant. So he widened his sights and almost immediately found a job in another field, in the parts-procurement department of one of St. Louis’ largest electronics firms.

They stayed with me for only a month. Since then, Lyle had been promoted twice and they had bought a two-bedroom home on Bellerive Boulevard in South St. Louis.

Lyle still had a little emotional trouble, as evidenced by his touchiness and his occasional fits of depression, but it seemed to be nothing serious. It was just enough to get him a 10% disability compensation without interfering with either his work or his home life. He wasn’t under treatment, unless you counted his annual psychological checkup at the Jefferson Barracks Veterans Hospital just south of the city. That was required in order for him to continue to receive his disability compensation.

Otherwise they seemed to have no problems. I got the impression that both of them were still as deeply in love as the day Martha brought Lyle home. I know she was, from a conversation we had the first evening Lyle was away.

Tod was already in bed and we were companionably drinking together in the front room. The alcohol loosened her tongue enough to tell me some things about her relationship with Lyle that she had never mentioned before. More or less idly I asked if Lyle’s emotional condition was improving any. She took so long to answer that I sat up straight and peered at her.

“Well, it’s not really likely to, you know,” she said finally.

I hiked my eyebrows. “I know he had a bad time in Vietnam, but I thought everybody eventually got over combat fatigue.”

“Most do, when there’s no physical damage accompanying it. But Lyle’s problem is a little more than just combat fatigue.”

“Oh?”

“Since I was his nurse, naturally I know his complete medical history. He had a rather severe emotional problem before he ever entered the Army. In fact, he spent a year in a Wisconsin mental hospital.”

I stared at her. “Diagnosed as what?”

“Mild schizophrenia.”

“Schizophrenia!” I said incredulously. “How’d he ever get in the Army?”

“He neglected to mention it, and the Army didn’t discover it until he’d been returned to the States. Under Army regulations he could have been discharged as mentally unfit for service, or even have been given a discharge other than honorable. That’s not the same as a dishonorable discharge. You still have all veterans’ rights. It’s just sort of like graduating with a D-minus average. But Lyle had picked up a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star Medal in action, and the brass tends to overlook minor indiscretions by war heroes. Since he was being discharged in any event, they gave him an honorable one.”

“But schizophrenia!” I said. “Doesn’t that mean he’s dangerous?”

“Of course not,” she said, frowning at me. “Severe cases of schizophrenia can be dangerous, but I told you Lyle’s was diagnosed as mild. He’s far from psychotic. You probably know a dozen people you consider normal who have schizophrenic tendencies. It isn’t that uncommon.”

“Suppose he gets worse?”

“He isn’t likely to. He isn’t likely to get better either, though. It’s just a matter of learning to live with his occasional withdrawals into some private little world of his own.”

I took a long, slow sip of my drink before saying, “Don’t misunderstand this, Sis, because I like Lyle. But knowing his diagnosis, how’d you ever happen to marry him?”

She stared at me. “I love him.”

“That’s no answer,” I said. “Would you have married Jack-the-Ripper if you had loved him?”

“That’s hardly a comparable example!”

“Don’t get sore,” I said placatingly. “I’m not trying to run Lyle down. I’m just trying to understand how a girl with your background in psychiatry brought herself to taking the risky step of marrying a diagnosed schizophrenic.”

“Not a schizophrenic, dammit, Tod. Merely with schizophrenic tendencies.”

“Okay, okay. But despite what you say about his condition not being likely to worsen, you must have known before you married him that it could. And that seems pretty risky to me.”

She made no reply for nearly a minute, during which she took several angry pulls at her drink. Then she calmed down and gave me a sheepish smile.

“I know you’re just being protective, so I have no right to get mad at you. Particularly since you’re right. I did consider the risk. But he loved me too, you see.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “What’s that got to do with the element of risk?”

“Nothing, really,” she said with a shrug. “But Lyle’s the only man who ever gave me a second look.” When I frowned at her, she said quickly, “Don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t just a matter of a love-starved spinster jumping at the only chance she ever had. I wasn’t just settling for what I could get. Even if I had been the belle of the hospital, I would have picked Lyle. He’s the handsomest, most charming, most wonderful man I ever met.”

I said nothing, merely taking a gulp of my drink.

“You’ve never been in love, Tod,” she said softly. “The way I feel about Lyle, I’d continue to love him if he became a raving maniac. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

The drinks were affecting me too, or I would never have said what I did. “Even stand still for a bullet if he decided to kill you?” I asked bluntly.

She blinked, but instead of getting angry again, she merely turned defensive. “That’s not fair,” she said. “He’s not going to get worse.” After a beat she added, “Yes, I guess I would, though.”

I felt a chill crawl along my spine as I suddenly had a mental vision of Martha standing with an expression of loving forgiveness on her face as Lyle, his face maniacally contorted, pumped bullets into her.

Shaking myself, I said, “Maybe we’d better drop the subject. You love him and I like him, and all we’re doing is getting each other upset. You want a nightcap?”

“I think I could use one.” Then she glanced at her wristwatch and said in a surprised tone, “Maybe we’d better not. It’s nearly eleven, and don’t you have to get up at six?”

“I never sleep more than six hours,” I told her. “One more isn’t going to hurt either of us.”

In the kitchen I set the empty glasses on the counter next to the sink and was turning toward the refrigerator for ice when a sight across the alley caught my eye. The window over the sink looked directly at the rear of the house across the alley. Through a lighted second-story window I could see into a bedroom where a young and shapely blonde was just beginning to undress.

I don’t think I’m any more of a Peeping Tom than the average guy. It wouldn’t even occur to me to make a deliberate attempt to see into a neighbor’s window, but I doubt that any normal man deliberately turns his back when a view such as that is unexpectedly offered. I stood there and watched.

She took quite a while to undress, because she was neat. She hung her dress on a hanger and put it in a closet. After removing her stockings, she disappeared from view for a while, then reappeared without the stockings and in no further stage of undress. I guessed that she had washed them and hung them to dry in the bathroom.

The rest of her undressing didn’t take very long, and she was stark naked when Martha came into the kitchen to see what was delaying me.

When she saw, she burst out laughing instead of being shocked by my depravity.

“You too?” she said. “I catch Lyle in here watching the show about once a week.”

“Doesn’t she ever draw her drapes?” I asked without taking my  eyes off the blonde. She was now putting on a filmy nightgown.

“Only on weekends, when her husband is home. He works nights. Then I imagine it’s he who draws them. Lyle and I have decided she’s not an exhibitionist, though, because she never shows the least self-consciousness. She would almost have to if she suspected she were being watched, don’t you think? Besides, we’ve had a little casual neighborly conversation with them, and she’s quite obviously fond of her husband, so it seems unlikely she’s looking for anything. We think she’s just careless about drawing drapes.”

The light in the bedroom suddenly went out. Belatedly I began mixing the drinks.

“Doesn’t it upset you when you find Lyle watching her?” I asked.

“Why should it?” she asked cheerfully. “It’s me he goes to bed with, not her. And the show always puts him in the mood for love.” The next morning on the way to work an unsettling thought occurred to me. I had left word at the city desk that I would be staying with my sister for a week, so they knew where to find me in an emergency, which meant I could be called out on some special assignment in the middle of the night before Lyle returned from Chicago.

That didn’t happen too often but, just in case, I decided to take Lyle’s suggestion and install drawbolts on both the front and back doors.

En route back to the paper from an assignment, I stopped at a hardware store and bought two bolts.

After work I drove to South St. Louis straight from the paper, getting to Martha’s place about five. Although it was only the end of March, we were having an early spring and it was pleasant enough for people to be out on their porches. Little Tod was riding his tricycle on the sidewalk while Martha sat on the porch watching him.

“Hi, Unkie Tod,” the little guy called. “Watch me!”

I stood and watched a few moments as his fat little legs pumped the pedals and the tricycle raced along at the desperate speed of perhaps two miles an hour. My applause made him grin with delight.

Climbing the steps, I held up the paper bag I was carrying for Martha to see. “Just in case I get called out on an assignment some night, I decided to take Lyle’s suggestion and install a couple of drawbolts after all. Where’s Lyle keep his tools?”

“In his workshop in the basement.”

Going inside, I shed my coat and necktie in the den, then went downstairs. One whole side of the basement had been partitioned off to serve as Lyle’s workshop. A long workbench had tools of every description hanging on the wall over it: everything from hammers to a set of bolt cutters. The dismantled innards of a television set stood on the bench, and two more sets were on the floor.

I selected a screwdriver of the size I would need, then began to open drawers in search of a drill. In a top drawer containing nothing but woodworking tools I found a hand brace and a set of bits. I could have used that, but I was sure that for his repair work Lyle would have an electric drill. I started searching the other drawers.

In one of the bottom drawers there was nothing but a small leather case and a tin box. When I found it was locked, I snapped open the leather case.

It contained five items. There was an extremely thin-nosed pair of pliers, a glass cutter, a small rubber suction cup with a metal ring attached to it large enough to fit over a man’s finger, a pair of black kid gloves and a long, thin implement that seemed to be made of spring steel.

I puzzled over the last item and the rubber suction cup. I figured out the spring-steel implement first. It was a picklock.

Then I realized the purpose of the suction cup. If you pressed it against the glass of a windowpane, then cut around it with a glass cutter, it would prevent the cut-out section from falling inside and perhaps shattering on the floor.

I like to think I’m at least as quick on the uptake as the average guy, but my initial reaction was merely puzzlement at why Lyle would possess what appeared to be a rather simple burglar’s kit. I suspect this was a quite normal reaction, though. On the basis of such a bare hint, it would be abnormal to jump to a monstrous conclusion about anyone as close to you as a brother-in-law. As a matter of fact the normal reaction would be not just to reject such a thought, but to refuse even to let it form.

Whether it was intuition, subconscious suspicion or merely my reportorial nosiness that made me try the picklock on the tin box, I don’t know. At any rate I did try it, and because it was a simple lock, I managed to get it open after only about five minutes of fumbling.

The box contained nothing but eight nylon stockings.

This being a little more than a bare hint, the monstrous thought did occur to me; but because I sincerely liked Lyle, I instantly began a mental search for some less monstrous explanation for this cache.

Almost immediately I was able to think of something that seemed to make it highly unlikely that he was the Stocking Killer. According to Martha, Lyle had repeatedly watched the blonde who lived behind them undress. She was as attractive as any of the Stocking Killer’s victims, and Lyle knew her husband worked nights. If Lyle were the killer, why hadn’t she been a victim?

The depressing answer to that hit me almost as quickly as the question. Insane people aren’t necessarily stupid. The blonde was simply too close to home to be worth the risk.

I turned back to trying to think of some alternate reason anyone would keep a secret cache of women’s stockings.

I couldn’t think of any, particularly after examining the stockings more closely. At least four of them had no mates. One was longer than all the others, another shorter, and two didn’t match any of the others in shade. The other four were the same shade and size, so might have been two pairs; but it was equally it possible that they were single stockings from four similar pairs.

I took some hope from the fact that there were eight stockings, while there had been only six murders. Then I thought of the one in Kansas City and the one in Chicago that the police assumed were merely apings of the Stocking Killer by a couple of other nuts who had read about him.

Lyle made periodic business trips to both cities. I decided to find out if he had been to either or both places when the murders occurred.

I had to play this very cool. I had to be absolutely sure before I went to the police, and I had to be equally sure that they would guarantee me anonymity as their informer. I didn’t want my sister living with a homicidal maniac, but I also didn’t want her thrusting me out of her life. Even if Lyle were guilty, I knew she would never forgive me for turning him in.

Fortunately there was time for some thorough checking. It was only Tuesday, and Lyle wasn’t due back from Chicago for six more days.

I put the nylons back in the tin box and managed to get it locked again with the picklock. Then I searched some more drawers until I found the electric drill, went upstairs and installed the two door bolts.

During dinner I casually remarked to Martha, “Lyle gets to Chicago quite often, doesn’t he?”

“Only about twice a year,” she said. “Last time he had to be there over Thanksgiving, remember?”

I did recall, now that she mentioned it, because she had invited me for Thanksgiving dinner, and Lyle had been away at the time. I tried to remember when the Chicago murder had occurred, but could place it in my memory only as sometime last winter. I could look it up at the paper tomorrow, though.

I said, “Yeah, I remember. His last trip to K.C. was over some holiday too, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, no. That was way last summer, around the middle of June.”

I let the conversation drop.

The next morning, as soon as I arrived at the paper, I went down to the news morgue in the basement.

The K.C. murder had been on Wednesday, June 16th, of the previous year. The Chicago murder had been on Friday, November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving.

I went up to the city room, sat at my desk and phoned Dr. Sam Carter at his home. I called there instead of to his office because it was only a few minutes after eight, and he didn’t reach his office until nine.

Sam was now a hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrist, but in our youth, when he was a pre-med student and I was studying journalism, we were fraternity brothers at Washington U. We still kept in touch and were still good friends.

When I got him on the phone, he at first said he couldn’t possibly see me until evening. When I told him it was urgent, he said he would cancel his first appointment and see me at his office at nine a.m.

I arrived exactly at nine and his receptionist sent me right into his private office. Sam was about my age, thirty-five, but a lot better-looking. He was tall and lean, with a strong-featured but amiable face and thick, slightly graying hair.

He pointed to an upholstered leather chair before his desk. “Have a seat, Tod. Or would you rather lie on the couch?”

Seating myself, I said, “It’s not a personal problem. I just want some information.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

I said, “Would it be possible for the Stocking Killer to be a happily married man, a good father and in love with his wife?”

Sam looked interested. “Possible. There have been cases where apparently normal family men with seemingly happy marriages have turned out to be pretty nasty sex criminals. I would have guessed that the Stocking Killer was a loner, but it’s not impossible he’s the sort of man you describe, that’s sure.”

“Okay, next question. If the guy I have in mind is the Stocking Killer, he keeps the mates of the stockings he used to strangle his victims in a locked tin box. Why would he do that?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m a psychiatrist, not a clairvoyant. If you want some blind guesses, I can give you a couple. Maybe he keeps them as the record of his victories, sort of like scalps. Maybe he just has a stocking fetish. Maybe he’s saving them to stuff a pillow.”

“You’re in the wrong profession,” I said sourly. “You should have been a stand-up comedian. Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure, so long as it’s legal and doesn’t require me to violate medical ethics.”

“It is and doesn’t. But first I want to stress that what I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential.”

He nodded. “Most of what I hear in this office is confidential.”

I took a deep breath. “I think Lyle Barton is the Stocking Killer.”

He gazed at me in astonishment. “Martha’s husband?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And on just what do you base that incredible theory?”

I told him, in detail, including the history of Lyle’s mental illness.

When I finished, he was no longer looking astonished, but only thoughtful. “What’s the favor you want?” he asked.

“I’d like you to check out Lyle’s psychiatric history. Since he has his annual disability checkup at the local V.A. hospital, I assume his Army medical records would be on file there. As a psychiatrist, you’d have better access to them than I.”

“No problem. I’m on the staff out there. His file should include not only his Army medical records, but a detailed report from that Wisconsin mental hospital. Almost certainly the V.A. would have asked for one.”

“When can you get out there?” I asked.

“Not before this evening. I can’t possibly cancel any more appointments, and I’m booked solid right up to five.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “There’s still five days to work on this. Suppose you phone me at Martha’s when you get back from the hospital?”

“I’ll need a little time to evaluate whatever I find in the case record. I’d rather make it in the morning.”

“All right,” I agreed. “But I don’t want to make you cancel any more appointments. Could you get yourself up in time to meet me here at eight a.m.?”

“I’ll make that sacrifice if you’re willing.”

“It’s no sacrifice for me,” I told him. “I check in at the paper at seven-thirty.”

Thursday morning we arrived at Sam’s office simultaneously. Again I took the leather chair and he sat behind his desk with his hands folded across his stomach.

“There were some interesting things in Lyle’s case file,” he said. “Did you know his father strangled his mother, then blew his own brains out?”

“Martha never mentioned that,” I said in surprise. “When?”

“When Lyle was twelve. According to what he told the psychiatrist assigned to him at the Wisconsin mental hospital, he felt his mother deserved it. He hated her and loved his father. He described her as a very beautiful woman, but a cheat. Apparently he became aware at a very early age that she was having numerous lovers. From the case record, I gathered that she made little attempt to conceal it from him, but periodically threatened to beat him senseless if he ever told his father. He never did, but one day he deliberately neglected to give his mother a phone message in the hope that his father would find her out. His father phoned from out of town that he would be home a day earlier than expected, and would arrive around midnight. Because Lyle failed to relay the message, when his father walked in, he found his wife in bed with another man.”

“And killed her?”

“Not right then. He kicked the lover out, stormed out himself and went on a five-day drunk. Then he came back, still drunk, strangled her and shot himself.”

I said, “So Lyle developed a guilt complex because he had caused the tragedy?”

He gave me a mildly irritated look. “You armchair psychiatrists have guilt complexes on the brain. What makes you think everybody who’s mentally disturbed has to have a guilt complex about something? Neither the Wisconsin report nor the considerably briefer and more cursory reports of the various Army and V.A. psychiatrists who have examined him indicate he ever felt the slightest guilt about either parent’s death. He was deeply grieved by his father’s death, but he blamed it on her, not himself, and he was quite happy that he had been indirectly responsible for his mother being killed. He felt he had been an instrument in wiping out evil.”

“All right,” I said. “If no guilt complex, what?”

“Probably a mixed bag of emotions. These things are never simple, but what comes out most clearly is that he had a strong mistrust of good-looking women. At the risk of hurting your feelings, I suggest it’s possible that’s why he chose Martha. He may have felt he could be sure she wouldn’t cheat on him.”

“You can’t hurt my feelings,” I said. “No Conner has ever won a beauty contest. Then his hang-up is simply that he hates beautiful women? Each time he kills one, in fantasy he is killing his mother?”

He got that irritated look on his face again. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Tod. If I could get Lyle on the couch for a half dozen sessions, I might be able to figure out his motives, if indeed he is the Stocking Killer. But I don’t make diagnoses by long-distance. That could be it, and even may be it, but it’s only a guess. Psychologically it has a large hole in it. If he picks victims as substitutes for his despised mother, they should be not only beautiful, but also unfaithful.”

After thinking this over, I said slowly, “Maybe they were. They were all married.”

He shrugged. “How would Lyle know that they were cheating, if they were? No connection between any of the victims has ever turned up. So how could he separately have met six attractive married women who didn’t know each other, then have gotten to know them well enough to learn they were cheating on their husbands?”

The answer came to me in a blinding flash of inspiration. “On TV repair calls,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lyle does spare-time TV repair work evenings. Maybe these women were all customers. Maybe they all made passes at him. He’s just the sort of guy discontented wives on the make would pass at. He’s built like a gladiator and has the face of a matinee idol.”

Sam pursed his lips, then shrugged again. “So why wouldn’t he kill them when they made the passes?”

“Opportunity,” I said promptly. “Maybe the husband was home, but in another room. Maybe kids were wandering around. Or more likely, maybe because it was early enough for neighbors to see him coming and going. He makes these calls in the early evening, remember. I’m not suggesting that the victims invited him into their bedrooms. Maybe they just dropped hints that they were available, if he wanted to come by sometime when their husbands weren’t home. Couldn’t that be enough to set him off?”

“Sounds possible,” the psychiatrist conceded. “I wouldn’t comment on its probability without first getting Lyle on the couch.”

“You have a vested interest in scientific skepticism,” I said, rising from my chai”. “But to me it’s good enough to take to Sergeant Burmeister, and I do mean right now.” Sergeant Fritz Burmeister was the detective in charge of the Stocking Killer case. I found him at his desk in the Homicide squad room. He was a burly, beetle-browed man of about fifty with the perpetually sour expression some old-time homicide cops develop.

“Hi, Nose,” he greeted me with dour friendliness. “Sit down and rest your bones.”

Taking the chair alongside his desk, I said, “How would you like to wrap up the Stocking Killer case?”

His expression became alert. “I’d love it.”

“I can give you a strong lead. It may not pan out, but I kind of think it will. There’s a condition, though.”

“Okay,” he said impatiently. “You get an exclusive.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the condition. I want a guarantee that you’ll never disclose to anyone where you got the tip and that I won’t be called as a trial witness.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Will we need your evidence to convict?”

“No.”

“Okay. You got it.”

I told him the whole story.

On the basis of what I had told him, Sergeant Burmeister requestioned the husbands of all six victims. Three of them reported that TV repairmen had been called to their homes. Unfortunately in two cases, arrangements had been made by their wives, the husbands were out when the repairman arrived, and they had no idea who had been called. The two men who had been out of town when their wives were murdered both had traveling jobs. Neither knew of any TV repair work being done in their homes, but both conceded it was possible their wives had called repairmen and had just neglected to mention it. The sixth man was sure no TV repairman had been to his home, but the man who had arranged for the service call himself said he had called Lyle Barton, and had a canceled check to prove it.

No response resulted from a subsequent public appeal, after Lyle’s arrest, for whoever had made the TV service calls to the two homes where the husbands didn’t know who their wives had engaged, but a number of things transpired before that.

On Friday, Sergeant Burmeister descended on Martha with a search warrant. In deference to me he explained he was there because it had been learned her husband made a TV service call on one of the victims of the Stocking Killer, and may have called on others, and that the police wanted a look at his repair-service records. However, along with authorizing the look at Lyle’s records, the warrant authorized search for tools that might have been used for illegal break-in and for “items which may have been illegally removed from the premises of any of the victims.”

Martha was considerably upset by the search, but she had no idea that I had instigated it.

The leather case and tin box were found where I had told the sergeant they would be, but Lyle’s records showed no repair calls to any of the victims’ homes other than to the one Burmeister already knew about.

Six of the stockings found in the tin box matched those used as murder weapons. The police lab stated there was no way to establish them as definite mates, because similar stockings were manufactured by the millions, but at least they were established as possible mates. The other two stockings were sent respectively to Kansas City and Chicago.

Monday afternoon Lyle was arrested when he stepped off the plane from Chicago.

Martha nearly fell apart. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. Deciding she shouldn’t be left alone, I continued to stay with her instead of moving back to my own apartment.

Naturally I had myself taken off the story, because it was too close to home, but I kept in close touch with Fritz Burmeister so that I would know what was going on.

The sergeant was convinced Lyle was guilty, but his case was far from airtight. One thing that bothered him was Lyle’s records showing a service call to only one victim. Burmeister was morally convinced he had made at least the two other calls known about, and perhaps had also made calls to the homes of the two traveling men. He thought Lyle had been cunning enough not to enter anything about those calls in his records, but to enter the one where he had been paid by check because the visit could be proved.

He wouldn’t be able to make that sort of speculation from the witness stand, though.

Another setback was the reports from Kansas City and Chicago. Neither stocking matched the ones used to strangle the victims in those cities. It was also established that Lyle had arrived back in St. Louis from Kansas City the day before the murder there. So apparently the original police theory that those murders had been imitations of the Stocking Killer by other psychos was right after all, if Lyle actually was the Stocking Killer.

Burmeister had a possible explanation for that setback too, but it would never have been admissible as evidence. He theorized that Lyle had broken into a couple of places, intending to commit murder, had gotten as far as locating a stocking to use, then had somehow been frightened off and had carried the stocking away with him.

Despite these loopholes, Burmeister thought he had a pretty strong case. It was going to be difficult for the defense to explain that miniature burglar kit and the cache of stockings that included six exactly matching the six used as murder weapons. Then a second search warrant turned up a pair of black slacks, a black long-sleeved sweater and a matching black cloth cap in Lyle’s closet. The witness who had once seen the Stocking Killer from the rear, and had described him as wearing similar clothing, was asked to view him wearing the outfit from behind. She couldn’t identify him as the man she had seen that night, but she was willing to testify that he was of the same height and general build. On top of all that, Lyle’s psychiatric history was bound to influence the jury.

It was a boon to the prosecution that Lyle had no alibi for any of the murder dates. There is little question in my mind that Martha would have sworn he was never out of her sight on any of the occasions, except it was a matter of record that he was.

Because Tod was so young, Martha didn’t care to work regularly, preferring to be at home with her son, but she filled in at Barnes Hospital when nurses went on vacation, or simply wanted nights off. She was on call only for night duty, so that Tod could be left with Lyle, thereby saving baby-sitter costs.

It just happened that Martha was on nursing duty every night that the Stocking Killer struck—except Sergeant Burmeister surmised that it hadn’t “just happened” at all. He suspected Lyle had deliberately chosen those nights to commit murder because his wife was away.

Despite my concern over her, Martha rather quickly recovered from her initial emotional collapse. By Tuesday she had regained full control of herself, although she remained pale and drawn and refused to eat anything. Meantime a friend had taken Tod into her home until Martha could completely quiet down.

Even in the face of the devastating circumstantial evidence against her husband, Martha fiercely denied any possibility of his guilt. She hired George Brinker, St. Louis’ top criminal lawyer, to defend him.

I accompanied her when she went to see the man for the first trial-strategy conference after he had interviewed Lyle and had studied the evidence against him. He was a plump, smooth-looking man in his mid-forties with considerable personal charm.

He started off by saying, “The evidence against your husband is entirely circumstantial, of course, Mrs. Barton. And the prosecution must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s not up to us to disprove his guilt. All we have to do is cast doubt on it.”

“How do you plan to do that?” I inquired.

“Let’s start with the so-called burglar kit. That’s what the prosecution is calling it, but we’re calling it an emergency repair kit for electronic appliances. Your brother-in-law has explained to me how that so-called picklock is used as a tool to test electrical contacts, and how, when it is used that way, the gloves are necessary for insulation.”

I noticed he made no mention of the glass cutter and rubber suction cup. I said, “How are you going to explain the stockings?”

“Ah, but we don’t have to, Mr. Conner. It’s up to the prosecution to prove they are the mates of the ones used in the murders, and the two extra stockings are certainly going to confuse that issue. We don’t have to explain why the defendant kept nylon stockings in a locked box. I don’t care if the jury thinks he’s eccentric; I just don’t want them to think he’s a murderer.”

He similarly felt that he could cast doubt that Lyle had met his victims by making service calls to their homes. He planned to block any reference by the prosecution to the two service calls where it had not been established who the repairman was, which would leave them with only the one call Lyle had admitted making to present to the jury. The lawyer felt he could convince the jury that was pure coincidence.

When we left Brinker’s office, I came away with the feeling that he really didn’t have much hope of acquittal, but had been optimistic merely for Martha’s benefit. From her pinched expression, I suspected she had gotten the same impression, but I didn’t mention it.

By now Martha seemed well enough not to require me underfoot any longer. She moved Tod back home and I returned to my apartment. Periodically I dropped by to check on her, and while she seemed terribly depressed, she was holding up well enough to function.

Trial had been set for six weeks after the arrest, which put it in mid-May. A week beforehand I happened to be in the city room when a call came in that there was a murder on Dover Place, down on the south side. I volunteered to go out on it, and thus got the assignment.

I didn’t realize until I got down there that Dover Place was the street just south of Bellerive Boulevard. The house was the one whose back faced the rear of Lyle’s and Martha’s.

There were several people inside in the front room: a couple of uniformed cops, a man from the police lab, a dazed-looking man of about thirty seated in an easy chair, and Sergeant Fritz Burmeister. The lab man was just leaving, apparently having finished his work.

When I glanced curiously at the seated man, Burmeister said, “Husband. Come on upstairs.”

I followed him up the stairs. In the same bedroom I had once looked into from Martha’s kitchen window, the same blonde I had watched undress lay on the bed wearing a filmy nightgown. Her face was purple and was horribly bloated because a nylon stocking had been knotted tightly around her throat.

“Husband found her when he came home this morning,” the sergeant said wearily. “He works nights. Same old story. No sexual assault, no prints. Both doors have inside bolts. A small square was neatly cut out of the glass pane in the back door, right next to the bolt. As usual, the second stocking is missing.”

I tore my gaze away from the dead woman. “What’s this do for Lyle?” I asked.

“Clears him,” he said in the same weary voice. “How the hell could he be the Stocking Killer when he’s locked in a maximum security cell?”

That’s almost the end of the story. Lyle was released with full apologies and again he and Martha seem radiantly happy.

There have been no more Stocking Killer murders, but recently I’ve been thinking. I keep remembering Martha saying, “The way I feel about Lyle, I’d continue to love him even if he became a raving maniac. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

I also keep remembering that Martha had judo training when she was an Army nurse. An hour a week for twelve weeks, I think she said, certainly not enough to win her a black belt, but maybe enough to handle another woman not much larger than herself.

Anybody can buy a glass cutter. They’re on sale in every dime store.

Martha doesn’t work at the hospital nights anymore either. Now she’s on call only for days, and arranges for a baby-sitter when she’s called in.

The last time they had me down to dinner, little Tod took me down to the basement to show me something. The partition had been taken down and there was no longer a television repair shop there.

I was afraid to ask why Lyle had gotten out of the TV repair business, but I can’t help wondering if Martha insisted on it, just to remove future temptation.

MAGGIE’S GRIP

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1975.

I was working the four p.m.-to-midnight trick out of Homicide when the call came in from the Carondelet Precinct, way down on the south side of St. Louis.

I logged the call as coming in at 6:02 p.m., but it was 6:30 by the time I got to the scene, a good ten miles from headquarters.

The address was a two-story frame house, probably fifty years old, but in good condition. In front of it was a police car, a black sedan with MD license plates, and a crowd of onlookers.

Harry Dodge, who had gone through the Police Academy with me a quarter of a century ago, opened the door. I had forgotten that Harry now worked out of the Carondelet Precinct. He had never made it beyond the rank of patrolman and was still in uniform, but one several sizes larger than he wore when we graduated from the academy.

“Hi, Sod,” he said in a pleased voice as I moved inside past him, then poked a finger into my belly. “Hey, you been putting it on, buddy.”

“If I was a pot, I wouldn’t comment about a kettle,” I growled at him.

A lean, leathery-looking man in a tan jacket and a plump woman in a house dress sat in the front room, the man probably fifty, the woman perhaps ten years younger. After closing the door behind me, Harry introduced them as Henry Crowder and his wife Emma, then added that Mrs. Crowder had discovered the body.

I asked both of them how they did, and asked them to please stand by until I could get to them. Then to Harry I said, “Where is it?”

“In the kitchen.”

He led the way into a central hall where we met a tall, graying man just emerging from the kitchen. He was carrying a medical bag.

Coming to a halt, Harry said, “This is Dr. Lischer, Sod, the victim’s doctor. Mrs. Crowder called him instead of us when she discovered the body. After talking to her, he phoned the precinct before he came over.” To the doctor he said, “Sergeant Sod Harris of the Homicide Squad, Doc.”

Shifting his medical bag from his right hand to his left. Dr. Lischer shook hands with me. “Glad to know you, Sergeant. Terrible thing. She was only twenty-eight.”

“They’re all terrible,” I said. “Mind sticking around a few minutes until after I’ve had a look at the body?”

“No, of course not.”

He went on into the front room. Harry and I continued into the kitchen. Another uniformed cop was in there, leaning against the back door. He was in his mid-twenties and looked vaguely familiar.

There was also a corpse in the room. It belonged to a fairly attractive blonde, slim and pleasantly contoured. She was wearing a light cloth coat, unbuttoned and wide open, over a street dress, no hat and an expression of surprise. She lay flat on her back in the center of the kitchen with the handle of what appeared to be a butcher knife protruding from between her breasts. On the floor to the left of her body was an open purse from which a number of items had fallen when it dropped to the floor. To her right was an old-fashioned iron door key. It seemed apparent that she had been stabbed just after entering by the back door, apparently as she was in the act of replacing the key in her voluminous purse.

The young patrolman said, “Hi, Sarge.”

“Hi,” I said. “I know you, but I can’t place from where.”

“Carl Budd. You were on the first homicide call I ever answered, back when I was a rookie. The Thursday-night Strangler.”

“Oh yeah, the guy who sent happy birthday wires to his victims before he killed them.” Glancing around, I spotted on the wall over the stove a rack of knives with black wooden handles similar to that of the murder weapon. They were of assorted sizes, ranging from a small paring knife to a carving knife with an eight-inch blade. The only vacant space looked as though it might accommodate the butcher knife stuck into the corpse.

Seeing me looking at the rack, Harry said, “That’s what we figured, too. The killer grabbed it from there because it was handy.”

Grunting, I looked back down at the dead woman. “What was her name?”

“Joan Turnbell. Mrs. Joan Turnbell, although her husband don’t live here. According to Mrs. Crowder, they’ve been separated about four months, and the victim lived here alone. Mrs. Crowder also has pretty well pinpointed the time of death to within a minute or so of five-thirty.” Glancing at a wall clock, he said, “About an hour and five minutes ago.”

“How’d she pinpoint it?” I asked.

“She heard Mrs. Turnbell come home, then discovered the body only minutes later.”

Although that wasn’t awfully clear to me, I decided the details could wait until I talked to Mrs. Crowder. “She know who did it?” I asked.

Harry shook his head. “Seems to have been a prowler who panicked when she walked in on him. There’s some drawers dumped out in the other rooms. My guess is nobody saw him because he lammed out the back way. If you’ll look out back, you’ll see the yard is enclosed by a high wooden fence that would have kept him from being seen by neighbors if he headed for the alley. At any rate he wasn’t seen.”

“Oh, you’ve asked all those people out front?”

He flushed slightly. “Well, no, but no one has come forward to report seeing anything.”

That was why Harry Dodge was still a patrolman after twenty-five years. If he had been a rookie, I would have jolted him alive with some acid comments on how to make a preliminary investigation, but you can’t do that to a veteran of twenty-five years even if he deserves it.

I said, as pleasantly as I could manage, “Better go see if anyone saw anything before the crowd disperses. Maybe you’d better hit the nearby houses on both sides of the street too, just in case some of the neighbors have gone back inside.”

“Okay,” he said agreeably, and headed for the front of the house.

I went over to peer through the glass pane of the back door into the yard. In mid-March, sunset was about six p.m., and it was just now starting to get dark. It was still light enough, though, to see that the yard was enclosed by a seven-foot-high board fence. At the rear of the yard, some fifty feet away, was a garage that gave onto an alley. Next to it was a gate in the fence, also leading to the alley.

I tried the back door, found it unlocked and stepped out onto the back porch. From it I could see over the top of the fence onto the back porches on either side, which meant anyone on their back porches at the time the killer emerged from the house could have seen him too. I could also see the back porches of the houses whose rears faced this way from the other side of the alley.

I went down the porch steps and along a concrete walk to the garage. The door leading from the yard into the garage was unlocked. A red, two-seat sports car was parked inside. A car radiator will stay warm for a couple of hours after the car has been driven long enough to heat the engine thoroughly, and this one was still warm enough to indicate it had been standing for not much more than an hour. It seemed reasonable to assume that Joan Turnbell had arrived home in that car.

The garage door giving onto the alley was the overhead type. I swung it up, then back down again. It made considerable noise going both ways, the springs creaking loudly and the door settling into place with a subdued slam.

Returning to the kitchen, I told Carl Budd to go across the alley and inquire at each house if any neighbors had seen anyone enter or leave here by the back door an hour or so earlier.

When the young patrolman had left, I stooped to examine the victim’s shoes. They had those thick, ungraceful Italian heels that have become so popular, with metal cleats on them to retard wear.

Rising from my stooped position, I went into the front room. Dr. Lischer had taken a seat there, but when I came in he rose and picked up the medical bag alongside his chair. Apparently he was in more of a hurry than he had indicated.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Doctor,” I said. “May I have your report now?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much except that she’s dead, Sergeant. I understand from Mrs. Crowder here that death occurred about five-thirty. That conforms to the physical condition of the body. Mrs. Crowder phoned me at twenty of six. I called the police, then came over as soon as I could. I had an emergency patient, so I wasn’t able to get here until about six-fifteen. By then the police were already here.”

“I see. I assume you didn’t move the body.”

“Oh, of course not. I also instructed Mrs. Crowder over the phone not to touch anything.”

I gave him an approving nod. “Was Mrs. Turnbell a regular patient of yours?”

“Yes. Mrs. Crowder also, which I assume is why she called me.”

“Any particular condition you were treating Mrs. Turnbell for?”

He shook his head. “When I say she was a regular patient, I merely mean I was her family physician. Aside from an occasional viral infection, she was in generally good health, you see.”

“Okay, Doctor. Thanks for your trouble.”

“You’re welcome, Sergeant. I’m happy to be of service.”

When he had left, I turned to the Crowders. “Just how close of neighbors are you people? Right next door?”

Both nodded. The leathery Henry Crowder pointed toward the dining room. “On that side.”

I looked at his wife. “It was you who discovered the body, Mrs. Crowder?”

“Yes,” she said. “Henry wasn’t even home from work yet. He just came over to keep me company after the police got here.”

“I see. Then actually you have no direct knowledge of events, Mr. Crowder?”

“Just what Emma told me.”

Turning back to Mrs. Crowder, I said, “Just how did you happen to discover the body so quickly after it happened?”

“I was waiting for Joan to come home so I could show her a pattern I had bought. She always got home from work exactly at five-thirty. You could set your clock by it. She worked in a law office at Grand and Gravois as a legal secretary, you know. The lawyers all left at four-thirty, then she could close up when she wanted. She always left there exactly at five-fifteen, and it took fifteen minutes for her to drive home. So I was listening for her.”

“Listening?” I said. “Don’t you mean watching?”

She shook her head. “The fence is too high to watch. But I could always hear her come home because her garage door squeaks and bangs when it’s opened and closed, then I could also hear her heels click on the walk. Today when I heard her, I looked at my kitchen clock, and sure enough it was right at five-thirty. I gave her five minutes to get her coat off and get herself settled, then I came over.” She gave a little shiver. “He must have just barely left when I got here. If I hadn’t waited that five minutes, more than likely I’d be dead too.”

“Possibly,” I agreed. “How did you come over? I mean out your alley gate and in by this one, or out your front door to this front door?”

“Neither. Out the front way, down the walk between our houses, and in by the gate at the bottom of the back porch steps. Don’t ask me why I do that instead of going to Joan’s front door, which would be closer. I just always have. Maybe because we always ended up in the kitchen anyway for coffee.”

“I take it you were on quite friendly terms with Mrs. Turnbell, then.”

“Oh yes, we were close friends.”

I said, “When you came in by that gate, the killer must have just left by the gate into the alley. Did you hear that gate click shut, or anyone running down the alley, or anything at all?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I went up the porch steps, and was just raising my fist to knock on the back door when I saw through the glass pane in the top of the door that Joan was lying on her back on the kitchen floor. I didn’t notice the knife in her until after I opened the door and went in. Then I almost fainted.” After a moment, she added with a touch of pride, “I didn’t scream, though, like they always do in the movies.”

I didn’t deflate her ego by telling her that women in the movies scream at the sight of bodies because it’s written in the script, and in real life they’re more apt to go into silent shock. I just said, “What did you do?”

“As soon as I could bring myself to move, I ran into the hall to phone Dr. Lischer.” Her tone became apologetic. “I think I knew she was dead the minute I saw that knife in her, so in the back of my mind I knew a doctor wasn’t going to do her any good. But I was so upset, all I could think of was getting Dr. Lischer over here.”

“You did fine,” I assured her. “A doctor had to declare her dead anyway, so it saved bringing some intern all the way from City Hospital. You have any idea who killed her?”

She looked surprised. “How would I know who the burglar was?”

“You figure it was a burglar?”

“What else? I heard one of those policemen say some drawers were dumped out.”

“Yeah, he told me. I haven’t had a chance to check that out yet. I understand Mrs. Turnbell was separated from her husband.”

Mrs. Crowder nodded, then her eyes suddenly widened. “You don’t think…”

When she let it trail off, I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. Who is he?”

“Addison Turnbell. He works for the Marks Carburetor Company.”

“As what?”

“He’s just a worker on the assembly line.” She sniffed. “He’s always been way below Joan intellectually. She was a trained legal secretary, while he just worked with his hands. I never could understand why she was so crazy about him that she didn’t want to let him go.” After a pause she added, “I never said that to her, of course.”

“Was it an amicable separation?” I asked.

Henry Crowder said laconically. “Hardly.”

Both of looked at him. When he said nothing more, I looked back at his wife.

Emma Crowder said argumentatively, “Joan wasn’t giving him a hard time, Henry. If there was any bad feeling, it was on his side.”

Henry said, “Maybe she wasn’t giving him a hard time, but she wasn’t turning him loose either.” To me he explained, “Ad has another girl he wants to marry, but Joan wouldn’t agree to a divorce. She wanted him back.”

Mrs. Crowder rendered her opinion of this desire by emitting another sniff.

After a short pause, her husband said, “Joan’s mother wanted to see it patched up, too. Last time I saw Ad, he told me she was bugging him with phone calls nearly every night.”

“He has Mrs. Phelps as snowed as he had Joan,” Emma Crowder said with disgust. “Even after the way he’s treated her daughter, she mothers him like he was her own son.”

“Well, Ad has always liked Stella too,” Henry said. “He told me he wished she would stop bugging him to go back to Joan, but otherwise he’s as fond of her as before the breakup.

“How did Mrs. Turnbell’s father feel about the separation?” I asked.

Mrs. Crowder said. “He’s been dead for years. Mrs. Phelps lives alone somewhere out in the west end.”

Taking out my notebook, I wrote the name Stella Phelps in it, then said, “I take it you don’t know her address?”

“No, but Joan kept an address-and-phone-number book on the telephone table in the hall. It should be in there.”

I wrote down the name Addison Turnbell and asked if either knew his address.

“That should be in her book too,” Emma Crowder said. “He’s only a few blocks from here, over on Bates. He moved in with a bachelor friend named Lionel Short, who works at Marks with him.”

I went to the phone table in the central hallway and found both addresses. After writing them in my notebook, I returned to the front room just as Harry Dodge came back in from outside.

“Nothing,” he reported. “No one saw or heard anything at all.”

A moment later Carl Budd came through the central hallway from the kitchen and made a similar report about the neighbors across the alley.

I thanked the Crowders for their help and told them they could go home. As they were leaving, Art Ward from the lab showed up. I took him to the kitchen, told him what I wanted, left him there, and made a tour of the rest of the house while he was doing it.

There were four rooms on the first floor, clustered around the central hall. At the back were a kitchen and a TV room, at the front the parlor and dining room. On one side of the hallway was a bathroom, on the other side were stairways to the basement and second floor.

In the dining room the bottom drawer of the sideboard, containing nothing but linens, had been pulled out and was upended on the floor. In the TV room there was a combination bookcase-desk with a small drawer underneath the desk for stationery and writing implements. This drawer had also been pulled out and upended on the floor.

Those two dumped drawers were the only evidence of disturbance on the first floor.

I climbed to the second floor. There were two bedrooms and a second bath up there. There was no sign of disturbance.

I went down to the basement and gave it a thorough looking-over. Nothing seemed to be out of place there.

Going back upstairs, I checked the other drawers of the dining-room sideboard. One contained a set of sterling silver. Another contained a piggy bank full of dimes.

Art was finished in the kitchen by the time I completed my tour. He reported that he had taken pictures of the body from three different angles and had dusted the butcher knife for prints. There had been none. He wanted to know if it was okay to remove the knife from the body.

When I told him yes, he pulled it out, sealed it in a large manila envelope, marked it as evidence, and we both initialed it.

I said. “There’s no sign of forced entry anywhere. Want to look at the locks on the front and back doors to see if either has been scratched by a picklock?”

He went over to examine the back-door lock, then gave me a wry grin. “I thought that by now everybody had replaced these old-fashioned open-keyhole locks with modern ones. If this was a prowler job, you don’t have to look any further. You can buy a skeleton key in any dime store that will open this.”

Nevertheless I had him examine the front-door lock also, then, in afterthought and just to be thorough, the lock to the basement’s outside door. Neither showed any sign of tampering.

When I had him take photographs of the two dumped drawers, Art began to get it. “Hey,” he said, “this was a setup, wasn’t it? Not a very good one either.”

“The killer didn’t take much time,” I agreed. “But then, maybe he didn’t have much.”

When Art Ward left, I phoned for a morgue wagon and told Harry Dodge and Carl Budd to stand by until it came for the body. Then I drove over to the apartment where Addison Turnbell lived with his friend, Lionel Short.

The apartment building was on Bates, about four short blocks from Joan Turnbell’s house on Dewey.

Turnbell’s apartment was on the ground floor. When I rang the bell, a thin, rather handsome but jaded-looking man of around thirty answered the door. He was in shirt sleeves and had a folded newspaper in his hand.

“Mr. Turnbell?” I asked.

He shook his head. “His apartment-mate.” Over his shoulder he called, “It’s for you, Ad!” Returning to the easy chair from which my ring had roused him, he disappeared behind his newspaper.

A muscular, blond, good-looking man of about the same age came from another room and over to the door. He also was in shirt sleeves, had an apron around his waist, and carried a dish towel.

“My night to do the dishes,” he said in wry apology. “What can I do for you?”

I showed him the badge clipped inside my wallet. “Sergeant Sod Harris of Homicide,” I said. “Mind if I come in?”

His eyes widened and he stepped aside. I put away my wallet, moved past him and waited for him to close the door. The thin, jaded-looking man folded his newspaper, set it aside and stared at me from eyes as widespread as Turnbell’s.

When I was first assigned to Homicide. I used to try to dream up ways to break the news of murder gently to the next of kin. Quite often, I soon learned, it wasn’t news, and even when it was, gentleness didn’t seem to soften the blow. Now, whenever I have the least suspicion that I’m not bringing any news, I just make the bald announcement and watch for reaction.

I said, “Mr. Turnbell, your wife was murdered at five-thirty this afternoon.”

Both men’s eyes became even wider. Turnbell asked on a high note, “Where?”

“In her home.”

“How?”

“With a butcher knife. We think from that set hanging over the stove.”

He licked his lips. “It happened in the kitchen, then, huh?”

I nodded.

“Have you caught the prowler?”

I examined him curiously. “Now, why do you assume it was a prowler?”

His eyes shifted away from me and he licked his lips again. In an oddly defensive tone he said, “Didn’t you say it happened at five-thirty?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, she always arrives home exactly at five-thirty. I used to set my watch by her. You also said it happened in the kitchen. I guess I just assumed she surprised a prowler when she walked in the back door.”

He looked so guilty, I very nearly gave him the customary warning and arrested him on the spot. I held off only because I could hardly believe it was going to be that easy.

It wasn’t, I discovered, when I asked him to account for his time. He could account for every second of it from the time he left work at four-thirty until right now. There was a space during the actual time of the murder when I momentarily thought I might break his alibi, but eventually that checked out too.

It developed that he and his apartment-mate had left work together at four-thirty, had ridden home together on the South Grand bus, and had gotten there at ten after five. Neither had actually checked the time when they walked into the apartment, but both insisted it had to be within a minute or so of five-ten because they made the same bus trip every day and always arrived home at the same time.

Lionel Short said, “I usually look at my watch when we get home, just out of curiosity to see how close to five-ten it is. And we’ve never been more than two minutes off. I didn’t look today because the phone was ringing when we walked in, and I ran to answer it.” He emitted a cackling little laugh. “It was Ad’s girlfriend again.”

I looked at Turnbell. “The girl you planned to marry if you could get your wife to agree to a divorce?”

He looked startled. His apartment-mate emitted another cackling laugh, then explained it by saying, “I was being satiric, Sergeant. It was his mother-in-law. Ad spends half his life talking to her on the phone.”

“Oh,” I said.

Addison Turnbell said wryly, “Tonight we talked for forty minutes.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, I must have been talking to her at the very moment Joan was killed.”

“You were,” Short affirmed. “I did note the time when I returned from the supermarket, and you were still on the phone. It was exactly a quarter to six”

I perked up my ears. That was when I got the momentary hope that I might be able to break Turnbell’s alibi. I said, “You weren’t here at five-thirty, Mr. Short?”

“No. I went out to buy something for dinner. There’s a supermarket just a block away at Grand and Bates. I was gone from about a quarter after five until a quarter of six.”

I contemplated him in silence for some moments before asking, “You sure Mr. Turnbell was still actually talking to his mother-in-law?”

“Of course.” Then he caught the significance of the question and let out another of his cackling little laughs. “You mean maybe Ad tried to con me by talking into a dead phone? You don’t know Mrs. Phelps. Her voice on the telephone carries clear across the room. I could hear her still talking plainly enough even to tell you what she said. She was telling Ad that Joan realized she had been wrong to downgrade him for not having a better job, and had promised to look up to him and make him feel like the man of the house if he would come back. Then, a little later, I heard her say something about having a casserole in the oven, so she had to hang up.”

My hope almost flickered out, but not quite. There was still the possibility that Mrs. Phelps had phoned twice—or that Turnbell had called her back after the first conversation—and that there had been sufficient time between the two calls for Turnbell to make the round trip to the house on Dewey and back. However, that would have to wait until I talked to Mrs. Phelps.

Taking out my notebook, I said to Addison Turnbell, “I’ll need the name of your girlfriend. The real one, I mean.”

He stared at me in frowning silence.

“The girl you plan to marry,” I prompted.

“I know who you mean. What’s she got to do with this?”

I shrugged. “Quite possibly nothing. On the other hand, maybe she got tired of waiting for you to talk your wife into a divorce, and decided to make you an eligible widower. I’ll get to her eventually, whether you give me her name or not. It will be simpler if you cooperate.”

After glumly thinking this over, his face suddenly brightened and he said with an air of triumph, “She couldn’t have killed Joan. She works from four until midnight. She’s working right now.”

“Oh? Where?”

“At Martin’s Steakhouse on Kings Highway. She’s the hostess.”

“I know the place,” I said. “Her name?”

“Sylvia Baumgartner.”

After writing down the name, I put away my notebook and said, “I guess that’s all for now. You’ll stay available, Mr. Turnbell?”

“I wasn’t planning any out-of-town trips,” he said sourly.

“If I want to contact you tomorrow, will you be at work?”

He shook his head. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll be here.”

“Fine.” I pulled open the door, then paused and turned. “One last thing. You don’t seem overly grieved at becoming a widower.”

“I was trying to divorce the woman, Sergeant,” he said sardonically. “I wasn’t wishing her dead, but frankly I was fed up to the eyebrows with her. If you want me to pretend, I suppose I could squeeze out a few crocodile tears.”

“Don’t bother on my account,” I said. I went out and pulled the door closed behind me.

Sylvia Baumgartner turned out to be a sleek, brittle redhead in her mid-twenties. She also turned out to have been in full view of the restaurant manager, a dozen waitresses, and a varying number of customers from four p.m., when she started work, until I got there at eight.

Mrs. Stella Phelps lived in an apartment in the 4300 block of Maryland. I got there about eight-thirty.

The victim’s mother was a plump blonde in her mid-fifties with a pleasant but rather moonlike face. She came to the door red-eyed from crying, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. It developed that Addison Turnbell had phoned her to break the news of her daughter’s death while I was en route.

She invited me in, had me sit in an easy chair, and sank onto the sofa across from me. After giving her eyes another dab with her handkerchief, she squared her plump shoulders and smiled bravely.

“I’m not cried out yet, Sergeant,” she said. “But I know you have a job to do, so I’ll postpone my grief until a more appropriate time. Joan was my only child, you know, and since my husband died ten years ago, she’s all I had left. Ad has always been as close to me as a son, but of course he’s no blood relation, and he and Joan were separated, so he may not think of me as his mother-in-law anymore. I’m sure they were going to get back together eventually, but now it’s too late.”

She touched the handkerchief to her eyes again. I took advantage of the momentary pause in the flow of words to insert, “Your son-in-law says he was talking to you on the phone at the time your daughter was killed.”

“Yes. When he phoned me he said you would probably ask about that.” She cocked a quizzical eyebrow at me. “Surely you don’t suspect him of killing Joan, do you?”

“The spouse is always a routine suspect in a homicide, Mrs. Phelps. I haven’t accused Mr. Turnbell of anything. I’ll be quite happy to clear him as a suspect if you can confirm his alibi. Do you recall just what time you phoned him and how long you talked?”

“I can tell you to the minute, Sergeant, because I had a casserole in the oven that had to come out at ten of six. I turned on the oven at five-ten, then immediately dialed Ad. That fellow he’s staying with answered—Lionel something. I never liked the man. I think he’s been a bad influence on Ad. There is always potential for trouble in a marriage when the husband continues his friendship with a chronic bachelor. The fellow has never been married, you know, which seems to me unnatural for a man past thirty. While Ad and Joan were still together, he was always coming around and luring Ad to go off and do bachelor things with him, such as bowling, shooting pool and playing poker. I think he’s the one who introduced Ad to that little tramp who caused the final breakup between Ad and my daughter.”

I began to understand how the telephone conversation had lasted so long. When she paused for breath, I quickly slipped in, “When did your phone conversation end?”

She looked surprised. “I thought I already told you. At ten of six. I kept checking my wristwatch because of the casserole, and when it was ten to six, I told Ad I had to hang up. It was just when I was beginning to make some progress, too. He had admitted he was still fond of Joan, and if things were different—if she stopped nagging him about going out with his friend Lionel, for instance—maybe the marriage could still work. I was really beginning to feel quite encouraged that they would patch things up. But maybe at that very moment the poor girl was being killed by the fiend who murdered her.”

That was interesting. Addison Turnbell had said to me, “I was trying to divorce the woman, Sergeant. I wasn’t wishing her dead, but frankly I was fed up to the eyebrows with her.” Yet a couple of hours earlier he had hinted to his mother-in-law that reconciliation was still possible. Of course, that possibly could have been simply to shut her up.

After a brief pause Mrs. Phelps opened her mouth to say something else, but I beat her to it by asking quickly, “What time does your wristwatch show right now?”

Looking at it, she said, “Eight-forty-two. It keeps very good time. I haven’t set it for weeks, yet it’s always right with the time they announce on television.”

She reminded me of the guy who, when you asked him the time, told you how to build a watch.

My watch, which also keeps very good time, showed eight-forty-two as well. I got to my feet. “I guess that pretty well clears your son-in-law, Mrs. Phelps. Can you think of any enemies your daughter may have had who would resort to this?”

“Joan?” she said, obviously shocked by the idea. “Why, everyone absolutely loved her. I’m sure it was just a prowler.”

“Perhaps,” I conceded, and made my escape before she could get started on another monologue.

I drove back to headquarters, set up a file folder on the case and typed the chronological record of events so far, beginning with the phone call from the Carondelet Precinct. When I read it over, the suspicion I’d had all along crystallized into certainty: Joan Turnbell had not been murdered by a prowler surprised in the midst of burglarizing the house, but had been deliberately murdered. That much was perfectly clear. Nothing else about the case was, though.

When I got home shortly after midnight, Maggie was asleep. When I awakened in the morning, her side of the bed was empty. The bedside clock told me it was eight a.m.

Ordinarily I sleep until at least nine when pulling the night trick, but today I felt the need for Maggie’s counsel. Getting up, I yelled for her to put the coffee on, and went into the bathroom to shower and shave.

When I entered the kitchen, dressed, twenty minutes later, she was pouring my coffee. She gave me my usual good-morning kiss, still with considerable gusto even after twenty-five years of marriage, and asked what I wanted for breakfast.

“Just toast and conversation,” I said.

She dropped bread into the toaster, put butter and jam in front of me, then sat across the table from me and cocked an inquiring eyebrow. “Problems?” she asked.

“Just one. I’ve got a murder that was supposed to look like a prowler job, but wasn’t. The guy with the only motive I can unearth has an ironclad alibi.”

“Tell me about it, and maybe we can break it,” she suggested.

She wasn’t being egotistical. Over the years her hard common sense has unraveled a number of snarls that had me baffled.

The toast popped up and I waited until she brought it to me before beginning. Then I described in detail everything that had happened the night before.

“It couldn’t have been a prowler surprised in the act,” I concluded. “And not just because those two dumped drawers were so obviously staged. There was no way he could have avoided hearing her arrive home in plenty of time to scoot out the front door before she came in the back. If that noisy garage door hadn’t alerted him, he still couldn’t have missed hearing her steel heel cleats clicking along that fifty-foot stretch of concrete walk from the garage to the back porch. If the next-door neighbor heard both sounds, why couldn’t the killer?”

“He could have been deaf,” Maggie suggested.

I made an impatient gesture. “Who ever heard of a deaf burglar? It would be too much of an occupational hazard.”

She grinned at me. “Okay, so he had to hear her coming. Which means he deliberately waited there in the kitchen, intending to kill her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what’s your problem?”

I paused in the act of spreading jam on toast to stare at her. “My problem is that the only guy with a motive to kill her was four blocks away when she died, talking to her mother on the phone.”

“While his apartment-mate was out shopping. Or says he was shopping.”

I continued to stare at her.

“His friend did it for him,” Maggie said. “While he deliberately kept his mother-in-law on the phone in order to give himself an alibi.”

Setting down my toast, I folded my hands in my lap and peered at her until she blushed.

“You don’t like it?” she asked.

“Oh, I think it’s a remarkable theory,” I said with irony. “I’m curious about one small point, though. How did Turnbell induce his friend to commit murder for him?”

“I can’t do all your work for you,” she informed me. “Maybe he paid him.”

“Out of his salary putting together carburetors on an assembly line?”

“Maybe Lionel Short wants somebody killed too,” she said with sudden inspiration. “And next time, Addison Turnbell is going to do it while Short makes himself an alibi.”

I gave my head a pitying shake. “You’re losing your grip, light of my life. If there were collusion between Turnbell and Short to murder the woman, why would Short admit being gone from the apartment at the time of the murder? They could have alibied each other simply by swearing neither was out of the other’s sight.”

She blushed again, then made a face at me. “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

“He could have hired a killer, though,” I said thoughtfully. “A pro, I mean.”

“Out of his salary putting together carburetors on an assembly line?” she mimicked me.

I picked up my toast again. The phone rang and Maggie got up to answer it. She caught it on the kitchen extension, which was a wall phone above the counter next to the stove. I was facing that way.

After saying hello, she cupped a palm over the mouthpiece, assumed a martyred expression and said in a low voice. “Grace Fenwick.”

Grace was one of Maggie’s more long-winded friends. I finished my toast to the accompaniment of only occasional monosyllabic comments by Maggie and the steady drone of Grace’s high-pitched voice coming from the phone.

I drained my coffee cup and was just getting ready to get up for more when Maggie gestured me to remain seated, picked up the pot from the stove and carried it over to the table to fill my cup.

“How’d you get away from old gabby so fast?” I inquired.

Maggie placed a finger to her lips and tossed her head in the direction of the phone. Looking that way, I saw that she had not hung it up, but had merely laid it down on the counter.

In a low voice Maggie said, “She’ll never know I’m gone. She never stops talking long enough for an answer. But she might hear you when you talk so loud.”

She went back to the phone. I gazed at her for a time, then left my second cup of coffee untouched, went into the bedroom and put on my necktie and suit coat.

Maggie was still listening to the telephone when I gave her a kiss on the free ear and whispered into it, “You haven’t lost your grip after all, doll. You solved it.” I continued on out.

On my way down to Carondelet I did a considerable amount of thinking. I knew I had a solved case, but proving it was going to be a problem.

I had the advantage that Addison Turnbell hadn’t seemed very bright. Actually he had been more lucky than clever, because his murder scheme had been pretty harebrained. It had contained so many possible pitfalls that its working could be ascribed to nothing less than improbable luck. His mother-in-law could have asked a question that required an answer; his apartment-mate could have returned before he got back; Emma Crowder could have arrived thirty seconds earlier and have seen him leaving by the back gate.

Anyone stupid enough to devise such a murder plan might be stupid enough to fall for a bluff, I decided.

It wasn’t quite nine a.m. when I rang the apartment bell. Addison Turnbell himself answered the door. He was in pajamas and a robe, but apparently had been up for a time, because his hair was combed and he looked freshly shaved. He greeted me without enthusiasm, but without surprise either, and invited me in.

“Where’s your friend?” I inquired as he closed the door behind me.

“Still sleeping. He went out on the town last night after you left us. Have a seat?”

“No, thanks. Mr. Turnbell, you are under arrest for investigation, suspicion of homicide.” I took out the little card and read him his constitutional rights.

When I finished, he gazed at me with his mouth open for some time before finally saying in a high voice. “You’re arresting me for what?”

“For murdering your wife,” I explained. “I think it must have been a spur-of-the-moment thing instead of something you elaborately planned, because the situation that developed was too accidental. All of a sudden you found yourself on the phone with a woman who talked so interminably that she probably wouldn’t miss you if you left her talking to herself even for as long as fifteen minutes. Your apartment-mate was off to the store, so he wouldn’t know you had left the apartment. And your wife was due home in a very few minutes. I imagine you still have a key to the house. You got there just before your wife did, hurriedly upended a couple of drawers in an attempt to make it look like a burglary, stabbed her as she walked in, wiped off your prints and took off for here again. By walking fast you probably made the round trip in no more than ten minutes.”

“You’re crazy,” he said huskily, licking his lips. “You’ll never prove it.”

“Oh, but I have proved it. Not by your mother-in-law, because she still thinks she was talking to you all the time, instead of to herself. Your wife’s neighbor across the alley happened to be trying out a brand-new Polaroid camera from his back porch just as you came out the back door, and he noted the time was exactly five thirty-two p.m. I have the print right here.”

As I reached for my breast pocket, he broke for the kitchen, presumably meaning to flee by the back door. I don’t know where he thought he was going in pajamas, a robe and slippers, but it became an academic question when he tripped over a kitchen chair and sprawled flat on his stomach.

I put a knee on his back and cuffed his wrists behind him before I helped him to his feet.

PREMARITAL AGREEMENT

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1973.

When Irma married Stanton Carr, the premarital agreement hadn’t seemed important. While she wasn’t exactly in love with her former boss, she liked him well enough and she expected the marriage to last. At thirty she had long since given up her dream of a romantic Prince Charming and was willing to settle for luxury without romance. She had every intention of being a good wife.

The agreement provided that in the event Irma ever instituted legal proceedings to dissolve the marriage, she would claim no community property, no alimony, and would accept a lump-sum financial settlement of $2,000 for each year the marriage had lasted as a full and complete discharge of all Stanton Carr’s obligations to her. His lawyer had explained to Irma that the agreement would not apply if Stanton brought such an action, but only if she herself decided to end the marriage. Also, if she and Stanton had any children, the agreement would not affect any child-support claims she made, even if she instituted a divorce action herself.

It was understandable why Stanton insisted on such an agreement. His first wife, also a former secretary, had nicked him for a settlement of nearly a million dollars after only two years of marriage. Even though that had been ten years before Irma became his secretary, he was still a little marriage-shy. It had struck Irma as rather silly for Stanton to insist on her signing such an agreement, but he was too skittish about marriage for her to risk refusing.

Signing really didn’t bother her much. She had no intention of ever ending the marriage, and her rights were fully protected in the event he decided to divorce her. The latter seemed inconceivable to her anyway. Although he was quite a handsome man in a distinguished, gray-haired way, she was fifteen years his junior, extremely attractive, and he was evidently quite crazy about her.

Then, five years later, Prince Charming came along. His actual name was Gary Sommers. It was Stanton Carr’s fault that they met.

Stanton was chairman of the board of the Crippled Children’s Association, one of his several charitable activities; and when the organization decided to schedule some swimming classes for crippled children, he volunteered the pool at his and Irma’s Beverly Hills mansion. He also volunteered to locate and pay the fee of a swimming instructor.

Gary Sommers was a relatively new employee of the Carr Refinery Equipment Company. When Stanton, the company president, asked the personnel division to check employee files to see if any employee were a qualified swimming instructor, they sent him Gary Sommers. The man was a drill-press operator, but under “previous experience” on his application form he had included the information that he had worked five summers as a lifeguard and held a Red Cross certificate as a water-safety instructor.

Stanton Carr arranged for the man to handle the swimming classes, which were to run from one to three p.m. each Saturday.

The first class was on May fifteenth. Irma knew that someone named Gary Sommers was coming to conduct it, but she had a luncheon engagement that day; and of course her husband wouldn’t be there to receive the man, because he always played golf on Saturday. Irma left instructions with Mrs. Felton, the housekeeper, to show Mr. Sommers and the children where to change into their swimsuits when they arrived. Then she left before any of them arrived.

She returned at three, just as the class was ending. The chartered bus the children had come in was parked in the driveway back near the three-car garage, so Irma swung her car onto the white-shell strip that circled around past the front door, where it would be out of the way when the bus backed out. Getting out of the car, she walked over to the pool.

Edith Pemberton, a volunteer worker for the Crippled Children’s Association and the wife of one of Stanton’s business associates, was supervising the exodus from the pool of some twenty children, ranging in age from about five to eight, toward the basement door leading into the playroom, off of which were the dressing rooms.

Irma had a momentary flash of guilt because she felt more repelled than sympathetic at the sight of so many handicapped children, but she repressed it and gave the middle-aged Edith a friendly greeting.

“How are you, Irma?” said the woman, preoccupied. “Don’t dawdle, children. The bus is supposed to leave in ten minutes.” She stooped to assist a five-year-old girl replace her leg braces.

Irma glanced at the bronzed man in swim trunks standing at the pool’s edge. When he smiled at her, her heart skipped a beat. He was tall and lean and had a weight lifter’s muscles. His dark hair was becomingly curly and his handsome face possessed a sort of boyish charm. He was probably about thirty.

Irma was past the age where she could believe in love at first sight, but to her own amazement she found herself wondering if there couldn’t be such a thing as lust at first sight. She had never before seen a man who appealed to her physically so strongly and so instantly.

She tried to reject the feeling as ridiculous by telling herself the man was obviously five years younger than she was, and that she had always preferred older men. Then, for some reason, she recalled an article she had read years before, written by a psychologist, who had argued that because women outlive men by an average of five years, the ideal age difference for mates was for the women to be five years older. When she had read the article, her reaction had been amused disagreement, but now she found herself wondering if the psychologist might not have been right after all.

Going over to the man, she said somewhat breathlessly, “You must be Mr. Sommers.”

Exposing even white teeth in another smile, he said, “Yes, ma’am, and who are you?”

“Why…Mrs. Carr,” she said.

He looked surprised, and his expression managed to make the surprise flattering. In a subtle, completely inoffensive way it implied that he was wondering how a man of Stanton Carr’s age had succeeded in getting such a young and lovely woman to marry him, but all he said was a formal, “Glad to know you, ma’am.”

By then Mrs. Pemberton had followed the last of the children inside, and Irma and Sommers were left alone.

She said, “I understand you work for my husband. What do you do at the plant?”

“Drill holes in the base plates of heat exchangers.”

“Oh?” she said. “That sounds interesting.” Then she blushed when she realized what a vapid remark she had made. The man’s radiations were making her act like a teen-ager. She made an effort to sound more adult by saying, “You work in the Plate Shop, then.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I see you’ve toured the place.”

“I worked there two years. I was my husband’s secretary before we married.”

“That right?” he said. “I didn’t know, but I haven’t been around very long. I’ve only worked there a few weeks.” He glanced toward the house. “Well, I guess I’d better get my clothes on like the rest.”

In her desire to extend the moment she reverted to a teen-ager again. She said almost breathlessly, “I was planning to take a dip. If you aren’t tired of the water, you could stay and join me, if you’d like.”

He eyed her contemplatively. His face was so expressive, she could almost read his mind. He was quite aware of his animal appeal—probably many women threw themselves at him—and sensed that she was almost desperately eager for him to stay. He found the prospect attractive, but also possibly dangerous. After all, she was the big boss’ wife.

As a further inducement, Irma added, “We could have a cocktail by the pool. There’s a bar in the playroom. You could mix them while I change into my suit.”

His spirit of adventure won over caution. “All right,” he decided.

“I have to speak to my housekeeper for a moment first,” Irma said. “Would you mind just waiting here until I come back?”

“Of course not,” he said with dry amusement, his tone letting her know he was perfectly aware that she was simply making an excuse to delay changing into her suit until Mrs. Pemberton and the children were gone.

When she blushed again, he chuckled. “Take your time,” he said. “I’ll wait here until they’re gone, then go in and start the drinks. What do you drink?”

“A salty dog will be fine,” she said. “You’ll find everything you need at the bar, including a bartender’s guide on the backbar, in case you don’t know the recipe of a salty dog.”

Inside, Mrs. Felton told her that her husband had phoned from the country club only a few minutes before, and wanted her to call him back at the bar. When she contacted him, he asked if she had any particular social plans for the evening.

“I hadn’t planned on going out unless you want to,” she said. “I had in mind having dinner at home, then writing some letters.”

“Well, some of the boys are getting up a poker game and they want to start early. If you don’t mind, to save time I’ll have dinner here.”

“Oh, sure, go ahead, dear,” she said. “You’ll probably be quite late, then?”

“Probably,” he conceded. “I’ll try not to wake you.”

When she hung up, she told Mrs. Felton that Mr. Carr would not be home for dinner, and she felt like nothing more than a cold snack. “I can make it myself,” she said. “If you’ve finished your other work, you may leave any time you want to.”

“Well, I guess I’ll go now, then,” the housekeeper said. “Everything is done.”

Irma changed into her suit in her bedroom. She first put on a bikini, but when she looked at her image in her full-length mirror she was appalled to see how she was beginning to bulge in a couple of spots where bulges were not attractive. She quickly changed into a one-piece black suit that tended to minimize the bulges.

Examining her reflection again, she decided she was still in pretty good shape for thirty-five. Her natural blonde hair as yet showed no sign of gray, her complexion was still smooth, and her figure was still generally good. She probably could stand to lose about ten pounds, but that wasn’t much of a problem. She could accomplish that in two weeks on a crash diet.

From her bedroom window she watched the bus back out of the driveway, and a few minutes later saw Mrs. Felton’s car drive away. Only then did she go downstairs.

Gary Sommers was at the bar, pouring the contents of a cocktail shaker into two stemmed glasses with salted edges. He finished pouring and set the shaker down before he turned to examine her. He looked her over slowly from head to foot. The frank admiration in his eyes, mixed with something more intimate than mere aesthetic appreciation, made her blush for a third time, which in turn made him smile.

Handing her one of the drinks, he raised the other and said, “To love.”

She hiked her eyebrows, then shrugged. “To love,” she repeated.

They drank, set their glasses down and looked at each other. The quizzical, estimating expression in his eyes started her heart beating violently. His face was so expressive that again she knew exactly what he was thinking. He was simply considering how long he ought to wait before making an overt move.

Apparently her expression was readable too, because he decided no wait was necessary. Almost casually he drew her into his arms, but there was nothing casual about his first kiss. It was so savage and demanding that it instantly set her on fire.

They never did get back to the swimming pool.

* * *

In the beginning it was simply a physical affair insofar as Irma was concerned. They spent most of their time during their clandestine meetings making love in motel rooms.

It wasn’t hard for Irma to arrange to be with Gary. Her husband was so involved in community projects that he spent a good many evenings away from home, and he made no effort to check on his wife’s activities. Irma could generally get away for at least a couple of hours several nights a week. Also, Stanton got in the habit of playing poker at the country club every Saturday night, and she could safely stay out quite late then.

After a rapturous period of compulsive lovemaking, Irma and Gary finally got around to talking to each other.

Their early dialogue involved little but trading personal information. Irma told him how she had grown up in foster homes, had attended business school, then had worked for years at a variety of stenographic and secretarial jobs until she had finally landed the position as Stanton Carr’s private secretary, which led to their marriage two years later.

Gary told Irma of his boyhood on an Oregon farm under the despotic rule of a martinet father, how he had run away to join the Army at sixteen, and how he had acquired a high school diploma by taking Army extension courses. Briefly he mentioned some “minor” trouble that had ended his Army career six years later. He didn’t describe the trouble, but he assured Irma he had an honorable discharge—the reason recorded as “for the good of the service.” He had been reduced from staff sergeant to private, he admitted, but it was still a “white” discharge.

Gary’s Army service had been in ordnance, and in addition to acquiring a high school diploma he had learned to become a machine-shop worker. Since his discharge eight years ago, he had held a number of jobs up and down the coast in different manufacturing plants. His jobs had been so numerous because he would quit when summer arrived in order to work in some resort, usually as a lifeguard.

Despite this seemingly aimless background, he expressed to Irma a driving ambition to own his own machine shop eventually. He’d had enough experience with every type of power tool to run such a shop, he said, and his various jobs had given him friendly contacts in several plants that had government cost-plus contracts and farmed out a good part of their machine-shop work. He was sure he could get all the subcontracts he could handle. All he needed was a sufficient stake to go into business for himself, he told Irma, and within five years he could be a millionaire.

As she got to know him better, Irma found that she liked Gary Sommers more and more. Toward the end of June she suddenly realized she was hopelessly in love with him; not just physically in love, but in love the way a woman is when she starts dreaming of changing her status from lover to wife.

When Gary told her he loved her too, all the luxury she enjoyed as Mrs. Stanton Carr became meaningless. Gary was the Prince Charming she had once given up ever meeting, and now that he had finally come along, she was instantly ready to move from the palatial Carr mansion into whatever type of residence a drill-press operator could afford.

Gary wasn’t quite as ready, though. While he had every desire to marry her eventually, he assured her, they had to be practical. Moving out on Carr and in with Gary while the divorce was pending would be a bad tactical error.

“Our starting to live together openly would accomplish two things, darling,” he said patiently. “First, it would get me fired. Then it would get you a divorce without alimony. So what would we live on?”

After thinking this over, Irma said contritely, “I really hadn’t thought about anything but being with you all the time. What do you want me to do?”

“Keep our relationship entirely secret until your divorce is in the bag and you have your settlement. If the court found out you planned to remarry as soon as your decree was final, you wouldn’t have a chance of getting any money out of Carr. But if you’re just a poor abused wife who can’t put up with your mistreatment any longer, you can nail him good. I did some checking, and his first wife took him for nearly a million.”

Irma was silent.

“Incidentally, it’s not a divorce anymore in California. Now they call it a ‘dissolution of marriage,’ and the only ground is ‘irreconcilable differences.’ Which means you don’t have to prove your husband beat you or seduced your housekeeper or anything like that. You just have to tell the court you can no longer get along. You don’t have to prove anything, because the law no longer requires one party to be at fault and the other to be innocent of fault. You ought to be able to have the marriage dissolved within a month if you see a lawyer right now.”

Irma was still silent.

“What’s the matter?” he asked finally.

Irma cleared her throat.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to get anything near what his first wife got as a settlement, honey. I can’t expect more than ten thousand.”

He turned his head to frown at her. “Ten thousand? That’s ridiculous. Your husband must be worth ten million. What are you talking about?”

She explained about the premarital agreement she had signed.

He glared at her. “You let him con you into signing a premarital agreement?” he said in an enraged voice. “How stupid can you get?”

After staring up at him in shocked astonishment, Irma began to cry. Immediately he became contrite and gathered her in his arms.

“Hey, cut it out,” he admonished. “I’m sorry I called you stupid.”

“It’s not that,” she said between sobs. “I thought you loved me for myself, not just for the money I could get out of Stanton.”

“I do,” he protested, “but there’s no point in passing up money. I was counting on at least enough to open the machine shop I told you about. You think I want you to have to live a factory worker’s salary the rest of your life? I want to cover you with diamonds.”

Irma’s sobs gradually subsided. Getting up, she wiped her eyes with some tissue, then put her head on his shoulder. “How much would your machine shop cost?” she asked. “Wouldn’t ten thousand be enough for a down payment?”

He gave a sardonic chuckle. “The companies I plan to go after for subcontracts are big business, Irma. They aren’t going to deal with any two-bit operator. They’ll be parceling out jobs that run into the hundreds of thousands and they won’t go to anyone who isn’t tooled up to handle them. I had in mind something like a couple of hundred grand.”

She sighed. “Stanton would never give me anything like that. In fact, I’m quite sure he won’t go any higher than he has to under our agreement. He’s not tight with personal expenditures, but he’s very tight about business matters.”

Gary made a face. “Then we’ll have to think of some way to get money out of him before you leave him.”

“Like what?”

He didn’t answer immediately. After a time he asked casually, “Are you named in his will?”

Stiffening, she withdrew from his arms and looked at him. “I hope that was a joke.”

He emitted an easy chuckle. “Of course it was, honey. What else?”

“It sounded as though you were contemplating making me a widow, and that kind of talk is definitely out so far as I’m concerned.”

Realizing his remark had really upset her, he said, “It was just a bad joke, honey. Do I look like a killer?”

Examining his smiling face, she decided she had never seen anyone look less like one. Relieved, she snuggled up against him. Neither said anything for some time.

Eventually he asked, “Do you have moral reservations about crimes less than murder?”

“What do you mean?”

“How far would you be willing to go to shake some money out of him?”

“Nothing criminal,” she said definitely. “I’m not going to risk jail.”

“Well, the idea that just popped into my head may be criminal, but I don’t think there would be any risk of jail, even if it went sour. How would you like to be kidnapped?”

She stiffened again. “Kidnapped! They put you in jail forever for that!”

“Only if it’s a real kidnapping, honey. If we faked a kidnapping and it backfired, the most we could be tagged for is attempted fraud; and it seems unlikely to me a man would push that against his own wife. You know your husband better than I do—would he push charges against either of us if we got caught trying to shake him down by pretending you’d been kidnapped?”

After thinking his words over, she shook her head. “I’m not sure exactly what he would do. He might kick me out, but then again he might even forgive me. He’s pretty crazy about me. One thing I’m sure he wouldn’t do is press charges, because he would want to hush it up. Stanton is quite vain, and he couldn’t stand the thought of appearing ridiculous to the whole world.”

“Then there’s no risk,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

She had some reservations, but eventually he convinced her there was absolutely no danger, only a little embarrassment if they got caught. Once she finally agreed to go along, the discussion turned to how much ransom to ask. He suggested they try for a quarter of a million.

“Oh, Stanton would never go for that much,” Irma said in a positive tone. “I don’t think we should ask for more than a hundred thousand.”

“I thought you said he’s crazy about you. The way this is going to be presented to him, he either pays off or gets you back dead. You think he’ll set a limit on what your life is worth?”

“No, of course not, but you have to understand how Stanton’s mind works. He isn’t in the least cheap, but he is quite calculating about major expenditures. He makes sure he always gets full value for his money. When he buys a new car, for instance, he shops and shops until he gets absolutely the best possible deal.”

“What’s that got to do with anything like this?”

“I’m just trying to explain how I think he will react to a ransom demand. You would class that as a major expenditure, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess,” he admitted. “So how would he react?”

“That would probably depend on the amount asked. Up to a certain sum—my guess is a hundred thousand—I suspect he would go along with all instructions without trying to set any traps, and maybe without even informing the police. He would figure it was worth that much to get me back without risking antagonizing the kidnapper. If you asked much more than what he considered a reasonable amount, he would start balancing the risk to my safety against the money. It isn’t that he doesn’t love me; it’s just that he also loves money.”

“You mean he would refuse to pay a larger amount?”

“Oh, he probably would pay anything you asked, but if you ask too much, he’s going to do his best to arrange things so there is at least a chance to recover his money. Probably he would call in the FBI, have our phone tapped and set all sorts of traps for the kidnapper. I just think it would be safer to set our sights low. Can’t you start your machine shop on a hundred thousand?”

“I could probably set up a pretty fair operation with that for a down payment,” he admitted. “Okay, you ought to know how your husband ticks. We’ll ask for only a hundred grand.”

* * *

Gary took a week to work out the details of a plan. Then he spent a whole evening thoroughly briefing Irma. The following day they put it into effect.

Just before noon Irma stopped by her husband’s office. Stanton Carr was dictating to his private secretary when she arrived.

Marie Sloan, a pert brunette of about twenty-five, was a relatively new secretary, the previous one having quit to join the Peace Corps. Stanton Carr always hired pretty secretaries, which partly accounted for his having married two of them, and Marie was no exception.

Marie, who as yet didn’t know her boss’ wife well enough to be fully at ease with her, immediately rose to leave when Irma came in.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Irma said quickly, preferring to have the girl hear what she had to say too. “I’ll be only a minute. Keep your seat, Miss Sloan.”

The girl glanced at her employer, then reseated herself when he nodded. “What is it, dear?” he asked Irma.

“I’m supposed to meet Hazel Ellison for lunch, and I’ve discovered my wallet isn’t in my purse. Can you spare a twenty-dollar bill?”

Stanton Carr drew a twenty from his wallet and handed it to her. “That all, dear?”

“Yes, thanks. You can get back to work now.” She started for the door, then paused and turned. “The oddest thing happened, Stanton. A masher followed my car all the way down Wilshire from Beverly Hills. I noticed him in the rear-view mirror shortly after I left home.”

Her husband frowned. “You sure it wasn’t just somebody going in the same direction and traveling at the same speed?”

“Positive. En route I stopped at DeWitt’s Department Store. That’s when I discovered I didn’t have my wallet. When I drove on, the same car was behind me again. It followed me right to the entrance to the plant parking lot, then drove on by when I turned in.”

Stanton Carr’s frown deepened. “How do you know it was a masher? Did he make any overt move, such as honking his horn at you?”

“No, but what else could it have been?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, but I don’t like it. Did you get a good look at him?”

Irma shook her head. “All I could tell was that he was a heavyset man. I couldn’t see him well enough in the rear-view mirror to make out his face. But he was driving a black Ford and I managed to catch his license number as he drove by the parking lot entrance.”

“Good. Give it to me and I’ll have the police check the man out.”

“It was FHB-548.”

Carr glanced at his secretary, who jotted the number in her notebook. “I’ll find out who your masher is,” he said to Irma. “I have a friend in the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

Irma was quite satisfied with the way things had gone. When the black Ford was discovered abandoned on the plant parking lot, it would be assumed the mythical heavyset man had waited for Irma on the lot, then had abducted her in her own car. It shouldn’t take long to find the car, because Irma was fairly certain of how Hazel Ellison would react when she failed to meet her for lunch. First Hazel would phone her home, and Mrs. Felton would tell her Irma had left some time ago to meet her. Then she would phone Stanton at his office to find out if Irma had stopped by there. That call would most certainly cause Stanton to investigate the parking lot.

Finding the car there would lead nowhere even after its registration was traced, because it was a stolen car.

Gary’s plan for getting the Ford on the lot had been both clever and simple. In the middle of the previous night he had stolen it from an all-night parking lot and had left it for Irma in a previously designated spot on a side street a short distance from the plant. Irma had simply parked her own car behind the stolen one and had driven the Ford onto the lot. When she left the plant, she walked back to her own car.

Gary’s plan not only lent credence to the story Irma would eventually have to tell about her abduction, but also gave him an ironclad alibi in the remote event that he was ever suspected of being the kidnapper. All the time the heavyset man was supposed to be following Irma’s car, Gary was working in the Plate Shop in the middle of fifty other workers.

Irma drove to Griffith Park, parked the car in the zoo area, took a brunette wig and some dark sunglasses from the glove compartment and put them on. She walked to the nearest bus stop and caught a bus going to South Los Angeles.

Gary had reasoned that when Irma’s car was eventually found in Griffith Park, it would be assumed the kidnapper had left his own vehicle parked there, had forced Irma to drive him to it, then had switched cars.

Irma got off the bus at 24th Street and walked the three blocks to the motel where Gary had rented a light-housekeeping unit. No one was in sight when she let herself in with the key Gary had given her.

The unit consisted of a living room, bedroom and bath, with a kitchen alcove off the living room. Gary had stocked the refrigerator and a cabinet with both food and liquor.

Irma took off her wig and sunglasses, fixed herself lunch, then sat down to watch television.

Gary showed up at six. He reported developments as he mixed a pair of salty dogs at a counter.

“There’s both good and bad news,” he said. “I’ll give you the good first. My phone call to your husband went beautifully. I called his office from the public phone booth in the plant foyer during the three p.m. coffee break. I made my voice so husky, even you wouldn’t have recognized it. Your friend Hazel must have phoned him that you never showed for lunch, because he didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. He sounded as though he had been expecting such a call. He agreed to pay the hundred grand, but first wanted proof that you were all right. I told him to be at home at ten tonight and he would get a phone call from you.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“Your guess that he’d pay up to a hundred grand without even calling the cops was wrong. I stretched my coffee break so I could check his reaction to my call by keeping an eye on his office door. Approximately fifteen minutes after I made the call, about half the LAPD walked into his office.”

Irma frowned. “The news hasn’t gotten hold of it. I’ve been watching every TV newscast.”

“Well, the cops must have declared a news blackout, but they’re sure as the devil in on it. It doesn’t really matter, though. There’s no way they can set a trap with the delivery method I’ve worked out for the ransom money.”

At nine-thirty p.m. they left the motel together, Irma wearing her black wig and sunglasses. Gary drove up to the Boyle Heights district to make the phone call, so that in the event it was traced, it would give no clue to the section of town where they were actually hiding out.

They called from an outdoor public phone booth, squeezing into it together. Irma dialed the number. Stanton Carr answered instantly.

Making her voice tearful, Irma said, “Honey, I’m allowed to speak to you for only a minute, and I can’t tell you where I am or answer any questions. I haven’t been harmed, but there’s a gun in my back and the man says he’ll kill me if you don’t pay. Please do as they say.”

“I will, dear,” he assured her. “Don’t worry.”

Gary Sommers took the phone from her hand and growled into it in a husky, disguised voice, “Okay, there’s your proof that she’s still alive, Carr. Now, here’s what you do. When the banks open tomorrow morning, you get a hundred grand in used twenty-dollar bills and put the money in a suitcase. Take the suitcase to your office and wait for the mail delivery. Further instructions will arrive in the mail.”

He hung up.

As they got back in the car, Irma said, “I thought you planned to give all instructions by phone.”

“I do. That mail bit was just to keep the cops from tapping his office phone. I’ll be phoning his office again from the foyer phone at the plant, and I can’t chance a trace. That’s what got stupid Captain McCloud in trouble, phoning his girlfriend an hour after his wife’s funeral. The post provost marshal had put a tap on her phone.”

“Who’s Captain McCloud?” she asked, totally at sea.

Pulling away from the curb, he said casually, “My Army C.O. It was his stupidity that ended my Army career. The provost marshal got the idiot idea that he’d paid me to murder his wife, mainly because he withdrew five grand from the bank the day before I deposited four thousand. I have no idea what he did with the money, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did hire somebody to kill his wife, because he was certainly glad to get rid of her. But it wasn’t me. I won my money in a crap game.”

“They accused you of murder?” she asked in a shocked voice.

“They investigated me for murder,” he said. “They never accused me of anything. There wasn’t enough evidence to make a case against either of us, but the idiot provost marshal wouldn’t let it go. So the Army did what it usually does when it decides soldiers are guilty of something, but can’t prove it. It brought pressure on him to resign his commission and for me to request discharge. They gave him the choice of resigning or being shipped to Greenland. They busted me and put me on permanent garbage detail.”

“But you didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?” she asked.

He smiled sideways at her. “Do I look like a killer?”

Smiling back, she said, “You look like a lover.”

Gary didn’t stay when they got back to the motel. In case he needed an alibi later, he wanted to be seen as much as possible, while Irma was missing, by people who knew him. He planned to drive to a bar in his own neighborhood where he was well known and stay until the closing hour of two a.m.

Gary didn’t reappear at the motel until the following midnight. Meantime there still had been nothing at all on the news about the kidnapping; very hush-hush.

“Get your wig and glasses on and let’s go,” he said as soon as he was inside.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. There’s a hundred grand in a suitcase in the trunk of my car.”

As she donned her disguise, she asked. “What about all the food left here?”

“I’ll clear it out tomorrow,” he said. “Rent’s paid until the end of the week. Hurry it up.”

When they were in the car, he headed south.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I’m going to take you to Long Beach.”

“Oh? Why so far? I thought you were just going to turn me loose somewhere in L.A. I’m not supposed to know where I was held anyway, being blindfolded all the time.”

“Slight change in plans,” he said.

They drove in silence for a time. Presently she asked, “Any trouble about the pickup?”

“Not a bit. Matter of fact, I was able to simplify the original pickup plan considerably.”

“Oh? How?”

“I’ll tell you when we get where we’re going,” he said. “Right now I want to think about all the lovely money in the trunk.”

It was nearly one a.m. when he parked the car at a deserted stretch of shore in Long Beach.

“Why such an isolated spot?” she asked.

“Why not?” he asked. “Come on, let’s walk down to look at the water.”

He sounded as though he had romance in mind. The timing surprised her, but she was enough in love to be always willing. Agreeably she climbed from the car. It was a warm, pleasant night with a moonless but clear sky studded brightly with stars.

She took his hand as they strolled toward the water. “You were going to tell me how you simplified the pickup plan,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. When I phoned your husband this morning, he threw me a curve. He said, ‘I was hoping you would phone instead of write. I am in my private office alone, and no one is listening in. How would you like to make two hundred thousand instead of just one?’ When I asked how, he reeled off a telephone number and asked me to call it at seven this evening. ‘The phone won’t be tapped and we can talk safely,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this one because this call is going through a switch-board.’ I said okay, I’d call him at the number he gave me. When I hung up, I called information, said I was a cop and asked the name of the subscriber for that number. Turned out to be Marie Sloan.”

“My husband’s secretary?” Irma said in surprise.

“Uh-huh. That, plus the offer of an extra hundred grand, gave me a couple of clues to the puzzle. So I really wasn’t very surprised when I phoned him at seven and heard his proposition. I guess he’s decided to marry another of his secretaries. The extra hundred grand was to kill you.”

They had reached the water’s edge. They stopped and she turned to stare at him in the darkness.

“It’s foolproof from his point of view,” Cary said. “The cops listened in on our call from that phone booth, so there’s no question in their minds about it being an actual kidnapping. Kidnappers quite often kill their victims after collecting the ransom.”

“Why, that beast!” Irma said indignantly. “And to think I refused even to talk about killing that—”

“Yeah. Tactical error on your part. After his proposition, there wasn’t much point in going through all the rigmarole I’d planned for the payoff. I just had him leave it in an alley while I watched from across the street. I wasn’t afraid he’d try to set a trap, but I still didn’t want him to see me. The second pickup will be made just as simply.”

“The second one?” she said, her eyes widening. She withdrew her hand from his.

“Sure. He’ll pay it. He wouldn’t want to risk an anonymous note to the cops from the kidnapper explaining who suggested the killing, and I’ve already told him that’s what will happen if he tries to get out of paying the second hundred grand.”

Her eyes grew wider and wider. Even in the darkness she could see his expression. This time she would have had to give a different answer to the question he had asked her twice. She had never before seen anyone who looked more like a killer.

GUARDIAN OF THE HEARTH

Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, December 1979.

It was exactly three p.m. when the door chimes sounded, because the oven timer bell went off at the same moment. Coco Joe, as usual, made a beeline for the front door, barking his head off. Josephine was considerably longer getting there. She first shut off the oven, lifted the cookies from the oven with a pot holder, set them on top of the stove and hung up the pot holder. At sixty-five she was still slim and trim, but she no longer hurried.

The Pomeranian was still barking furiously when Josephine finally got to the door, indicating that the caller had not given up and gone away. Josephine said, “Hush! It’s only the lady from the doggie parlor, come to get you for your bath and trim.”

But it wasn’t, she saw when she peeped through the viewing hole. It was a man in a blue serge suit. She scooped up the little dog in her arms before opening the door.

Coco Joe, as always when a man came to the door, went into an absolute fit. Growling and snarling, he did his best to struggle from his mistress’s arms and fling himself at the intruder’s throat.

The man stood there examining the dog warily as Josephine repeatedly but lightly slapped his muzzle and said. “Stop it! He’s a nice man. Stop it now!”

When Coco Joe finally stopped struggling, and his performance tapered off to mere low, threatening growls, Josephine said. “I’m sorry. He thinks he’s a mastiff.”

The visitor, a stocky man of about forty, gave her a pleasant smile. Producing a wallet, he displayed a police badge pinned inside of it.

“Sergeant Dennis Cord, ma’am. Are you Miss Henry?”

“Yes.”

“May I have a few words with you?”

“Certain—” Josephine started to say, then Coco Joe suddenly went into another frenzy when he detected the presence of another man alongside the door.

The second man loomed into view, smiling apologetically. He was young, large, blond, and wore a blue police uniform.

When Josephine had quieted the dog for a second time, Sergeant Cord introduced the uniformed man as Officer Harry Dewey. He told Dewey to wait outside and stepped into the apartment with Josephine.

His entrance into the apartment brought on another display of ferocity from Coco Joe. Again Josephine had to slap his muzzle and say, “Stop it! He’s a friend. Be nice, now!”

When for a third time the dog’s performance had finally tapered off to occasional low-throated growls, Josephine said, “He’ll be all right in a minute. He doesn’t bite anyway. He just puts on a fierce show.”

Kneeling, she held the Pomeranian so that he could sniff the sergeant’s shoes. “Make friends now,” she ordered. “He’s a nice man.”

Sergeant Cord stood perfectly still while the little dog sniffed at his feet and trouser legs. When the growling finally stopped, Josephine cautiously released her grip. Coco Joe took a final sniff, then turned his back and trotted over to leap into his favorite chair. His tail had not wagged even once, but the sergeant had his permission to stay on a probationary basis.

Rising to her feet, Josephine said, “He’ll be all right now, Sergeant. Will you have a seat?”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He took the chair farthest from Coco Joe. Seating herself on the sofa, Josephine looked at him expectantly.

“I’m afraid I have some rather disquieting news for you, Miss Henry,” the detective said.

“Oh, my. Has someone I know been hurt?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that—well, as a matter of fact someone you know has been hurt, but you didn’t know her well. Mrs. Ann Sommerfield.”

Josephine gazed at him blankly.

“One of your fellow jurors on the Pitton case,” the sergeant prompted.

“Oh, of course,” Josephine said. “That thin, rather humorless woman.” Then she looked puzzled. “I’m sorry to hear she’s been hurt, but I don’t understand—“

When she let it trail off, the sergeant said, “She was a little more than just hurt, I’m afraid. She’s been murdered.”

Josephine could feel herself turning pale. After a moment she said, “By James Clayton?”

“We think so.”

Josephine felt a cold, invisible hand squeeze her spine. James Clayton was the Clyde in the Bonnie-and-Clyde relationship between himself and Delores Pitton. Six months back, Josephine, along with eleven other jurors, had found Delores Pitton guilty of first-degree murder in the bank-robbery death of a bank teller. Because the jury had refused to recommend leniency, the woman had received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

James Clayton, who was still at large, mailed a letter postmarked the same date as the sentencing to the presiding judge. In it he threatened to kill the judge, the prosecutor and every member of the jury if his girlfriend was not given her freedom.

All fourteen of those threatened had immediately been placed under heavy police guard. But after six weeks with no attempts on the lives of any of the fourteen, no further threats and no reported sightings of the notorious bandit that could be authenticated, the guard had been relieved. Nothing had been heard of James Clayton since, and it was now months since he had even been mentioned in the news.

Josephine said, in a tone she tried to keep steady, “He was just lying low until he was sure security measures had been relaxed, then?”

“Apparently. I thought at the time that the publicity given his threat, and particularly the publicity given to the security measures taken to protect all of you, was a mistake. I wasn’t on the case at that time, but I recall there were even photographs in the paper of some of the threatened jurors with their police bodyguards.”

Josephine nodded. “There was one of me and Mrs. Murphy, seated together in this room, on the front page. Mrs. Murphy was the policewoman who stayed here nights after the threat.”

“Oh, yes, Connie Murphy. She’s currently on leave to have a baby.”

“Well, how nice!” Then Josephine pulled herself from this pleasant distraction back to the unpleasant reality of murder. “When did it happen? Mrs. Sommerfield, I mean.”

“Apparently last night, but it wasn’t discovered until this morning, when a friend dropped by to see her. She was a widow and lived alone, you know. It will be in tonight’s paper, although we are not at this time releasing that we think the killer was Clayton. We don’t intend to make the same mistake we did after his threatening letter.”

“I see. How—how was it done?”

“With a knife. No weapon was found at the scene, but we guess it was a switchblade, since he’s known to carry one with a seven-inch blade. There was only a single stab wound, through the heart, and apparently she was killed in her sleep, because she was in bed and there was no sign of a struggle.”

Josephine shivered. “How did he get in?”

“We don’t know. There was no sign of forced entry. The front door was off the latch, which is how the friend got in when she discovered the body, but we think he left it that way on the way out. The friend says it’s inconceivable that Mrs. Sommerfield would have left any door or window unlocked, because she was almost neurotically afraid of burglars. James Clayton is an expert burglar, though, in addition to being a heist artist. As a matter of fact, he has numerous criminal talents. He’s really quite a clever man, even if he is psychotic. And he’s slippery as an eel. As you know, we’ve never even come close to laying a hand on him. If he hadn’t been off somewhere when his girlfriend was taken, I rather suspect he might have slid her out of that.”

After a period of silence, Josephine asked, “If there was no sign of forced entry, and no weapon left behind, how do you know it was James Clayton?”

“He inadvertently left behind a clue. A list containing the names of all twelve jurors in the Pitton case, the judge and the prosecutor. Mrs. Sommerfield’s name was first on the list, and a line in red ink was drawn through it. We think that what happened was that he took out the list to draw a line through her name immediately after killing her, then for some reason got rattled and left it lying on her dresser instead of putting it back in his pocket. The woman kept a cat, and maybe it came into the bedroom and distracted him just then. The paper had some fingerprints on it, but we can’t check them against Clayton’s because his aren’t on file. He’s never been in custody.”

“Yes, I recall that from the time of the trial. Do you think he still plans to carry out his two-victims-at-a-time threat?”

“There is no reason to believe he has changed his plan. If he manages to kill a second victim, we anticipate that the judge will get another letter demanding Delores Pitton’s release, or he will kill another two.”

After considering this, Josephine said, “Then we will all be placed under guard again for awhile. The police can hardly afford to keep around-the-clock bodyguards on twelve people indefinitely, so when they are eventually withdrawn, he will come back and kill two more.”

“We plan to prevent him from killing his second victim. We hope to catch him.”

Josephine said dryly, “Neither the police from coast-to-coast nor the FBI has had much success at that endeavor up to now.”

“No,” the sergeant admitted. “But do you suggest we release Delores Pitton from prison?”

“Of course not. Every thug in the country with a girlfriend or partner in jail would immediately try the same stunt.”

“Exactly,” Sergeant Cord agreed.

“Nevertheless it leaves us survivors in a rather uncomfortable position. Do you recall where I was on that list you mentioned, Sergeant?”

“Second, Miss Henry.”

Josephine blinked.

“There is nothing to worry about, though,” he assured her. “You are already under around-the-clock guard. The officer in the hallway I introduced you to will remain there after I leave, and will be relieved by another guard when his trick is up. There is also an officer stationed behind the apartment building at the back door to check everyone who goes in that way.”

“Last time a policewoman stayed with me nights.”

“One will this time also. I am assigning to you the women’s pistol champ of the force.”

“Well, that’s somewhat reassuring,” Josephine said.

The detective stood up. “I guess that about covers it, Miss Henry. Officer Phelps—that’s the policewoman I’m sending over, Gladys Phelps—will be along well before dark. Meantime, if you wish to go out anywhere, Officer Dewey out in the hallway will accompany you.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Would you like a cookie before you go? I was just taking them from the oven when you rang the bell.”

“I can smell them,” he said, sitting down again. “Thank you, I would love one.”

As Josephine rose from the sofa, the door chimes sounded, again sending Coco Joe to the door, barking furiously. Josephine gave Sergeant Cord an inquiring look.

“Your caller had to be passed by Officer Dewey,” he said reassuringly. “But just to make sure, I’ll check.”

Rising, he went over to the door and peered through the peephole. At his feet the Pomeranian continued his furious barking.

“Someone in orange coveralls,” he announced. “A woman, I think.”

“Oh, that’s the Canine Beauty Care Center, come to take Coco for his weekly bath and trim.”

The police officer stepped back and Josephine opened the door. Coco Joe rushed out, snarling, then stopped and began to wag his tail after a sniff at the messenger’s legs.

The woman was tall and rather masculine looking, with short-cropped black hair and a lean, not very curvaceous body. She wore one-piece coveralls of bright orange with Canine Beauty Care Center embroidered in small black letters over her heart. Josephine had never seen her before.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” she said. “What happened to Stella?”

“She’s on vacation. I’m Margie.” She glanced at Sergeant Cord behind Josephine, at Officer Dewey alongside the door, then stooped to pick up the little dog. “I guess this is Coco Joe, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s Coco,” Josephine said. “You’re going with the nice lady, Coco Joe. You be good now.”

“Oh, he’ll be good,” the woman said, stroking the dog’s neck. “He’s a little darling. Will you be home about six, Miss Henry?”

“Yes, I plan to be.”

“Then I’ll drop him off on my way home, instead of making a special trip. I go within a few blocks of here.”

“All right, that will be fine.”

Coco Joe made no objection to the woman carrying him over to the elevator. He gave Officer Dewey a warning growl, though, when he went over to push the elevator signal button for the messenger, but made no attempt to attack the policeman. Coco only had conniption fits when men tried to enter the apartment.

When Josephine closed the door, Sergeant Cord asked, “How come your dog didn’t devour her?”

“He only attacks men,” Josephine told him. “He loves women. I think he regards them as sex objects.”

The sergeant murmured, “How could he tell in this case?” then looked as though he wished he hadn’t.

“She was a bit boyish, wasn’t she?” Josephine said with a grin, and went on into the kitchen for the cookies. From there she called, “Would you like some tea also, Sergeant? Or a glass of milk?”

After a short delay, during which the detective considered these two choices, he called back, “Milk would be fine, ma’am.”

When she returned with a plate of cookies, a glass of milk and a napkin, he had reseated himself. Josephine set everything on the end table next to his chair, took a single cookie from the plate and returned to the sofa.

“I seldom nibble between meals,” she explained. “So I’ll just taste one to see how they came out. But you have all you wish, Sergeant. There are plenty more.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He helped himself to a cookie and tasted it. “Umm, delicious. You bake like my mother used to.”

“Why, thank you, Sergeant.”

Both nibbled for a few minutes. Presently she said, “It would be helpful to have a picture of James Clayton, in case he tried coming around as a door-to-door salesman or something.”

“Sorry, but there are no mug shots, because he’s never been arrested. We do have what we believe is a pretty good description, though. He is thirty-two years old, but looks younger because he has a smooth complexion and a rather boyish face. He has blue eyes and straw-colored hair that he wore in a crewcut on his last bank job, but that was more than seven months ago, so it may be longer now. He is five-feet-six to five-feet-seven-inches tall, and weighs an estimated hundred and thirty-five pounds.”

“I am already familiar with his description,” Josephine said. “It was printed at the time of his threatening letter just after the trial. It always surprised me that such a violent man was so small.”

“They often are,” the sergeant said. “From Billy the Kid right up through James Clayton the most vicious killers in this country have generally been relatively small men. Psychologists say that’s one of the things that turns them vicious. They’re compensating for getting pushed around as kids.”

“I suppose there’s at least a germ of truth in that,” Josephine said reflectively. “Before I retired from school-teaching, I often wondered when I saw some bully picking on a smaller boy, how the victim would be affected later in life by his recollection of the unpleasant experience. Perhaps the bullies he encountered as a child are more responsible for James Clayton’s career in crime than anything basically evil in the man.”

“Don’t start feeling sorry for him,” the detective advised her. “He is known to have killed at least five people prior to Mrs. Sommerfield, and at least three of the killings were deliberate acts of viciousness which were entirely unnecessary. One was an old man, a customer at one of the banks he and Delores knocked over, who simply failed to move as fast as Clayton wanted him to. Turned out later he couldn’t, because he was arthritic.”

“I know he’s a terrible man,” Josephine conceded. “And I am hardly inclined to sympathize with anyone whose goal is to kill me. But I can still regret the traumatic experiences he must have had as a child to make him into such a monster.”

Sergeant Cord, obviously unconvinced that factors other than innate evilness turned people to crime, merely grunted. By now having consumed three cookies and his glass of milk, he rose to his feet.

“Well, I’ll be running along now, Miss Henry,” he said. “Thank you for the delicious cookies and for the milk.”

“You’re welcome, Sergeant.”

She accompanied him to the door. Standing in the open doorway, he beckoned to Officer Dewey, who was seated on a small wooden bench directly across from the elevator.

When the young policeman came over, Sergeant Cord said, “You’re to accompany Miss Henry if she decides to go our anywhere, Harry. But phone in where you’re going, and be sure to give the apartment a thorough check when you come back.”

“Sure, Sarge.”

“I’m sending over a policewoman named Gladys Phelps early this evening,” the sergeant said. “When do you go off duty?”

“Six p.m.”

“Well, you’ll be gone before she gets here, so tell your relief to expect her. She will spend the night in the apartment.” He turned to Josephine to append reassuringly, “The guard out here and the one out back will still be on duty around the clock, Miss Henry. A policewoman on the premises is merely extra precaution.”

“Yes, I understand, Sergeant.”

“What time do you actually have dinner?”

“About five-thirty.”

“Then if Officer Phelps got here at six-thirty, you should be all through?”

“Yes, but she can come for dinner, if she would like,” Josephine offered.

“Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

“I know it isn’t necessary,” Josephine said. “But I often had Mrs. Murphy for dinner when she was guarding me six months ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I assure you she’s quite welcome.”

“Well, I’ll pass on your invitation and see what she says.”

“You would be equally welcome, Sergeant, if you want to come back when she does.”

“Why, thank you,” Sergeant Cord said in a slightly startled voice. “But unfortunately I have other plans. Thanks again for the cookies and milk.”

“Again you’re quite welcome, Sergeant.”

She and the young patrolman watched the detective cross to the elevator, press the call button and get on when the car came to the fourth floor.

As soon as the elevator door closed, Josephine said, “Would you like some cookies, Officer Dewey?”

The odor of the cookies had crept into the hallway through the open door. He said in a grateful tone, “Why that would be very kind of you, ma’am.”

“All right, come on in,” she said, stepping aside.

When he looked doubtful, she said, “You’ll hardly be deserting your post, young man. It seems to me you’ll be much better protection inside the apartment than out here in the hallway. Suppose this Clayton man got past your guard out back and picked the lock of my back door?”

“That makes sense, ma’am,” Harry Dewey said with a grin.

He went over to lift his visored cap from where he had laid it on the wooden bench where he had been seated, and followed her into the front room. He laid his cap on the end table nearest the door.

“You may sit right over there where the sergeant was,” Josephine said, pointing. “Would you like tea or milk with your cookies?”

It took the young patrolman as long to think over these choices as it had the sergeant. Eventually he opted for milk. There was still a dozen cookies on the plate, so Josephine didn’t bother to replenish it. But she carried the sergeant’s empty glass into the kitchen and returned with another filled with milk.

Harry Dewey gratified Josephine by eating eight of her cookies. When he finished the last one and had drained his milk glass, he stood up and said, “Thank you very much, ma’am. They were delicious. I guess I had better get back to my post.”

“Why?” she inquired. “You’re not in my way. I’m going to be in the kitchen for a time, preparing dinner, then I plan to nap while it’s baking in the oven. At my age I start yawning about seven if I don’t have an afternoon nap. You’re welcome to sit here and watch television, if you wish. As a matter of fact you’re welcome to stay for dinner.”

“Thank you, but my wife will be expecting me.” Then, beginning to realize that the hospitable ex-schoolteacher tossed out dinner invitations to anyone who happened to be nearby, he forestalled her possible later disappointment by saying, “The man who relieves me will already have eaten.”

“Oh?” she said, mildly surprised by this gratuitous information. “Well, you’re still welcome to watch TV in here, if you wish.”

“I guess I could do that,” the young policeman said, going over to peer at the set. “There’s a ball game on channel four.”

“Would you like some more milk? Or a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you,” he said politely. Then, after a pause, he asked tentatively, “Do you happen to have any coffee?”

“Oh, of course. I never think of coffee, because I never drink it. I’ll make some.”

She made a pot of coffee, replenished the plate of cookies, and left Harry Dewey to his own devices as she prepared dinner. She fixed stuffed pork chops, wrapped some potatoes in foil for baking, and made a salad. She put the first two items in the oven and the third in the refrigerator. At four-thirty she turned on the oven, set the timer to go off in an hour, then went into her bedroom for an hour’s nap.

When the bell ringing in the kitchen awakened her at five-thirty, she found the patrolman still seated before the television and the cookie plate nearly empty. In the kitchen she checked the chops and potatoes, found both done, and turned the oven down to 150 to keep them warm. For a vegetable she started heating frozen peas in a pot.

At a quarter of six she was ready to serve dinner, but the policewoman had not yet showed up. She had about decided she wasn’t coming until after dinner, and had resigned herself to dining alone, when the door chimes sounded. She looked out from the kitchen door as Officer Dewey peered through the spy-hole, then opened the door into the hall.

“Hi,” a pleasantly husky voice said from beyond Josephine’s range of vision. “I’m Gladys Phelps.”

“Harry Dewey,” the young man said. “Come on in.”

A tall strawberry blonde with a slender figure entered. She carried a small overnight bag in her left hand, and had a shoulder bag slung from her right shoulder. She wore a blue police uniform with a knee-length skirt, sensible low-heeled black shoes, and had a blue overseas-type hat perched at an angle on her head, Josephine guessed her to be somewhere in her mid-twenties.

“This is Miss Henry, Gladys,” Dewey said. “Officer Phelps, Miss Henry.”

The policewoman smiled acknowledgment. Josephine said, “I’m glad you could make it in time for dinner. You haven’t had dinner, have you?”

Shaking her head, the strawberry blonde said in her pleasantly husky voice, “No.”

Harry Dewey said, “I go off duty in fifteen minutes, Gladys, but another guard will be stationed out in the hall all night. There’s also one out back, checking everyone who enters by the back entrance.”

The policewoman nodded understanding.

“I’d better get out in the hall to wait for my relief. Thanks for the refreshments, Miss Henry.”

“You’re quite welcome, young man.”

Picking up his visored cap, the patrolman went out. Eyeing the newcomer’s left hand and spotting no rings, Josephine said, “It’s Miss Phelps, not Mrs. Phelps, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Or Gladys, if you like.”

“All right, Gladys,” Josephine said, smiling. “I have only one bedroom, but the sofa makes up into a quite comfortable double bed. There’s a dressing room off the bedroom where you can leave your overnight bag.” She gestured in the direction of the central hall.

“Thanks,” the policewoman said, carrying the bag down the hallway and disappearing into the dressing room.

The door chimes sounded. The policewoman immediately reappeared in the central hall doorway.

Josephine said, “That must be my little dog. He’s due back from the doggie beauty parlor about now.”

She went over to peer through the viewing hole. It was the same messenger who had picked up the dog, now wearing a suit of mannish cut in place of the orange coveralls. She had Coco Joe cradled in her arms. The Pomeranian was growling in the direction of the bench alongside the door, presumably at Officer Dewey.

Opening the door, Josephine took the little dog from the messenger’s arms. His coat was shiny clean, he was freshly trimmed, and a little purple bow had been pinned to the top of his head with a hairpin.

“Hi, you fierce beast,” Josephine said. “Was he good?”

“Just darling. See you next week, Miss Henry.”

“All right, dear. Good night.”

Closing the door, she set Coco Joe on the floor. Instantly the dog whipped across the room, snarling and snapping at the policewoman’s ankles. A defensive kick sent him rolling head-over-heels, squealing, toward Josephine, who scooped him up in her arms.

Apparently the kick had hurt only his dignity, because he immediately began to struggle to get out of her grip, snarling and growling at the policewoman all the time.

“What’s the matter with you, you silly little dog?” Josephine scolded him, slapping lightly at his muzzle. “Stop it now! She’s a friend.”

When the dog finally quieted to the point of merely emitting low-toned growls, Josephine said apologetically, “I’m sorry. I don’t know wha t’s gotten into him. I’d better lock him in the bedroom until he quiets down.”

The policewoman stepped out of the way to allow her to carry the dog down the hallway to the bedroom. As she closed the bedroom door behind her, Josephine started to say, “You bad little—” then suddenly cut it off and stood stock still.

Coco Joe never made a mistake about the sex of visitors to the apartment. The masculine attire, masculine figure and masculine hairdo of the Canine Beauty Care Center messenger had not fooled him for an instant. He had known she was female anyway.

Just as the policewoman’s garb had not fooled him. He had known the intruder was male.

Josephine’s skin turned cold. The person who claimed to be Gladys Phelps was about five-feet-six or seven, probably weighed around 135 pounds, had blue eyes and a rather boyish face.

But hadn’t the voice been feminine? Not markedly, she answered herself, just not obviously masculine. And the supposed Gladys Phelps had said very few words, now that she thought of it, had so far been almost monosyllabic in fact—perhaps because it was a strain to assume that husky, almost feminine voice.

But what about the strawberry blonde hair?

The answer to that was simple. Every department store in town sold women’s wigs. You could get a quite natural-looking one for as little as twenty-five dollars.

But that would involve advance planning on James Clayton’s part. How could he possibly have guessed that a policewoman would be heading for her apartment in time to go buy a wig before intercepting her? And how did he know her name?

Setting Coco Joe on the bed, she went over to gaze out the window at the street four stories below while she sought answers to those two questions.

They came disturbingly quickly. He had seen the front-page photograph, six months before, of Josephine and her policewoman bodyguard seated in the apartment. The police, like criminals, tended to follow a certain modus operandi. James Clayton could be reasonably certain they would assign another policewoman guard to Josephine if they suspected he was the killer of Mrs. Sommerfield. Perhaps the list of potential victims had not been left behind on that poor woman’s dresser by accident after all. Perhaps it had been deliberately planted in order to make sure another policewoman guard was assigned to Josephine.

The answer to the second question was even easier. The killer had gotten Gladys Phelps’ name from her identification card after he killed her.

If she had not been so frightened. Josephine might have felt admiration for the deviousness of the man’s plot. It would have been considerably easier and less dangerous for him to have come direct from Mrs. Sommerfield’s murder last night to Josephine’s apartment. But this way he could demonstrate to the whole world, and specifically to the remaining twelve potential victims, that police protection meant nothing once James Clayton singled you out. Despite Sergeant Cord’s assertion that his demand for the release of Dolores Pitton from prison could not even be considered, and her agreement with the assertion, there undoubtedly would be strong pressure from at least some of the survivors to do just that, if he succeeded in murdering Josephine under the very noses of the police.

Josephine resolved to do everything in her power to prevent him from succeeding.

Unfortunately none of her apartment windows overlooked the back, or she might have dropped a note to the guard back there. She contemplated, then discarded, simply casually walking to the front door, suddenly darting out into the hall and calling to Officer Dewey that the policewoman was James Clayton in disguise. That probably would only get the young policeman killed too, because it was too much to expect for him to react quickly enough to do anything as unnatural to his instincts as shooting what seemed to be a policewoman before the bandit got in the first shot.

All at once it occurred to her that Officer Dewey had already been remarkably lucky in not being personally acquainted with Gladys Phelps. The killer must have simply taken a brazen chance on that, planning to draw the gun that undoubtedly was in that shoulder bag and start shooting if anyone accused him of being an imposter.

Realizing the fake policewoman would probably become suspicious and come looking for her if she didn’t reappear soon, she decided she had better come up with a plan of defense at once. But any defensive action necessarily depended on the killer’s plan of attack. Did he mean to dispose of her quickly, or to wait until she was asleep, as Mrs. Sommerfield had been?

Putting herself in the killer’s place, she decided the problem of getting by the guard in the outer hall threw the odds with him waiting until she was asleep. In the morning the policewoman guard was expected to leave, because she only stayed in the apartment nights. The killer could simply tell the outside guard that Josephine was still sleeping, walk past him and get on the elevator.

Then it occurred to her it would be just as simple for him to walk out five minutes from now on the pretense of going downstairs to get some cigarettes from the machine in the lobby.

Glancing at her watch, she saw it was five of six. She was reasonably certain James Clayton would not time the murder within the next few minutes, because he knew the changeover of hallway guards was due to take place at six. There would be no point in timing the killing when there might be two policemen outside the door. Logically he would wait until at least a few minutes after six, so that in case anything went wrong, he would have to contend with only one police guard.

Looking into her dresser mirror, she realized she was too pale to fool anyone into believing she wasn’t frightened half out of her wits. Deliberately she held her breath until her face became beet red. When she finally let it out, her color gradually faded, but only back to its normal tint.

Ordering Coco Joe to stay on the bed, she went out into the hallway and shut the door behind her to keep the dog in the bedroom. Squaring her shoulders and sternly reminding herself that her life depended on her acting perfectly natural, she marched up the hallway to the front room.

The pseudo-policewoman had one ear to the front door, trying to hear what went on in the front hall. The shoulder bag still hung from the imposter’s shoulder.

Josephine’s resolve shattered, and she became absolutely terrified.

Yet when the man in policewoman’s uniform turned to give her a sharp look, she found herself saying in a natural tone, despite her screaming nerves, “Why don’t you take off your cap, dear?”

Summoning a smile, the imposter removed the little blue cap and laid it on the same table where Officer Dewey had put his. Josephine breathed a sigh of relief, because that put her over the first hurdle of her plan.

“Dinner is all ready,” she said. “You don’t mind eating in the kitchen, do you?”

Without waiting for a reply, she walked into the kitchen, stiff-legged to keep her body from shaking with terror. The pseudo-policewoman followed.

Pausing next to the electric stove to give the simmering peas a stir, Josephine pointed to the chair whose back was to the stove and said, “Sit there, please, Gladys.”

Hanging the shoulder bag over the back of the chair, the imposter sat. Josephine stooped as though to open the oven door, but instead drew out the drawer beneath it and quietly lifted out the largest of her iron skillets.

With her right hand she raised the skillet high overhead. With her left she suddenly plunked off the wig. She had a double motive for doing the latter. She was afraid the wig would cushion the blow, and she wanted to make absolutely sure the person she was braining was not a policewoman after all.

The hair beneath the wig was straw-colored and crewcut. Josephine smashed the iron skillet down on top of it with all her might. The imposter half rose from his chair, glanced around with glazing eyes, and pitched sideways onto the floor.

Setting the skillet on the stove, Josephine grabbed up the shoulder bag and raced to the front door. When she flung it open, she found two policemen in the hallway. Officer Dewey was in the act of punching the elevator button. Standing with him was an equally large, but middle-aged policeman.

“Come quick!” Josephine gasped. “I just captured James Clayton!”

The bandit was still unconscious when the two policemen got to the kitchen. As a matter of fact he was still unconscious when the ambulance got there, although the intern who came with it told Josephine he thought the man had only a severe concussion instead of a fracture, and no doubt would live.

While awaiting the ambulance, the middle-aged officer had gone searching for the real Gladys Phelps, leaving Officer Dewey with Josephine and the prisoner. He found her on the roof, not dead as Josephine had feared, but obviously left for dead. She had been knocked unconscious by some kind of blunt instrument, then, after removing her uniform, her assailant had slipped his knife into her back.

The intern who had declared James Clayton in no real danger of dying seemed to think the policewoman had every chance of surviving too. He said that the very fact she was still alive indicated that knife blade had neither penetrated the heart nor any other vital spot, and that a few stitches and some blood transfusions ought to pull her through.

Josephine resolved that as soon as Gladys Phelps recovered, she would have the policewoman over to make up for the dinner she had missed.

It was nearly eight p.m. by the time everyone, including the police, had left, and Josephine could have dinner. By then the baked chops were a little dried out, but they were still good. She shared them with Coco Joe.

Customarily he ate dog food, but she felt he deserved the special treat. After all, he’d saved her life.

THE EVILS OF DRINK

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1980.

When she retired at sixty-three Loretta Beam wanted to stay in Los Angeles, but she didn’t want to risk being murdered in her bed. And after thirty years as a welfare worker she knew there were sections of the city where a 103-pound spinster lady wouldn’t be safe in her own home.

Therefore, after finding what seemed to be an ideal location for her needs she did a considerable amount of checking before signing the lease. She made the same thorough kind of investigation she was used to making in her welfare cases. From the police she learned that the section of the Boyle Heights district where the duplex was located was a low-crime area. From nearby residents she found out it was a quiet neighborhood, and of course she called on and became acquainted with the tenants in the other half of the duplex. John and Angela Garrett were in their early thirties and had no children. They did have a cat, however—a Siamese tom named Edward—which Loretta considered a plus. John Garrett was a stolid, chunky man with a rather dull personality, but he was cordial enough. He drove a bread truck for a living. Angel, a plump, placid woman with dyed blonde hair, was a clerk in a department store.

During her brief visit Loretta was unable to unearth any intellectual interests the couple shared with her. John’s main interest seemed to be watching sports on television, and Angela’s seemed to be situation comedies. But they qualified in her judgment as acceptable neighbors. They seemed clean, their house was neat, and they were unlikely to have loud parties; they told her they seldom entertained.

It wasn’t until after she had signed the two-year lease and moved in that Loretta found out about Friday nights.

* * *

That was the night the Garretts drank. Every Friday. It always started peacefully enough, but after a time they became quarrelsome, and it always ended in a shouting match. The wall between the two units was so thin Loretta could hear every word if she wanted to. As it happened, she preferred not to, and deliberately tried not to listen. But it was impossible not to hear the louder shouts, and some of them were so vulgar they caused Loretta to blush. And Mrs. Garrett had the greater capacity for obscenity.

Loretta believed in being a good neighbor. The first two Friday nights she simply endured in silence. But the third week the couple became so loud she felt some protest was justified. She took her broom from the closet and pounded on the connecting wall with the handle.

Her thumping brought momentary silence from the other side. Then Angela Garrett yelled through the wall, “How would you like that broom shoved up your nose, you old bat?”

Shocked, Loretta put her broom away and made no further protest when the fighting resumed in a somewhat lower tone. But she was even more shocked the next morning when she answered a tap on her back door to find Angela with a cup in her hand and a friendly smile on her face.

“Hi,” the woman said cheerily. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”

Flabbergasted, Loretta murmured, “Of course,” let the woman in, and filled her cup with sugar.

“Thanks,” Angela said, still cheery. “I’ll return it this afternoon as soon as I come back from the store.”

“No hurry,” Loretta assured her, still not recovered.

Shortly after lunch John Garrett returned the sugar. Shamefaced, he asked if Loretta would excuse their noise of the previous night.

“Of course,” she said, equally embarrassed.

“Don’t pay any attention when my wife yells like that,” he advised her. “She does that when she’s had one too many. She doesn’t even remember it, which is why she sent me back with the sugar. I didn’t tell her how she yelled through the wall until after she’d been over here this morning, and now she’s ashamed to come back.”

“Please tell her not to be,” Loretta said, now understanding that morning’s astonishing visit. “I like to get along with my neighbors and I hope there won’t be a strain between us.”

“There won’t be as far as we’re concerned,” he assured her, relieved. “I’ll tell my wife there are no hard feelings.”

“Please do.”

That was the beginning of what developed into the oddest relationship Loretta had ever had. Eventually, during a particularly violent Friday-night argument, Loretta again risked pounding on the connecting wall with her broom handle. Again Angela Garrett screamed through the wall. Again the next day Angela acted as friendly as ever, as though nothing had happened.

This time Mr. Garrett made no apology, though he looked a bit uncomfortable when Loretta happened to encounter him in the back yard the next morning. As weekly apologies would only have embarrassed Loretta, she was just as happy that nothing was said and a tacit understanding developed between her and Garrett that Friday nights would simply not be mentioned.

There also developed a kind of routine on those Friday nights when the noise became unbearable to Loretta. She would rap on the wall and Angela would shout some insult through it. Often the fighting would stop, however, and even if it didn’t it usually resumed at a lower decibel level. Loretta ignored the insults and on Saturday mornings she and Angela would be on neighborly terms again.

One Friday night Loretta was seated at her kitchen table having a cup of tea when the weekly fight started in the kitchen next door.

She heard Angela scream, “Who are you calling a mess?”

“You!” her husband yelled back. “Go look in a mirror. You’re at least twenty pounds overweight.”

“So you’re Burt Reynolds?”

“Compared to you I’m a Greek god!” he shouted.

Loretta was contemplating getting out her broom but unaccountably, there was a long period of dead silence. Eventually, from the tenor of the argument when it again resumed, she realized the respite was because Mrs. Garrett had been out of the room, presumably in the bedroom dressing to go out.

John Garrett said loudly, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To one of those singles bars,” Angela spat back. “I want to see if other men think I’m such a mess!”

“You aren’t going to any singles bar at this time of night!” her husband said even more loudly.

“I’ll go anywhere I please any time I want!” Angela shouted. “You just try to stop me!”

“You think I can’t?” he shouted back, and there was the sound of a chair overturning.

Angela screamed, “You dare touch me and I’ll have you in jail!”

Loretta was not alarmed that physical violence was about to erupt. Mrs. Garrett often screamed such warnings at her husband, but so far as Loretta knew he had never struck her. Their fighting was strictly verbal. There was always a first time, however, and just in case Mr. Garrett was on the verge of losing control of himself Loretta thought it would be wise to let him know she heard the argument. Opening the broom closet, she took out the broom and banged the handle against the wall three times.

There was momentary silence, then Angela Garrett yelled, “Mind your own business, you old witch, or I’ll be over there to mind it for you!”

The threat left Loretta unruffled. Having attracted their attention, she was content to put the broom away and return to her tea.

John Garrett’s voice thundered, “You step out that door and you won’t get back in!”

“Who wants to come back to this stinking place?” Angela yelled at the top of her voice.

The back door slammed so hard it made Loretta wince. Getting up, she peered out her kitchen window. It was quite dark, about 9:30, but Angela had turned on the light in their open carport. As she climbed into the car, Loretta could see that she was dressed up.

The engine started and the car backed into the driveway. Leaving the carport light on, Angela roared away. Loretta felt alarmed concern, wondering if the woman was sober enough to drive.

* * *

A half hour later Loretta was watching the 10:00 news on television when her doorbell rang. When she peered through the peephole and saw it was John Garrett, she opened the door.

He was in shirtsleeves, and he was half drunk.

He spoke with the careful enunciation of an intoxicated man striving to conceal his condition. “Sorry to bother you, Miss Beam, but I wondered if my wife was over here.”

In thirty years of welfare work Loretta had developed an instinct for detecting lies that was little short of miraculous. She knew instantly that her next-door neighbor was fully aware that his wife wasn’t with her.

“No,” she said politely. “Why would she be here?”

“Well, we had a little argument and she walked out. I thought maybe—” He let it trail off.

The man certainly must have heard his wife say she was going to a singles bar, Loretta thought. He must also have heard her drive off. What was his purpose in this pretense?

She said, “I thought I heard her shout something about going to a singles bar, Mr. Garrett.”

“Oh, sure—I heard that. But I thought she was just trying to make me jealous. I thought maybe she ducked in here, figuring on letting me stew for a while. I never thought she’d do anything as dangerous as actually going to one of those places.”

“Dangerous, Mr. Garrett?”

“Well, both of those stocking-killer victims were picked up in bars.”

Loretta recalled the two unsolved murders some months back. The victims, both women, had been found in their own cars, parked near MacArthur Park, strangled with nylon stockings that were still knotted around their throats. The investigation in each case had disclosed that the victim was last seen leaving a tavern with a man who had just picked her up. Unfortunately, in neither case had anyone been able to give a clear description of the man.

Loretta said, “The odds against your wife running into the stocking killer must be rather long, Mr. Garrett.”

“Maybe, but it could happen. I’m really worried.”

Loretta’s built-in lie detector told her he wasn’t actually in the least worried. The chilling thought occurred to her that perhaps he was making such a point of his worry because he planned to hunt down his wife, strangle her with a stocking, and let the stocking killer take the blame.

Instantly and a trifle guiltily she dismissed the thought as both melodramatic and impractical. Angela hadn’t mentioned to which bar she was going. Her husband would never be able to look for her in every bar in Los Angeles—even it he did have homicidal intentions.

She said. “I really don’t think you have much to worry about, Mr. Garrett. She’ll get home safely, I’m sure.”

“I hope so,” he said with patent insincerity. “I’m sorry we got so loud that you had to knock on the wall again, Miss Beam.

“I’m sorry I had to,” she replied with the old embarrassment.

“Did you hear the whole fight?” he inquired. “What it was about, I mean?”

Her embarrassment evaporated, to be replaced by polite chilliness. “I try not to eavesdrop, Mr. Garrett. I make a conscious effort not to listen to what is said when you and Mrs. Garrett have your—disagreements. It isn’t the words but the volume that sometimes causes me to knock on the wall.”

“I see. Then you don’t know what it was about. But you did hear Angela say where she was going?”

For some reason she could not divine, the man wanted to know exactly how well she could hear through the wall, and also how much attention she paid to what was said.

She said, “Mr. Garrett, I probably could have heard every word of your—discussion—if I had listened. But I’m not interested in your personal affairs. I simply don’t listen.”

“I see,” he said again. “Well, I’m sorry I disturbed you, Miss Beam. Good night.”

As she closed and relocked her door, Loretta wondered what in the world that had been all about. She also wondered why it had taken him half an hour after his wife left to come over and inquire about her.

A possible answer occurred to her. Perhaps he had been sitting home plotting what to say to Loretta and working out the details of some devious plan. Despite her conclusion that he would never be able to find his wife, even if he did have homicide in mind, she couldn’t dispel the irrational worry that he had exactly that in mind.

That worry prevented her from sleeping well. The more she thought about it the more certain she became that he was planning something. She could sense it as surely as she used to sense that a welfare client was about to take a job and not report it.

The next morning she was relieved to discover she had worried needlessly. Angela Garrett had returned home safely. She came over, suffering nothing worse than a hangover, to tell Loretta that she and her husband would be out of town for the rest of the weekend and to ask her to feed the cat. When Loretta said she would be glad to, the woman gave her an extra key to her back door and told her the cat’s dish and the cat food would be next to the electric can opener on the kitchen counter.

* * *

The Garretts must have returned very late Sunday night because Loretta didn’t hear them come in, but she heard them depart for work on Monday morning. They were gone before she remembered the key to their back door. She reminded herself to return it that evening, but it slipped her mind.

The following Friday the Garretts had their worst, longest fight since Loretta had moved in. It started about 8:00 and by 8:30 it had developed into a shouting match. At 9:00, having put up with a hideous half hour of abusive screaming without pause, Loretta pounded on the wall with her broom. There was the usual momentary silence, then Angela shouted, “Some night I’ll make you eat that broom, you old hag!”

Undisturbed, Loretta put away her broom and started to make herself a pot of tea. The fight next door continued, but at a subdued decibel level. At about 9:30, however, it got loud again.

Loretta was still in the kitchen, washing her teacup and teapot, when she heard John Garrett call from the kitchen next door, “You think that same guy you claim bought you all the drinks last Friday will be at the Coed Club again tonight?”

“What do you mean, claim?” Angela called back petulantly from the front room.

“Aw, nobody bought a mess like you any drinks!”

There was an outraged yell that started in the front room and ended in the kitchen. “You think I made that fellow up?” Angela shouted. “Well, maybe tonight I’ll just accept his invitation to go to breakfast after the place closes!”

“You can forget about that!” he said loudly. “You’re not stepping out of this house tonight!”

“That’s what you think, buster!”

During the ensuing silence, which Loretta assumed was because Angela was in the bedroom dressing to go out, she wondered why Mr. Garrett had deliberately goaded his wife into going back to the singles bar. There was no question in her mind that it had been deliberate. She had heard the calculation in his voice.

She started to become uneasy. Perhaps Mrs. Garrett had survived last Friday night only because her husband didn’t know where to find her. But apparently she had since then not only told him where she had gone but what had happened there.

In a few minutes the silence was broken by John Garrett insisting, “You’re not going to that club—and that’s final!”

His wife’s only answer was the slam of the back door. Again Loretta peered out her kitchen window and saw Angela climb into the car and drive off, leaving the carport light on.

Five minutes later Loretta’s doorbell rang. Again it was John Garrett. This time he was dressed in a suit and necktie. Although he had obviously been drinking, he didn’t seem as drunk as he had been the previous Friday.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Beam,” he said. “I suppose you heard Angela storm out again.”

“Yes,” Loretta admitted.

“She’s off to that singles bar again.”

Loretta waited.

He fingered his necktie.

“I figure what’s good for the goose is good for the gander—I’m going out too.”

“Your philosophy is none of my business,” Loretta said distantly.

“No, I guess not,” he conceded. “What I came over for—I wonder if you’d do me a favor?”

“Such as?”

“In case Angela decides to come back and wonders where I am, will you tell her I’m at the Friendly Tavern? That’s the one a couple of blocks from here, over on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“You expect her to come back?” Loretta asked.

“I don’t know. But if she does I’d like to make up. You can tell her I’ll wait for her at the tavern right up to closing time—2:00 a.m.”

“All right, Mr. Garrett. If she stops here I’ll deliver the message.”

When he had gone and she had relocked the door, she began to worry seriously. Her built-in lie detector told her John Garrett had no expectation of his wife returning and asking Loretta where he was. She was convinced that the real purpose of his visit was simply to let Loretta know where he was going. And the only reason she could think of for that was that he was constructing an alibi.

She was worried enough to consider calling the police. But after some thought she decided that if she told the police her reason for suspecting that John Garrett planned to murder his wife was merely intuition they would think she was dotty. In the end she merely had another sleepless night.

In the morning when she looked out her kitchen window and she saw the Garretts companionably weeding the back lawn together she was glad she hadn’t phoned the police.

Maybe she was getting dotty, she thought. She decided to suppress any future suspicions she had about John Garrett before she got herself classified at the police department as a crank.

* * *

The next Friday night battle was mild enough so that Loretta didn’t even have to use the broom. But the week after that they had one as loud and long as the one that ended with John Garrett goading his wife into making a return visit to the Coed Club.

Again it started about 8:00 p.m., while Loretta was having a cup of tea at her kitchen table. At first she could hear only an occasional phrase as one voice or the other rose momentarily. The shouting didn’t begin until about half an hour later, when the sounds of battle became so loud that they distracted Loretta from the television program she was watching.

She put up with it for another twenty minutes, but when it showed no sign of abating she went to the kitchen for the broom.

Mrs. Garrett was screaming something about her husband’s sloppiness as Loretta raised the broom handle. Then, before she could drive it against the wall, there were three sharp thumps immediately followed by Mrs. Garrett shouting, “Some night I’ll make you eat that broom, you old hag!”

Loretta stared at the broom in astonishment. For a wild moment she thought it had somehow leaped from her grip to pound against the wall of its own volition, then she realized no such thing had happened—the thumps had come from the other side of the wall.

But if one of the Garretts had thumped on the connecting wall for some incomprehensible reason, why had Mrs. Garrett yelled at her for doing it?

It didn’t take her long to figure out a possible answer. When she peered out her kitchen and saw that the Garretts’ carport was empty, it became the probable answer.

Going to the Garretts back door, she unsuccessfully tried to peer past the edges of the shade drawn over the pane of glass in the upper part of the door. Unable to see anything, she knocked, at first timidly, then with increasing force. She really didn’t expect an answer, but it took her some time to get up sufficient courage to try the door. It was locked.

All this time the argument in the kitchen raged on. While Loretta stood listening, Edward, the cat, nearly gave her heart failure by rubbing against her leg. Gazing down at him reminded her of the key she had forgotten to return.

Returning to her apartment for the key, she let herself into the Garretts’ kitchen. Entering with her, Edward made a beeline for the front room.

As Loretta had suspected, a tape recorder was on the kitchen table, playing back a tape.

Loretta was familiar with tape recorders—the Welfare Department used them instead of dictaphones. Shutting off the machine, she studied the ninety-minute tape, then, returning it to the machine and switching to FAST FORWARD and periodically switching back to PLAY in order to check that she had not yet reached the end of the recording, she finally did reach it. It ended with the same scene as two Fridays previously, when John Garrett goaded his wife into slamming out of the house to go to the Coed Club.

No wonder Garrett’s voice had sounded so calculating that night, Loretta thought. He had been recording the entire fight for replay. Now she understood why the man had been so concerned over how well she could hear their fights and how closely she listened. He must have been relieved to learn she paid as little attention as possible since that lessened the chance of her recognizing tonight’s battle as a replay.

Her suspicion of John Garrett had not been from dottiness after all, she thought, with less relief than regret. Her regret was because she was quite sure it was too late to save Mrs. Garrett.

Loretta visualized the probable sequence of events. Some time prior to 8:00 p.m., and probably immediately prior to it, Mr. Garrett had strangled his wife with a nylon stocking and loaded her into the back of their car. Then he had returned to the house long enough to switch on the recorder. By the time Loretta heard the first raised voices he must have been well on his way to MacArthur Park.

She decided that his plan must be simply to abandon the car near where the other two victims were found, then return to the house by bus or taxi. Bus, probably, she thought—there would be less chance of his being remembered on a bus. He planned to get back before the tape played out, thus establishing a perfect alibi. No doubt he meant to stop by Loretta’s again to make sure she had heard his wife slam out of the house, then go on to the Friendly Tavern to complete his alibi by sitting there until it closed at 2:00 a.m.

Loretta ran the tape back to the place it had been before she hit the FAST FORWARD button and switched the machine to play. Then she went back to her own apartment to use the phone.

* * *

When John Garrett arrived home a half hour later, he found his next-door neighbor and two policemen waiting on the front porch. From inside his duplex, only slightly muffled by the closed front door, came the sounds of verbal battle between him and his wife.

“Good evening, Mr. Garrett,” Loretta said in a tone of reproach.

Licking his lips, he looked from her to the two policemen. In a desperate attempt to deny the obvious he asked, “Who’s that arguing in my apartment?”

Both policemen ignored the question. The elder of the two intoned, “Are you John Garrett?

“Yes,” Garrett admitted nervously.

“Mr. Garrett, you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of your wife, Angela Garrett. You are not required to make any statement, and if you do it may be taken down and used against you in evidence. You are entitled to legal counsel, and have the right to have an attorney present at all stages of the arrest, arraignment and trial procedure. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one may be furnished you at public expense.”

“Murder?” Garrett said on a high note. “What makes you think my wife’s dead?”

The older policeman said, “Because while you were on the way home by bus a couple of officers found her body in the back seat of your car where you had parked it at Seventh and Parkview.”

Garrett stared blankly from one policeman to the other. “What made you look there?” he asked finally.

“We figured it would be near where the other two bodies were found,” the older man told him. “Or, rather, your neighbor here figured that—and we agreed with her.”

Loretta spoke up. “One of the evils of drink, Mr. Garrett, is that it muddles the mind. If you had been thinking more clearly, it might have occurred to you to erase the broom thumps from your recording.”

MOTHER LOVE

Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, April 1981.

Ostensibly Pamela Quillan purchased the island of Paraquito from General Alfredo Mendez because she wanted an isolated retreat to recover from the breakup of her sixth marriage. But the underlying reason was simply that she didn’t own an island, and when you are a chain store heiress with four hundred million dollars to ease your boredom, you can afford to indulge multi-million-dollar whims.

General Mendez’s reasons for selling the island, whose ownership by his family traced back to a sixteenth-century royal grant by the king of Spain, was more apparent than Pamela’s reason for buying. Technically Paraquito, which was situated in the Mona Passage halfway between the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, was part of the Dominican Republic. After backing an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of the Dominican Republic, General Mendez thought it discreet to unload his ancestral home and run for Europe before it occurred to the government to confiscate it. Pamela got it lock, stock and barrel for eight million dollars.

Although supposedly subject to the laws of the Dominican Republic, for all practical purposes the only law on Paraquito for 400 years had been the decrees of the Mendez family, whose power rested on the simple economic fact that the Carib natives were living on and farming Mendez land, which put them in the same relationship to the island’s owner as that of medieval serfs to their barons. The Indians, still nearly as primitive as they had been when the first Spanish conquistadors landed on the island, were used to and accepted despotic rule.

Pamela inherited this absolute power when she acquired title to the island.

Although the initial idea behind the purchase had been to isolate herself from the outside world, Pamela quickly fell so in love with the island that she seldom visited the various other homes she maintained around the world, even after her marital scars healed. Paraquito possessed something increasingly difficult to find anywhere: a combination of unspoiled primitive beauty and all modern conveniences. The twenty-room house, surrounded by several smaller buildings that housed servants and livestock, was as up-to-date as a Hilton hotel, yet was within walking distance of primeval jungle.

Pamela’s favorite spot became the tide pools on the coral reef off the north shore, clear across the island from the house. The south shore was an unbroken stretch of white sand beach. The northern shore was bounded by a solid line of towering cliffs that looked down onto a pounding surf. A single wide stream, fed by a central lake, poured through a gap in the cliffs, giving the only access to the reef. The tide pools were always full of fascinating things such as star fish, sea horses, sea anemones and baby octopuses, as well as a great variety of colorful shells. Pamela could spend hours investigating them.

* * *

On her first visit she innocently suggested to her muscular young Indian guide that they take a dip in the relatively calm stretch of water between the reef and the cliff some hundred yards away. Paxhali gazed at her with his mouth open.

“Shark,” he said finally. “Too many shark.”

Frowning at the gently rolling surface. Pamela suddenly saw three large fins simultaneously emerge and race away in formation. Paxhali saw them too.

“Great white shark,” he said. “All big fellow, maybe eighteen, twenty feet long. Sometimes grow thirty feet long.”

“Are there any off the south shore too?” she asked apprehensively, thinking of the many times she had swum there.

“Oh, no. Water too shallow. Deep here, also full of fish. No worry about swim off south beaches.”

Learning that the lagoon was infested with man-eating sharks didn’t spoil Pamela’s enjoyment of the reef because it seemed apparent there was danger only if you went swimming. Because of the excellent fishing, the lagoon was always dotted with native canoes, which the sharks made no effort to molest. Pamela felt that if the flimsy canoes were safe, her fiberglass speedboat had to be.

A small thorn in her garden of happiness was her discovery of the title the natives had bestowed on her. She learned of it the day Paxhali brought a shy teenage Indian girl to the house and asked Pamela’s permission to marry.

“Why do you ask me?” Pamela inquired.

“Because you are La Madre.”

“I’m not your mother,” Pamela said indignantly. Only forty-two, and looking no more than thirty as a result of diet, exercise and plastic surgery, she resented the suggestion that she was old enough to give motherly advice.

Looking confused, the young Indian guide said, “You are the mother of all, Señora.”

“All who?” Pamela demanded.

“Those on the island. I can no marry Wawaiya without you permit.”

While being regarded as a mother figure by some 1200 Carib Indians didn’t particularly appeal to her, Pamela grudgingly found some humor in it. “All right, you have my permission,” she said. “When’s the wedding?”

“At the new moon. Twenty day.”

“Am I supposed to give away the bride?”

“Wawaiya and I would be honor.”

“All right,” Pamela said indulgently. “Give me a few days notice.” Later she inquired of Juan DiMarco why the natives had bestowed the La Madre title on her. Pamela had inherited the affable thirty-six-year-old bachelor from General Mendez, for whom DiMarco had served as overseer. In Europe the general didn’t need an overseer, but the island still did. DiMarco supervised the native farms and the fishing industry, handled the export of grain and fish, the import of needed goods, and generally ran the business of the island.

“The natives are essentially children,” the overseer explained in answer to Pamela’s question. “The senior male member of the Mendez has been called El Padre for generations. You are the first female ruler Paraquito ever had.”

“What do you mean, ruler?”

“Don’t you understand that you have absolute power here, Pam? You could order natives whipped, or even shot, if you wanted to.”

“That’s terrible! I would never do either!”

“There’s nothing to prevent you being a benevolent dictator, if that’s your bag,” DiMarco said with a smile. “It will bemuse the natives, because the Mendezes were pretty despotic. But they’ll adjust to it. They’ve been adjusting to the whims of dictators for four hundred years.”

“Don’t call me a dictator,” Pamela objected. “I just bought the island, not the people on it.”

“You bought the whole ball of wax,” the overseer told her. “You may as well get used to reigning.”

* * *

When Pamela was ready to come out of her self-imposed isolation, it was unnecessary for her to leave the island in order to rejoin the international jet set. She merely let it be known that she was back in circulation, and the Beautiful People came to her, the possession of 400 million dollars being a powerful social magnet.

She started in a small way by scheduling what she whimsically called her “coming out party” for about two dozen of her closest friends. One of the invited guests was the internationally famous race car driver, Baronet Ambrose Harding. He was an old friend, but it occurred to Pamela that there was at least a possibility that their relationship would now ripen into something even more intimate. The baronet had been divorced from his second wife about the same time Pamela was shedding her sixth husband. He was about ten years younger than her, but all except her first husband had been several years younger. While she was not yet consciously husband hunting, she looked forward to seeing the baronet in his new bachelor status.

All but a half dozen of the guests would arrive aboard various yachts. The other six, who all happened to be on the Riviera when their invitations arrived, were flying together from there to San Juan, where they were scheduled to land at 7:30 Saturday morning. Because Ambrose Harding was in that group. Pamela decided to go along when her pilot flew her private plane to meet them.

Pamela and Juan DiMarco breakfasted together at six Saturday morning. Tom York, the pilot, had already breakfasted and was checking out the jet prepatory to taking off for Puerto Rico at six-thirty.

They were just finishing breakfast when the distant sound of a drumbeat came from the interior of the island. There was no rhythm to the sound, merely being a series of discordant thumps, repeated several times.

“What’s that?” Pamela asked DiMarco.

He shrugged. “I don’t read the drums.”

“Read them? You mean some kind of message?”

“Uh huh. Louquo can read them.” He turned to the Indian girl who was just pouring them second cups of coffee. “Tell the criado principal to step in, Pahali.”

The chief servant was a wizened but erect man of seventy. After listening to the drumbeat, he said that one of the natives of a village near the central lake had been bitten by a water moccasin.

Pamela said in surprise, “I thought there weren’t any snakes on Caribbean islands.”

“The moccasin is the only kind on Paraquito,” Louquo said with a curious air of apology. “What does La Madre wish to reply?”

“Don’t call me that,” Pamela said irritably. “I’m not your mother. Why should I reply anything? Isn’t it just a news bulletin?”

The old man shook his head. “The message is meant for you. It asks if you can obtain some white-man medicine.”

“Don’t the natives have any treatment for snakebite?”

“Yes, señora, for ordinary bites. But this was in the neck.”

“Jesus,” DiMarco said. “We’ll have to get the poor devil to San Juan for antitoxin.”

Frowning, Pamela asked Louquo how long it would take to get the snakebite victim to the house.

“Two hours, perhaps, with the fastest canoemen.”

Looking at her watch, Pamela said, “If the plane’s on time, we could be back by then.”

Staring at her, DiMarco said, “You certainly don’t plan to take off now, before the victim gets here.”

“I certainly don’t plan to let my guests cool their heels for two hours at the San Juan airport.”

After gazing at her for several more seconds, the overseer said to the aged criado principal, “That will be all, Louquo,” then said to the maid serving them, “We won’t need you anymore either, Pahali.”

When both servants were gone, Pamela said, “I take it you want privacy because I’m going to get a lecture.”

DiMarco nodded. “About the facts of life on Paraquito. Will you get it through your head, Pam, that you are absolute ruler here, and as such have some definite responsibilities?”

“I am not absolute ruler!”

The overseer made an impatient gesture. “You are in the eyes of the natives. They’re used to despotic rule, and could understand harshness, or even cruelty, because a long line of Mendezes subjected them to both for four centuries. But the Mendezes, like most enduring despots, also took care of their subjects when the need arose, much as harsh parents rise to protect their children in emergency, even though they tend to abuse them other times. The natives are accustomed to regarding the island’s owner as a sort of all-knowing parent, which is why they labeled you La Madre. A cruel mother they could understand, but they would never forgive indifference.”

“Why are you making such a big deal of it, Juan? I’ll be back in two-and-a-half hours at the latest.”

“You don’t know that. The flight into San Juan may be late. The victim could get here in an hour and a half, anyway, instead of two. Louquo’s no canoeman. Believe me, it’s extremely important, not just for humanitarian reasons, but for your status on this island, that you wait.”

Tom York came in to tell Pamela the plane was ready for takeoff. Rising to her feet, Pamela said to the overseer, “Tell Louquo to have the patient brought here, and that Tom will fly him to San Juan as soon as we get back.”

* * *

It did take less time than Louquo had estimated for the canoemen to traverse the winding jungle stream from the lake. The snakebite victim arrived shortly after eight a.m. and was given a bed in the servants’ quarters. At nine Pamela contacted the house by radio. There was no phone service on the island, but there was a shortwave radio room in the house, and Tom York had instructed all the house servants in its operation.

Juan DiMarco was out on the veranda, peering east in the hope of spotting the returning plane when the call came. The weather was clear, with a limitless ceiling, he was happy to see, but the ocean was getting rough. The guests arriving by yacht would probably be late, he thought, because headway against such high seas would be difficult.

When Louquo came to tell the overseer that their employer was on the radio, he hurried to the radio room and said into the mike, “Juan here, Pam.”

Pamela’s voice came from the speaker quite clearly. “Any of the guests show yet, Juan?”

“No, and they’ll probably show late, because seas are running high. The snakebite victim has been here for nearly an hour, though. What’s the holdup?”

“The flight was late. How is he?”

“It’s a she, not a he. She looks to me like she’s dying.”

“Well, tell her we’re doing everything we can for her. There’s been a slight change of plans. I’m not going to be able to get back for a while, so I’ve made other arrangements. I want you to run the woman over to Mayagues in the speedboat. The public hospital there has been alerted that you’re coming. They don’t have any snakebite antitoxin, but I’ve arranged for some to be trucked there from San Juan.”

“Pam, there isn’t time for that. The victim’s dying.”

“Nonsense,” Pamela’s voice came from the speaker. “Mayagues isn’t more than eighty miles from there, and the speedboat can do fifty miles an hour. You can get her there faster than I could fly back for her.”

“Not today, I can’t. I told you the seas are running high. We would be lucky to make it in four hours.”

“Juan, there’s nothing else to be done, so don’t argue. We have to fly the plane to Nassau.”

“Why?”

“Because Piggy and Sue Barton are stranded there. Their yacht has engine trouble. They phoned a message to the San Juan airport because they knew Tom was meeting the seven-thirty a.m. flight.”

DiMarco said, “For God’s sake, Pam, this is more important than your friends’ inconvenience. Call them back and tell them to rent another yacht. If that’s the Bartons I think it is, they have nearly as much money as you.”

The voice coming from the speaker was sharp and definite. “Juan, Piggy and Sue’s convenience is a lot more important to me than that of an ignorant savage I have never even seen. I am not those people’s mother, you know, regardless of what they think.”

The overseer had a sudden idea. “Why can’t you charter a plane to send the serum and a doctor here?”

“I already thought of that. There’s nothing available small enough to land on our airstrip. The local police have helicopters, but they aren’t allowed to fly them into the jurisdiction of a foreign country. I’m not going to argue with you any more, Juan, because I don’t have time. You had better get moving. Over and out.”

DiMarco flipped the microphone switch from Receive to Transmit and said, “Wait a minute, Pam.”

There was no reply.

Irritably the overseer turned away from the mike. Louquo was standing in the doorway.

“You hear all that?” DiMarco asked the old man.

Louquo nodded impassively.

“Then you know the situation. Have one of the maids make some kind of bed in the boat and have the patient carried down to it. Make sure she’s wrapped warmly in blankets.”

“Si, señor,” the old man said.

* * *

It was nearly two p.m. when the small jet returned from Nassau loaded with guests. They had already started partying on the plane, and everyone was in such a gay mood, Pamela completely forgot to inquire about the snakebite victim until she suddenly realized a couple of hours later that Juan DiMarco was missing. Then she hunted up Louquo to ask what had happened.

“Señor DiMarco took the girl in the boat right after you radioed,” the old man said.

“Girl?” Pamela said. “I thought it was a woman.”

“Well, yes, señora, but a young one. About eighteen.”

“Juan should be back by now,” Pamela said with a frown. “I didn’t mean for him to wait until the patient is fully recovered. Ask him to report to me as soon as he returns.”

The boat didn’t return until six p.m. By then all the guests had arrived and the party was in full swing. Juan DiMarco found Pamela on one of the upstairs balconies with a handsome, bronzed man she introduced as Sir Ambrose Harding.

The overseer’s clothing was drenched with salt water and he looked exhausted. After politely shaking hands with the baronet, he said to Pamela in a tired voice, “Louquo said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes. How did things go?”

“About as I expected. She was dead on arrival. The doctor figured she’d been dead about an hour, which means about three hours after we left.”

“Three hours? It took you four hours to make eighty miles?”

“I told you it would.” After a period of silence, DiMarco added, “At the request of the father I brought the body back. He went along in the boat. According to native belief the girl’s spirit would forever wander instead of entering the eternal jungle if she weren’t buried on home ground.”

“I see,” Pamela said. There was another period of silence before she finally said, “I’m sorry.”

“I knew you would be,” the overseer said.

Making an abrupt about-face, he went back inside.

“What was that all about?” the baronet asked.

“One of the island’s Indians was bitten by a snake. Juan took her by speedboat to Mayagues on the west coast of Puerto Rico, about eighty miles from here. Unfortunately he didn’t get there in time.”

“That’s too bad,” the baronet said.

Pamela grew conscious of someone standing in the arched doorway onto the balcony. Glancing that way, she saw it was Louquo.

Because she suspected he had been standing there listening to the whole conversation with the overseer, her tone was a trifle sharp. “Well?”

“When does the señora wish the buffet served?” the old man inquired in his most formal manner.

Glancing at her watch, Pamela said in a more pleasant tone, “Not for about an hour, Louquo. Give the guests a little more cocktail time.”

The weekend was not as great a success as Pamela had hoped. The guests seemed to enjoy themselves, but Pamela was disappointed in Ambrose Harding. While he obliquely implied that he was available for an affair if Pamela were interested, he made it quite clear that he had no desire to remarry which ruled him out completely so far as she was concerned. Despite her six husbands, there was a puritanical streak in Pamela that made it impossible for her to enter into casual affairs. As a matter of fact, the reason she had married so many times was that she was incapable of sleeping with any man out of wedlock.

* * *

On Monday morning when Tom York flew the Baronet and his party back to San Juan, and the Bartons on to Nassau, Pamela did not go along. When the last yacht departed shortly afterward, she suddenly felt lonely. Hunting down Louquo, she told him to send someone to Paxhali’s village to tell the guide she wanted to take the speedboat across the island after lunch.

Paxhali showed up a little after one p.m., and they took off along the winding jungle stream leading to the central lake about one-thirty. When the speedboat shot from the mouth of the freshwater outlet into the lagoon, only one old man in a canoe was fishing. Pamela waved to him as they went past, and he waved back.

The tide was just starting to come in when they arrived at the reef. Paxhali, as usual, pulled the bow of the boat up on the reef, then stood on guard near it while Pamela went to examine the tide pools.

Today there was an unusual wealth of sea life in the pools. Pamela became so fascinated that she was unaware of how much time had passed until water began to lap over her canvas shoes. Then, glancing around, she saw that only the higher portions of the reef were still above water. She was going to have to wade back to the boat.

At that moment she realized that although Paxhali still stood where she had left him, the speedboat was gone. Her gaze skimmed over the water in all directions, and she spotted the boat just as the pounding surf carried it crashing against the base of the cliff, smashing it to pieces.

How careless of Paxhali, she thought, irritated but hardly alarmed. There was no cause for alarm because the old man in the canoe was heading for the reef.

Paxhali stepped into the canoe while Pamela was still wading through knee-deep water in that direction. By the time she reached the high spot where the young Indian had been standing, the canoe had drifted off a dozen yards. Pamela stood looking at it expectantly, waiting for its return. Paxhali was seated in the boat’s center and had picked up a paddle. The old man in the stern had his paddle in the water and was moving it just enough to keep the canoe stationary.

After a few moments, Pamela said, “What are you waiting for? Tell him to bring the canoe over here, Paxhali.”

“He understands English, señora,” the young Indian said. “His name, Pia.”

Pamela said to the old man, “Pia, come here and get me.”

Pia stared at her unblinkingly, still moving his paddle just enough to keep the canoe in place.

“What’s the matter with him?” Pamela asked on a high note. “I thought you said he understood English.”

“I guess he close his ears,” Paxhali said. “He Wawaiya’s father.”

“Who?” she asked blankly.

“Wawaiya, my bride-to-be. You remember, the one bitten by la serpiente.”

Pamela gazed at him openmouthed.

“We would return for you, La Madre, but we have no time,” Paxhali said tonelessly. “Is something more important we must do. Is the funeral of Wawaiya today, and we must hurry there to make sure her akamboue, her spirit, goes to the eternal jungle.”

His paddle sliced into the water, turning the canoe toward shore. Then both blades were driving the canoe toward the outlet with powerful strokes.

“Paxhali!” Pamela screamed. “Come back! Pia!”

The canoe shot through the wide gap in the cliff and disappeared upstream.

Pamela screamed for help until the water was halfway up her thighs, but no one answered. Eventually she had to swim for shore because she had no other choice.

Her only chance was to make for the outlet, because at high tide the surf raged against vertical rock either side of it. She thought she was going to make it until she got within twenty yards, but then discovered the current of the freshwater stream was too strong to swim against. It kept pushing her back.

She continued to struggle against the current until she was too exhausted to struggle any longer, then despairingly let it carry her back toward the reef.

She had been lucky on the way in, but halfway back to the reef the sharks discovered her.

FRIENDLY WITNESS

Originally published in The Saint Magazine, July 1984.

Sergeant Gunner wanted the three old people to wait at the morgue’s front desk while he took Mrs. Worth to the viewing window.

“You’ll have to go over to Homicide with me later,” he said to the aged man and two aged women with the retirement home manager. “But all I need to make an identification is Mrs. Worth.”

The manager of the Riverview Senior Citizens Retirement Home said, “They want to see Olivia, Sergeant. They were her best friends.”

Sergeant Gunner didn’t particularly care how many people viewed the body of old Mrs. Olivia Pritchard, but he was uneasy about elderly viewers. Over the years, he had piloted enough witnesses to the viewing window at the morgue to know the traumatic effect the sight of a body full of bullet holes could have. He didn’t like the prospect of three visitors in their eighties keeling over from shock. But since they seemed determined to view the body, he couldn’t bar them. Leading all four along the corridor to the viewing window, he moved the lever that parted the curtains.

Beyond the glass, the withered body of an old woman lay on a morgue cart. She was naked and the blood had been washed from her, but four puckered purplish-black holes across the chest and stomach showed how she had died.

In a faint voice Mrs. Worth said, “It’s Olivia Pritchard all right.”

Sergeant Gunner glanced at the three old people. Apparently, his worry had been needless. None showed emotion. Although sad, their expressions were curiously lacking in grief. It occurred to the homicide officer that after you pass eighty, death probably doesn’t seem very tragic.

Anna Stenger, the oldest of the trio, was eighty-six. A retired schoolteacher, she was a straight-backed spinster with snapping black eyes and a birdlike manner of cocking her head to one side. Except for a face so wrinkled it resembled cracked parchment, she might have passed for sixty.

Mrs. Hester Lloyd, like the dead Mrs. Pritchard, was a widow. She was a pear-shaped little woman with a gentle smile and a nearsighted manner of peering over thick-lensed glasses. She was eighty-four.

Gerard Hawk, the youngest of the group, was eighty-one. Tall, stoop-shouldered, and beak-nosed, with curling white hair and a white handlebar mustache, he had clear blue eyes that were still strong enough not to require glasses. Mrs. Worth had told Gunner that he was a lifelong bachelor.

Closing the curtains, the homicide detective said, “Now, would you all please accompany me to Homicide?”

As Police Headquarter’s was only a half block from the Coroner’s Court Building, they walked. Sergeant Gunner expected that he and Mrs. Worth would have to cut their paces to accommodate the old people. Instead, they had to walk briskly to keep up.

As they fell a few steps behind, Mrs. Worth said, “They’re going to miss Olivia. The four were inseparable.”

When Sergeant Gunner only grunted, she said, “So many of our tenants are mentally slow—some even senile. Anna, Hester, and Mr. Hawk are still smart as whips, and so was Olivia Pritchard. They had nothing in common with most.”

“I know,” Gunner said. “When she came in to report seeing the Sloan Company bombing, there was nothing vague about her description of the suspect who tossed the bomb.”

“You think it was this Nick Spoda person?”

“The description fits. We’d have a better case if we had caught him in time for her to make a positive identification.” His expression turned glum. “I didn’t think she was in danger, because we kept from the media the fact that we had her as a witness. I had no idea it had leaked to Spoda. If she had phoned me when Spoda called on her the day before yesterday, I would have put her in protective custody.”

Mrs. Worth said, “I would have phoned you myself if I had known who the man was, but Olivia wasn’t in the habit of confiding in me. She told Anna and Hester and Mr. Hawk, but I knew nothing about it until after she was dead. It didn’t seem to occur to any of them that the police ought to be informed.”

The three old people waited in front of Police Headquarters for Gunner and Mrs. Worth to catch up, and the five crossed the lobby together to take the elevator to the third floor. In the Homicide squad room, Sergeant Gunner briefed them on the situation.

“We figure this as a gang kill,” he said. “With Mrs. Pritchard scheduled to testify against Spoda when we eventually caught him, it’s pretty obvious she was gunned because she could identify him as the one who threw the bomb through the window of the Sloan Cleaning Company. But suspicion is not proof. Your testimony may make the difference between Spoda getting away with this raw deal and going to the gas chamber.”

The white-haired and white-mustached Hawk said, “How could he get away with it, Sergeant? If I was on a jury in a case where the only witness against a gangster was shot down in broad daylight, I would figure either the gangster himself did it or had it done. Hardly likely anyone else would be gunning for a harmless woman like Olivia.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a member of the Fallon gang got away with this raw a kill,” Gunner said. “Not even the first time for Spoda.”

Mrs. Worth said, “The Fallon gang?”

“A bunch of labor racketeers, headed by a crooked lawyer named Mark Fallon. Spoda is Fallon’s top gun.”

He had Nick Spoda brought in then. The old people showed no more emotion at the sight of the gunman suspected of murdering their friend than they had when they viewed Mrs. Pritchard’s body. Gerard Hawk examined him with the clinical detachment of a biologist looking at a specimen under a microscope. Anna Stenger cocked her head to one side and stared at him with teacher-like disapproval. Hester Lloyd peered over her glasses at the swarthy gunman sorrowfully, as though she pitied him more, for his sins, than she censored him.

Nick Spoda sneered. “What’s this, Sergeant? An old folks’ convention?”

Ignoring him, Gunner said to Mrs. Worth, “Is this the man who came to see Mrs. Pritchard?”

“Yes,” she said.

Still looking at the gunman while speaking to the retirement home manager, Gunner said, “But you weren’t present when they talked?”

Mrs. Worth shook her head. “I left them alone in the parlor. All I can really testify to is that he did talk to her.”

Gunner turned to the three old people. “None of you saw this meeting?”

All three shook their heads. Gerard Hawk said, “We all generally nap about that time of the afternoon, but she told us about it afterward.”

“Just what did she tell you?”

Anna Stenger said, “He threatened her. He warned her not to identify him when she was brought to headquarters to look at him. Apparently he planned to turn himself in.” Her voice took on a kind of grisly enjoyment. “I guess Olivia told him off good and proper. She wasn’t one to hold her tongue.”

Gunner said, “She told all of you this same story?”

The other two old people nodded. Hawk said, “We were all together when she told it.”

Nick Spoda yawned. “Hearsay. Just think what Mark Fallon will do to that testimony.”

Hester Lloyd peered over her glasses. “What’s he mean by that?”

Nick himself answered her. “It ain’t admissible evidence. Long as you didn’t personally hear me say nothing to this Pritchard dame, it don’t count. What somebody else told you I said ain’t allowed in the court record. The most you people can prove is that I stopped off to see the old lady for a couple of minutes. So what? I heard she wanted to buy a dog, and I got one for sale.”

His arrogant tone constituted a brazen admission that he had committed the crime, and an equally brazen challenge for Sergeant Gunner to prove it. Gerard Hawk studied the swarthy man, his expression curious.

He said, “You don’t seem very scared, young follow.”

Nick Spoda laughed.

The squad room door opened and three men walked in. In the vanguard was a well-dressed man of about forty, sleek and genial and assured. He made an impressive entrance, pausing just inside the door and smiling around generally before coming the rest of the way into the room. Behind him came two men with beefy physiques and sullen faces.

“Morning, Sergeant,” the lead man said to Gunner. “Got a little piece of paper for you.”

Gunner took the proffered paper and studied it. When he looked up, he said, “You didn’t need a writ, Fallon. We had every intention of sticking your boy in front of a judge this morning.”

Mark Fallon cocked an eyebrow. “On what charge, Sergeant?”

“Suspicion of homicide. I think we have enough to get him remanded.”

“What homicide is he suspected of?”

Sergeant Gunner looked irritated. “Don’t cat-and-mouse me, Fallon. What’s on your mind?”

Fallon smiled a genial smile. “As Nick’s attorney, I’m entitled to know the charge. What homicide?”

When Gunner failed to answer, Nick said, “Some old dame named Pritchard, Mark. They claim I gunned her down on the street from a blue sedan at three o’clock yesterday afternoon. Down on South Broadway somewhere, a couple of blocks from the Riverview Old Folks Home.”

“The Riverview Senior Citizens Retirement Home,” Mrs. Worth corrected.

The lawyer’s expression became one of mock surprise. “Three PM.? It’s lucky I happened to bring these two gentlemen along.” He indicated his two silent companions. “They were with Nick across the river at the dog races from eleven a.m. until five-thirty p.m. Right, gentlemen?”

Both nodded without changing expression.

“There are other witnesses, too,” Fallon said. “The boy Nick bought his admission ticket from, a fellow who sold him a hotdog, and a cashier at one of the betting windows. Can’t see how you could establish Nick as anywhere but at the dog track at three yesterday.”

Sergeant Gunner gazed at Fallon for a long time before saying, “You own stock in that track, don’t you, Fallon?”

“Totally irrelevant, Sergeant. Shall we go see this judge you mentioned?”

Gunner said, “Murder isn’t the only change your boy faces. There’s the little matter of flinging a grenade through a plate glass window.”

“The Sloan Company bombing, you mean? You have a witness tying Nick to that?”

Sergeant Gunner continued to gaze at Fallon. Then suddenly his expression wearied. He said, “I guess we better go see the captain.”

Fifteen minutes later, Nick Spoda walked out of Police Headquarters a free man.

Sergeant Gunner didn’t have much success explaining to Mrs. Worth and her three elderly tenants why the gunman was released, partly because he wasn’t very happy about his own explanation.

“A writ of habeas corpus requires you either to release a suspect from custody or take him before a judge who has authority to set bond,” he said. “In this case we knew there was no point in taking him before a judge because the judge would have to dismiss the charge.”

“Even with our testimony?” plump little Mrs. Hester Lloyd asked.

“He has better testimony on his side,” Gunner said. “All we could prove was that Spoda called on Mrs. Pritchard two days ago. His witnesses prove he was miles away when she was gunned. Even though we know they’re lying, there’s nothing we can do without counter witnesses placing him at the scene of the crime.”

“But isn’t Spoda the man Olivia identified as throwing that bomb?” Mrs. Lloyd persisted.

“She only gave us a description that fits Spoda. She never actually identified him, because she was dead when Spoda turned himself in.”

“It’s still obvious he’s the killer. I mean, people like Olivia don’t go around getting shot by just anyone. It seems to me that, like Mr. Hawk said, any jury would understand when a gangster has a motive to kill someone, he threatens her, and then she gets killed in a gangster way, he must be the killer.”

“It has to be more than obvious,” Gunner said. “You have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The straight-backed Anna Stenger said, “Aren’t you going to do anything at all, young man? Just let him run loose to kill again?”

Sergeant Gunner said, “There isn’t anything we can do.”

The old ex-schoolteacher sniffed. “We didn’t have that lack of justice when I was young, Sergeant. Criminals were punished.”

Gerard Hawk said, “I guess it makes a difference who you are, Anna. I imagine that when ordinary people who haven’t got gangs behind them commit murder, Sergeant Gunner takes them to court.”

Gunner’s face reddened. “What would you do if you were a cop, Mr. Hawk?”

The old man looked at him without any particular expression. “I was a cop once, Sergeant. But I guess things have changed since my day.”

The sergeant became a little angry. “Maybe you didn’t have the problems we have. You’re right when you say I run ordinary people who commit murder into court. But you think I like watching a cheap hood like Nick Spoda walk out of here clean? You think he’s the only killer who has? What’s a cop supposed to do when an organized mob like the Fallon gang is willing to perjure itself down to the last man? I know Spoda killed your friend, but I couldn’t prove it in court in a million years, so why waste my time trying?”

The old man said to Mrs. Worth, “I guess we’ve done all we can here.”

Gunner glared at him. “You think I wanted to let that hood go?”

Hawk looked at him curiously. “Course not, Sergeant. I understand your technical reasons for turning him loose.”

Courteously, he bent over the aged Anna Stenger and helped her to her feet. Then, as though in idle afterthought, he said, “Doesn’t seem quite right there should be separate rules for gangsters and ordinary people, though. Wasn’t when I wore a badge.”

“How long ago was that?” Gunner asked.

The old man smiled. “Before you were born, Sergeant. Been retired over forty years.”

Sergeant Gunner’s primary reaction to the whole incident was frustration. He felt it unfair to be blamed for a situation beyond his control, yet at the same time he had to admit there was justification for old Gerard Hawk’s unconcealed contempt for the modern law enforcement system. Because the sergeant represented that system, the old man’s attitude continued to rankle long after he and his companions had gone.

* * *

He was still feeling frustration when he logged in the following morning and received word that Nick Spoda had been shot dead the previous night. As a homicide cop, Gunner had a natural aversion to murder, but this killing actually gave him a lift.

“The call just came in,” the captain said. “But the guy who called figures it must have happened last night. Manager of the hotel where Nick lived. Want to take it?”

“Naturally,” Gunner said. “I want to pin a medal on the killer.”

Nick Spoda’s home had been the Midland Hotel, a respectable but inexpensive place on upper Grand Avenue. Gunner found a number of people awaiting him in the lobby.

There was the hotel manager, a nervous man who seemed more concerned about possible bad publicity for the hotel than he was disturbed by the death of a tenant. With him was a sleepy-eyed night clerk whom the manager had dragged from bed on the assumption that the police would want to talk to the man who had been on duty when the crime occurred. There was also a uniformed policeman, Mark Fallon, and the same two men who had accompanied him to headquarters the day before.

Mark Fallon seemed to be suffering from barely controlled rage. “We already know who did this, Sergeant,” he said. “I would like to go along when you make the arrest.”

Gunner eyed the lawyer with distaste. Had anyone else present announced that he knew the name of the killer, he would have asked for details before he did anything else. But Fallon aroused in him a desire to be contrary.

“Hold it until I’m ready for you,” he said. He turned to the patrolman. “Where is it?”

“Second floor, Sarge. My partner’s guarding the door.”

Ordering everyone to wait in the lobby, Gunner climbed stairs to the second floor. Halfway along the hall, another uniformed policeman stood in front of a closed door. Several other doors were open, and tenants stood in them, curiously watching the patrolman.

In the room, Gunner found Nick Spoda sprawled on his back just outside the bathroom door, a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead. He was dressed, but the collar of his shirt was tucked in all around, and shaving cream had dried on his checks. A safety razor was gripped in his right hand.

It was apparent that someone had entered the room while Spoda was shaving. The gangster had stepped to the bathroom door to see who it was and had been shot.

“The manager says nothing’s been touched,” the patrolman said. “A cleaning maid discovered him about an hour ago, around eight. She didn’t disturb anything, and the manager said he didn’t even enter the room, just looked from the doorway.”

Bending over the body, Gunner lifted the head enough to satisfy himself there was no exit wound. “Still in the head,” he said, ostensibly to the patrolman, but really to himself. “Shouldn’t be too mashed up for comparison purposes.”

Rising, he went over the room quickly but thoroughly, finding nothing of interest. In the bathroom, he found a can of shaving cream on the washbowl counter and a couple of inches of soap-filmed water in the bowl.

Noting the sergeant’s scowl, the patrolman said, “Nothing, huh?”

“The killer didn’t leave any calling cards,” Gunner said.

Instructing the guard to admit the lab man and photographer when they arrived, and release the body to the morgue as soon as they finished their work, he returned to the lobby. He addressed his first question to Mark Fallon.

“What are you doing here, counselor?”

The lawyer said, “I had a golf date with Nick. When I walked in and learned what had happened, I stuck around. That old coot who was in your office yesterday killed him, Sergeant.”

When Gunner gave his eyebrows an inquiring hike, Fallon said, “I phoned Nick at seven-thirty last night to make our golf date. He told me old Hawk had just called and asked to come see him at eight-thirty. That’s when he was shot.”

Tabling him, Gunner turned to the hotel manager. “What’s your name?”

“Thomas Bower.”

“All right, Mr. Bower, tell me what you know.”

He didn’t know very much. Aside from having looked into Spoda’s room long enough to assure himself the man was dead, he knew only what he had gotten from the night desk clerk. When he started to relay that, Gunner cut him off in favor of getting it from the source.

“You tell it,” he said to the clerk.

The night clerk was a thin man in his twenties named Amuel Card. He said he lived at the hotel. He said he had heard a shot about eight-thirty the previous night, sounding as though it came from the second floor.

“What did you do about it?” Gunner asked.

“Went up and looked down the hall. All the doors were closed and I couldn’t see anything, so I figured it must have been a backfire from outdoors, and just sounded like it came from inside.”

“None of the second-floor tenants heard it?”

“I don’t think any were in, except Mr. Spoda. Most tenants are out to dinner about then.”

“You know Gerard Hawk?” Gunner asked.

The clerk shook his head. “Unless he’s the old guy who came by about six, just after I went on duty.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall and kind of bent over. White hair and a droopy white mustache. He asked for Mr. Spoda’s room number, but he never went up. Just thanked me and left.”

“He didn’t come back at eight-thirty?”

Again the clerk shook his head. Then he shrugged. “Maybe by the back stairs, but I didn’t see him.”

Gunner went to examine the back stairs. They could be seen from the desk, he noted, but were invisible from the left side of the lobby.

Returning to the clerk, he asked, “Were you behind the desk when you heard the shot?”

“No, reading a paper over there.” He pointed to a leather easy chair well to the left of the desk. “When things are quiet, I don’t sit at the desk much.”

Mark Fallon said, “It’s obvious that crazy old man killed him, Sergeant. You have any objection to my going along when you make the arrest?”

After examining him moodily, Gunner shrugged. “Leave your pet apes behind and you can come.”

The lawyer told his two henchmen he wouldn’t need them anymore that day.

Mrs. Worth answered the door at the Riverview Senior Citizens Retirement Home. Showing them into an immaculate but old-fashioned parlor, she invited them to sit.

Politely declining for both of them, Gunner said, “We’re here on rather unpleasant business, Mrs. Worth. Nick Spoda was murdered last night.”

The retirement home manager’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

“Mr. Hawk had an appointment with him at eight-thirty. That’s when Spoda was shot.”

Mrs. Worth’s eyes widened even more. “You can’t possibly be suggesting that Mr. Hawk killed him.”

“Afraid I am. He was pretty fond of Olivia Pritchard, wasn’t he?”

“We all were.”

“He was pretty sore about Nick being turned loose.”

“We all were that, too, Sergeant. But Mr. Hawk’s a law-abiding man. He used to be a policeman, himself.”

“He mentioned that. Do you know where?”

“All over the country. He was a G-Man under the famous Melvin Purvis. Mr. Hawk helped shoot Dillinger, he was at the shootout with the Ma Barker gang, and he once put a bullet in Pretty Boy Floyd.”

Mark Fallon said, “There you are, Sergeant. Those FBI men in the 1930s were nothing but legal killers. Old J. Edgar Hoover didn’t believe in arresting bank robbers. His order was to shoot hell out of them.”

“That was fifty years ago,” Gunner said.

“Once a killer, always a killer, Sergeant. The old coot was trained to shoot suspects on sight, and obviously that’s still his philosophy.”

Gunner asked Mrs. Worth where Gerard Hawk was.

“In Anna Stenger’s room, I imagine. Usually they play bridge there mornings. Three-handed, now that Olivia’s gone.”

She led them into the hall and across it to the nearest door. When she knocked, Anna Stenger’s voice called an invitation to come in.

Anna, Hester Lloyd, and Gerard Hawk sat at a card table in the center of the room. It was a large room, airy and well-lighted by French doors on two sides which led to the front and side lawns. The lawn was not more than six inches below the doorsills, Gunner noted, making it convenient for the old people to step outdoors without having to bother going through the building to the front door.

The three card players greeted the sergeant without any evidence of surprise, ignoring Mark Fallon.

Gunner got right to the point. “Mr. Hawk, Nick Spoda was shot to death last night.”

Riffling the cards, the old man began to deal. “Young fellow who shot Olivia, you mean?”

Mark Fallon said, “He didn’t shoot anyone.”

Anna Stenger said, “You put down my last score, Hester?”

“Of course,” the plump woman said. “You made two spades.” She turned a score pad for Hester to see.

Gunner said, “Mr. Hawk, I’m afraid I have to arrest you on suspicion of murder. You have the right to remain silent, and if you do make a statement, it may be taken down and be used as evidence against you. You also have the right to legal counsel, and if you can’t afford a lawyer, one may be assigned to you at public expense.”

“Don’t think I need one,” the old man said. He glanced up at Fallon. “Nice that you’re handy, in case I do.”

The lawyer looked offended. “I advise you to hire other counsel.”

Gerard Hawk shrugged. “What makes you suspect me, Sergeant?”

“Mr. Fallon says you had an appointment with Spoda for eight-thirty last night, and that’s when he was shot.”

The old man looked up at Fallon again. “What gave you that idea?”

“I talked to Nick on the phone right after you called him. He told me.”

Hawk looked down at his cards. “Hearsay. One heart.”

“One diamond,” Hester said.

“You have to say two diamonds,” Anna said.

“What do you mean, hearsay?” Fallon asked in a loud voice.

“Not admissible in court. Never phoned the man.”

“Two diamonds,” Hester said.

Gunner said, “The hotel night clerk’s testimony isn’t hearsay, Mr. Hawk. He says you stopped in about two-and-a-half hours before the shooting and asked for Spoda’s room number.”

“Oh, that. Got to thinking about that dog he said he wanted to sell to Olivia. Thought I might buy it myself, then decided not to, so I left without going up. You going to bid, Anna?”

“Pass,” Anna said.

“I’m afraid it isn’t going to be that easy,” Gunner said with regret. “You own a gun, Mr. Hawk?”

“Sure. Forty-five semiautomatic. Glad to loan it to you for ballistic tests. That’s why you asked, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s why I asked.”

“Used to own a pair of them,” Hawk said. “Accidentally dropped one in the river a while back. Two hearts.”

“Pass,” Hester said.

“Pass,” Anna said.

Mark Fallon watched irritably as the old man picked up the blind dummy and began laying out cards. “Why don’t you stop this nonsense and put cuffs on the man?” he asked Gunner.

Hester Lloyd suddenly asked, “What time was this Spoda man killed?”

“Eight-thirty last night,” Gunner said.

“Then it wasn’t Mr. Hawk did it. The three of us played cards right here from six-thirty until eleven, and he wasn’t out of our sight for a minute. Right, Anna?”

“Right, Hester.” The retired schoolteacher looked up at the sergeant. “I can swear to that in court, Sergeant. Lead, Hester.”

Sergeant Gunner looked at the expression on Mark Fallon’s face. Then he started to laugh. Once started, he couldn’t stop. He leaned against the wall and howled until tears ran down his face.

Mark Fallon began to yell something about conspiracy.

Over the hubbub, Anna Stenger’s voice rose shrilly. “Hester, you reneged. If you can’t play fair, I’m not going to play at all.”

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THE GOLDEN AGE OF PULP FICTION

1. George Allan England

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MYSTERY AND CRIME

1. Fletcher Flora

2. Ruth Chessman

* Not available in the United States

** Not available in the European Union

***Out of print.

FREE PROMO MINI-MEGAPACKS®

Each one was only available from our web site for a single day—on Free Ebook Tuesday (which has since been replaced by Discover a New Author Wednesday!) Like us on Facebook or join our mailing list to see new title announcements.

The Poul Anderson MINIPACK™

The John Gregory Betancourt MINIPACK™

The Richard Deming Crime MINIPACK™

The Charles V. de Vet MINIPACK™

The Paul Di Filippo MINIPACK™

The H.B. Fyfe MINIPACK™

The Lt. Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol MINIPACK™, by Eando Binder

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Content

The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Copyright Info

A Note From The Publisher

About The Series

HOMICIDE, INC.

FOR VALUE RECEIVED

MUGGER MURDER

STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO Man Alone

CHAPTER THREE Proof of A Wife

CHAPTER FOUR Killer’s Corner

THE BLONDE IN THE BAR

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

HIT AND RUN

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

THE HAPPY MARRIAGE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

SAUCE FOR THE GANDER

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

A LITTLE SORORICIDE

THE PRICE OF FAME

FALSE ALARM

ERRAND BOY

THE MOST ETHICAL MAN IN THE BUSINESS

HONEYMOON CRUISE

THE MONSTER BRAIN

THE JOLLY JUGGLERS, RETIRED

AN ELEMENT OF RISK

MAGGIE’S GRIP

PREMARITAL AGREEMENT

GUARDIAN OF THE HEARTH

THE EVILS OF DRINK

MOTHER LOVE

FRIENDLY WITNESS

The Megapack® Ebook Series