Shell Scott’s Seven Slaughters

A Shell Scott Mystery

Richard S. Prather

The Best Motive

The cab dropped me off on the outskirts of Silver Beach and I looked around before I walked through darkness down the narrow alley. I didn't see anybody who looked like Bruno, the guy Ellen had told me was due for a stretch at the cackle factory. Any guy who'd try twice to kill a sex-charged hunk of dreamy tomato like Ellen had to be one step removed from the net. The crazy guy was probably still around here somewhere; he had been when Ellen phoned me, fright twisting the words in her throat.

I was eighty miles from the Los Angeles office of “Sheldon Scott, Investigations,” and I didn't think Bruno had ever seen me. But I'm damned easy to describe: six-two, short-cropped hair, almost white, the same color as my goofy eyebrows, and the face you might expect on an ex-Marine. I didn't see anybody eyeballing me, so I walked to the alley entrance of The Haunt, a gruesome Silver Beach nightclub with lively corpses and a hot orchestra.

Knowing that Ellen was inside made my throat dryer, my pulse faster. She had a shape like a mating pretzel, and the normal expression in her dark eyes always made me think she was about to tell a pleasantly dirty story. I walked past the grinning Death's head and a luminous skeleton and on into the club, banged against a table and spilled somebody's drink, barked my shin on a chair and got a perfect barrage of highly uncomplimentary language. Man, it was dark.

When my eyes were used to the gloom I saw dark blurs, presumably people drinking or feeling or whispering in ears, or whatever. Almost anything could have been happening in some of those corners, absolutely anything. Strike a match and you're dead. The orchestra was just beginning a number. I expected a funeral march or “I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal, You,” but it was the bright and bouncy “Love Me."

It was bright and bouncy like Ellen. I'd known the gal only a week, but she was already under my skin. And I felt sorry for her, though it's hard to be sorry for a twenty-three-year-old beauty with a million bucks. But she'd had it tough otherwise: both parents killed when she was nineteen, and the man she loved, her husband Ron, had been killed in a train wreck six months ago.

I found her at one of the small tables on the edge of the dance floor. I took a chance and lit a cigarette, and it was Ellen, strikingly lovely, the warm light melting on her high cheekbones, caressing her red, parted lips, and showing me fright in her dark eyes before the match went out.

“Oh, Shell,” she said. “Shell, I'm glad you're here.” Her hand slid across the table and found mine, held it. My spine wiggled to “Love Me.” “This is a horrid place,” she added. “Ghastly. I'm half out of my wits."

This wasn't the cheeriest spot for a gal who expected to have her throat cut by a crazy man. I squeezed her hand, thinking that no matter how dark it was, this had better be the extent of my squeezing. Ellen Benson was a Reno, Nevada, gal vacationing at California's Laguna Beach a few miles from here—with Joe Benson. Uh-huh, honeymooning with the new husband. What the hell; I squeezed Mrs. Joe Benson's hand some more.

“The Haunt,” I said. “Our motto is ‘We scare you to death.’ O.K., honey. What's with Bruno?"

Bruno was the crux. Apparently the nut had tried to murder her twice. She and hubby Joe had seen Bruno get off the bus in Laguna Beach yesterday afternoon; last night the trouble had started. She'd been visiting friends in San Clemente; driving back to Laguna, the brakes on her big Caddie went out, but luckily she wasn't hurt. Then, walking from the car to a service station nearby, where she could phone, she'd been shot at. She'd screamed, run to the station, been lucky once more. Tonight, just half an hour ago, she'd seen Bruno again and phoned me. Because she could reach it easily, and because it was dark enough to hide her—or anybody—I'd told her to meet me here at The Haunt.

She said, “He must have followed me. Shell. Again. It's driving me crazy. Joe and I are going to a party tonight—same friends I visited last night—and we were shopping here for gifts for them. I saw Bruno in front of the shop and told Joe. He told me to get out of sight quick, then went out front to talk to Bruno. I was so terrified I just ran out the back way and phoned you."

I had talked the mess over with both Ellen and hubby Joe last night at the Surf and Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach, where we were all staying. We'd got fairly chummy, and they knew I was from L. A., a private detective vacationing. So when Ellen had got back to the hotel, ready to split at the seams because of the kill attempts, and told Joe what had happened, they'd given me the story. Joe had seemed ready to go to pieces himself. I didn't exactly cotton to the guy, though he seemed nice enough and Ellen had told me he knew everybody in Reno from shoeshine boys to judges, and ex-cons to preachers and they all liked him—probably it's just that I seldom cotton to husbands. A tall, quiet, good-looking man, he'd seemed an odd choice for Ellen. She was hot, sexy, bubbling with life, while Joe impressed me as a guy whose idea of living dangerously was to pick his nose.

I said, “Give me that first Bruno bit again, Ellen.” She said quietly, “After Ron died I was pretty mixed up. This Bruno kept hanging around, but I only went out with him once. He's terribly stupid, and he's some sort of criminal. I think he was in prison for a while. I couldn't stand him, but I was nice to him—too nice, I guess. When I told him I wouldn't see him any more he went into an awful rage. Said he loved me, he'd follow me everywhere. He did, too. Then just before Joe and I married a month ago, Bruno caught me on the street in Reno. He sliced the dull edge of a knife across my throat and said if he couldn't have me nobody else could either, he'd kill me. He's crazy, insane.” Her voice got tighter. “He kept following me around. Joe and I didn't tell anyone where we were going on our honeymoon, so I didn't think I'd have to worry about Bruno—and now he's here, he's even come down here!"

“Relax, honey, unwind. What say we have a drink?"

We got two highballs as the orchestra began another number and what I call the gook lights came on. The management was putting on its fluorescent act, and in gook light even Marilyn Monroe would look sexless. Ellen's eyes glowed like blue coals. I peeled my lips back and my teeth glowed horribly.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Don't do that."

“Sad, huh? You look pretty gruesome yourself."

She smiled and her teeth seemed to leap at me. It was disgusting. “Haven't you been here before?"

“No,” she said. “Do people come twice?"

“Sure. It's fun. Look at all the hilarious people."

Dim bodies were wiggling on the dance floor in a whole sea of appalling eyes and teeth that floated in the air. “You ain't seen nothin’ yet; pretty quick the skeletons come out.” I grinned horribly some more. “But first let's figure what—” I stopped. Somebody was breathing on my neck. In The Haunt you can almost believe it's a ghost's fanny brushing you as it floats by, but this breath was warm, scented with garlic.

I turned around and almost banged into a head angled toward our table. The guy was scrunched over right behind me with his ear practically flapping.

“Hey,” I said. “The ear, friend. Do you like the ear? If you do, take it some place else before I remove it."

He jumped back at my first words, his eyes glowing at me. He was alone. I stepped to his table, bent my face down close to his and peered at him. “You get it? Vanish. Get lost."

He didn't say anything. I could see his lips move in an attempt at a smile, but his teeth didn't glow. False teeth wouldn't glow in this light. I sat down with Ellen again and said softly, “This egg looks like nobody I ever saw, what I can see of him. Does Bruno have false teeth?"

“No. Big and crooked, but they aren't false."

“O.K.” I looked back at the man behind me. “The ear, friend. I'll take it.” He left, and I asked Ellen, “Any chance Bruno could have followed you here?"

“I ... don't think so. I don't think he could have seen me go out and down the alley. It was dark."

I kept thinking about that guy at the next table. The loony Bruno would hardly have anybody else teamed up with him. He sounded like an insanely jealous crackpot, and the crack didn't make him less dangerous. Jealousy is one of the best murder motives I've run across, but the crime of passion is usually swift, vicious. I wanted to know more about Bruno—and I was starting to want out of this creep-joint.

“Maybe we'd better take off, Ellen. Anybody wants trouble, I'm all set.” After Ellen had phoned and before I'd left Laguna Beach, I'd strapped on my .38 Colt Special.

“Let me finish my drink first, Shell, I'm not scared when you're around. You're ... good to be with.” Her hand tightened on mine, squeezed gently. “Anyway, you'll have to dance with me once. Maybe it'll calm me down some more."

“Ha,” I said, “it won't calm me down.” I knew what would happen if she laid that long curved body up against me on that dark dance floor. But she was already standing by the table, pulling my hand. I got up.

She sort of oozed into my arms, and into my blood, her free hand restless on the back of my neck. She pressed close against me, following easily, her body soft and warm, even bold. After about a minute of that I said, “Look. This is lovely, ecstatic, but I, uh, it's too—"

She interrupted. “Shhh. What's the matter?"

“You know damn well what's the matter. What I mean is, hell's bells, after all, you're on your honeymoon—"

“Just a minute.” She stopped dancing, put both arms around my neck. “Let me tell you something. Joe wanted me to marry him even before I met Ron, but I just wasn't in love with him. Joe was around all the time, came to the house to see Ron and me while we were married, and after the accident he was wonderful to me, sweet, somebody I could lean on. He was Old Faithful, always there, and good to me—and I thought maybe that was enough. But it wasn't, Shell, and it never will be. A fast honeymoon and a fast divorce, that's it. So there's the sad story of Ellen Benson."

“Joe know how you feel, Ellen?"

“He knows, but he thinks maybe it'll work out. After last night he swore he wouldn't let me out of his sight, and he never did until he went out to see Bruno. He's sweet, Shell; it's just not enough. Now, let's dance."

There was no more conversation until the music ended. We went back to our table and I finished my drink. The gook lighting was still on and I could see two glowing skeletons, or rather waiters dressed in fluorescent skeleton suits with skull hoods, moving around at the far side of the dance floor.

I asked Ellen, “You about ready to go?"

“One more glug,” she said.

I looked out at all the teeth and things again. The two skeletons, looking amazingly lifeless-like, were walking toward our table. Probably something scary was about to happen.

I turned back to Ellen and said, “Glug your glug before we get into the act. Are you afraid of ske—"

It felt like a bony finger poking me in the ribs. For a brief moment light from a pencil flash gleamed on the long-barreled revolver in the man's cloth-covered hand, then flicked over my face and winked out. Ellen gasped, “Shell—"

“Take it easy, honey.” I was taking it easy myself. They do some screwy things in The Haunt, but I'd never seen a gun in here before. Maybe it was a gag.

“Look, bony,” I said, and that was all I said. I got the gun across my jaw, and a skeleton hand pulled my .38 from its holster, then jerked me out of my seat. The gun jabbed my spine and I was shoved toward the club's entrance.

This was no gag, for sure—and these guys weren't waiters. I stopped, but before I could even think about doing anything, something hard slammed into the back of my skull. I almost went down, and when the guy shoved me I staggered forward. We went out and started down the alley. My head cleared a little as we reached the back of a building, indented a few feet from the alley. The guy shoved me into its darkness. I stumbled and fell to the soft dirt, still confused, wondering what was coming off.

Then I heard a click as he cocked the hammer. I was still down on one knee, and as the knowledge that the guy was actually about to plug me jumped in my brain, I acted instinctively, scooping up a handful of soft earth and hurling it toward him, diving to the side and rolling. The gun roared and the bullet dug into earth as I slammed into his legs, grabbed them and yanked. He fell on top of me, and the gun thudded into my arm. Then I was all over him, slicing with the thick edge of my palm, unthinking, just trying to fix him before he fixed me. I felt my hand jar flesh; I saw his face before me and cut at it with all my strength. He went limp. I grabbed him and his head hung like a rag from his neck. I swore, felt for his pulse, jerked off his skull hood, traced my fingers over his split lips, then found the mashed-in bridge of his nose. He was dead.

I didn't know how many other unfriendly guys were back in the club, or what they looked like—but they'd flashed that light in my face and knew me. There was at least one other skeleton there, maybe waiting for this one to return. So two minutes later I walked inside the club wearing the dead man's skeleton suit over my clothes and the Death's mask over my head, peering out of the eye slits. Deep pockets in the black outfit's pants held my .38 and the dead man's gun. Some girls pointed at my glowing skeleton and giggled. I went to the table where Ellen had been. She was gone. The table top was wet where a drink had been spilled.

A voice behind me said softly, “All right?"

I turned. The scent of garlic filled my nostrils. The man smiled, his false teeth dark in his mouth. I nodded, and he seemed satisfied, walked toward the exit. I followed him outside, grabbed the big revolver by its barrel, and when he started to get into a new Buick parked in the alley, I helped him in, with the butt of the gun on the back of his head.

I got into the car with him, and in a minute he groaned, tried to sit up. I grabbed his coat and yanked him to me.

“Talk fast, you son! Where is she?"

He gasped and sputtered. “What ... what..."

I'd yanked the hood off so he could see my face. He looked ready to pass out.

He babbled that he didn't know what I was talking about, so I swatted him alongside the jaw. His false teeth skidded half out of his mouth, and I kept slapping him with the gun until the choppers landed in his lap.

“You've got two seconds,” I said. I cocked the gun, and as it clicked he yelped, the words distorted and almost unrecognizable, “All right, O.K. She's—stop!"

“Keep it going. All of it. And where is she?"

He fumbled for his teeth. “With Frank Gill. Just picked up her Cad and left. Please, man, watch that gun.” He shoved his chipped teeth at his mouth, anxious now, trying to talk even while his teeth clicked in his shaking hands. “You don't want me, man, it's Bruno Karsh. He phoned Sammy Lighter in Reno last night. Sammy sent three of us for the job."

I broke in. “Where is she? I won't ask you again."

“Other side of Laguna Beach, that bad spot, curve and cliff. He'll knock her out and she's—she'll go over in her Cad. Frank's got a Ford out there to come back in."

He kept talking as sickness crawled in my stomach. The next time I laid the gun on him was the last time. I locked him in the Buick's trunk to keep him on ice, then I got behind the wheel and roared out of the alley. I hit seventy going up the winding road beyond Laguna, fear and sickness mingling inside me as I thought of that curve ahead. I knew the place; it was bad enough in the daytime, with a hundred-foot drop off the cliff at the road's edge to the sea below. I shoved the accelerator all the way down, thinking of the Cad tumbling end over end off the cliff, Ellen unconscious behind the steering wheel at the start, and at the end ... I shivered.

The guy laid out in the trunk had told me more of what had happened, and I knew the Sammy Lighter he said Bruno had phoned last night. Lighter was one of the top racket boys in Nevada. Bruno had wired him money, explained the job was to tail Ellen and her husband, grab her the first time she was alone, and “accidentally” kill her. The men had reached Laguna this a.m., tailed Ellen, and had seen her and Joe spot Bruno at the Gift Shop in Silver Beach. When she'd ducked out the back way they'd tailed her to The Haunt.

It looked as though Bruno, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to kill Ellen, had decided to call in the professionals. It also looked as if Joe Benson had been wise not to let his wife out of his sight. But all Bruno had to do was get Joe away from Ellen, knowing the pros would then pick her up, and he'd managed that.

I was peering through the Buick's windshield and suddenly I saw the two cars a quarter-mile ahead, above me at the crest of the road. They seemed to be parked, facing in opposite directions, and I saw a man running to the Ford. As the blue Cadillac started to roll down the road toward the curve, I knew was ahead of it. I lost them for seconds, tires screaming as I slid around the last curve between us, trying not to look to my left at the awesome blackness that was the sea there below me, the wall of earth at the road's right only a blur at the corner of my eye.

As I swung around the last curve the Ford was moving toward me; beyond it the Cad picked up speed as it neared the sharp curve fifty feet ahead of it. I flashed past the Ford, right foot on the brake as I started down the incline, my hands slippery with sweat. The Buick ate up the distance between me and the car Ellen was in, but I didn't think I could possibly reach it before it hurtled over the cliff's rim. The Cad was only yards from the drop when I shoved on the brakes with all my strength, knowing that at this speed I'd never stop in time, fighting the wheel as the Buick swerved, drawing alongside the Cad's left as my headlights fell on the blackness almost in front of me. I yanked the wheel to the right and the jar slammed through my wrists into my shoulders as fenders scraped and crashed, the sound grinding in my ears.

The Caddie swerved and my own tires screamed, sliding closer to the edge on my left as I tried to pull the car around the curve. I saw the Cad angling to the right, pulling away from me now, blackness looming all around me, and then, with the car slowing, I felt the left wheels bite at the road's edge, slide in the dirt, drop suddenly. The car shuddered, hung for a moment, and panic leaped in my brain as I threw my body automatically away from that blackness, clawing for the door handle, jerking at it as the car tilted crazily and moved beneath me. I slammed my feet against the floorboards as the car seemed to jerk and rise above me, and then I half jumped, half fell, through the open door and slammed against the earth, my fingernails ripping and breaking as I clawed at the ground, felt myself sliding backwards, dug with fingers until they bled, then felt the asphalt at my fingertips, pulled myself toward it and sprawled forward on my face.

Behind me I heard pounding from inside the car, hoarse shouts—and suddenly I remembered the man who was in the Buick's trunk. Then the car scraped the cliff's side, crashed with a grating of metal, and there was silence for seconds as it hurtled through the air, followed by a faint splash as it hit the sea. I heard sounds closer to me, looked up. The Cad was a hundred feet away, moving slowly, its side rubbing against the wall of earth at the right edge of the road. I sprinted to it, jerked the brake on.

Ellen lay motionless on the front seat. As I reached for her, light fell on us and I looked back to see the Ford rounding the curve, fast, veering in toward us with brakes squealing. I pushed Ellen to the floorboards, crawled over her and out the door as a gun roared and I saw the Ford stop, its lights off. I grabbed for my .38, yanked it from the deep pocket and dropped on my belly by the rear wheel of the Cad.

Light winked as a man fired and ran toward me; dirt splashed, inches on my left, and the slug ricocheted away whining. Then I was pulling the trigger of my .38, aiming at the man and pulling the trigger again even as he fell and I heard the slugs smack into his body. I jumped up and ran to him, slapped the gun from his hand and bunched his coat in my fist, jerked him up off the ground. I could feel his blood oozing warmly against my fingers. He coughed and a dark stain spread from his lip to chin.

“Where's Bruno?” I realized I was shouting. He shook his head, coughed again. I kept after him and he talked—for a little while. It was the same story I'd got from the other guy. Gill told me the same things about Bruno, except where he was. Gill also said that after the kill he was to phone the Laguna police and anonymously report the “accident.” Then Gill's dead weight hung heavy from my hand and I let him drop to the ground.

It seemed likely that Bruno, perhaps frightened by the mistakes last night, might be fixing himself an iron-clad alibi for tonight's kill. I wondered where Bruno would go if that were true. Probably where there were a lot of people. And right then I remembered some things I hadn't thought about enough; I thought about them. When I finally stood up I was pretty sure I knew where to find Ellen's would-be killer. I left Gill where he was and went back to Ellen.

After what seemed a long time, her eyes fluttered. She started screaming. “Hey, baby,” I said, “this is Shell, remember? Hell, I wouldn't hurt a flea.” She kept screaming. And she didn't stop until I remembered I still had on that stupid skeleton suit, minus the mask. No wonder she screamed. She thought she was dead and the ghouls had got her.

When we parked in front of the white two-story house with lights blazing inside all the windows, I told Ellen to wait for me away from the car, then I put the Death's mask on, walked to the door in complete costume, and knocked.

A woman opened the door, then stepped back, one hand at her throat. I could hear laughter and music in the room behind her. “What...” she gasped. “What in the world..."

She backed away from me; I followed her inside the room. People were talking, drinking. Joe looked up, his face shocked and surprised, then flushing with anger as he walked toward me.

Joe Benson, Ellen's new husband. He had stood out like a bright light once I started wondering about him.

As I'd thought earlier, the crime of passion is usually sudden, seldom carefully planned like this one—and the click of that skeleton's gun hadn't seemed part of a crazy man's kill. I'd also wondered, finally, how Bruno happened to learn where Ellen was.

Joe shoved me out the door and slammed it behind us. Light fell on his twisted face as he swore at me.

I said softly, “It's all right, she's dead."

In his anger he answered automatically. “But that outfit! And how did you know I was here? None of you knew—” And then he stopped very damned suddenly, his face frightened and ugly, as I pulled off the skeleton hood and he saw my face.

“Now, wait. You don't understand.” His voice shook.

“The hell I don't, Benson. I understand a million bucks worth."

His eyes focused on the gun in my hand, and I used it to slam him one between them and they stopped focusing.

I dragged him over to the car, shoved him inside, and began to work him over. He suddenly started squirting words. He was really trying to please me now.

“Where's Bruno, Joe?"

“House I rented by phone in his name,” he mumbled through puffed lips.

“Where is it?"

He mumbled the address, and I took off my necktie, yanked his hands around in back of him, and bound them together with the necktie. Then I locked the car door on his side, shoved him down on the seat, and took off. It didn't take us long to get to the house, and Joe didn't say a word while we were travelling. He just lay there on the seat, sucking in air through his mouth in huge gulps.

The house was completely dark, and I dragged Joe from the car and shoved him ahead of me up to the front door. I pushed him to one side and tried the knob. It was locked. I turned to Joe and held the barrel of my gun under his nose.

“The key, Joe,” I said softly.

“In my coat pocket,” he blubbered, getting the words out so fast that he almost stumbled over them.

I held the gun on him, fished the key out of his pocket, and opened the door. I grabbed Joe by the elbow, held him in front of me, and pushed him through the open door ahead of me.

From somewhere in front of us, I heard the muffled sounds of movement, something scraping on the floor. I pulled Joe to a stop and felt along the wall until I found the light switch. I flicked the lights on, and a few feet in front of us was a man sitting on the floor, his hands reaching out for a rope which held his ankles bound together. In back of him were strands of rope that must have come from his wrists.

“Hold it, Bruno,” I said, shoving Joe to the floor and pointing the gun at Bruno.

He swivelled his head around and glared at me with eyes that were hate-filled and deadly. Then he caught sight of Joe.

“You dirty son of a bitch!” he screamed. “You tricked me. Where's Ellen?"

Joe just stared at him. I dragged over a chair with my foot, sat down on it, and looked at both of them lying on the floor. I waved the gun back and forth slowly in my hand.

“I think I'll untie him, Joe,” I said. “Looks like he wants to get at you."

Joe's eyes rolled toward me and then back to Bruno. “No!” he said quickly. “No!"

“You tipped him off about Ellen, didn't you, Joe,” I prompted. “You met him outside the Gift Shop and told him you'd take him to Ellen."

Joe stared at me for a moment, then nodded his head.

“Let's have the rest of it, Joe."

His face twisted up, and then the words started to pour out. “I had to kill her. Had to make it look like an accident and make sure I was in the clear. Half of Reno knew Bruno had threatened her. I knew if I could get him down here when she died he'd be suspected if anyone was. Sam Lighter in Reno is one of my closest friends; I phoned him yesterday and had him trickle word to Bruno where Ellen was. I figured the fool would come down to pester her if he knew."

His voice trailed off, and he looked at Bruno, staring wild-eyed at him.

“Then you tried to kill Ellen after that, didn't you?” I said.

He pulled his eyes away from Bruno and swung them back to me. “Yes. Lighter let me know when Bruno hopped the L. A. plane, and I checked the bus schedules, made sure Ellen saw him get here. Last night, when she went to San Clemente I said I was sick. I followed her in a rented car. I'd messed with her brakes, but that didn't do it so I took the shot at her."

“So when that didn't work,” I said, “you got Lighter to send his boys to get Ellen, lured Bruno here, tied him up, faked the accident, and then tried to have me killed because I would be the only one who knew it was murder, and not an accident."

Joe nodded.

“Bruno was your patsy,” I went on. “You had an alibi, Lighter's boys wouldn't talk, and once you had let Bruno go free, the heat would be turned on him. All that was left then was to get me out of the way."

Before Joe could say another word, Bruno let out a wild yell, snaked his hand inside his coat, and pulled out a knife, snapping the blade all in one motion.

“Drop it, Bruno,” I yelled at him and started to swing the gun on him.

He never even looked at me. He moved forward, fast for a big guy, and I saw the knife flash upwards.

The knife caught Joe in the throat and stayed there. Bruno started to laugh and rock back and forth on the floor. He was still laughing when I picked up the phone and dialed the police....

I lay in my bed, alone in the wide bed, in my room at the Surf and Sand, and thought about the mess just ended. Bruno was in the clink; Joe was dead; so were some other guys; and two innocent waiters at The Haunt must still be rubbing their sore heads wondering what happened to their skeleton outfits.

I listened to the whisper of the breakers outside and thought about the Bruno gimmick that had made me concentrate on jealousy, a good substantial motive for murder, and made me wait almost too long to look at the best motive—Ellen's million bucks. That's what Joe wanted, and he had to plan her death when he saw their marriage going on the rocks.

I thought, too, about my own motives. I'd wanted to help Ellen for a lot of reasons. She'd been like a frightened kid; she'd had it tough, even if she did have all that dough. And once, at the beginning, she'd hinted at a fabulous fee for me if I could help. But that wasn't all of it. I suppose I had another motive.

The bathroom door opened and soft light outlined Ellen's full, sensual figure, filtered through the dark lace that hugged her lush curves. It was only for a brief moment, but a moment heavy with promise, and then the light snapped out. I heard her moving through the darkness toward me.

Yeah, I guess I did have another motive. Can you think of a better one?

Crime of Passion

I could hear the hellish squealing and whooping as soon as I parked at the address in Malibu.

I pulled my Cad in behind a new Lincoln convertible and walked to the front door of a two-story, hundred-thousand-dollar house as modern as now. A small fortune in rubber plants, ferns, bananas, hibiscus fronted the house and bordered the drive. I could hear the boom of surf, fifty yards away, and the air was clear and clean.

This was a warm Sunday afternoon, Sheldon Scott, Investigations—my Los Angeles office—was closed, and I was invited to a Hawaiian-type party: luau, roast pig, the works. From behind the house somewhere came another happy feminine squeal. Sounded like a good wild party. At the top of six cement steps I found a buzzer, poked it, heard somebody come running toward the door. Sounded like somebody barefooted.

“Oh, Johnny!” a gal yelled. “Here I come, Johnny!"

There was the slap-slap of bare feet and then the door swung wide and a beautiful blonde babe, holding a highball glass in her hand and beaming at me, stood there framed in the doorway, and in very little more than the doorway.

She cried, “Where you been, Johnny?” then blinked at the white-blond hair short on my scalp, the sharply-angled white eyebrows and slightly bent nose. Blinked down to the Cordovans on my big feet and up again, no longer beaming.

Very softly I said, “I'm not Johnny, I'm only Shell Scott, but—” Wham, the door slammed in my face. Feet went slap-slap back the way they'd come. What the hell? I leaned on the buzzer some more.

This time the door opened and a guy about five feet, eight inches tall came outside and glared up at me. The man was maybe thirty-five, wearing vivid swim trunks and carrying a highball glass. He was six inches shorter than I, but no more than ten pounds under my 205. He was built like a .45 automatic, and he was loaded.

“Johnny, huh?” he said thickly, then he dropped his highball glass onto the cement with a crash, and socked me on the chin with his right hand, and knocked me clear down those six steps onto the driveway. “The hell with you, Johnny,” he said. The door slammed again. Behind him.

I started to get up, then changed my mind. That short egg packed a powerful punch, and all the scenery looked fractured. I fumbled in my coat for cigarettes, got a weed lit, and propped an elbow under me while I dragged smoke into my lungs, wondering. Less than an hour ago Dolly had phoned me from here and said, “Come on, Scotty boy, you come on out here ri’ now. Bes’ li'l ol’ party you ever did see. You got my pers'nal invitation.” And so on. Naturally I had dropped everything and headed for Malibu. She had convinced me that I would be welcome. Welcome. Maybe Dolly had been out of her mind.

A girl's voice near me said, “Boy! I thought I was drunk. Whoo. You better go home."

“I just got here.” I glanced up.

She was wearing a censorably brief bathing suit and from this angle didn't look half bad. I decided that from any angle she wouldn't look half bad. She also had long red hair and blue eyes.

“What are you doing down there on the ground?” she asked me.

“I'm resting, stupid.” I felt ugly.

She squatted on her heels and looked bleary-eyed at me.

“Hi,” she said. “I'm Betty. You must be awful tired."

She was a gorgeous babe, but obviously no great shakes for brains. I got to my feet, went up the steps and rang the bell. Nothing happened. I banged on the door and the babe standing down there in the driveway said, “Why'nt you turn the doorknob?"

“Yeah, sure,” I said. Talk about stupid babes. I turned the doorknob. The door opened. I laughed sourly and went inside. Out in back somewhere the whooping and yelling continued. I headed that way, found a door and went through it. Ten or twelve guys and gals were standing around drinking and yakking, and a lot of noise was coming from somewhere closer to the ocean. A path led through trees and shrubbery toward the sounds, but I couldn't see very far because the grounds were so lushly planted and overgrown.

In this group, however, was the short, bad-tempered egg who had clobbered me. I walked up to him, tapped his shoulder with my index finger, and when he turned I tapped him on the chin with my right fist. He got all loose and his eyes rolled a bit and he fell down.

Everybody stared at me. Several of the people seemed shocked, a few merely interested. One guy remarked, to nobody in particular, “Some party, huh?” They were all horribly drunk. Another guy, a tall, gangling fellow with sandy hair and a wire-stiff mustache stepped toward me.

“Oh, I say,” he said mushily, “that was a rotten thing to do.” He was British, and sounded like Charles Laughton gargling with Schweppes Quinine Water. “That's not quite the way to treat our host, what?” he said cheerfully.

“What? He's the host?"

“Yes, host, old man. Well, toodle-oo.” He wandered off, down the shrub-lined pathway toward all the commotion.

I looked at the guy on the ground. This might ruin the party for me, but I wasn't sorry I'd popped him. A big ruby ring on his finger had left a lump on my chin larger than the ruby. Somebody behind me said, “Well, well."

It was the blonde who'd been looking for Johnny. She was still barefooted, but now wearing a red and green sarong. The blonde hair was shoulder length, her eyes were huge and brown, and she looked very good to me. Again.

She nodded at the guy on the ground. “Did you do that?"

“Yeah. But I had a reason."

“I should hope so.” It took her only a minute to bring sanity into this madness. Her name was Elaine, she said, and this was just one of the rather wild parties that L. Franklin Brevoort—now unconscious—held here every weekend. He'd been tossing the parties for a year, and this was a big one—pig and poi, dancing girls, Hawaiian music, all the trimmings.

Elaine went on, “I can't stand him. Who can? Oh, you can't blame L. Franklin maybe—everybody calls him L. Franklin—considering that old mace he's got for a wife."

“That old what?"

“Mace. A kind of battle-ax. She's pretty gruesome.” You had to be careful not to let L. Franklin get you alone, Elaine told me, because he was a regular old rip. “I'm surprised somebody hasn't shot him,” she said, “the way he's always going around reaching for everybody's women. He's sure a rip. Boy, was he mad when the bell rang and I took off."

“I know. He came outside and knocked me down."

She laughed. “Well, I'm going back to the party. Stick around. I'll save you a hula.” She actually performed a short but action-packed one right there, then grinned and walked away.

That did it. If everybody here was crazy, this was no time for me to be sane. I started after Elaine, noting that somebody was pouring water on L. Franklin. A minute later I stepped into a big clearing filled with plenty of interesting movement. Approximately fifty people, most in swim suits, trunks, bikinis, were flitting in and out among the trees, many of them dancing. Four brown-skinned guys in bright lava-lavas were playing a kind of Hawaiian mambo on stringed things and drums, and the place was a hot rainbow of color. A fifth brown-skinned man was swinging a wicked-looking sword around and jumping over it as if he was trying to hack off his feet.

On my right was a 200-pound block of ice, its center hollowed out and filled with purple punch. A redheaded tomato dipped one of the handy coconut cups into the punch, drank and let out a yip, shaking her head and running out her tongue. It was Betty, the genius I'd met in front of the house.

I walked over beside her, had a cup of the stuff and let out a yip myself. It tasted like fermented cobra venom. Betty didn't say anything, just smiled and wrapped her arms around me and we started dancing. Then she stopped. “You scratch,” she said, looking up at me. “Haven't you got a suit?"

“Sure. In the car."

“Get it. And hurry. We'll have a dance, and a swim."

I was back in two minutes, and it was really much better without scratching. After a couple of dances, Betty said, “Come on,” and ran toward the beach. I followed her down the path and caught up with her at the sand.

On our right, flames leaped from a big pit dug in the sand. “What's the bonfire for?” I asked Betty.

“That's where they'll cook the pig pretty quick,” she said. “An imu, they call it. Big deal. Crazy dinner later, poi and raw seaweed or something, all kinds of jazz.” She raced into the water.

When we got back to the clearing the music and dancing were even wilder. It was almost dark, and somebody grabbed Betty and whirled her away. I went over to the punch bowl and had a drink as a woman older than most here, a gal about forty, stepped up beside me and dipped half a coconut into the purple venom. She gulped down the drink, gulped another slug immediately after it. She weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, was maybe five-eight, and had a flat, rather unpleasant horse-like face. “Dance with me,” she said. “I'm Mrs. Brevoort. I'm the hostess, so you have to dance with me."

She was soused to the eardrums. I said, “Sure,” and latched onto her. We took about four steps and she stopped.

“I don't want to dance,” she said. “Go wiggle with those naked women."

I swung around eagerly, looking for the naked women, then realized she'd referred to the gals in bikinis. Mrs. Brevoort's eyes were getting glassy. She waved her hand at me and said, “Go away. Go wiggle wi’ nake’ w'mn.” Then she hitched at her girdle and galloped off, tossing her head as though silently neighing.

If I'd let myself think about the episode, it might have ruined the party for me. And I'm a great guy for parties. So I had a drink instead. It was dark now, and the glow from the fire down on the beach was warm and red; a few Japanese lanterns had been lighted, and the yellow-red flame of Hawaiian torches flickered in the clearing. I wondered where L. Franklin was. But then I forgot about him. I was having too much fun to wonder about the host or hostess—it was a typical party. I never did see Dolly.

A couple of hours passed in a kind of Polynesian delirium. The music became more sensual, the dances wilder. Suddenly in front of me was a beautiful blonde, shaking all over like a plucked banjo string. It was Elaine. She came toward me going at least a hundred miles an hour, but making little forward progress, and I danced gayly to meet her. Soon we were on the edge of the crowd, next to the path leading toward the beach.

Elaine spun around and raced down the path. I ran after her, past the pit where huge hot coals now glowed. From the corner of my eye saw something that jarred me oddly, but I kept on running. Then I slowed and stopped, went back and looked down into the pit, heat bouncing against my face. It looked like a pig at first, not much like a man. It was a man, though. I heard Elaine laughing.

The guy was face down, but even face up he would have been unrecognizable, so horribly was he burned. Still sticking from his throat was the sharp metal spit that was to have been used for holding the pig. One arm was outflung and I could see the big ruby ring on his finger. My host.

“Come on! What's the matter?” It was Elaine.

I could barely see the dim white blur of her body outlined against the darkness of the sea. Behind her a comber broke with a sound like thunder.

Back in the house Elaine, puzzled and a bit annoyed with me, waited in another room while I phoned local Homicide. Then I joined her and we located the kitchen. I gulped hot coffee, found some roast beef in the refrigerator and made a thick, sloppy sandwich with an inch of meat between two slices of french bread. Then I grabbed a frying pan and big spoon and led Elaine back to the clearing, where people were still squealing and dancing.

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

“Hold the frying pan for me, will you?"

She shook her head in exasperation, grabbed the pan. I hit it vigorously with the spoon and yelled, “Chow time, everybody. Chow's on.” I walked around the clearing, munching on my sloppy sandwich and saying, “Chow, anybody?” to everybody. It didn't happen till I was almost at the punch bowl. Mrs. Brevoort's mulish face loomed beside me.

I said, “Hi. Wanna dance?” and nibbled at the beef. She eyed the sandwich, fascinated. “I got so starved I couldn't wait for everybody else,” I said. “Hope you don't mind, but I carved a little meat off that pig down there in the pit."

“You—what?” Her face was starting to get green.

“I was famished,” I said. “There's plenty more, though, Mrs. Brevoort. Would you like—"

Her mouth dropped open, her lips twitched, and her eyes rolled up in her head. Then she fainted. People around us kept dancing and going "Uuh!" and making Hawaiian noises.

Half an hour later the police had come and gone. They handled everything quietly and took Mrs. Brevoort away. She spilled everything in the first few minutes: that she knew her husband had only married her for her money, and that it was her money he used for these weekly parties at which he and everybody else ignored her. She caught him on the beach tonight with a girl, waited until the girl left, then swatted L. Franklin over the head with the spit and stuck it through his throat. She dragged him to the pit and rolled him onto the coals.

Elaine said to me, “I still don't know why she fainted."

“She thought I'd made sandwiches of her hubby. She tossed him into the pig pit. She told the police she thought she could hide him there until she figured out what to do. She was all excited, and punch-drunk to boot. And she wasn't acting very logically, anyway; it was a crime of passion—she hated parties."

We were standing by the melting punch bowl, and a number of people were still dancing. Elaine said, “How in the world did you know Mrs. Brevoort did it?"

“I didn't. However, I had socked L. Franklin in front of numerous witnesses, so finding out whodunit, if I could, struck me as a capital idea. The rest was simple—since, clearly, only the person who'd killed him would have known what was cooking."

“And I thought you were crazy."

“Well, I'll admit it was a bit drastic. But I had to take drastic action or the cops might have hauled this whole gang to the hoosegow. And I couldn't let that happen.” I grinned at her. “It would have ruined this fine party."

She smiled. “That's right, both the host and hostess are gone, aren't they?"

“Uh-huh, they took L. Franklin away, too. So there's nobody to call this thing off—why, it may last for weeks!"

“But will you?” Elaine smiled a smile that strongly hinted she wouldn't run lickety-split and said, “Race you to the water.” Then she whirled and ran.

I gave her a little head start—not very much—and ran after her.

Squeeze Play

Pretty Willis was a killer as proud of his appearance as of his gun, and he had no use for private detectives unless he was hitting them over the head. Consequently he had no use at all for one Shell Scott. But at four o'clock Tuesday afternoon he barged into my office in the Hamilton Building and said flatly, “Get your coat, Scott. You're leaving.” It was an order.

I was watching guppies in the aquarium on top of my bookcase, so all I knew at first was that there was a nasty-voiced slob behind me. But I turned around, recognized him and said, “The hell you say. Bag your lip, Pretty."

His handsome face flushed. “You know who I am. You know better than to spring with a crack like that."

To Pretty both statements meant the same thing: If you knew who he was, you talked softly to him. We'd never met before, socially or unsocially, but I knew a lot of things about him and all of them except his appearance were nauseating.

He was handsome enough in a tortured sort of way. He stood almost my height, six-two, but I had twenty-five pounds over his one-eighty—not counting the gun which would be under his coat. Besides the gun and his weight-lifter's build, he had porcelain caps on his teeth, jet-black hair the precise color of Tintair number fourteen, and carefully manicured, too-shiny nails. His eyebrows were dark and neat, the space between them plucked as bare and empty as I imagined his mind was. Pretty Willis was possibly the vainest man in Los Angeles—but also one of the toughest. He'd been in a number of brawls, and was still pretty only because he could take care of himself.

He said deliberately, “Snap it up. Hackman wants to see you. We hear you been looking for Leroy Crane."

He was right. Mrs. Leroy Crane had been my client for about twenty-four hours now. She wanted me to find her husband—or, perhaps, late husband. Leroy was four days late. He worked—or had worked—as Hackman's accountant, so I figured Leroy was already starting to decompose.

Hackman was Wallace Hackman, Crook in capitals, with his fat fingers in everything from dope to sudden death. He was not only ruthless but stupid, and would never have got as high in the rackets as he had except for one thing: he didn't trust any man alive. He wouldn't give you the correct time if he could help it, and he didn't even trust his right-hand man, Pretty Willis, behind his back. His complicated little hierarchy was a lot like a communist club: crooks watching crooks who in turn watched other crooks, and all reporting to the top, Hackman.

Complicated, maybe, but as a result nobody had ever got enough on Hackman to haul him into court, much less put him behind bars. His previous accountant, who by the nature of his work would naturally have learned more than anybody else about the boss’ business, had simply disappeared a couple years back—after which Leroy Crane got the well-paid, unhealthy job. It seemed likely that Hackman wouldn't want me to find Leroy.

Pretty Willis said, “Get a move on. Hack don't like to wait. And don't give me no more lip."

“You run along and pluck your eyebrows, Pretty,” I said. “Tell your boss I'll see him when and if I get time.” I wasn't exactly dying to see Hackman because a lot of times seeing Hackman and dying were practically the same thing.

Pretty walked up in front of me, stopped, started to say something and then strangled it in his throat. It's funny, but I wasn't thinking about much of anything except the best way to tie him up. I knew Pretty was handy with his hands—and feet and knees for that matter—but even if that was part of his business, it was also part of mine and had been from my Marine days down to here. I just wanted to be careful that I didn't mark him up. He would be mad enough at me for simply clobbering him, but there was no point in driving him insane. His face was to him what soft lingerie or French postcards are to some other guys; it was his fetish; he was in love with it. If I mashed his face, he'd kill me when he could, if he could. Actually, the best way to handle Pretty was with a gun, and I glanced toward my desk where the .38 Colt Special and harness were draped over my coat.

I learned one thing for sure: You should never take your eyes off a guy like Pretty. While I was looking toward my gun, he knocked me down. I'd expected him to chat a bit more, but I had hurt his feelings so he just hauled off and caught me not only off guard, but behind the ear. I landed on my fanny, more surprised to be down there on the floor than hurt, and I was too surprised for too long.

Pretty swung his leg forward and the pointed toe of his shoe went into my stomach like a meal. It caught me in the solar plexus and I bent forward, grabbing for his leg, my sight blurring as tiny red and black spots danced in the air around me, and I got a grip on his foot and twisted. I did all of it just like the book says, but the book didn't say what happened when you were dizzy, paralyzed, and couldn't twist a wet noodle.

But I found out. I knew Pretty was way up there above me, that he'd be swinging his gun down toward my head, but it was like knowing the earth is moving; I couldn't do a thing to stop it —

When I came to I was on a soft couch, though I didn't realize even that at first. My head ached, and I couldn't remember what had happened or why my head should be throbbing. I felt my skull and found a large bump. There was a clue. Then I remembered and opened my eyes. A few feet from me, in an overstuffed chair large enough to hold his overstuffed bulk, was Hackman. That meant I must be in his suite on the top floor of L.A.'s new Hotel Statler.

“Hello, Hackman,” I said. “Hello, you sonofabitch."

He chuckled. A lot of the top racket boys are pleasant, personable men, but not this oily, pudgy, baby-faced and round-bellied slug. I shut my eyes and shook my head to clear fog from my brain. I knew Hackman would want to talk about Leroy Crane, and I thought back to what Crane's wife had told me.

Yesterday Ann Crane, a cute little wide-eyed doll, had phoned me and I'd gone to see her. She'd cried and told me that three nights before, husband Leroy had phoned her and said he wouldn't see her for a few days.

He had a big deal cooking and would make up for the separation—their first—with mink coats and diamonds. She hadn't heard from him since.

She'd convinced me not only that she had no idea what he'd been talking about, but that she was ready to crack up. I got a photograph of thin-faced, rather homely Leroy, learned all I could about him, including what his job was with Hackman, and through it all were her tears. Tears out of brown eyes, trailing down over soft cheeks, glistening on curved red lips.

After reaching an agreement about my fee I'd gone back to the office and put my lines out, let it be known in the right places that I was looking for Leroy. And then in had walked Pretty Willis.

I opened my eyes and said, “Get it off your chest, Hackman."

He glanced toward the door. “Wait outside, boys."

The “boys” were Pretty Willis and a little hood named Shadow who was so skinny and dishonest that he always weighed himself with his gun on. He must have helped Pretty lug me up here. When I saw Pretty, anger exploded inside me and I got to my feet, wobbling a bit. But before I could take a step toward him both men had gone out the door and closed it. I started after them but Hackman said, “Sit down. All I gotta do is grunt and you've had it."

I told him to shut up, but I sat down. He was right. If I'd had a gun, though, he might have been wrong. Hackman wheezed and jiggled, shifting from one monstrous buttock to the other, then he said, “Scott, I know you don't like me. And I got no love for you, neither. But we don't have to like each other to cooperate."

“Get to the point."

“I want Crane myself. In case you get to him before me, I want him, see? I can make it worth your while."

“Nuts. I wouldn't give you a drink in the desert. I wouldn't even give you conversation if you hadn't asked me so politely.” I went on from there. I watched him get angry, watched his oily face shade from white into pink, and when I finished he knew for sure I wasn't going to give him a damned thing except trouble.

Suddenly he said, “Shut your face, Scott. And blow. Blow fast before you start leaking someplace besides your mouth.” He leaned forward and said, “But understand this, Scott. I want Crane myself. And I mean to get him. You get in my way an inch, move one inch out of line, and I'll see that you get dead."

Some of the hot anger drained out of me because it finally had occurred to me that this was a strange conversation we were having if Leroy Crane were alive. And if Hackman was still looking for him, he almost surely was alive.

I thought about that for a moment, then said slowly, “So that's it. Crane powdered and now you're sweating."

In his own cute way he told me I was constipated. Then he went on, “You drop it. Stop looking for Crane. Forget you ever heard of him.” He didn't make any more specific threats, but his voice was lower and the words came out like ice cubes. I started to say something else but Hackman said, “Get out,” then raised his voice and shouted, “Pretty!"

Pretty Willis came inside followed by Shadow. There weren't any guns in sight, but I knew there would be if I wiggled. Hackman said, “Beat it, Scott. Don't forget nothing I told you."

I walked to the door and as I passed the two thugs I said pointedly, “Be seeing you. Pretty.” He showed me his too-white teeth and chuckled, “I'm panicked.” He and Shadow followed me to the outer door. Shadow opened it and I went through, then started to turn around for a last word. I didn't make it. While Pretty was behind me he must have taken his gun out. I assume that's what he slammed against the back of my skull.

I stumbled forward, fell to my hands and knees and there was barely enough strength in my arms to hold me up off the floor. Laughter grated behind me. I guess it took me about a minute to get to my feet and turn around, and by that time I was alone with my insanity. I left, went back to the office, found my gun still there and strapped it on, and returned to the Statler lobby before even a semblance of reason returned.

Half a dozen of Hackman's boys were scattered around in the chairs and divans. One of them stood up and the rest looked at me, grinning. There wasn't a thing I could do about it. I had been knocked down, kicked, threatened and sapped, and if I wanted to keep on living I had to take it—at least for a while longer.

But from then on I stopped sleeping except for short naps in my Cad or slumped over my office desk. I didn't go near my apartment. I looked for Leroy Crane. Every ex-con, every tipster and stoolie I'd ever had anything to do with got word one way or another from me that they could name their price if they gave me a lead to Crane. I saw Ann again, told her that her husband was at least alive, and that I'd find him, but I learned nothing new from her except that she was the cryingest babe I had ever seen. I kept my eyes peeled for any of Hackman's pals, and I looked for Pretty as hard as I looked for Leroy. For two long days nothing happened.

On Thursday afternoon my office phone rang and a woman's soft, lilting voice said, “Mr. Scott? I can take you to Leroy Crane. For a hundred dollars."

“You just made a hundred. Where and when?"

“Right now in room sixteen. Porter Hotel on L.A. Street."

“Is Crane there?"

“No, stupid. I am. Bring the C-note. Incidentally, my name's Billie."

I hung up and glared at the phone. Billie could be on the level, and probably was, but I didn't like it. A hundred dollars didn't seem like much payment for her information.

It was one of those mangy hotels on Los Angeles Street a block from Main. On the wrong side of Main. Somebody had thrown up in the narrow entrance at street level; worn wooden stairs shuddered as I walked up them into a dimly-lighted hallway that smelled like dead mice. The door of room sixteen looked as if it would turn into powder and termites if I knocked hard on it, so I tapped gently with my left hand, right hand curled around the .38's butt in my coat pocket. The door opened and I stared.

This was almost like getting kicked in the stomach again. It would be impossible to describe her exactly because there aren't any three-dimensional words, but she looked so warm and wild and wonderful that my mouth went down and then up like a small slow elevator while I listened to a voice like a breeze saying, “Come on in. I'm Billie. You bring the money?"

“Yeah. Hello. Yeah. I brought the money. Uh..."

The “Uh...” was because Billie wasn't wearing much of anything. She had on a robe which reached nearly to the floor and covered every inch of skin from the neck down, but it was thin enough to suit me, and that is pretty goddamned thin. She held the robe together with both hands—there was so much to cover that it took both hands—and stepped aside as I walked in.

I glanced around to make sure we were alone, then turned to look at the gal again. She was tall, with white skin as smooth as smoke, with mist-gray eyes, with long black hair and pleasantly full lips and things. She let me look, even seemed to help me a little, and I asked her, “Where do we go from here?"

“Nowhere if you don't have the hundred. Hand it over and I'll take you to Crane."

“Not in that outfit.” I took two fifty-dollar bills from my pocket.

She laughed, walked past me and flopped on a rickety bed, plucking the two fifties from my hand as she went by. I was just starting to wonder what such a choice, expensive-looking tomato was doing in this dump, and where she thought she was going in that robe and nothing else, and I might have saved myself some trouble if I'd continued thinking like that. Only right then was when she flopped on the bed.

I'm sure she hadn't planned it quite the way it happened, because the bed springs broke. There was a great deal of activity for about two seconds there, and that was long enough for the guy to come up behind me. I hadn't been worried about anybody getting behind me because only the gal and I had been in the room and there weren't any adjoining doors—just the front door. Just the one I had my back to. Maybe I should have worried about that door behind me, considering what a phony deal this now seemed to be, but I was stupid. And if you were staring open-mouthed at a babe flying through the air with arms and legs waving at you, and bouncing to the sound of twanging springs, and no longer clutching a robe which had been thin enough to begin with, you, too, would be stupid.

But what tipped me was that the gal was paying no attention to either my face or her nudity, but was looking at a spot past my left shoulder. And maybe I heard something. I don't know now. I just know I ducked and dropped as the blow fell, and something jarred against my skull, glancing off and not getting me squarely enough to knock me out. It hurt, and it dazed me, but I still had enough sense left to reach behind me as I went down, get one hand on a trousers-covered leg and yank.

The leg slipped out of my hand as the guy fell, but I flipped over in time to see him sprawling on his back. He rolled over and jumped up again as I got my feet under me and stood up straight. It was Pretty Willis. I should have known. Every time a guy came up behind me and batted me it was Pretty Willis. Only this time I was facing him, looking at him.

The sap he'd used was on the floor, and he didn't have a gun in his hand—but he dug under his coat for one and I jumped for him. I slammed into him and my weight jarred him back against the wall as I drove my right fist forward, knuckles projecting to dig into the soft spot in his belly. Somehow his elbow got in the way, and then the hard heel of his other hand crashed under my chin, snapping my head back. I staggered slightly but in the same moment I sliced my right hand up in a tight arc, felt its edge crack against the bony structure of his face. I caught my balance, turned toward him and saw a trickle of blood under his nose, his lips pulled back tight over white teeth. He swung a hand at me and when I jerked my head aside his other fist came out of nowhere and exploded against my chin.

At least he hit me so hard that if felt like an explosion. All the colors in the room blended into a shimmering gray for a moment as I fell backwards. The floor thudded against my back. Then my vision cleared enough so I could see Pretty still bent over from the force of his swing, see him straighten up and leap toward me.

While I wasn't in the best shape of my life I could have rolled out of the way. But I didn't. I didn't even start to. Pretty had already started to dive toward me, hands extended, before I jerked my legs up off the floor and toward my chest, thinking even as I did it about the hell this bastard had given me. Then I drove my legs forward and my feet burst through his outstretched hands as if they were paper; my hard leather heels jarred into his face; and Pretty wasn't pretty any more. His body jerked, hung for a moment in the air, then dropped limply to the floor. Red stain flowed from his cheek, covered exposed white bone, seeped into the carpet.

I glanced over my shoulder at the girl, who was still on the bed, then I felt Pretty's neck to see if it was broken. It wasn't. I'll never know why it wasn't. I got up, walked to the bed and stood over Billie. She licked her lips, swallowed, stared up at me.

“Spill it,” I said.

She shook her head, said nothing. I bunched her black hair in one hand. “Give me some straight answers or wind up like him. Take your pick, beautiful."

She bit her lips but didn't answer. Then she looked at Pretty. He lay on his back, face toward us. I knew I couldn't slug Billie around, but the expression of fright on her face gave way slowly to revulsion, and that gave me an idea.

I grabbed her, pulled her off the bed and twisted her arms behind her, then shoved her across the room, forced her to kneel by the unconscious man. She struggled to get away but I held her firmly and pressed her face closer and closer to his. When I let her go there was a smudge of blood on her cheek. She wiped it off, stared at her stained fingers, then spoke, trying to keep the sickness out of her voice, keep from actually becoming sick.

I was lucky to be talking to Billie because Hackman hadn't trusted even Pretty with the details I wanted to hear. But she knew it all—Billie was Hackman's woman. And she told me all of it. Leroy Crane had found out that Hackman had ordered the death of his previous accountant when said accountant learned too much about the boss. For more than a year now. Crane had kept a detailed record of every financial move Hackman had made—including taxes Hackman had paid and what he should have paid. Crane had originally started preserving his info as a guarantee of his own safety when and if Hackman decided that accountant Crane, too, had to go. It had started out like that but had turned into the old squeeze play, a shakedown.

Crane, with his typed information supported by a mass of documents and figures, had phoned Hackman—on that night when Crane hadn't showed up at home—and told Hackman he could have the file of information for a cool half million; otherwise Crane would turn the dope over to the income-tax boys and settle for the “informer's fee,” the informant's share of delinquent taxes collected—while Hackman would wind up in the federal clink. After telling Hackman he would phone again in a week. Crane had hung up.

So Hackman had to get those papers, even if he had to pay a half-million dollars for them. But now he was trying to find Crane and work him over, beat the location of the papers out of him, then put a bullet into his brain. Crane, knowing what would happen to him if he were found, had dropped completely out of sight.

I asked Billie why Pretty had jumped me and she kept talking. “Hack knows now that you've been seeing a lot of Mrs. Crane. He didn't know that at first. This is too important for him to take any chance of a slip when he grabs her. So he had to make sure you were out of—"

“When he what? Grabs her?"

“Crane has the papers, but maybe he thinks more of his wife than he does of a half-million dollars.” The trace of a smile curved her smooth lips as she said, “Crane must have thought nobody would bother his wife, at least not when he had all that stuff on the boss. But Crane was wrong if he did."

“When?” I said. “When are they—"

That slight smile again stopped me. “Oh,” she said slowly, “they probably have her by now."

I turned and ran for the door, jumping over Pretty. I was clear down on the street and in my Cad before I thought of what it meant to leave him back there, unconscious but soon to be awake—and looking at his face. He was a little psycho anyway, and now he'd go off the deep end, crazy mad. He'd do his damndest to kill me, but there wasn't time to go back. There wasn't time for anything but Ann.

There wasn't even time for Ana. When I reached her home she was gone. The door was ajar and a wrinkled carpet, a tipped-over end table were mute signs of a struggle.

It was four o'clock, Thursday afternoon. On Friday afternoon, at three o'clock, the party started coming to a head. I spent those intervening twenty-three hours without sleep, and I did everything I could to find Ann or Leroy, with no success. I looked for Pretty and Billie but didn't find them; I did find Hackman holed up in the Statler with half a dozen thugs around him, and not being suicidal I left him alone. There was one way left, and it was all I had so I took it.

For six hours now I'd been parked near the Statler where I could watch the exits. From what I knew of Hackman I was sure of one thing: he would, one way or another, get his hands on Crane's file of papers, but Hackman would also make sure they were his own hands. The only man alive with information which could put Hackman in prison was Crane. If Hackman let one of his underlings pick up the papers, that underling would then have in his hands enough to put the boss in jail or else squeeze him dry—and there was a very good chance the other boys around Hackman would squeeze a lot harder than Crane. I knew Hackman wouldn't trust any of his hoodlums with his right name if he could avoid it; he sure as hell wouldn't hand them the end of the noose around his neck. At least that's the way I had it figured; that was what I was counting on. If I kept my eye on Hackman, didn't lose him, I'd be in at the finish.

At three P. M., it started. Pretty Willis arrived.

He parked in a no-parking zone and ran into the hotel. I almost missed him, because I was watching for any sign of Hackman, and I would have missed Pretty if it hadn't been for his face. It was swathed in white bandages and he looked like something out of a horror picture as he ran limping across the sidewalk. Two minutes later Pretty came out—with Hackman. They drove away and I tailed them to Forty-Sixth Street, to a rooming house. They went inside, came back to their car with Shadow, the skinny hood. And with Ann. They drove to Broadway and I followed, keeping a car between them and me, and the farther they went the more puzzled I got. Shadow drove through the business district, turned right beyond First, swung back into Main and parked squarely in front of the City Hall. I didn't get it, but I double-parked a few yards behind them, taking a chance they'd spot me, because whatever was happening, I wanted to be close. Shadow stayed in the car with Ann; Pretty and Hackman got out and started walking up the stone steps of the Main Street entrance of City Hall. And then it made sense.

Standing between high cement columns before the huge entrance was Leroy Crane, tall and thin, thin-faced, haggard, with a leather briefcase in one hand. He looked past the two men, toward the car, toward Ann. At the top of the steps the three men talked, argued; Crane shook his head, pointed toward the car.

It was clear enough now. Hackman was trading Leroy's wife for the stuff in the briefcase, getting the noose off his neck without spending a buck—and Leroy was the guy in the squeeze now. But Leroy was playing it smart. He was going to make the trade, but not in a place where he could be shot in the back. Behind Crane in the City Hall lobby was a guard, a cop was standing halfway down the block, in the building was everything from the Mayor to office workers to firemen to hundreds of policemen.

After some more argument Hackman turned and waved to Shadow. He and the girl got out of the car. Ann walked a few feet away, looking all the time at her husband. I got out of the Cad, grabbed my gun and started walking toward them, tightness swelling in my chest, stomach knotting. For a moment their figures were still, as if frozen. There seemed no movement at all and none of them had yet seen me. Then Hackman took the briefcase from Crane, looked inside and pawed briefly through its contents, shut it and gripped it tightly as he and Pretty started down the steps. Shadow walked rapidly toward the car and Ann started running toward the big entrance and her husband.

It was as if a rigid tableau had dissolved into separate lines of movement, except for the still figure of Crane, standing motionless and looking toward Ann. And then came the explosion; then it happened; then Main Street blew up in our faces.

Hackman spotted me.

He stopped, reached out and clutched Pretty's arm. From twenty feet away and below him on the sidewalk I could see his fat, oily face get white. Pretty turned his bandaged head and stared at me, his eyes wide above the strips of gauze and tape. Hackman's mouth stretched open and he thrust both hands toward me, pulling his head into his neck, fat cheeks jiggling. But not Pretty, not that crazy bastard. All the hate boiled up in Pretty and overflowed when he saw me, and his mashed face twitched beneath the bandages as his hand went under his coat.

I yelled at him, told him to stop, but he didn't hear me or just plain didn't give a damn. I even let him get the gun in his hand, bring it out from under his coat, but when sunlight gleamed on the .45's rapidly swinging barrel, there wasn't any choice for me.

The first slug from my .38 caught him high on the chest and I squeezed the trigger again as he staggered just enough so my second shot missed him and the slug caromed off one of the high cement columns fronting City Hall. Pretty convulsively triggered his .45, but by then the gun was pointing down at the sidewalk. I heard the bullet crack viciously against the walk and whine away as I fired the third shot from my Colt. It was the last shot, too, because it caught him in the throat and diced the jugular cleanly.

You've got to see something like that to believe it. You wouldn't think the red fountain of a man's blood would squirt so far through the air, leave such a long, wide, snakelike stream against the cement, a stream that spread wider and uglier even as Pretty fell into it. He hit the cement with his side, rolled over onto his face and sprawled across two of the steps, awkward, puppet-like, very, messily dead.

I thought a slug had caught Hackman, because he stumbled and fell down the steps quivering like a life-size mound of Jello, but from the corner of my eye I saw him reach bottom squirming, face down, hands wrapped around the top of his head. He was just scared, sweating plasma.

And then there was nothing but cops. They came from everywhere except out of the sky. There were uniformed cops, plain-clothes cops, cops from Robbery and Homicide and Forgery and maybe even the Juvenile division. There were cops milling about, and possibly jumping up and down, and sirens and squad cars converging, and this was for sure the damnedest commotion ever seen on lower Main Street. Well, what can you expect when you start shooting up City Hall?

Somewhere in there a policeman on my right raised a gun toward me and I swung around yelling as he fired. The slug went past me and I looked over my shoulder to see Shadow, a red stain on his chest, gun falling from his hand and clanking against the sidewalk just before Shadow fell too. There was a blurred glimpse of Ann clinging to Leroy on one of the middle steps, of uniforms, of shouting red faces; and one guy with halitosis got his face close to mine and swore at me, and I swore.

It might have been a minute or it might have been ten, but then the landscape sighed and settled, people stopped milling. Main Street settled down. There was much jawing and yakking and explaining, and cops looked at the papers in Leroy's briefcase and beamed happily; and there was weeping because naturally Ann was bawling away as usual, only this time it was different.

And everybody was hauled away, including me for an hour after which somebody patted me on the back and told me to get some sleep. I got in a word with Ann, alone now because her husband was in a cell, and I told her Leroy wouldn't get off scot-free but it shouldn't be bad, and she cried and thanked me.

I went out of City Hall free as a bird and walked to my car. A man was mopping up red stain from the big cement steps. I headed for home, for sleep, and on the way I thought about the case, about Hackman. He'd given me a lot of trouble, but now that it was over I actually felt sorry for him. Where he was going he'd want a lot of things, miss a lot of things—but most of all he was going to miss Billie.

But, then, she was a woman almost any man would miss. And I remembered her standing in the doorway, mist-gray eyes in her soft white face, a voice like whispering winds, a shape—a shape —

Come to think of it, she still owed me a hundred bucks.

Butcher

If you've been around Los Angeles much, you know that desolate, unlighted strip of highway, Chavez Ravine Road, that stretches from Adobe Street to Elysian Park. It's solitary and lonely enough in the daytime.

Wednesday night about eight p.m. I swung off Adobe Street, headed for Hollywood and home. Things had been slow for over a week at the office of Sheldon Scott, Investigations, so I'd closed up early and spent the afternoon jawing with the guys at City Hall, then stopped off on Adobe for a beer. I was about half a mile down Chavez Ravine Road when I saw the dog.

It was a big, mangy-looking mongrel sniffing a dirty white blob at the road's edge. In my headlights the blob looked like something wrapped in newspaper, part of the paper darkly stained.

I kept on, angling toward Sunset, but that brown-stained paper stuck in my mind. It was a sort of creepy night to begin with; thick clouds were massed overhead blotting out the moon and stars, though it hadn't yet started to rain. Thunder rumbled softly far away and the air was heavy, damp.

When I hit Sunset, the sight and sound of all the cars, instead of making me forget that thing I'd seen, brought it even more clearly into my mind. I turned around and drove back. The dog ran a few steps away and squatted close to the ground when I parked. Leaving the Cad's headlights on I walked to the newspaper-wrapped bundle, looked at the mud smears on it—and at another brown stain. Then I gripped a corner of the paper and unwrapped it from the thing inside.

I didn't know what it was at first. But two minutes later, using the phone in a nearby house, I was talking to my good friend, Phil Samson, Captain of Central Homicide. “Sam, this is Shell. Get somebody out here on Chavez Ravine Road. I think I've found a—a leg."

“Damn,” he said. “Another one."

“Yeah.” This was number three. Three murders, parts of three dismembered bodies—three that we knew about. Sam was swearing. I told him where I was and hung up.

There were two others with me in room 42 at City Hall. Samson, a big pink-faced guy with a jaw like a boulder and a black unlighted cigar clamped in his strong teeth; and bald, brush-browed Louis from the Vice Squad. This was in Homicide's lap, but the Vice Squad is interested in murders that show the work of a twisted mind.

We'd been kicking the case around and anyone eavesdropping would have thought there was a little respect for the dead here. They'd have been wrong. In any large police headquarters death becomes, finally, so common that it's treated more casually, more flippantly, than by most people, and here in L. A. Homicide the boys had got to calling this particular killer The Butcher.

Louis, the Vice Squad Lieutenant, poured more coffee into my paper cup and I said to him, “Lou, you're the psychologist. What the hell kind of guy would cut them up?"

He raised a shaggy eyebrow and patted his bald skull. “Two kinds. The practical guy, because it's easier to get rid of an arm or leg than a body; and the nut. The nut likes it, gets a charge. This one's a nut."

“Why not practical?"

“Because the same guy did it. Three times is getting damned unpractical. At least it looks like the same guy, right, Sam?"

Samson bit into his black cigar. “So far. They're still working on it.” He grabbed his phone and growled into it for a minute, then hung up. He looked at me. “Young girl again, about eighteen, five-two, hundred-ten pounds, blonde. Damn.” He banged a big horny fist against his desk top and said, “All that they give me from a leg. Why in hell can't they look in a test tube and come up with her name and who killed her?” He swore. “Same guy. This one had been frozen, too. Cut up while she was frozen stiff."

Louis perched on Sam's desk and leaned toward me. “Add that in. Shell, if you want to know what kind of guy. We get the dregs, chum. And the hell of it is you can't tell it by looking at them. Take a number from one to two million, and that's our boy. Could be you, me, even Harrington Harrington the Fourth. And it always gets worse, like a bug multiplying in the blood. First maybe a pin to stick a woman with, then a rape, then you find a leg.” He shrugged. “They run amuck, but they look O. K.; they run amuck in their minds."

The conversation drifted to the Black Dahlia; to Albert Fish, who killed a little girl, cut her up, and ate her flesh—cooked with carrots and onions and bacon; to some of the things that never hit print and that are difficult to believe even though you know they've happened. When the morning watch came on at midnight I left, and drove home on brightly-lit Sunset.

In the morning, I couldn't get the murder out of my thoughts, I'd dreamed a crawly cold-sweat dream, and awakened with the picture of that severed limb in my mind. Ex-Marine, long-time detective, I'd seen worse things, especially in the war; but even the mass insanity of war didn't seem quite so personal or frightening as a guy who would kill a kid, freeze her, and cut her up.

Just before nine a.m., when I was getting ready to leave for my office, Samson phoned. Some more of the girl had been found. “Thought you'd want to know, Shell,” he said. “Rolled prints off the hand and made identification. Judith Geer."

“Oh, no, Sam. Not one of those sweet little gals."

“Yeah. Sister listed this Judith with Missing Persons two days ago. Thought maybe she'd been hurt, hit by a car or something."

I told him to hang on a minute while I lit a cigarette. The identification had rocked me. I knew both of the gals he was talking about. Judith Geer—the dead one—and Norma Geer, her sister, worked at a Carpenter's Drive-In where I'd had innumerable hamburgers and beers, and kidded with both girls a lot; they had shared an apartment on Melrose.

I thought about Judy, little and cute and blonde as sunshine, trotting out to my car and laughing with me over nonsense, and I thought of that ugly unreal thing I'd found last night. I said, “Sam, are you sure? It doesn't seem possible—"

“Hell, yes, we're sure. Look, you knew them pretty well, didn't you?"

“Just to yak with. I know their names, and they know mine, and we had a lot of laughs. That's about all. Hell, Sam, what kind of a sonofabitch would...” I let it die.

He said, “If you know the sister well enough to drop in later you might pick up something we haven't got. You know, you're unofficial, no uniform."

“Yeah. I'm hamburger with onions and two beers. Sure, Sam."

“We want this one, Shell, the worst way. The guy must be clear off now, gone, nuts; Christ knows what he'll do next."

“Uh-huh. You get anything, give me a buzz. I'll see you later."

Nothing happened at the office except the phone rang once. It was a gal with a thready voice asking that I please hurry to her address because tiny saucer-shaped men were on her roof, screeching down the chimney at her. I told her to call 2680 at City Hall: the police psycho detail; they got calls like that every day.

It wasn't funny. When I hung up a shiver ran over my spine again, and I swore, phoned Norma's place on Melrose. Norma said she was glad I'd called and, sure, come on over; she could use some company. She could use a few laughs, she said. She was trying to sound adult, brittle, not frightened. But she was seventeen, and she couldn't quite pull it off.

There weren't any laughs. Norma was scared, shocked; all through with crying for now, and white-faced scared. Tall and slim and blue-eyed, she sat with her legs curled under her in an easy chair. I could tell she was thinking that it might have been her instead of her sister, that maybe it might still be.

I tried to convince Norma that whoever had killed Judy would certainly stay clear of her, and I really opened my mouth and put my foot in it. I'd been thinking about the talk at Homicide last night, and for a moment I must have forgotten who I was talking to.

I said, “Hell, doll, we were talking about The Butcher last night, and it's not—"

Norma straightened up in her chair, rigid. I could have yanked out my tongue; she might not even know how Judy had been mutilated.

I started to apologize for my choice of words, but Norma interrupted, “It's all right. Shell. It just shocked me when you said butcher, because it made me think of Mr. Hecker."

“Who?"

“Mr. Hecker. He's our—butcher, where we get our meat."

“This Hecker,” I said slowly, “you know him very well?"

“Just from the market. Oh, he tried to date ... both of us, but naturally we wouldn't have anything to do with him."

“Why ‘naturally,’ honey?"

“He's an old guy—and he's married. Oh, he's sort of an ugly geek, and kind of funny, but we still wouldn't have had anything to do with a chaser like him. He's tried to date other girls around here, too."

“He go out with any that you know about?"

Norma shook her head, frowning. She described Hecker for me and told me his wife worked in the market with him. Finally I told Norma I'd keep in touch and left. Hecker's was only a block and a half down Melrose, so I walked. On the way I picked up a newspaper, just out, at a small store; the Judith Geer murder was on the front page.

Hecker's Market was kind of run down and needed a coat of paint. Inside, the meat case was on my left; shelves along the right wall held hams and canned goods; a couple frozen-food lockers stood before them. There weren't any other customers, and Hecker was behind the glass-fronted meat case. He turned to look at me as I came in.

Hecker was built like an ape. An inch or two shorter than me, he must have weighed 300 pounds, and his enormous wrists were nearly as big as my forearms. He was heavy-featured, with eyes that looked too round, too big, in a pasty-white and red-veined face. When I stopped before the meat display he said, “What you want?” in a deep voice that rumbled in his thick chest.

“Top sirloin,” I said.

He slid open the rear glass of the case and grabbed a steak, flopped it onto a paper on the scales. Behind him was an oversized meat block, pitted and stained; a lot of sawdust was on the floor, and dark stains were around the chopping block. Above the block a green-shaded light hung on a cord from the ceiling.

He slid the wrapped meat to me and I tossed the newspaper on the counter while I got out my wallet. Paying him I said, nodding at the paper, “Hell of a note, huh? That kid?"

I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, “What kid?” I pointed to the story. He picked up the paper and glanced at it. “Yeah.” His fingers left blood-marks on the newsprint.

I heard a noise behind me and looked over my shoulder as a woman walked toward us from the rear of the store. From Norma's description, I recognized her as Hecker's wife. She walked behind the meat counter and stood beside her husband.

Mrs. Hecker was a frail, plain-looking woman, bony and angular, wearing no makeup and with short dark hair matted on her head. She looked almost like a small wizened boy, standing there next to her huge, thickly-muscled husband.

I said to Hecker, “This Judy and her sister shopped here?"

He turned his head slowly to stare at me from the large too-white eyes. “Who'd you say you were?"

“Shell Scott.” I hadn't said.

“What you so gabby for, mister?"

I could feel a warm flush on my face and neck, but I pulled my wallet out again and flipped it open so he could see the photostat of my license.

“Cops,” he rumbled. “Geezus, all the crudding cops."

“Since the girls lived so close, I wondered if you ever noticed anybody hanging around them, following or watching them."

He grinned, showing square, too-short teeth, a film of yellow coloring them. “You didn't want no steak, did you?"

Before I could answer he walked from behind the meat counter and across the floor to the door of a walk-in refrigerator. Keys jangled as he unlocked a big padlock, then slid a heavy bolt back, flipped on a light and went inside; in a moment he came out with what looked like a whole half cow balanced on one of his heavy shoulders. Holding it with one upstretched hand he bolted and locked the door, then carried the beef back to the meat block, carried it effortlessly, big muscles swelling.

He dropped the beef with a sodden thud onto the block, picked up a long wide-bladed knife and conical stone, began sharpening the knife with a whispering grate, grate, grate of steel on stone, ignoring me.

I said, “You didn't answer my question. Might be you could help."

Without looking at me he said, “I don't know nothing about them. They bought meat here is all. Beat it.” The knife moved faster as he sharpened it, then he slid the stone into a metal bracket clamped on the block, ran the keen blade over the meat, sliced easily down to the bone.

I rephrased my question, asked it of Mrs. Hecker. She shook her head wordlessly, looking tired and nervous. In silence Hecker deftly sliced around the bone, put down the knife and picked up a massive cleaver, raised it over his head. He swung it in a swift arc and I heard it crack completely through the bone, bury its edge in the wood beneath. Then he turned and stared fixedly, soberly at me, still in silence. Finally he turned back to the block. I left.

Driving downtown in the Cad there was a tightness between my shoulder blades; all I had was a funny feeling about Hecker, a hunch, no real proof against him. But he had acted damned strange. And I kept seeing that knife rub on stone, hearing the grating sound, hearing the crack of a cleaver slicing bone. I went to Homicide.

Samson had his inevitable cigar going, so naturally there was a horrible smell in his office. I gave him the story of the last hour. “This guy's a bug,” I said to him. “He's non compos whatever, not at all pleasant. He could sure as hell stand a check."

Samson sighed, fumbled in his desk, found some papers and flipped through them. “Robert Hecker, fifty-two years old, married, no kids—he's been checked. Along with a hundred and forty others."

“You mean he's clean?"

“Not clean. Just nothing that looks wrong."

“You got a man on him?"

A slight trace of annoyance flickered over his pink face. “How many men you think we got. Shell? I put men on some other guys that look better and got records that fit this better. I'd like to have a man on all hundred and forty. And it still could be the hundred and forty-first."

“Answer me this, pal: you told me yourself the guy that did the others, and this one, knew what and where and how to do it; that he could be anything from a meat cutter to a brain surgeon.” He nodded. “And they were all three frozen stiff; this guy's got a cold room, a freezing room with beef hanging in it; easy enough to drop the temperature lower than usual if he wanted; he's got frozen-food lockers."

“Yeah. So has every other butcher in town,” Samson growled. “You want to watch the guy, watch him. Get me some more cops. Take the butcher to dinner and show him ink blots."

“Yeah, sure. I'll get you a good cigar."

He blew foul smoke in the air. “O.K., Shell. This guy's got me jumpy, but we'll put him through the wringer, give him a closer look."

I spent a long afternoon at the office. Samson phoned me before he went home for dinner. “No soap on Hecker,” he said. “Nothing yet, anyway. No past record, not even any complaints; far as we can tell he never even went out with any of the girls that live around Melrose there. He tried to date some—but according to the boys that saw his wife, you could hardly blame him for trying."

“I know what they mean. If she were married to anybody but Hecker, she'd look more like a man than her husband."

“We'll go over him some more, but he looks clear."

“Thanks, Sam.” We hung up.

Maybe I was a little off balance about it, but thinking of Hecker still gave me the creeps. When I headed the Cad out Sunset I remembered how carefully locked and bolted that walk-in refrigerator had been. Seemed funny that it would be locked during the daytime, when Hecker was in the market himself. He must be damned careful about his meat. Or something.

I swung over to Melrose and when I got close to Hecker's it looked dark. I doused the Cad's lights, parked at the curb and poked the glove compartment open, rumbled for a ring of keys I keep there. I wanted a look in that big refrigerator.

When I got out of the car I could see that the front door of the market was closed, but a thin strip of light slanted out the window from behind drawn blinds—and I could hear the soft, measured thud of that cleaver. I hesitated, and my right hand went to my shoulder where my gun should have been—only the gun was in my office desk. Then I made up my mind. The sodden chop, chop, persisted inside as I tried the door, found it locked, and selected keys on my ring until one worked. I unlocked the door, eased it open, slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.

Light from the green-shaded bulb behind the meat counter spilled down over the bulky shape of Hecker, reached out to touch me here by the door, glanced from the cleaver as Hecker raised it above his head and slammed it down onto the block. He wore only an undershirt covering his huge chest, and perspiration glistened on his hairy shoulders and arms. I moved forward, bent so I'd be out of his line of vision, then straightened until I could see a quarter of beef on the chopping block. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. There was something odd about Hecker's actions, the way he chopped at the meat, and I could hear grunting sounds in his throat. His arm rose and fell rhythmically.

Suddenly he stopped and turned. I thought he'd heard me but he wasn't looking at me, was staring across the room, yards beyond where I stood in partial shadow. I glanced to my right; the door to the walk-in refrigerator was closed, but a red bulb burned above it. He stared fixedly at the refrigerator, seemed strangely agitated.

He turned back to the block, picked up the long knife, the conical stone, and again I heard the grating scraping noise of steel rubbing stone as he sharpened the knife. He slid the stone into its bracket with a crash, sliced at the meat before him on the block.

His back was to me and I bent over, moved toward the refrigerator door. It was closed but unbolted, the padlock hanging open. As quietly as I could I cracked the heavy door. Cold air seeped from it and its inside surface chilled my fingers as I touched it, pulled it out far enough to let my body through. The chopping didn't falter.

I pulled the door shut, turned and looked inside the freezing room, cold swimming over my flesh. In the dim light I could see naked carcasses of beeves hanging from iron hooks. I walked forward, the light throwing eerie shadows on the wall ahead of me. And finally, far in back against the wall, hidden among the suspended meats, I found something that was different.

It was a white and bloodless thing like something made of wax, an artfully fashioned image of a woman—of part of a woman. It was a human slug suspended from a pointed iron hook. Then I saw the matted, clinging hair, and part of it was blonde, blonde as sunshine. This was what was left of Judy.

I became aware of quietness without at first realizing what it meant; and then dimly I heard a door slam out in the market, heard the murmur of voices. Footsteps thudded over the floor toward the refrigerator as my momentary paralysis ended and I whirled around.

The door swung wide and Hecker loomed before me. He yelled aloud as he saw me, then leaped backward so quickly that I almost didn't follow after him in time. He started to swing the door shut before I understood what he meant to do, but I leaped forward, jarred into it a moment before it closed.

I strained against it with all my strength, then suddenly the weight was gone from its other side. The door swung open and I saw Hecker running across the floor toward the meat block, saw him grab the massive cleaver in his right hand, whirl and run back toward me raising the cleaver above his head.

On the far side of the room stood his wife; it was she I had heard come in and speak moments ago. I glanced around for something, anything I could use as a weapon, knowing Hecker could send that cleaver slashing through my skull and brain and neck in one blow of his thickly muscled arm. Hanging from iron rods behind and above me, stretching from wall to wall were several unused hooks, S-curved and double-pointed like those from which the beeves hung. I grabbed one of them, leaped out of the refrigerator room as Hecker slowed his rush, stopped and stared at me, the cleaver held on a level with his head.

For a second he didn't move, then he walked toward me, not hurrying, just steadily coming closer, holding the cleaver tightly. I let him get six feet from me, then backed away toward the market's rear wall. I took my eyes off Hecker's face for one quick look at his wife, but she stood motionless near the meat case, eyes fixed on us.

The wall, I knew, was close behind me. I stopped. Hecker didn't falter in his slow stride but he raised the cleaver higher, his face almost expressionless.

I moved back and turned sideways until my left elbow brushed against the wall. Holding the hook in my right hand I crossed my arm in front of my body just as he jumped toward me swinging the cleaver down in a blurred arc at my head.

With the wall for leverage I shoved hard, let my body drop toward the floor, slashing my right arm toward his face with all my strength. The cleaver hissed past my head and struck the wood behind me as I felt my hand jar against him, pain ripping through my palm as the second point of the hook dug into it. It ripped across my skin and the hook was jerked from my hand, but as my knees hit the floor I saw where that other point had gone. It had entered Hecker's throat, the curving metal hanging down upon his chest. But it hadn't killed him.

He jerked the cleaver from the wood as I rolled a few feet across the floor and scrambled to my feet, then he jumped toward me, swinging the cleaver downward. I threw my left hand up, clamped my fingers around his huge wrist, but couldn't stop the blow. I slowed it, changed its direction, but felt the cleaver's edge bite into my chest muscles as I slammed my right hand up to grab that dangling hook, to jerk and twist it. His weight buried me to the floor and the cleaver thudded against the boards as I rolled away, pain burning in my chest. When I got to my feet I swung around, but Hecker was on his hands and knees, coughing horribly, his life draining from his throat.

Then he rolled over and lay on his back, eyes staring upwards, and I saw that he was trying to talk. I went over and listened, and I was damn glad I did, because the thing be told me was the craziest fact in the whole crazy case. He managed only a single sentence before he died, but it was enough to make me realize that he wasn't The Butcher at all —

It took quite a few hours for the medics to patch and bandage me up, and it was late afternoon before Samson, Louis, and I sat in room 42 again. Sam had just been talking on the phone, and he turned and said, “They've got Hecker's wife in a padded cell."

“I'm not surprised,” I said.

“Me, neither,” Sam said. “She's been raving for hours—drooling about the killings. Well, there's no doubt about your story any more, anyway—"

I shook my head. “I'm getting old,” I said. “I should have been tipped the minute Norma told me Hecker'd been trying to date every dame in that neighborhood—I should have realized that a sex killer has got to have violence and attack, and wouldn't be trying to date women.” Sam pushed a bottle into my hand, and I took a deep slug of it. I coughed, and went on, “It just never occurred to me that Hecker's wife was the way she was, and Hecker was just looking for some normal, natural outlets. Who the hell would ever figure that Hecker's wife was The Butcher, that she was so dominant that Hecker was under her thumb and cutting up the bodies for her after she did the killings?"

Sam took the bottle out of my hand, and took a deep dip before he answered.

“Nobody'd figure it,” he said. “Nobody'd figure it because it's the kind of fact that just never occurs to people—even people in jobs like ours. A cop's bound to go looking for a man when he's got some sex murders to solve. But it makes just as much sense the other way now that we know the whole story."

He paused, and I guess we all looked a little sick. “Because naturally,” he went on, “it would also be women who were murdered if the sex killer was a female queer—"

Babes, Bodies and Bullets

It was a pleasant enough party, I suppose, if you like sherry in thin, brittle glasses, ancient babes without bustles who look like ancient babes with bustles, and stern-faced old ducks conversing gently about a coloratura soprano's ecstatic debut at La Scala—which I don't.

No, I like parties with bourbon in water and in me, juicy tomatoes dancing can-cans, and conversations about tomatoes and can-cans, and no conversation at all. This would have been a grand party for centenarians dating octogenarians under a large oxygen tent, but it was not a grand party for me, not for Shell Scott. But, then, I wasn't really invited.

The hostess, Mrs. Hamilton, had phoned me at my Hollywood apartment half an hour ago and asked me to hurry out there, indicating that her husband was in trouble and she was willing to pay extremely well for help. Her husband was a wealthy Beverly Hills attorney, but that was all I knew about him. Mrs. Hamilton had met me at the door a few minutes ago, when I'd arrived, and now we stood just inside the living room, conversing in low voices.

She said, “I do appreciate your complying with my request in such an expeditious manner, Mr. Scott. But I feel that the matter is urgent."

Her voice sounded like a voice that would say something like that. It was clipped, sort of Pasadena-British, and just a bit through the nose. I'd say she was about 50, though her makeup, which looked as if it had been applied by one of the Westmores, made her look younger. Her hair, probably dyed expertly, was a soft brown, and she looked smooth and glossy, if a bit brittle.

She explained quickly that her husband had been acting in a most unusual manner. Ordinarily calm, pleasant, genial, he had become nervous, irritable and short-tempered. It had been a very sudden change and had started yesterday morning at breakfast.

I said, “What happened at breakfast?"

“Nothing. It was just like any other morning."

“But he was all right before then?"

“Perfectly normal.” She paused, then went on, “Something in the newspaper seemed to disturb him, though I have no idea what it could have been. I asked him what was the matter and he said it was nothing. You know how men are."

We stepped into the next room for a minute and she showed me yesterday's newspaper. I had read the paper thoroughly on the previous day because I had been more than ordinarily interested in the headlines, which concerned one phase of my business: Sudden death. The bold type declared, “Wealthy Manufacturer Killed.” Smaller type above the two-column story stated that Erik Douglas, local carpet tycoon had been found dead in his study, a small revolver near his hand, an apparent suicide, but that police were investigating the possibility of foul play.

Mrs. Hamilton said that her husband hadn't even read the paper, just stared at the front page for a while, looking ill, then left the house for his office. So if anything in the news had upset him, it was something on the front page. But she had no idea what it could have been. She wanted me to find out what was troubling him and provide any help I could. But she didn't want her husband to know she'd hired me.

I said, “Did he know Erik Douglas?"

“The man who killed himself? Oh, it couldn't have been that"

“Did he know him?"

“I don't believe so. It's conceivable, of course. I don't know whom all of Al's clients are."

She ushered me into the next room again, into that gathering of what looked like old family retainers waiting on each other. She pointed out her husband, then said, “I'll have to leave you and mingle for a minute, Mr. Scott."

She walked away from me, speaking to a person here and there, and stopped by a man and woman across the room. I took another look at her husband. As I turned toward him he threw back his head and laughed loudly at something a man near him had said. The booming laughter seemed out of place. So did he, for that matter. He was somewhere around 50, tall and ramrod straight, with a loosely-waved thatch of gray hair, a large nose, tanned skin. He laughed again, but glanced toward me then, and there was no mirth in his face. He looked at me as if he were afraid of me, though I doubted that he'd ever seen me before.

Then he looked quickly away. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead with it. Somewhere in the house a phone rang stridently. Mr. Hamilton moistened his lips and looked at the wall for long seconds, then abruptly strode out of the room. He walked right past me, but he seemed already to have forgotten about me. Here was a frightened man. It showed in the lines of his face, in the gleam of perspiration on his skin. You could almost smell the fear in him.

I followed him. A door at the end of a short hallway was just closing. I moved to it, pushed it gently open as I heard Hamilton say, “Hello.” I could see him seated at a wide desk in a book-lined study. He held a phone to his ear and listened, not speaking. Then he took the handkerchief from his pocket again and mopped his face. Finally he said, “Fine—yes. Right away. Yes, I'll bring it. Good-bye."

He sat motionless for a few seconds, staring blankly, then walked across the room, moved a painting and opened a wall safe behind it. He took a folded paper from the safe, then went back to his desk and opened one of its drawers. For a while he hesitated, then he reached into the drawer and took out a small automatic. He put the gun into his trousers pocket, the folded paper into the inside pocket of his coat.

I turned and walked rapidly down the hallway to the front door and outside. There wasn't even time to tell Mrs. Hamilton that I was leaving. My Cadillac was parked about 50 feet from the front door. I ran to it, started the engine and swung into the street with my lights out. One hundred yards farther I turned my headlights on and slowed, watching my rearview mirror. Another car came away from the house and down the road after me. I picked up speed, tailing him from in front for a few blocks, then slowed down and let him pass me.

It was Hamilton, all right, driving a new Buick. He didn't even look at me as he passed.

We hit Cordon Road, a narrow, unlighted road that wound toward the beaches, and I passed him, planning to tail him from in front again. I must have noticed the other car behind me, but it just didn't mean anything then. Something prickled the skin along my spine, though. I didn't know what it was, but I sat straighter, tightened my grip on the steering wheel and glanced into the rear-view mirror again.

I had pulled far ahead of the Buick, but its lights were clearly visible in the mirror, and I saw the lights of the other car as it swerved out to pass Hamilton. Only it didn't pass him. When the driver got alongside Hamilton and probably a little ahead of him, he swung sharply in toward the Buick.

I lost the reflection of the lights as I jammed on the brakes and my momentum pressed me forward as the car slowed suddenly, tires shrilling. I jerked the Cad around in a backwards arc until I was facing the way I'd come. As the car jumped forward again, I could see the two cars, perhaps 300 yards away, off the road on my left. The headlights of the car on the right—that would be Hamilton's Buick—were burning, lighting a path over a flat field off the road. When I was still 150 yards away or more, I saw him, saw Hamilton as he appeared running out of the blackness, appearing shrunken, small, like a puppet figure in a spotlight. He ran through the headlights’ beam, away from the two cars.

I didn't hear the shots. But from the darkness outside the twin beams of light from Hamilton's Buick I saw the tiny spurt of flame, and then another—a third from a different spot in the darkness. Both Hamilton's arms whipped forward and up, bent at the elbows and jerking crazily, then they dropped as he stumbled and fell.

He scrambled crablike forward, got halfway to his feet. The spurts of fire winked in the darkness again and he fell again, heavily. The Buick's lights were switched out. And then I was yanking the wheel over hard, sliding to a stop at the left side of the road. In the beam of my headlights in the moment before I snapped them out, a man's form was illuminated as he stood over the fallen man, and fired into his body. He spun around and sprinted toward a dark sedan alongside the Buick. As I jumped out of the car I dug under my coat, pulled my .38 Colt Special from its clamshell holster and sprinted after the running man.

As he ran he extended his arm back toward me and fired wildly. This time I heard the gunshot, the bark of a big gun. That's not what stopped me, though. From the darkened car another gun boomed, not a revolver, but the heavy cough of a shotgun. And that stopped me, for sure.

I wasn't hit, but the solid pellets whistled past me. I dived for the ground and rolled as the shotgun coughed again. I heard the slugs hit the dirt; one of them stung my back like a whip but didn't dig deeply into me. I kept rolling, came up fast onto my feet as light splashed me and I heard the whining roar of a car engine. The sedan's headlights moved toward me as the car lurched ahead.

I jumped to my left, bent far forward, and sprinted away from the road. The lights left me and the sound of the car's engine grew fainter. I looked back as the car bounced over some rough spots then veered into Cordon Road. In seconds more it was nearly out of sight. I ran to my Cad, switched on the headlights. Their beam brushed the still figure lying in the dirt. I ran to him. But I could have taken my time. It wouldn't have made any difference to Hamilton. It was Alvin Hamilton, all right.

His coat had been pulled down off one shoulder, the inside pocket turned out and torn. The paper I'd seen Hamilton remove from his safe was gone, as was the little gun. One slug had caught him in the back of his head and come out through his face, taking most of that side of his face with it At least two more bullets were in his body. And a load of heavy buckshot from that booming shotgun had caught him in the middle of his back. He lay awkwardly, as only the dead can lie. His gray hair was still loosely waved, hardly ruffled. He lay in what looked like mud. But it was his blood staining the earth. He had bled a lot.

It was difficult to tell Mrs. Hamilton that she hadn't called me soon enough. A police car arrived while I was explaining. She took it hard, but managed to tell us that she had no idea who might have killed her husband; she knew little about his practice and knew of no enemies he might have had. She didn't know what all he'd kept in his safe and she had no idea where her husband might have been going. I stayed a couple of minutes after the police left. About all that Mrs. Hamilton said to me was that she wanted me to go on with the case; she wanted me to try to find out who the men were who had shot her husband.

I had my own reason for wanting to find them. If the killers thought I might have recognized one of them, they almost surely would try again to kill me. If they'd gotten a good look at me. A little time would tell, I thought.

A little time—it took 20 minutes.

I live in the Spartan Apartment Hotel, opposite the green grounds of the Wilshire Country Club, on North Rossmore in Hollywood. Half the time I just park at the curb across from the Spartan, but this night was one of the nights when I drove into the garage in back. It's roomy enough, with spaces for 20 cars, and usually Tay, the fiftyish and very quiet attendant, has a word for me, or maybe just nods and says hello.

This time he wasn't around. I got out of the car and walked toward the exit behind the hotel. Only one dim light was burning, and the interior of the garage was a big grayness filled with darker shadows. I was almost at the door when I saw them, two of them, two men. They moved toward me quickly, not speaking.

They didn't have to say anything; there was enough menace in the swift, silent movement. I stopped in the dim light, facing them. Each of them held something in his right hand, but what it was I couldn't tell. The man on my left was tall, bony, his face in the dimness a pattern of bony protuberances and shadows like a death's head covered by tight-stretched skin. The other man was an inch or two shorter, heavier, flabby, with a doughy slug-like face.

Coldness brushed over my skin. I started to reach for my gun—but something stopped me. I didn't hear anything behind me. Maybe it was the way the men simply walked toward me, without making any other movement of offense, as if they were waiting for something to happen. Maybe it was because I've been jumped before. Whatever it was, I turned half a second before it would have been too late.

I didn't get a look at the third man's face, all I saw as I swung around was a blur of his twisted features—and the upraised right arm. Something dangled from his hand, and as he started to swing it down toward me I stepped closer to him, throwing my left arm over my head and starting to pivot toward him, right hand squeezed into a fist.

The heavy object cracked against my hand, drove my arm back and sent sharp pain all the way up to the elbow. It felt as if he'd split my fist open and I heard the sharp coughing sound forced from my lips but I was turning fast, pivoting toward him, and I slammed my right fist into his gut with my shoulder driving in and my body following it.

Whatever he'd swung at me bounced from my hand and wrist and on past my face, thudding against my shoulder hard, heavily, painfully. But he let out a high squeaking sound as the air burst from his lungs, and staggered back, the weight falling from his hand to clink on the cement floor of the garage.

Those were the only sounds that had been made in these few seconds—but the silence ended suddenly then. The man who'd swung at me gasped air and let out a hoarse unintelligible shout, then crashed into a waste can, toppling it over with a grating clatter as he fell. I bent forward and grabbed the thing he'd dropped—a heavy length of chain, more than a foot long, with lethal inch-thick links. It weighted my hand as I started up again, hearing the slap of shoe leather on the cement behind me.

One of the men landed on my back. Something hard bounced off the side of my head, a jarring, glancing blow. I jerked my body aside, the man still hanging onto me, then the other man landed on me and I went down.

I swung both my arms, rolled onto my back, whipped the length of chain through the air and felt it thud against flesh, then got one leg bent and drove my foot forward against the side of the other man's neck. He spun away, sprawled on the cement a yard from me. I grabbed his foot in my free hand and wrenched and twisted with all my strength until I heard a dull cracking sound: he cried out in sudden pain.

The third man was getting up from alongside the waste can he'd knocked over and as he ran at me I was, for about one second, free of clinging arms or hands. I was able to get on my feet and take a step forward, and I swung my left arm around, chain clenched in my fingers. Those heavy links whipped through the air and smashed violently against the side of the man's skull. It made a horrible noise, a surprisingly loud sound, and he toppled heavily to the cement.

I reached under my coat for the .38 but something jarred me and the gun slipped from my fingers, fell at my feet. One of the other men loomed on my left, and I swung toward him, and as I moved I slashed the chain at him, heard him yell in pain as the heavy metal thudded against his side. I stepped toward him balling up my right hand, twisted my body and drove my fist hard at him, cracking it against his face. The blow sent the man reeling backwards, arms flipping up into the air and then falling loosely. I started toward him. But only started. I didn't make it.

It felt as if the building had crashed on the back of my skull. Pain roared audibly inside my head, ricocheting against brain and bone, reverberating and echoing like a sound deep inside me. My legs gave way. I felt myself falling through grayness, falling and spinning. My knees hit the hard cement floor and surprising pain sliced through the fog in my brain. I heard the man grunt behind me and I threw my body aside as fast as I could. But not quite fast enough.

The pain was less this time, the blow glancing, not solid. But it slowed me down still more. The sounds ricocheted inside my head and lights flashed before my eyes. But it almost seemed that with the sound this time was the high wail of a siren. A man swore harshly. I heard his shoes scrape on the cement. I crawled a few feet forward, trying to get to my feet. A man grunted. I could hear the wailing clearly now, a siren for sure. It seemed to be closer, louder.

I got to my feet, hands empty but balled into fists. Shoe leather slapped on cement. I turned in time to see two men going through the door into the alley outside, one of them supported by the other. I yelled something at them, then hunted over the floor for my gun, saw it a yard away.

As I bent to pick it up dizziness blurred my sight and a line of warm blood coursed down the side of my face, bathed my neck. A car engine caught nearby, roared and drowned out the sound of the now obviously close siren. I ran, weaving a little, toward the door, as the car sped away from the garage. It was still in view. I steadied my gun, squeezed off two shots. The sedan skidded left into the street and out of sight.

The siren shrieked in my ears. A police prowl car slid to a stop in the alley near me. I shouted at them and they took off in a hurry after the other car. It was too late, though. Two of the men had gotten away—but I wasn't kicking.

Ten minutes later I knew that the sedan with the two men in it was long gone. I'd been told, too, that the police had arrived in response to a phone call from Tay, the garage attendant. All he knew was that he'd been hit over the head, and had come to resting under some bushes against the back wall of the Spartan, clumsily tied. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious, but it couldn't have been very long; and after getting free of the ropes the first thing he'd done was to find a phone.

Four of us were inside the garage now. Tay sat on a wooden chair, holding a wet cloth against his head. Two policemen from one of the radio cars were getting my story. I wound it up, “That's all there was to it. It's ten to one that they recognized me out there where Hamilton got it, either knew me and where I lived or else traced me down, then came here and sapped Tay and waited for me. It's my guess that the only reason they didn't shoot me is that they wanted to kill me quietly and then haul my body out in the sticks."

“Three of them, huh?” one of the policemen asked.

“Yeah. I'd never seen them before, but when the third boy comes to he can tell us who they are."

The other officer said, “Guess again, Scott.” He pointed to the prone body of the man I'd sapped with his own heavy chain. “He's not coming to."

I hadn't looked carefully at the man since the ruckus started. Now I walked over and squatted by him. His skull was split open, ugliness oozing from the split. His eyes stared without seeing. No breath flowed between his lax, parted lips.

I walked back to the officers. “He came at me from behind, swinging that chain I showed you. When I got my hands on it, I tapped him with it. It was self-defense, but I didn't think I was going to tap him clear out of his skull!"

One of the officers sighed. “You sure did, though,” he said. “At least, he don't seem to be in there."

At the Police Building in downtown L.A. I found pictures of the two other men in the mugg books. It took me two hours, and by the time I'd identified the hoodlums as Frank “The Mouse” Washer and “Noodles” Costain, the police had checked out the dead man. His name was—had been—James J. French, and he'd been called Preachy by the law and the lawless.

Lieutenant Rawlins, a friend of mine, sat with me in Homicide and gave me the info while we had coffee. “Funny thing about Frenchy, Shell,” he said. “We picked up his prints at the scene of two burglaries here within the last month. From the M.O., we figure these were two out of maybe twenty or more jobs that've been pulled by the same bunch in the last year or so."

“What kind of jobs?"

“Warehouse burglaries mostly. Also some truck hijackings. We list seven hundred cases of Coca Cola as one, a refrigerator car of meat for another—those are the two where we lifted Frenchy's prints. And we think some of the others were half a garage full of cigarette cases and cigars, another of foodstuffs, one job where they heisted furs—mink mostly."

“Anything to tie Frank the Mouse and Noodles in with Frenchy?"

“Not till tonight. They're killers, not thieves. At least we don't have any record of them pulling stickups."

Noodles was the taller man, the Death's Head with skin on it. Dough-face was Frank the Mouse. At least I knew the names of the men I was after, and what they looked like, and now had copies of their mugg-book pictures.

I talked to Rawlins a few minutes longer, finished my coffee and went home. Before turning in I phoned half a dozen friendly hoodlums, and informants, and put out the word that I was extremely interested in locating two muggs named Noodles Costain and Frank the Mouse Washer. And I let it be known that it would be worth $500 to whoever turned the men up, if it was done fast. It had to be done fast; unless I got to those killers soon, they would get to me first.

Over my usual meager breakfast of mush and toast—I think of it, dismally, as lukewarm porridge—I thought about the case. So far this A. M., nobody had shot at me, which after the activity of last night almost made it seem like a slow morning. I had no doubt, though, that Hamilton's killers would be trying again very soon to rub out the only live witness—me. The way I felt, what with aches and sorenesses and pains they wouldn't have to rub very hard.

The only lead I had to any reason for Hamilton's murder was the fact that he'd gotten the creeps after reading a morning paper. And the only suspect item on that front page he'd ogled seemed to be the headlined “murder—or suicide”—of Erik Douglas. Douglas was a member of the local Four Hundred, a Social Registerite who had hit it big in the manufacture of glass-wool and glass-fiber rugs and carpets. Through selling the colorfast and long-wearing items he'd made well over a million dollars, it was said, in the last three years. But that was all I knew about him.

I ordered a cup of coffee and phoned Mrs. Hamilton, bringing her up to date, then called the Police Building. None of my friends there knew of any connection between Douglas and Hamilton. The only similarity between them, in fact, seemed to be that they were both dead.

Alvin Hamilton's office had been on the third floor of the Curl Building on Fourth and Grand in downtown Los Angeles. I phoned and talked to his secretary, a gal named May Sullivan, then headed for the Curl Building. I found a parking slot on Fourth, took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to room 36. The door was slightly ajar, and I started through. But only started.

I got the door open and took a step forward, but somebody was trying to do exactly the same thing from the opposite side and we collided. It was nothing to be annoyed about, though, because there are collisions and collisions. The other half of the bump was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, blonde and pale-green-eyed, and so amply equipped with shock absorbers that neither of us could have felt any pain at all even though we bounced about a yard in opposite directions. She was so delightfully fashioned that if we bumped again in the dark I would be almost sure to recognize her, which seemed like a marvelous idea.

She squealed and I said, “Woops!” and we got settled down a bit and I said, “I'm sorry. I didn't—"

“It's all right.” Beyond her was another woman, a pleasant-looking gal of about 30, with glamour glasses that had little stones set along their sharply angled edges, a rather plump face, and fine brown hair. But I merely glanced at her and returned my attention to the blonde.

The blonde's upper half, which almost seemed like three-fourths, was encased in a pink sweater and it didn't hurt a bit. I even examined the dark skirt and high-heeled shoes; everywhere was dandy. She was saying, “It was my fault—I was looking the other way."

“I wasn't, I'm happy to say. But you sort of stalled my motor reflexes."

She smiled, as if glad we had bumped. Luscious was the word for this one, and soft, and tender, but also full of hell—as if kisses would bruise her and she'd love to be black and blue all over. She looked as if she had been sprinkled with a tenderizer invented by cannibals, and there is no doubt she was the kind of gal who made men want to join nudist camps. With her, of course.

The other gal, the regular woman, walked up to us and said, “Mr. Scott?"

“Yes. Are you the one I just talked to on the phone?"

She nodded, light glancing from the stones set in the frame of her glasses. Then to the blonde she said, “This is Mr. Scott, dear. The detective fellow.” She smiled at me and added, “This is Miss Wexler, Mr. Scott."

“How do you do?” I said.

The blonde said, “Well, at least we met in an unusual fashion."

“Uh-huh. Shaking hands won't be much fun after this."

She gave me a slow smile, then turned toward the door. “Bye,” she said to me, and then to May Sullivan, “You're sure there's nothing I can do?"

“No, thanks, Barbara. I can manage."

The blonde went out. I sighed, thinking that this was not the day when I wanted to work on a murder case; this was the day I wanted to join a nudist camp. But I pulled my thoughts together and asked May Sullivan the appropriate questions. She knew of no reason why anybody would have killed her late employer, she said, adding without a great deal of logic that “everybody” had liked him. I asked her if he had ever said anything to her about being afraid of anybody or anything, if he'd been the same as usual lately.

She shook her head. “He never said anything to me, Mr. Scott. He was always in good spirits, jolly, like he didn't have a care in the world. But he had seemed upset the last few days. As if he might have been worried about something. I didn't ask him what was the matter."

“Do you know if Mr. Hamilton knew Erik Douglas?"

She blinked in surprise. “It's odd you should ask about him—you mean the man that just committed suicide, don't you?"

“Yeah. Or was killed. Why is it odd?"

“Well, so far as I know Mr. Hamilton never represented him in any way. But last week Mr. Douglas was in the office. Mr. Hamilton met here with him and a man named Lou Finney."

She was smiling when she said that, so obviously she didn't realize what her words meant. Not only had she linked Hamilton with Erik Douglas, but had tied both of them to bad news. Because no matter how it was pronounced, “Lou Finney” spelled Trouble.

Finney was a heavy-handed heavy, a local hoodlum with national ideas, a crumb from the lower crust who now ran a “high-class” nightclub called the White Crow. He was not the suave, glad-handing type who might be expected to oversee the activities of a lush den for lushes, but more the kind of rotten egg who might be mixed up in a murder omelette. Finney fitted right in with such lobs as Frank the Mouse and Noodles Costain and the late Frenchy French.

I said, “What was the meeting about?"

“I don't know. Mr. Hamilton didn't ask me to stay in his office."

“The three of them never met here before?"

“Not to my knowledge."

“Either Douglas or Finney here any other time that you know about?"

“Mr. Douglas never was, not so far as I remember. But Mr. Finney had been in the office once or twice. I don't know what about, though."

That was all she could tell me. I left and went down to the Cad, and sat in it smoking a cigarette and thinking about the case. My job, of course, was to find out why Hamilton had been killed and pin it on the people responsible. But even more important was the job of staying alive myself. I knew three things: first, that Hamilton had been murdered shortly after he'd been scared half out of his pants by something on the front page of the newspaper, almost surely the item about Douglas’ death; second, that the men who had murdered Hamilton were, if logic was still logical, the same men who had tried to kill me; and third, that Lou Finney had recently met with both Hamilton and Douglas—both of whom were now corpses.

It was time to ask Lou Finney about that meeting in Hamilton's office. If he had nothing to hide, he'd probably tell me what it had been about, if for no other reason than to keep me off his neck. But if there was anything he wanted to keep under cover, he would undoubtedly clam. Either way, his reaction would tell me something. I started the car and headed for the White Crow.

Not until I turned into Cordon Road did it hit me that I was retracing much of the route I'd covered last night when I'd followed Alvin Hamilton to his violent death. I passed the place off the road where Hamilton had run, panicked, through the beam of headlights, but this time I continued on to Fennel Street and turned right. Another mile up Fennel and I came to the White Crow.

It sat 50 yards back from the road, alone, at least a mile from any other building larger than a small house, looking rather shabby in the afternoon sunlight, though it was glamorous enough at night. I'd been here once and remembered only that the floor-show had been as good as the liquor had been bad. I remembered Finney well, though.

Until a little more than four years ago, Lou Finney had been just another failure, a medium-time hoodlum who did odd jobs for odd people, jobs usually involving muscle or gunplay. Then he'd suddenly built the White Crow. It was rumored that Syndicate money was financing him and he was just the front, but he could have robbed a bank, or people. Anyway, the club had prospered from the start, and he was a Big Man now. I didn't like him a bit more than I liked blood poisoning. And that was the way Finney wanted it.

He had no use for me. I represented law, and Finney hated anything connected with law and order and justice. We'd met occasionally over recent years, mainly when I was trying to trace hoodlums and following up leads that pointed to, or near, Finney. He'd never given me anything but a hard time. Always he was rude, big-mouthed, even insulting. I hadn't knocked him on his ear, though—not yet.

The White Crow wouldn't be open to the public until six P. M. and it was only two now, but there were a few cars in the lot. I parked the Cad, walked to the club's entrance and inside. It was one large room filled with tables. A big papier-mâché crow, painted white, stood against the rear wall, so that it faced the customers when they came in. The dominating colors of the room were black and white. The bar lined the left wall. Near the right wall—far from the bar so that you couldn't see the show well while nursing a six-bit beer—was the dance floor. At the moment, six gals were stomping about on it, apparently rehearsing some kind of dance, or killing cockroaches.

Three other people, besides the dancers, were in sight. At the edge of the floor a man leaned forward with his arms on the back of a wooden chair. A long cigar stuck out of the side of his mouth, and it wiggled vigorously as he called in muffled tones, “All right, all right. Let's take it again from the beginning."

Beyond him and farther to my left a thin blond man sat before a piano. The third person was the cigarette girl. At least she was dressed in a highly abbreviated outfit and carried the usual tray of cigarettes, matches and cigars suspended from red velvet ropes around her smooth white shoulders. She seemed a little out of place, because without customers at the tables there didn't seem much chance she could do a booming business in smokes.

She glanced my way, then smiled at me, just for fun. I smiled back, widely, also just for fun. Then she walked toward me, and even though those six well-developed gals on the floor were flopping about wildly inside loose sweaters, and were throwing everything every which way, it was the cigarette girl that I watched. And with reason. Just her long, lovely, firmly curving legs were almost enough, all by themselves. Visible for their full length beneath the extremely short skirt, encased in dark net nylons, the curves accentuated by four-inch heels on her shoes, gliding smoothly and with the dim light gleaming dully from rounded calf and columnar thigh, they were works of modern art designed to burst blood vessels in bulging eyeballs.

My eyes travelled upward, just a little, and then a little more, and a little more, and by the time I got to her face she had been standing in front of me for at least three seconds—but there had been so much to see on the way—lyrelike hips and dainty waist, bold breasts that said “I dare you” and cleavage that said “Why not?” and then lips that had to be warm and soft, hot eyes, heavy lidded and dark.

She said, “Are you trying out?"

“I'm game,” I said. “What does it mean?"

She frowned slightly, but not unprettily. “I thought I was the only one auditioning. I'm going to sing. What do you do?"

Then it penetrated. “Ah—no,” I said. “I guess I'm not trying out, at that. You sing, hey? I'll bet you're great."

“I don't know. I've never sung professionally before. Just in the tub and shower, and at parties."

That smacked me like a hot wet washrag. “Tubs—and showers, huh? And at parties. Not tub and showers at parties."

“Oh, my goodness, no!” She laughed softly. “What a crazy thing to say. I'm probably not very good, anyway. Ordinarily, I'm the cigarette girl, you see. And a couple of days ago Mr. Finney asked me if I could dance or sing or anything. I told him I sang a little. You know what he said?"

“No, what did he say?"

“He said a little would be enough.” She paused, then added, “I'm going to do a special song as my audition. A friend of mine, a television producer and director, wrote it just for me. It's called, ‘The Cigarette Girl's Song.’ That way I don't have to get a new outfit. Isn't that clever?"

“Well, I'll say this much. The outfit is sure clever."

She laughed delightedly. “It does show my legs, doesn't it? And they're really my best part."

I just couldn't help looking her over again. “Oh, I don't know. It's sort of two of one and a couple of the other, what? I mean—"

“I know what you mean. And I think I like it,” she said. “I dance a little also, while I sing the song. Like this.” She broke into a sort of a jig step of some sort, and she was dressed in so little that a small jog turned into a massive jiggle. It was more than I could just stand there and watch.

“Stop. Stop dancing, stop moving entirely. Please."

She stopped. “You didn't like it,” she pouted, but I got the impression that her eyes were twinkling with merriment, and the pout was largely for effect, and that she had deliberately done this to me.

“No, no,” I said. “It's not that. I did like it, yes, indeed. But, that's not what I'm here for. I mean, fun is fun, but—"

I didn't get to finish whatever I was trying to say, which was probably a good thing. Right then, before our conversation deteriorated into a complete shambles, the guy with the cigar in his mouth called from the dance floor, “O.K., Martin. Snap it up."

“That's me,” she said. “Lucy Martin. Well, here goes."

She walked to the dance floor, stopped in front of the microphone there. The blond guy at the piano struck a chord, played an introduction, and Lucy Martin wiggled back and forth a bit, very nicely. Then she sort of flung her arms out to the sides and began to sing.

Well, words simply cannot tell it. She sang like a woman being eaten alive by ants. It was as if she had forgotten the tune, or maybe repressed it and it kept struggling back. In a word, she was horrible. But she moved around more than a little, while crying, “...love that's unrequited ... Life that's crushed and hope that's blighted ... Cigarette Girl in her brief attire ... tells you ‘Where There's Smokes There's Fi-yer!” And it was a good thing that she moved around quite a bit, because that made it nearly bearable.

Finally it was over. The guy with the cigar in his mouth said softly, “Let's run through that again, Honey. This time, soft-pedal the song, see? And throw a little more zoom into the dance. Try it that way."

I'd been here before, and knew that Finney's office was behind a plain door at the left end of the bar. I walked to the door and knocked. A man's voice said, “Come in,” and I went into Finney's office.

Lou Finney was sitting behind a green desk, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He was a hard-looking man. You have heard of guys who seem to have a steely surface over a cream-puff interior; and guys who look soft on the outside but are steel on the inside; well, Finney looked like steel on the outside over steel on the inside.

He was a little over six feet, maybe an inch shorter than I am, but quite a bit thinner. It was a muscular, tight-drawn, honed-down thinness, though. His face was dark, sober, not a face that had ever smiled much. It was a series of straight lines—level black eyebrows, under them a straight nose pointing at a firm, flat mouth, line of the jaw sharply angled. His usual expression was that of a man with ten ingrown toenails.

When I stepped inside he looked at me for two or three seconds, then lifted a cigarette to his lips, dragged briefly and shot the white smoke out through his nostrils. Then he said, “Well, come on in.” And deliberately he added, “Punk.” He dragged on his cigarette again. Theatrically. “You're the last man I expected to see out here, punk."

I sighed, and swore softly under my breath. “Finney,” I said, “you've got a big mouth.” I walked toward him, left hand down at my side, and I kept it open, not bunched into a fist. There was no good reason to warn him.

But he must have known that I was about to slam a handful of knuckles into his mouth, because he moved a little too suddenly. The movement was not an obvious one, and ordinarily I wouldn't have noticed it, but my starting so suddenly toward him must have caused him to move with less care than he normally would have used.

From the movement of his body it looked as if he'd pressed his knee or thigh to his right. I had a hunch that Finney was utilizing a common enough technique, the buzzer under the desk—common enough, at least, among men like Finney who live on the edge of sudden death.

There was a chance I was wrong, but I yanked my .38 out in a hurry, anyway, and jumped back to the wall alongside the door. The gun was pointed at Finney and I said, “Don't wiggle, friend. Maybe you better even hold your breath."

He looked as if he were already holding it. His face started getting red, and the way he looked now made his previous flinty expression seem like unrestrained joy.

When the guy came in he came in fast, slamming the door open and going right past me, a big, blunt, ugly .45 Colt automatic in his left hand. But he saw me out of the corner of his eye and began to turn. His head turned before his body, though, and he saw the .38 aimed at his right eye. He froze and got a stricken look, and he didn't turn any farther. He closed that right eye, then barely cracked it, pulling his head slightly away from me. He was a little guy, hardly more than five-2” or -3", with a pink face, big ears, and sparse hair, and he was so thin that he looked as if his suit were holding him up.

I reached for the door, slammed it shut. “Drop the gun,” I said.

He hesitated. “Better do what he says. Windy,” Finney told him.

Windy dropped the gun. I had him kick it toward me, then said, “Get over to the wall."

He moved over and, placing his feet a yard or so out from the wall, leaned forward with his palms on the wall like a man who had done it often. Finney said, “You're not being smart, Scott."

“Knock it off. If I'd let your boy get in here behind me I'd either be bleeding right now, or out cold—with a busted head."

He ignored that. “What are you doing here?"

“I've got a client named Mrs. Alvin Hamilton."

His dark face didn't change expression. “So?"

“I hear you were chummy with her husband and Erik Douglas."

He moved his mouth as if he were chewing on something sticky. “You hear from who?"

“A gal who should know."

He just looked at me with cold anger, but then it was as if he'd suddenly thought of something he didn't like, or there'd been a small explosion somewhere inside him. He let out an ejaculation that sounded like “Bah—” or “Bar—” but choked it off, surprise appearing momentarily on his face and then going away as he forced his features back to their normal appearance.

He continued to stare at me, but finally he said, “I suppose you've been talking to May Sullivan."

“I talked to her. So what was your business with Hamilton and Douglas, Finney? I don't suppose you'd have any objections to telling me, would you?"

“I wouldn't even tell you how to find Hell. As for Hamilton, let's say I never heard of him. Or Douglas."

“Sure. You convince me."

“I'm worried about you, Scott. I'm worried that you might leave us."

“Well, since you knew Douglas and he left us, and Hamilton and he left us, it's possible that practically anybody you know might leave us."

“I told you I didn't know either of them. You wouldn't be calling me a liar, would you?"

“Sure I would,” I told him cheerfully. “So I don't suppose there's any point in asking if you know a couple of muggs named Frank ‘the Mouse’ Washer and Noodles Costain."

“No point. I never heard of them."

That, as far as I was concerned, was the end of the conversation. I emptied the little man's automatic and tossed it into a corner, then said, “Don't send Windy or any of your other boys after me, Finney. I wouldn't blame them so much; I'd blame you."

We looked at each other in hostile silence for several seconds, then Finney grinned gruesomely, like a man opening his mouth for the dentist, and said softly, “We're sure going to miss you when you're gone."

I went out.

I stood in the gloom of the club and lit a cigarette. I'd get no more info from Finney himself, I knew, but there was another way. Two of the men who had jumped me last night were still alive; if I could find either Noodles or Frank the Mouse, and if I asked the right questions in the right way, there was a good chance I could learn enough to sew up this case.

The muggs of Frank and Noodles, which I'd gotten at the Police Building last night were in my coat pocket. Now I took them out, held them while looking around the club. I had a strong hunch, considering all the circumstances, that both Frank and Noodles would have spent some time here with Finney, or at least in the club; but I wanted more than a hunch, and I wanted to get my hands on them.

The blond egg was still at the piano. On the floor, those six gals were stomping around and singing la-la-la-la-la in tinny voices. Then I spotted the cigarette girl, alone at a table, having coffee. I wanted to be out of here and far away, but one more minute wouldn't make much difference, and shapely Lucy Martin might turn out to be an involuntary ally.

She smiled up at me as I stopped alongside her table.

“Hello again,” I said. “You get the job?"

“Not exactly. I'm supposed to take some dancing lessons.” She laughed. “In the meantime, I'm still the cigarette girl. I guess my song didn't really go over."

“It practically went under."

“I'll stick to tubs and showers."

“Now you're talking."

“Maybe I don't sing so good, but Ed Bornse didn't do the best job in the world, either."

“Bornse?"

“The producer and director who wrote the song for me. He produces and directs TV commercials."

“I should have guessed.” I had indulged in the dialogue with Lucy primarily for the purpose of keeping the chatter light and frothy, in the hope that it would take her a little while to get her mental guard up—assuming she might have any reason for so doing. Now, without any pause in the conversation, I tossed the pictures onto the table in front of her and said, “These boys hang around here, don't they?"

The photo of Frank the Mouse was on top and Lucy looked at it and her eyebrows went up a little way. “What an awful picture of Frankie,” she said.

I almost held my breath, kept my tone from changing in any way and kept the dialogue light. “Well, naturally; it broke the camera. He probably looks even worse right now.” I was, of course, playing it by ear, but that remark got the right words out of her. Or some of them, at least.

“I guess he does,” she said. “I heard he's in Doc Layne's Sewing—"

She stopped speaking suddenly and her face got a fixed, frozen expression as if she'd realized she might be saying too much. Then she looked at me and went on rather feebly, “I don't think that's him after all."

I knew then that it was no use, but I asked her “What about the other guy? Noodles been around? Maybe to see Finney?"

“I'm afraid I don't know him.” She didn't even look at the second picture. Her reaction made me glad that I hadn't come right out and asked her about the men; at least this way I'd picked up a word or two. That was all Lucy had to say today. But maybe she'd said enough. I got out of there.

When I was far enough from the White Crow so that I could relax, I found a pay phone and started calling the numbers on a special list—the list of my informants and acquaintances among the lawless element of L.A., the ones I'd phoned last night. I asked each of them if there were any word about Noodles and the Mouse, and also questioned them about “Doc Layne's Sewing” something or other. I drew blanks, and I was beginning to think that Lucy Martin had been babbling nonsense, when I got James Hay on the phone.

Hay was a successful con-man. He said, “I haven't been able to get a line on either of them, Shell. But Doc Layne's place is sometimes called the Sewing Center. Just as a joke. Doc's a funny little fat guy with a beard."

“Sewing Center? What kind of joint is it?"

“Big old wreck of a house that Layne turned into a kind of private hospital. Did this babe say the Mouse was out there?"

“Not in so many words, but close enough.” I was thinking that Frank the Mouse was probably pretty well banged up from our meeting in the garage last night, and might well have needed treatment and repair. But hoodlums cannot check into the County Hospital, say, for the treatment of such items as bullet holes and knife wounds. So they have to patronize lesser publicized spots, not necessarily legal. And that is what Doc Layne's undoubtedly was. If my man was there, it might be difficult for me to get to him. I thought about that, then said to Hay, “How'd you happen to know about this place? I just checked with four other guys who didn't have any idea what I was talking about."

“Not many of the boys know about the joint. I know a gal who works out there. Keeps books and once in a while helps out with the casualties."

“Can you check with her and make sure about the Mouse?"

“Can do. You still want to talk with the guy? Surprise him?"

“Definitely. If he sees me, and has a gun, he'll surprise me."

“I'll call you back."

In less than ten minutes. Hay phoned and talked to me again. He'd learned from the girl that a man had been brought to Doc Layne's place late last night with “about a thousand broken bones” as she had phrased it. She hadn't known his name, but from her description it was Frank the Mouse; she hadn't seen anybody who looked like Noodles Costain.

Hay went on, “I told her there was five C's in it for turning the guy up, and we'd split it. She says there's always a big ape on the front door, but she might be able to get you in the back."

“It's worth a try. What's the next step?"

“I got it all set up. She's home now, leaving for work in about an hour. You go out to her place and talk to her, and you two take it from there, O.K.?"

“Fine. And thanks, Hay."

“Yeah. Maybe you better mail me the fiver before you try sneaking into the joint. I'll split with Julie."

I laughed. “You aren't afraid I'll get killed, are you, Hay?"

“No, I know you'll make out, Scott. But—I could be wrong. By the way, don't get the wrong idea about Julie—this gal. She's on the up and up."

“Oh? Then why's she working at a place like Layne's?” “She flunked out of nursing school or something, the way she tells it—anyhow, she can't be a nurse in a regular hospital. But she wants to help people when they're sick. Get it?"

“Yeah. And she probably keeps three canaries and a lame cat."

“Nope. She's really a nice little doll. Scott, I think you're in for a surprise. Well, mail that check, boy."

I did mail it, then drove to the address Hay had given me. Maybe I drove too fast. Whatever the reason, when I rang the bell of the girl's apartment in the not-exclusive Mauger Arms, it took a while for her to answer. But then the door was cracked and a bright dark eye under damp black hair peered at me.

The girl said, “Are you Shell?"

“Yeah."

“Hi, Shell."

“Hi."

“I'm Julie. Come on in."

She stepped back and I went into the front room of a small apartment that seemed to be inexpensively but tastefully furnished. But I didn't waste any time looking at it because this little Julie had apparently been in the shower when I rang, which was probably why it had taken a while for her to get to the door. Her face was still wet, hair matted on her head, and she was wearing a pink bath towel and, I felt quite sure, nothing else.

The towel slipped a little and she casually pulled it back up and said, “So you're the fellow who did all that to him?"

It seemed obvious that she was referring to the condition of Frank the Mouse, so I said, “Yeah. But he was trying to do it to me. He still there at your—your hospital?"

“Yes. Until Jimmy Hay phoned and talked to me, I thought the man had been ruined in a wreck. But it was you."

“Yes, ma'am. I am the wreck that ruined him. Of course, I'm not a complete wreck."

“I should say not.” She smiled brightly. “He's in traction. You broke his leg, too?” She really seemed interested.

“I didn't inventory the damage, because another guy was beating me on the head, but I broke everything I could."

She made a face, but I didn't know whether it meant that she was appalled or delighted. She was sure a cute thing. This Julie was maybe two inches over five feet tall, but in her bare feet she seemed to be standing on the story below me. She did not look like a “little girl” however, even in a towel. She looked like a pretty big girl. Perhaps twenty-five years old, and with just enough pounds. The towel slipped again. She was a big girl. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Julie was letting that towel slip on purpose. If so, we might never get out of here.

But then she said, “Well, I'll get dressed."

She went into the next room, but we talked back and forth while she was in there. When everything had been explained by me and was clear, she told me that, under the circumstances, she had better go by herself to the “hospital” as she called it, and let me in the back way when I came along later.

Julie came into the room wearing a pale blue dress, looking chic and shapely, smooth, and even cuter than before. She told me where the hospital was located, and that she would pull up the shade on the back door if the coast was clear. In a couple more minutes, we went outside and she gave me a big smile and left, driving her own small car. I waited ten minutes, then drove after her.

Doc Layne's “hospital” looked like a place that ghosts would go for. A two-story frame building that had last been painted about twenty years ago, it was fairly well isolated, perhaps a quarter of a mile from other houses, and it occurred to me that it would have to be a pretty loud scream before it would be heard by the neighbors.

I had parked at the rear of the Clinic and half a block from it, then walked to its small parking lot. There was a lawn back here, but patches of it had turned yellow with neglect. A rusty incinerator was an unsightly blob of reddish brown against a leaning wooden fence.

I looked at the back door. The shade was up. I loosened the .38 in its holster and stepped out, striding toward the rear door as boldly and openly as if I were the new janitor. Nobody else was in sight. I walked through the parking lot and across the yellowed grass feeling very obvious and unprotected. Windows at either side of the building reflected late afternoon sunlight. I reached the door, put one hand on it and the other on my gun, turned the knob and stepped inside.

It was dim in the hallway and there was a smell of dust. My eyes weren't accustomed to the dimness, but I saw movement on my left. I swung around, yanking out my gun and slapping it toward the movement, finger heavy on the trigger.

“Ahk!” It was Julie, still in the blue dress. “It's me,” she said rapidly, “it's me."

I put the Colt away, looked down the hall. It was a short narrow walk ending in another hallway at right angles to it. One closed door was in the left wall, one on the right. Julie looked scared.

She swallowed and whispered, “I just finished checking the rooms, Shell. That's why I just now reached the back door. I haven't even had time to change."

“You find Frank the Mouse?"

She nodded. “He's in room ten. At least the man brought in last night is in ten. I guess he's the one you want.” She paused, biting her lip. “It really could be dangerous if any of the men here saw you, couldn't it?” She was looking at the left side of my coat. Right at the spot over my gun.

“If I were recognized, it sure could be. And it's likely the guys in here would be men who'd have no trouble recognizing me."

She sighed heavily. “We'll have to walk right by the man at the front door to reach the room you want."

I tried to think of a way we might distract the man's attention, but then I had a small flash, an idea, and I liked it.

“Is there any place in this joint where there'd be one of those gauze masks that doctors wear over their chops? The only way I can disguise this face of mine is to hide it completely."

She smiled. “The storeroom. There's even a gown there."

“Gown?"

“A white jacket thing that's open in the back—you know, like doctors use when they operate."

I thought about that and slowly grinned. Then I grinned more widely. “Exactly what I want."

“Let's go."

The storeroom was ten yards down the hall to our right and we reached it without any difficulty. We slipped inside and Julie shut the door behind us. Then she pressed a switch in the wall and soft light filled the small room. Shelves were loaded with sheets and blankets, pillows, gowns, items of clothing and equipment. Julie rummaged along a shelf, then turned toward me, smiling. In her extended hands were a surgeon's smock and the gauze mask I'd asked her for, also a small white hat that would hide my hair.

“Wonderful,” I said, and in another minute I had the gown and hat on and the mask over my face. “In this getup I could walk right past a dozen hoodlums. All I need to make the deception complete is the little black bag filled with knives and forks and death certificates."

“Of course! And you shall have anything you desire.” Julie turned her back to me, bent forward, and picked something off the bottom shelf. I had not the faintest idea what it was, because she was a delightfully rounded little doll, and the pose she adopted so briefly was like the sight of raw meat to a starving cannibal.

“Julie,” I said softly. “...anything I desire?"

She swung around and took a step toward me. “Sure—here's proof. Just mention it and you've got it."

She was holding a black bag towards me.

“I can think of a number of other things I might mention, and much more interesting, too—"

“None of that, Shell.” She smiled, but added, “I thought you wanted to see that gangster."

Her words were like a dash of cold water. I had actually forgotten for a moment that there were such thing as gangsters. “The hell with him,” I said.

“Turn around."

I blinked. “What's going to happen if I turn around?"

“Well, I have to change, too."

I then noted that Julie was holding another white uniform in her hand, this time the feminine kind. “You'll be less conspicuous walking down the hallway with a nurse along—me."

There was a small argument, but only a small one. I was really sort of anxious for her to change. She flipped the light out, and I turned around just as she'd said for me to, but of course I just kept turning all the way around. I couldn't see very much, worse luck, because my eyes were still adjusting to the near darkness. But I could hear lovely soft rustlings and wigglings. I couldn't actually hear the wigglings, of course, but it seemed as if I could, and I knew there had to be lots of wigglings going on.

“Why, Shell.” Julie said. “You're peeking."

Peeking, hell, I was practically stretching my eyes in the dimness. But it was only dimness, not darkness. And if Julie could see, now I could also see Julie. Which gave me much the better of the deal. She had wiggled out of her dress and was holding the white uniform while standing there in very little, and I realized that there was sure a lot of little Julie to be standing there in so very little. The next moment I was right before Julie, inches from her.

“Peeking?” I said.

“Yes."

“Sort of."

“You ought to be ashamed.” She didn't sound all broken up about it.

“I'm only inhuman."

“Well..."

“Uh..."

“If you're going to kiss me, doctor, you'll have to take your mask off."

Probably never in the history of medicine did a mask come off quicker. And then Julie was against me, pressing the soft, warm loveliness of her body against mine, her head tilted up and her lips parted and gleaming moistly. I could feel the skin of her back velvety against my fingers as I pulled her even closer, and then the warmth of her full lips against my own. She had so many curves and softnesses and delightful areas that holding her meant that, while time didn't actually stop, it lost any real meaning, and whether seconds or minutes went by I had no clear idea. I do know that it was quite an operation, even for a doctor and nurse in a closet.

Finally Julie's lips left mine for the last time and she said, “On with your mask, doctor."

“But—but I'm not through operating."

“Yes you are,” she chuckled. “And it was a complete success."

“Julie! How can you say that, when—"

“That's enough, Shell."

“But you—I—we—"

“Shell."

And that was her last word. She slipped into the white uniform, handed me a clean guaze mask—I had simply tossed the first one way off through the air somewhere—and said, “Shall we go?"

“Might as well,” I grumbled.

And out we went.

The hallway was empty. We passed the intersection in the hall and I glanced at the door through which I'd come in; then we came to the entrance Julie had mentioned. It was on the right, just a short hallway ending at a door before which a rough looking man sat, drinking a can of beer.

He looked right at me, then away, eyeing Julie in her starched white uniform, and I breathed a sigh of relief that we'd found the outfit I was wearing.

Then we were before a closed door that had no number on it, but which Julie said was the one we wanted. “The man I told you about should be in here,” she said. “So look and act like a doctor, now.” She opened the door and we stepped inside.

As Julie shut the door behind us I took a look at the guy on the bed. It was dough-faced Frank the Mouse, all right. But there was a livid welt on the side of his white face, one eye was blackened, and his chest, uncovered, was heavily bandaged. His left leg was held up into the air by a strange complex of lines and weights—what Julie had referred to as traction, I assumed. I walked over to the patient and as I passed his leg I gave it a playful little swing.

“Ow. Oh,” he said.

This was the louse, the bum, the crumby hoodlum who had tried very hard to kill me last night. I said, “Well, how are we today? Hmm?"

“O.K.,” he mumbled. “I guess.” He looked at me strangely, a bit apprehensively, as if he wasn't sure he liked my looks. In the surgical smock, and with the spooky mask over my mouth and nose, I probably looked horrible enough. That was fine. I wanted to look horrible.

With a sweeping gesture, I handed Julie my black bag, then leaned over the patient. With four stiff fingers I poked him in his bare middle.

“Oof,” he said. “Hey, doc, what're you doin'?"

“I'm, uh, palpating you."

“Palp—what's that?"

“Why, I'm thumping you.” I gave him a thump.

“Oo-ah!” he said. Frank the Mouse looked at his nurse. “What's all this? Where's Doc Layne? I thought I was all through bein’ bandaged and sqozen."

Julie rose magnificently to the occasion. “This is Doctor Scott. He's been called in as consultant. In case an operation is necessary."

Frank the Mouse's eyes got large indeed. “Op—operation?” he croaked. “What the hell do you mean, operation?"

I said, “I fear you may have vertigo of the sacrofibula. It may be necessary to remove the iliac and throw it as far as we can."

He really did look pained now. Of course, I was continuing to thump and bang and probe him. “Doc,” he said in a strangled voice. “Do you got to—oof—sock me like that?"

“Of course. All us doctors do it. You laymen mustn't try to tell the doctor what to cut out, you know. We know better than you, I suppose."

“Sure,” he said. “Of course, doc I—cut out?"

He seemed pretty well addled so I said casually, “Just how did all this happen to you?"

“What difference does it make how it happened?” He squinted at me.

“A great deal. The prognosis is predicated upon the precipitating factors. I have to know whether to shoot you with penicillin, acrophyllin, or plain vanillin."

He looked a little green about the gills. “Well, it was this bum that—attacked me. He hit me with a chain, see. And I don't know what all."

“Yes. Hmm. I know all that. It is my understanding that you were employed to attack him. I'm not naive, young man.” I chuckled and added playfully, “I'm a doctor, you know. No need to keep any secrets from me."

“Yeah, sure. I know that, all right,” he said.

“Now, then, who was it that employed you to attack this man?"

“Noodles done it.” He squinted at me, as if finally he might be getting a bit suspicious. “What difference does it make? You ask some funny questions for a doctor—doctor."

“I'm a specialist.” He wasn't quite ready yet, it seemed. I looked at Julie. “Nurse, my scalpel. The sharp one."

She looked as if she were struggling to keep an expression of amusement from her features. I held my hand toward her, palm up, and said, “Scalpel."

It was perfect. Just like the movies. She grabbed a scalpel and slapped it into my palm with a dandy whack. I gripped it and sneered under my mask, leaning over Frank the Mouse and waggling my eyebrows. He got a perfectly petrified look.

“Wha’—what's this?” he yelped. “What're you doing?"

“Going to have to go inside,” I said cheerfully.

“Inside? Inside what?"

“You."

“Me?"

“Who else?"

“But—now? Here?"

“Why not?"

“But—what—what for?"

“Ah, you laymen,” I chuckled. “Full of little questions, what?” I paused, holding the scalpel handle gripped in my fist like a dagger, the sharp end projecting downward like the blade of a knife, and then I raised my fist up a couple feet over his abdomen and said, “This won't hurt much."

“Doc! Don't! Wait, help, don't!” Even as I watched his face, it got paler. And paler. Pretty quick he wouldn't be able to get any paler unless he died to do it. And obviously he wasn't dying to do it. I waited, and he said in a crumbly voice, “Please don't, doc."

“But we've got to get you well,” I said.

“I don't want to be well. Just leave me stay sick. Don't go—go inside there. No anesthetic or anything—"

“Ha!” I interrupted him. “Forgot the anesthetic! That's the trouble, knew I'd forgotten something.” I squirmed around and managed to reach under my coat. It was a bit of a job to get under the smock, but I managed it and hauled out my .38 Colt Special. I pointed it at Frank the Mouse's arm and he really did manage to get a little paler.

“That's a gun,” he said, the way a man might say, “That's a cobra."

He looked at me and his eyebrows drew down, then went up, and drew way down again. “Something's funny here,” he said.

I decided the psychological moment had arrived. “You're right,” I said. “I'm not in the A.M.A."

“Uh-huh. I had a hunch something was—"

“I'm not even a doctor."

His lips got all flabby. “Not—a doctor?"

I leaned close above him, eyes glaring. “No,” I roared. “I'm Shell Scott—and I'm going to cut out your gizzard!"

With that I yanked off the face mask and glowered horribly at him.

Well, he fainted. I don't know whether it was my threat to slice him up, or my telling him I was Shell Scott, or just the cumulative effect of it with all that had gone before, but he let out a sort of urping sound and got white and unconscious.

Julie was snorting and gurgling. “Oh, Shell,” she said, “that was terrible of you."

“You know, for half a minute I really was ready to go in there. Julie, we've got a little time before this bum comes to. I'll teach him to try killing me. What else is in that bag?"

We rummaged through it and I chose a bottle of liquid that looked like mercurochrome. I opened it and smeared the red suff on my hands and the front of my gown, and on the front of Frank the Mouse's bandages. Then I poured a glass of water over him. As I finished, he stirred and moaned softly. It sounded as if he might be saying, “Nob-oo-ooo."

He came to slowly and tried to rise to a sitting position. Apparently he had forgotten for the moment that he was all trussed up and weighted down. But he pushed himself up far enough so that his eye caught the wet red stain on his front. He got absolutely rigid, not moving for seconds, then slowly he raised his head until he could see me and my red-stained smock. His eyes travelled up the line of redness to my gleeful face. His expression made it clear that he thought he must have erupted like a geyser. Out he went again.

I hadn't planned this one, and if it kept up I might really have to go inside and start squeezing the guy's heart, wringing it out like a washrag. That thought gave me another small inspiration. I felt that Frank the Mouse was ready to tell me practically anything, but there was no harm in making dead sure. I spoke softly to Julie and she said, “I'll see what I can find,” and went out. In about two minutes she returned. Frank was still unconscious, but twitching just a bit. Soon he would be back with us—but he would not, of course, know how long he'd been away.

Julie said, “This probably isn't what you want, Shell. There weren't any appendixes or livers or anything like that in the doctor's lab. Just this. I think it's a monkey's."

It was a small brain, in a bottle of what I assumed to be alcohol or brine. And though I had told Julie to try to find some pickled gizzards or a stomach or something, this was more than even I could have hoped for. This was perfect.

Frank twitched a bit more and I moved around to his side of the bed, standing close to him. As his eyes opened, I was holding the bottle about a foot before me, apparently studying the convolutions of the little brain.

Frank came out of his stupor with a snap. He stared at the bottle and said something completely unintelligible. With one free hand he pointed at the bottle, his finger trembling. He was really horrified this time. Obviously he thought it was his brain, and naturally he felt pretty miserable.

First he looked stupefied, then appalled and unbelieving, then a little believing but disappointed, as if the brain was too small. Then, slyly, he tried to look back inside his skull to see if maybe his brain was still there. At least that is what he appeared to be doing. His eyes rose and crossed on the way and kept on going back, back, and sort of wobbled gently up there like bouncing ping pong balls.

“Frank,” I said gently, “I have a few questions for you to answer."

He sighed. And when I asked him the questions, he gave me the answers without any hesitation whatsoever. Just dully, in a voice without springs in it.

“Who hired you for the job on me last night?"

“Noodles. He already had Frenchy with him."

“Who hired Noodles? Who was he working for?"

“I don't know."

“Who banged Hamilton?"

“Me and Noodles. Noodles handled the shotgun. Frenchy drove the heap. We seen you come at us, and took out. Noodles recognized you and made a phone call, then we went to your place and waited. Oh, boy, that was a mistake."

“Yes, Frank, it was a big mistake. Who did Noodles phone?"

“I don't know. You don't ask Noodles."

“Why was Hamilton killed?"

“I don't know that either. I was just along on the job."

“The police know Frenchy was along on several heist jobs in the last few months. Cigarettes, Coke, meat, tires, and so on. Who else was in on those?"

“Just me and Frenchy and Noodles. And Windy Jacobs on a couple. Most of them was for Lou Finney. Stuff he could use in his club."

That answered one more of the questions I'd been carrying around. And while the Mouse was so freely answering questions was a good time to ask him one of the others. “How about the White Crow? Where did Finney get the money to open it all of a sudden?"

“I don't know. Except—I heard somewhere that him and Douglas was tied up some way. In the club. I don't remember good.” His eyes rolled toward his skull again, as if he had a pretty good idea why he couldn't remember.

“Who did the job on Erik Douglas?"

“I don't know nothing about that one. It wasn't me."

Finney had built the White Crow about four years ago, so I asked Frank, “How long ago was it that Douglas and Finney were tied up, as you put it, in the club?"

“Three years, maybe. Maybe longer. It was around the same time Finney first hired Hamilton."

“Hired him for what?"

“All I know is Hamilton was Finney's mouthpiece, but nobody advertised it."

“That was about three years ago, huh?"

“Maybe more. That busty babe was Hamilton's secretary then, so it must've been over three years back."

I bunked. And for a moment I felt like batting my head against the wall. Neither when I'd been talking to May Sullivan in Hamilton's office, nor at any time from then till now, had I considered the possibility that Hamilton might have had a different secretary before her. He might, of course, have had half a dozen. But May Sullivan had been, if anything, un-busty.

“What busty babe?"

“Never did know her name. That bazoomy blonde mouse."

I got a creepy feeling, a coldness that brushed over my skin. I hadn't been worried that May Sullivan was in danger, even though she'd been Hamilton's secretary; she hadn't seemed to know anything of danger to Lou Finney or anybody else—and I was thinking now especially of Finney. But a previous secretary of Hamilton's might have known a lot more about the relationship between Finney and Hamilton—and Erik Douglas, too, perhaps—than May Sullivan knew; so much more, in fact, that if Finney had anything to hide he might have decided she was too dangerous to him to live. And I knew Finney had plenty to hide.

And now, finally, I put two little things together. When I'd told Lou Finney a while ago that I'd learned “from a gal who should know” that he'd been chummy with both Hamilton and Douglas, he'd ejaculated in sudden surprise something that had sounded to me like “Bar—” or “Bah—.” And the “Miss Wexler” whom I had literally bumped into when I'd entered Hamilton's office had not only been both busty and blonde but May Sullivan had called her Barbara.

Now I was sure that Finney had started to say Barbara. Barbara Wexler. It would have been natural enough for her to visit her ex-employer's office on the day after his death and offer May Sullivan her help; which, apparently, she had done. And it was that lovely pink-sweatered blonde with pale green eyes whom one of Finney's men might be killing right now—if she wasn't dead already.

If Finney had belatedly realized that he would have to kill her, then it had been my questions that had made him realize it. If she were killed, I would feel responsible for her death all the rest of my life.

I stood so long without speaking that Julie said to me, “What's the matter?"

“Where's the phone? Quick!"

“Why—there's one in Dr. Layne's office, of course, but—"

It was all she had time for. I heard the sound behind me and whirled around expecting the big mugg from the entrance to be standing there with a large gun aimed at me. But it was a small man, fat, with a dark beard to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. It had to be Dr. Layne.

He stopped suddenly and stared for just a moment and said, “What—” But then he spun around, started to leap out the door.

I was still holding that bottled monkey brain in my right hand. In one quick movement I hurled the bottle at him and let my hand keep going on around to grab my .38. “Come on,” I yelled to Julie, and jumped out through the door after the doctor.

But he was no further trouble. My aim had been perfect and the bottle cracked solidly against the back of his head, bursting open in a spray of brine and brain, sending the doctor sprawling. As he landed and got his hands under him, raising his head up, the now-unbottled little brain landed in the hall about six feet ahead of him and went bouncing and rolling nakedly down the corridor. I jumped toward the doctor, but I could have taken my time. If it had taken me five minutes to reach him, I doubt that he would have moved.

His skull must have felt as if it had split, I had swatted him so hard with that now-broken bottle, and he was staring fixedly at the little bouncing brain, his face agonized, unbelieving, horrified, perplexed, tortured—in a word, ghastly. From between his tight-stretched lips came a weird hooting sound, rising and falling like the moaning of a man in the rack. Then, “Gah!” he cried. “Hoot!” and “Gah!” again.

I couldn't help it. He presented such a peculiar picture that I had to slow up a little in order to watch him. As I reversed the Colt in my hand, gripping it by its short barrel, the brain hit the wall, bounced back into the middle of the corridor, and stopped, rocking just a little.

“Gah!” the doctor cried. I swatted him on his head, and that was the last noise we'd get from him for a while. He clunked forward on his beard.

But from that moment the kicks were over, and I knew it. “Show me that phone,” I snapped at Julie.

She ran past me and on down the hallway. Just before we went by the entrance I remembered the guard there and pressed the white mask against my face as we passed him, then let it drop as I sprinted after Julie. She twisted a knob, threw the door open and I jumped past her, my eyes flicking around the room. There were green filing cabinets, chairs, a bookcase, a pine desk—with a phone on it, resting on the thick telephone book.

I phoned Alvin Hamilton's office and May Sullivan answered. I said rapidly, “This is Shell Scott again. You told me that last week Mr. Hamilton met in his office with Erik Douglas and a man named Lou Finney. I think Lou Finney had your boss killed last night. If you know anything about Finney that might be dangerous to him, you'd better get into hiding or live at the Police Building. Just your knowing he met there with Hamilton and Douglas might give him enough reason to want you dead."

She sort of squeaked and asked several questions, but soon said that she knew nothing about Lou Finney except what she'd already told me; she was, however, going to ask for police protection under the circumstances.

I said, “Who worked for Hamilton before you?"

“Barbara? You met her today. Miss Wexler. I'd been with Mr. Hamilton almost three years. She worked here for a year or two prior to that."

So there it was. May Sullivan couldn't supply me with Barbara's phone number or address. As I hung up, I flipped the phone book open to the W's, found the column of Wexlers. There was no Barbara Wexler listed. Tension was building up in me and I tried to shake it off. I had been correct in my deductions about the blonde gal's identity, but that didn't mean the rest of my deductions were correct; maybe I was imagining a lot of this. I hesitated, a half-formed thought in my mind. I turned it around, looked at it, decided it was at least worth trying, and tried it.

I looked up the number of the White Crow fast, dialed it. Lou Finney answered. Under ordinary circumstances somebody else would probably have answered at the club—which supported my guess that these were not ordinary circumstances, that Finney had probably been waiting for a call.

I forced my voice through my throat in a harsh whisper, “Lou?"

“Yeah. Noodles? You sound funny."

I coughed. “Been some bad trouble."

“Trouble? What kind of trouble? Where you at?"

I took a chance. “I'm still there, Lou."

“You're still in the house? What the hell? Did you take care of the girl?"

“Barbara?"

“Hell, yes, Barbara. Who else would I—” He stopped speaking. Then, his voice lower, he said, “What did we have to drink before you left here, Noodles?"

That told me he wouldn't be fooled by anything else I might say. But he'd said enough. And that meant he had sent Noodles out to murder Barbara Wexler. From his words it seemed certain that Noodles was, right now—or had been—waiting in Barbara Wexler's house, waiting there to kill her.

I said levelly, “This is Shell Scott, Finney. Call off that killer of yours or I swear I'll put a slug in you myself. If anything happens—” I didn't get to tell him the rest of it. The phone clicked painfully in my ear.

My palm was moist on the receiver. There was a good chance that the girl was still alive, but I didn't have any idea where she was, or how to find her. I turned again to the list of Wexlers in the phone book. There were several, but I started calling them and hit pay dirt on the second try. The woman who answered said she was Barbara Wexler's mother. Barbara herself had a phone, but it was unlisted.

“Where is Barbara?” I asked her.

“Why, she just left here, on her way home. She should be there by now. Who's this calling, please?” The voice was pleasant, casual.

“There's not time to explain,” I said rapidly. “Where does she live? I've got to reach her fast."

“I'm ... not sure—” she hesitated.

I swore silently. “Mrs. Wexler, I've time to tell you just once. I'm Shell Scott, a detective. I think your daughter is in danger of being killed. I'll stop it if I can. Now give me her phone number—and address."

She gasped, and made up her mind. “Ten-twenty-one Bandini Street. It's a small green-and-white house. The phone is Emerald four-seven-three-three-six. But what—"

“Get off the line. Quick.” I slammed the phone down, jiggled the receiver and dialed the number she'd given me. It rang a dozen times, with no answer. With each ring the coldness grew in my brain and I wondered if Noodles were still there, listening to that sound in Barbara's empty house—or if, perhaps, Barbara had already arrived and Noodles had gone, his job done. Finally I hung up, dialed the Police Building. While waiting for an answer the picture of Barbara Wexler grew vivid in my mind; the shimmering blonde hair, the soft wide-set eyes, her sweetly curving lips and sensationally curving body. A man's voice spoke at the other end of me line and I said, “Emergency. Get—"

June screamed.

As I spun around, I got a blurred glimpse of her leaping into the room, bending forward. Behind her in the corridor was the burly guy who'd been at the entrance. He knew who I was now, it was obvious, and it was equally obvious that he was on the opposing team. I moved just in time, a split second before the big gun in his hand roared and jumped, the slug ripping past my arm and smacking into the wall. I flipped up my gun and pulled the trigger twice, aiming for him, but unfortunately not at him.

I missed him, but I scared him. He swung around and his feet slapped on the wooden floor as he ran. I jumped into the hall, yelling for Julie to follow me. She sure couldn't stay here now and live.

She came alongside me, the sound of her breathing heavy and ragged. “Get out the way we came in,” I said to her. I was looking down the corridor, but it was empty except for the still prone form of Doc Layne—which must have been what the guard had seen. That guard himself was out of sight, but whether in a room or at the entrance I didn't know. And I didn't mean to stick around to find out, not with a possible half-dozen hoods still nearby.

Julie had trotted past me, but moving slowly. “Run!” I barked at her. “Out the back way. My car's there.” Down the hall a door popped open and a man started out, saw me and sprang back inside. Julie picked up speed, but she just wasn't in it with me when it came to running, so I let her get almost to the door before I started after her. She went out into the yard and I barreled after her, yelled, “Keep going,” then stopped and turned around, looking at the windows on both sides of the building.

A black-haired guy was staring from one window. The others showed no signs of life. I waved my gun at the one guy and the black head disappeared fast. The door stood wide and I saw the guard once again as he appeared at the junction of the corridors.

I'd been looking at the black-haired man, and the guard saw me first. He fired twice, the second slug biting at the cloth of my coat. Then I had the Special aimed at him and I squeezed off a shot and another. He slapped his free hand to his chest and jumped aside, out of sight.

I turned and sprinted after Julie. She was still going, arms and legs awkwardly flying, white uniform a bright spot in the late-afternoon sunlight. She was nearly to the Cadillac. I shouted at her to get in, and she veered toward the car. She was just slamming the door when I climbed inside with her and started the engine.

Julie was breathing rapidly through her mouth and trying to talk but not saying anything intelligible. I yanked the wheel, jerked the car around in a backward arc and then shot it forward. In a minute more we were a mile away.

The speedometer needle quivered at 80. I pushed the accelerator to the floorboards and dropped my .38 in Julie's lap. “Load that,” I said. “Bullets are in the glove compartment."

In a couple of minutes the Special was loaded and back in my holster.

“When we get where we're going, you drive this buggy away, fast. O.K.? There might be some more shooting."

“All right."

“Get away from the house, then call the police and send them to ten-twenty-one Bandini. Which is where we're going."

She didn't ask any questions. But by this time we were going so fast that she was holding her breath, and squeezing her hands together. But we were almost there. Ahead was Wilson Street, and a quarter-mile down it was Bandini. I didn't know where the 1000 block was, but we had to find it fast.

We did. I spotted a sign at the corner, giving the street name and number, and halfway down the block was a small green and white house, a blue coupe parked before it—and a blonde in a dark skirt and pink sweater was just opening its front door. I hit the brakes and we skidded to a near stop almost opposite the house.

“Grab the wheel, Julie.” I was out of the car before it came to a full stop, and sprinted on around the front of it, the Colt in my right hand.

Not even the shriek of brakes had stopped the blonde—and I knew it was Barbara. Barbara still alive, but almost surely now nearly face to face with Finney's hired killer. She had gone in the door. It still stood open and as I ran, legs slamming over sidewalk and then lawn, I could see the pink of her sweater in the gloom inside the house.

And then she screamed, a scream that was suddenly cut short. Her body jerked. I made one last leap through the air and landed squarely in the middle of the doorway, still going forward. As my left shoulder hit the partly open door I saw what had happened to Barbara, what was happening now.

Her body was still moving to the right—toward Noodles. He had wrapped something around her neck, was straining to pull it toward him, his left hand at the base of her skull. But his death's-head face was turned toward me. I drove my left foot hard against the floor, slowing myself even while I skidded on the carpet, but I managed to change my direction, get my footing and jumped toward Noodles. He pushed Barbara from him and tried to set himself to swing at me, not having time to reach for a gun. And he didn't have time to swing at me, either.

I hit him with a left in the gut, swinging with all my strength, 205 pounds moving fast behind the blow, and that would have been enough, that one punch. Noodles was thin, bony, and I'll swear I felt the bones of his spine hit my knuckles. But I swung my right hand up at his jaw, forgetting for the moment the gun in my hand, and it ripped across his face, clicking as it tore into the cheekbone.

He flew back and slammed into the wall. He was out. He was cold, just starting to fall, his body sliding down the wall, and his head swinging to the side, the back of it pressed against the wall's plaster. I stepped toward him, measured him fast, and swung my left again, this time at his face. It was like an explosion of knuckles on his mouth and nose. He went down, but when he hit and lay quietly on his back that death's-head face looked more like hamburger dipped in ketchup. And that almost made Noodles and me even. Almost.

I turned toward the girl. But she was all right. Both hands were at her throat and she had pulled a quarter-inch cord free from her neck. I could see the red ring where it had dug into her flesh. She looked panicked and pale.

I stood still and said, as quietly as I could. “It's all right."

Slowly she lowered her hands, ran her tongue over dry lips. Her face smoothed a little.

I put my gun away, pointed toward Noodles. “He was hired by Lou Finney. That make sense to you?"

Slowly she nodded.

“Think you can talk about it?"

She could. It took a few minutes, but all became clear. I'd guessed the general picture; she just filled in details. While we talked, I tied Noodles’ hands and feet with the cord he'd brought along to use on Barbara's lovely throat. I wasn't gentle. And I finally got out of that medical gown.

When I asked Barbara what Finney's connection with Erik Douglas was, she said, “A few years ago, when Mr. Finney opened the White Crow, it was Erik Douglas who financed him. He put up the money. I think it was two-hundred thousand dollars."

“What did Finney put up?"

“I don't remember anything in particular, except he was going to run the club. And handle the ‘special services’ I think it was.

“Uh-huh. And I'll bet I can guess: since neither of those bums could trust the other, they made it legal. There must have been something in black and white to tie both of them down, right?"

“A legal contract, yes, giving Mr. Douglas twenty percent of the profits in return for his capital investment. That's how I knew about it—I was working for Mr. Hamilton then."

“And he, being Finney's attorney, naturally drew up the contract."

She nodded again. “This was about four years ago. I typed the contract papers, so I knew all the details of the arrangement. As it was then, anyway—when I talked to May earlier today she mentioned that she'd recently typed a new contract to replace that old one."

I blinked. “May Sullivan? Hamilton's secretary?” Barbara nodded and I went on, “Did she say why there was a new contract?"

“No, she didn't go into detail."

“Where's your phone?"

She pointed. I jumped across the room and grabbed the phone, dialed Hamilton's office number again. It had been only a few minutes since I'd talked to May Sullivan, and she was still in the office. As soon as she answered the phone I identified myself and asked her about the contract between Finney and Douglas.

“Oh, that,” she said. “I didn't even think about it when you were here earlier—"

I interrupted, “What was the difference between it and the previous contract?"

“I don't recall ever seeing the previous one. But I suppose the big difference was in the financial arrangements, the sharing of profits from the White Crow. That's what I gathered from the wording of the contract I typed."

“What percentage was Douglas supposed to get?"

“Half. Both Mr. Finney and Mr. Douglas were to receive fifty percent of the profits."

And that did it. This wrapped it up. I told May Sullivan to get the hell out of the office. This time I convinced her.

Then I hung up and looked at Barbara. “Honey,” I said, “you'd have been dead yesterday if it weren't for one thing: Finney must have thought that only Douglas and Hamilton knew about those contracts. He hasn't thought of May Sullivan yet—and he didn't even think of you until I ... reminded him.” I grinned at her. “So in a way I'm the guy largely responsible for the close call you just had."

She looked at Noodles, quite mangled, resting quietly, then turned her big pale green eyes on me. And she managed a small smile. “All is forgiven. Hadn't you guessed?"

I had known that I would have to move fast, so I'd left Barbara Wexler in front of her house, waiting for the police, and went out to the White Crow in a taxi. When the police arrived, she was supposed to send them on after me to the club. I'd gotten out of the cab far enough from the White Crow so that it was unlikely I would be seen, and walked to the building's rear. I could easily pick out Finney's office. A light was burning in the room, sending a square of pale yellow through the half-open window. There was no outcry, no sign that I'd been seen, as I walked to it. The office was empty. I pushed the window up and climbed into the room.

I moved to Finney's desk and sat down behind it, put my gun on the desk top and opened the right-hand drawers. I started looking for anything which might show Finney's relationship with Alvin Hamilton or Erik Douglas, and specifically for copies of either or both of those two contracts between Finney and Douglas. It seemed likely that they would have been destroyed by now, but as it turned out, that didn't really make much difference—I didn't have time to find a thing.

Finney came in with his gun in his hand.

He came through the door fast, the gun pointing at me from the moment he entered, a tight grin on his dark, hard face, and he closed the door gently, leaned back against it. He must have seen me on my way around to the back of the club, or climbing in through the window. Anyway, he'd sure known I was here.

I slapped a hand toward my .38, but stopped. There wasn't a chance I could grab it in time. Finney didn't speak.

But when I stopped moving suddenly, hand in mid-air, he said, “Good boy, punk. That's the wise way. Make it easy on yourself."

He looked ready to squeeze down on the trigger and I said rapidly, “Hold it, Finney. You've had it. The police are on their way here right now."

He laughed out loud. “Sure, Scott,” he said, still amused. “Sure. But if they were on their way, they could take you to the morgue. When I caught you searching my office, naturally I shot you.” The gun moved slightly in his hand.

“I know the whole setup, Finney.” I was simply making noise, trying to keep the man's attention on my words—instead of on shooting me. “I know about your contracts with Douglas, for one thing."

“There's no proof I ever had a contract with Douglas. No legal proof.” He looked puzzled.

I went on fast. “There's enough to kill you. You made more mistakes than an amateur."

He frowned. But I had him hooked, temporarily at least. “Keep talking,” he said.

“You and Erik Douglas were partners in the White Crow for four years, and he had a contract to prove it. A contract that gave him twenty percent of the take. About a week ago he decided it was time he got a bigger cut, and met with you in Al Hamilton's office. I imagine he threatened to make trouble if you didn't see things his way—maybe by tipping the law about the stolen stuff you've been pushing in the club. Items like Coke and cigarettes and meat,"

I couldn't be sure of what Douglas had actually said, of course, but I must have hit pretty close to the mark. Finney's frown got deeper, and his lips parted enough so I could see the gleam of his teeth between them. He didn't say anything.

“I imagine Douglas had himself covered pretty well, Finney, so he'd be clean—but you wouldn't be, not with your record. He had you over a barrel, so you pretended to go along with his demand for a bigger cut. And then you killed him.” I paused and went on slowly, watching his face. “But that old contract could have caused you trouble after his death if it were found among his papers. The D.A. would have pounced on the evidence that you and Douglas were partners in crime, so to speak, as a beautiful motive for murder. Douglas wasn't about to hand that old contract over to you, naturally—that was his protection—so you had Al Hamilton draw up another contract, a legal one, giving Erik the fifty percent he'd asked for. Then you went to Erik's home. With that new contract, you managed to get him to hand over the old one. With both of them in your possession, you shot him in the head.” I stopped, then went on, “I can't be positive of it all, Finney, but I'll bet that's just about what happened."

He licked his lips. “Close enough, Scott,” he said finally. “We both actually signed the new contract before he got the other one out of his safe.” Finney paused, as if recalling the scene. “He was pretty happy about it. I remember he was smiling when I shot him. At least he died happy.” Finney smiled himself, but it wasn't a jolly sight.

I hadn't had much time to think about it, but I didn't understand why Finney hadn't already shot me. But then I got it. The wild drive from Doc Layne's Sewing Center to Barbara Wexler's house, and the quick though violent activity there with Noodles, had taken at the most ten minutes; and the drive here would have added only five minutes more. So, since it had been only fifteen to twenty minutes since I'd phoned Finney pretending to be Noodles, he must think that I had come directly here from the hospital. Consequently he couldn't have any idea that Noodles now looked more like spaghetti, that Barbara was still alive and talking, and that the police would soon be here. Soon—I hoped.

Finney said softly, “Funny thing, Scott. Erik threatened me with tax trouble, too. Naturally neither of us paid taxes on the extra profit from the stuff my boys heisted, nor from the bootleg hooch I use, but Erik had himself covered pretty well, like you said.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, after I shot him, I tore up the new contracts and the old one, too, left the gun under his hand and was home free."

“Not quite.” My mouth was getting dry. I looked at my .38 on the desk but it was too far from my hand. I was going to have to try something. I couldn't simply sit here at Finney's desk and let him shoot me.

And that phrase in my thoughts, “At Finney's desk,” triggered memory of the moment this afternoon when our positions had been reversed—when Finney had been sitting here and I'd noticed him ring, with his knee, a long signal that had brought Windy bursting in here. I glanced down at the desk and saw the projecting button of the buzzer there, near my knee.

“What do you mean, not quite?” Finney said.

He was still standing right in front of the door, gun aimed at my chest. “There was Hamilton,” I said. I pressed my knee against the buzzer. “He knew about both contracts. So you had to kill him, too—or have him killed. You phoned him last night, told him to come out to the club—and bring his copy of the contract."

“At least I had him come toward the club.” Finney smiled again, and again it was not a jolly sight. “You're right this time, too, Scott. But it's the last time."

He was through talking. It was obvious in his words, his tone, and his bearing. Nothing had happened since I'd rung that buzzer—or tried to ring it. I hadn't heard anything, of course, so I couldn't be sure the thing had made any noise anywhere. My throat had been dry before, but I was breathing through a bone now; I managed to spit the words out fast, “Noodles, about Noodles. Don't you want to know what happened to him?"

He looked annoyed. “What about Noodles?” His glance went from me to the phone; he was wondering, probably, why it was taking Noodles so long to report in.

My heart was pounding, clattering around in my chest like a soft rock. “I caught up with Noodles before he got to Barbara. The law has him and she's talking to the police. They'll be here any minute."

“Quit stalling.” He swore at me angrily, face getting reddish, then he moved the gun slightly, aiming at the left side of my chest, and he must actually have started to bear down on the trigger as he snarled, “You lousy, lying—” but that was the end of it.

There was a hell of a commotion then, all of a sudden. I hadn't heard any sound, the door just flew open suddenly—exactly as it had earlier this afternoon—and little Windy tried to jump into the room. With Finney standing as he was in front of the entrance, the violently opened door caught him hard in the back, banging him forward and turning him to the side. His gun went off with an ear-cracking roar and the bullet hit the desk a foot from me. Windy reeled as he stumbled into the room. And by that time the .38 Colt Special was off the desk and in my hand.

I fired twice, just twice. I shot Finney first, aiming carefully so that the slug wouldn't kill him, and the bullet caught him in the chest near his right shoulder. The second shot was for the little gunman, but I didn't have much time for aiming by then. He'd caught his balance and was starting toward me, still confused, but swinging the automatic toward me.

I tried to hit him in the same spot where I'd caught Finney, but I had to rush the shot. Even so, Windy managed to pull the trigger of his gun. But it was his last shot. His last anything. My .38 slug caught him in the chin and tore on through his throat. He was dead before the gun dropped from his hand, before his knees sagged. It was a dead man that fell silently and crumpled on the floor.

Finney had let out a cry of pain, his own gun falling from limp fingers to the floor. He bent forward but didn't go down. In the sudden silence I said, “That's it, Finney. Just stand there.” He froze. I went on, “Whoever comes in here, tell them to beat it—tell them loud, and mean it. Let them know you mean it, friend."

The sound of pounding feet was outside the door. “Now, Finney,” I said.

His left hand was pressed to his chest. Blood flowed over his fingers, turning them red. He yelled. “Keep out. Stay the hell out of here, Ross. Keep the rest out!"

A big guy loomed in the doorway, hesitated and turned away. I'd cocked the gun, just in case. But then, and a sweet sound it was, too, I finally heard the sirens.

“There it is,” I said. “You can park at the curb.” Barbara pulled her Buick coupe over to the curb and stopped. We'd both finished our stint with the police, and I had reported to my client, Mrs. Hamilton. She had been pleased at the outcome, but not greatly cheered, naturally. She'd insisted that she would pay me a fat fee, even though I'd told her that all during this past night and day I had been trying to save my own neck more than I'd been trying to do a job for her. The money, she'd said, wasn't important to her now.

Finney was in custody, as were nine other hoods and Doctor Layne. When I'd phoned the police from the hoodlums’ hospital, even though I'd had to drop the phone and hightail it out of there, the policeman I'd reached on the other end of the line had heard numerous shots and the sound of frantic activity, and after tracing the call had dispatched a couple of radio cars to the scene. They'd rounded up Layne and the guard and Frenchy, plus seven other convalescent lobs who would finish their convalescence in police custody. Nothing now remained but unwinding, relaxing again.

Since I was still Cad-less, Barbara had offered me a lift home, and we were now parked opposite the Spartan Apartment Hotel. She said, “It's really just dawning on me that if it weren't for you I'd be—I'd be dead. I can't tell you how grateful I am, Shell."

“Oh, it was nothing. Nothing."

“It's so good to be so—so alive."

“You're sure alive, all right.” She was. Even that pink sweater seemed to be alive. She was what guys like you and me call a live one.

Barbara blinked those big pale green eyes at me and, breathing deeply—so deeply that I, too, was beginning to breathe deeply—said, “I don't know how I can ever repay you."

It sounded a little bit like a line from The Drunkard. “Well, I can give you a hint,” I said. “Though there's really no debt, you know."

“Oh, tell me.” There was another of those Drunkard-type lines.

I said, “Well, I've got a lot of bourbon and Scotch and gin and everything but benzedrine just going to waste up in my apartment. If you feel reckless as can be, you might come on up and sample my stock."

There was something wicked about the way she smiled. “I was hoping you'd ask me just that,” she said.

In practically no time we were through the lobby, up the stairs, and before the door of my apartment. I started to unlock it, but it was already unlocked and began swinging open from my touch. Alarm jangled along my nerves and I had my hand on the gun under my coat by the time the door opened far enough so I could see the woman on the couch.

I sort of tottered forward. It was Julie. Little black-haired, cute and curvy Julie. Julie, still in her white uniform. Julie, looking past me at Barbara, who had come in and shut the door and cried softly “Ooh! What's this?” Julie, with half of her face smiling and the other half frowning, making her look odd indeed.

“Ah, there.” I said. “Well!"

Julie said, quite gently, too gently, “I brought your car back. It's in the garage. I suppose I should have left."

“No, no. You did the—” the words stuck in my throat—"the right thing.” I swallowed. “Julie, this is Barbara, Barbara this is Julie, my—” there was a horrible silence—"my nurse."

Barbara looked at me with not quite so much gay abandon, and said, “I thought you were pretty healthy."

“No, I'm sick. Boy, am I sick."

We all sort of reeled around and wound up on the couch, me in the middle, between the two dolls. Barbara said, as if daring me, “Go on. Tell me you saved her from getting shot or something."

“As a matter of fact,” little Julie said, “he did."

Well that started them. They began exchanging experiences and crying “No!” and “My!” and by the time they finished they were calling each other “Honey,” and “Dear."

And when I said, “I'll tell you what. Why don't we just get plastered and see what happens?"

They didn't say anything, but squealed and giggled.

I got up and went to the kitchenette and began mixing highballs. I didn't know what those squeals or giggles meant, but I was sure as blazes going to have a stiff bourbon and water, and find out.

I thought back to the way this latest case had begun, the party which had definitely not been my kind of party, with the ancient babes and old ducks and sherry, and the morgue-ish quality of it all—and I grinned.

I was still grinning as I carried the three stiff drinks into the living room. Maybe it had started miserably, but there's always a happy ending.

This was my kind of party.

The Double Take

This was a morning for weeping at funerals, for sticking pins in your own wax image, for leaping into empty graves and pulling the sod in after you. Last night I had been at a party with some friends here in Los Angeles, and I had drunk bourbon and Scotch and martinis and maybe even swamp water from highball glasses, and now my brain was a bomb that went off twice a second.

I thought thirstily of Pete's Bar downstairs on Broadway, right next door to this building, the Hamilton, where I have my detective agency, then got out of my chair, left the office and locked the door behind me. I was Shell Scott, The Bloodshot Eye, and I needed a hair of the horse that bit me.

Before I went downstairs I stopped by the PBX switchboard at the end of the hall. Cute little Hazel glanced up.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“I know. I think I'm decomposing. Listen, a client just phoned me and I have to rush out to the Hollywood Roosevelt. I'll be back in an hour or so, but for the next five minutes I'll be in Pete's. Hold down the fort, huh?"

“Sure, Shell. Pete's?” She shook her head.

I tried to grin at her, whereupon she shrank back and covered her eyes, and I left. Hazel is a sweet kid, tiny, and curvy, and since mine is a one-man agency with no receptionist or secretary, the good gal tries to keep informed of my whereabouts.

I tottered down the one flight of stairs into bright June sunshine on Broadway, thinking that my client would have to wait an extra five minutes even though he'd been in a hell of a hurry. But he'd been in a hurry the last time, too, and nothing had come of it. This Frank Harrison had first called me on Monday morning, three days ago, and insisted I come right out to his hotel in Hollywood. When I got there he explained that he was having marital troubles and wanted me to tail his wife and see if I could catch her in any indiscretions. When I told him I seldom handled that kind of job, he'd said to forget it, so I had. The deal had seemed screwy; he'd not only been vague, but hadn't pressed me much to take the case. It had added up to an hour wasted, and no fee.

But this morning when I'd opened the office at nine sharp the phone had been ringing and it was Harrison again. He wanted me right away this time, too, but he had a real case for me, he said, not like last time, and it wasn't tailing his wife. He was in a sweat to get me out to the Roosevelt's bar, the Cinegrill where we were to meet, and was willing to pay me fifty bucks just to listen to his story. I still didn't know what was up, but it sounded like a big one. I hoped it was bigger than the last “job,” and, anyway, it couldn't be as big as my head. I went into Pete's.

Pete knew what I wanted as soon as I perched on a stool and he got a good look at my eyeballs, so he immediately mixed the ghastly concoction he gives me for hangovers. I was halfway through it when his phone rang.

He listened a moment, said, “I'll tell him,” then turned to me. “That was Hazel,” he said. “Some dame was up there looking for you. A wild woman—"

That was as far as he got. I heard somebody come inside the front door, and high heels clicked rapidly over the floor and stopped alongside me. A woman's voice, tight and angry, said, “There you are, you, you—you crook!” and I turned on my stool to look at the wild woman.

I had never seen her before, but that was obviously one of the most unfortunate omissions of my life, because one look at her and I forgot my hangover. She was an absolutely gorgeous little doll, about five feet two inches tall, and any half-dozen of her sixty-two delightful inches would make any man stare, and all of her at once was enough to knock a man's eyes out through the back of his head.

“Oh!” she said. “You ought to be tarred and feathered."

I kept looking. Coal black hair was fluffed around her oval face, and though she couldn't have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old, a thin streak of gray ran back from her forehead through that thick, glossy hair. She was dressed in light blue clam-diggers and a man's white shirt which her chest filled out better than any man's ever did, and her eyes were an incredibly light electric blue—shooting sparks at me.

She was angry. She was so hot she looked ready to melt. It seemed, for some strange reason, she was angry with me. This lovely was not one I wanted angry with me; I wanted her happy, and patting my cheek, or perhaps even chewing on my ear.

She looked me up and down and said, “Yes. Yes, you're Shell Scott."

“That's right. Certainly. But—"

“I want that twenty-four thousand dollars and I'm going to get it if I—if I have to kill you! I mean it!"

“Huh?"

“It's just money to you, you crook! But it's all he had, all my father's saved in years and years. Folsom's Market, indeed! I'll kill you, I will! So give me that money. I know you're in with them."

My head was in very bad shape to begin with, but now I was beginning to think maybe I had mush up there. She hadn't yet said a single word that made sense.

“Take it easy,” I said. “You must have the wrong guy."

If anything, that remark made her angrier. She pressed white teeth together, and made noises in her throat, then she said, “I suppose you're not Shell Scott."

“Sure I am, but I don't know what you're babbling about."

“Babbling! Babbling! Ho, that's the way you're going to play it, are you? Going to deny everything, pretend it never happened! I knew you would! Well—"

She backed away from me, fumbling with the clasp of a big handbag. I looked at her thinking that one of us was completely mad. Then she dug into her bag and pulled out a chromed pistol, probably a .22 target pistol, and pointed it at me. She was crying now, her face twisted up and tears running down her cheeks, but she still appeared to be getting angrier every second, and slowly the thought seeped into my brain: this tomato is aiming a real gun at me.

She backed away toward the rear of Pete's, but she was still too close to suit me, and close enough so I could see her eyes squeeze shut and her finger tighten on the trigger. I heard the crack of the little gun and I heard a guy who had just come in the door, let out a yelp behind me, and I heard a little tinkle of glass. And then I heard a great clattering and crashing of glass because by this time I was clear over behind the bar with Pete, banging into bottles and glasses on my way down to the floor. I heard the gun crack twice more and then high heels clattered away from me and I peeked over the bar just in time to see the gal disappearing into the ladies’ room.

A man on my left yelled, “Janet! Jan!” I looked at him just as he got up off the floor, and I remembered the guy who had yelped right after that first shot. He didn't seem to be hurt, though, because he got to his feet and started after the beautiful crazy gal.

He was a husky man, about five-ten, wearing brown slacks and a T-shirt which showed off his impressive chest. Even so, it wasn't as impressive as the last chest I'd seen, and although less than a minute had elapsed since I'd first seen the gal who'd been behind it, I was already understandably curious about her. I vaulted over the bar and yelled at the man, “Hey, you! Hold it!"

He stopped and jerked his head around as I stepped up in front of him. His slightly effeminate face didn't quite go with the masculine build, but many women would probably have called him “handsome” or even “darling.” A thick mass of black curly hair came down in a sharp widow's peak on his white forehead. His mouth was full, chin square and dimpled, and large black-lashed brown eyes blinked at me.

“Who the hell was that tomato?” I asked him. “And what's happening?"

“You tell me,” he said. And then an odd thing happened. He hadn't yet had time to take a good look at me, but he took it now. He gawked at my white hair, my face, blinked, and his mouth dropped open. “Oh, Christ!” he said, and then he took off. Naturally he ran into the ladies’ rest room. It just wouldn't have seemed right at that point if he'd gone anyplace else.

I looked over my shoulder at Pete, whose mouth was hanging completely ajar, then I went to the ladies’ room and inside. Nobody was there. A wall window was open and I looked out through it at the empty alley, then looked all around the rest room again, but it was still empty.

I went back to the bar and said, “Pete, what the hell did you put in that drink?"

He stared at me, shaking his head. Finally he said, “I never seen nothing like that in my life. Thirteen years I've run this place, but—” He didn't finish it.

My hand was stinging and so was a spot on my chin. Going over the bar I had broken a few bottles and cut my left hand slightly, and one of those little slugs had apparently come close enough to nick my chin. I had also soaked up a considerable amount of spilled whiskey in my clothes and I didn't smell good at all. My head hadn't been helped, either, by the activity.

Pete nodded when I told him to figure up the damage and I'd pay him later, then I went back into the Hamilton Building. It appeared Frank Harrison would have to wait. Also, the way things were going, I wanted to get the .38 Colt Special and harness out of my desk.

At the top of the stairs I walked down to the PBX again. Hazel, busy at the switchboard, didn't see me come up but when I spoke she swung around. “What's with that gal you called Pete's about?” I asked her.

“She find you? Wasn't she a beautiful little thing?"

“Yeah. And she found me."

Hazel's nose was wrinkling. “You are decomposing,” she said. “Into bourbon. How many shots did you have?"

“Three, I think. But they all missed me."

“Missed you, ha—"

“Shots that beautiful little thing took at me, I mean. With a gun."

Hazel blinked. “You're kidding.” I shook my head and she said, “Well, I—she did seem upset, a little on edge."

“She was clear the hell over the edge. What did she say?"

“She asked for you. As a matter of fact, she said, ‘Where's that dirty Shell Scott?’ I told her you'd gone to Pete's downstairs—” Hazel smiled sweetly—"for some medicine, and she ran away like mad. She seemed very excited."

“She was."

“And a man came rushing up here a minute or two after the girl and asked about her. I said I'd sent her to Pete's—and he ran off.” She shook her head. “I don't know. I'm a little confused."

That I could understand. Maybe it was something in the L. A. air this morning. I thanked Hazel and walked down to the office, fishing out my keys, but when I got there I noticed the door was already cracked. I shoved it open and walked inside. For the second or third time this morning my jaw dropped open. A guy was seated behind my desk, fussing with some papers on its top, looking businesslike as all hell. He was a big guy, husky, around thirty years old, with white hair sticking up into the air about an inch.

Without looking up, he said, “Be right with you."

I walked to the desk and sank into one of the leather chairs in front of it, a chair I bought for clients to sit in. If the chair had raised up and floated me out of the window while violins played in the distance, my stunned expression would not have changed one iota. In a not very strong voice I said, “Who are you?"

“I'm Shell Scott,” he said briskly, glancing up at me.

Ah, yes. That explained it. He was Shell Scott. Now I knew what was wrong. I had gone crazy. My mind had snapped. For a while there I'd thought I was Shell Scott.

But slowly reason filtered into my throbbing head again. I'd had all the mad episodes I cared for this morning, and here was a guy I could get my hands on. He was looking squarely at me now, and if ever a man suddenly appeared scared green, this one did. Except for the short white hair and the fact that he was about my size, he didn't resemble me much, and right now he looked sick. I got up and leaned on the desk and shoved my face at him.

“That's interesting,” I said pleasantly. “I, too, am Shell Scott."

He let out a grunt and started to get up fast, but I reached out and grabbed a bunch of shirt and tie and throat in my right fist and I yanked him halfway across the desk.

“O. K., you smart sonofabitch,” I said. “Let's have a lot of words. Fast, mister, before I break some bones for you."

He squawked and sputtered and tried to jerk away, so I latched onto him with the other hand and started to haul him over the desk where I could get at him good. I only started to though, because I heard somebody behind me. I twisted my head around just in time to see the pretty boy from Pete's, the guy who'd left the ladies’ room by the window. Just time to see him, and the leather-wrapped sap in his hand, swinging down at me. Then another bomb, a larger one this time, went off in my head and I could feel myself falling, for miles and miles, through deepening blackness.

I came to in front of my desk, and I stayed there for a couple of minutes, got up, made it to the desk chair and sat down in it. If I had thought my head hurt before, it was nothing to the way it felt now. It took me about ten seconds to go from angry to mad to furious to raging, then I grabbed the phone and got Hazel.

“Where'd those two guys go?"

“What guys?"

“You see anybody leave my office?"

“No, Shell. What's the matter?"

“Plenty.” I glanced at my watch. Nine-twenty. Just twenty minutes since I'd first opened the office door this morning and answered the ringing phone. I couldn't have been sprawled on the floor more than a minute or two, but even so my two pals would be far away by now. Well, Harrison was going to have a long wait because I was taking no cases but my own for a while. What with people shooting at me, impersonating me, and batting me on the head, this was a mess I had to find out about fast.

“Hazel,” I said, “get me the Hollywood Roosevelt."

While I waited I calmed down a little and, though the throbbing in my head made it difficult, my thoughts got a little clearer. It seemed a big white-haired ape was passing himself off as me, but I didn't have the faintest idea why. He must have been down below on Broadway somewhere, waited till he saw me leave, then come up. What I couldn't figure was how the hell he'd known I'd be leaving my office. He certainly couldn't have intended hanging around all day just in case I left, and he couldn't have known I'd be at Pete's —

I stopped as a thought hit me. “Hazel,” I said. “Forget that call.” I hung up, thinking. Whitey couldn't have known I'd show up with a hangover, but he might have known I'd be out of here soon after I arrived. All it takes to get a private detective out of his office is—a phone call. An urgent appointment to meet somebody somewhere, say, maybe somebody like Frank Harrison. Could be I was reaching for that one, but I didn't think so. I'd had only the one call this morning, an urgent call that would get me out of the office—and from the very guy who'd pulled the same deal last Monday. And all I'd done Monday was waste an hour. The more I thought about it the more positive I became.

Harrison might still be waiting in the Cinegrill—and he might not. If Harrison were in whatever this caper was with Whitey and Pretty Boy, they'd almost surely phone him soon to let him know I hadn't followed the script; perhaps were even phoning him right now. He'd know, too, that unless I was pretty stupid, I'd sooner or later figure out his part in this.

Excitement started building in me as I grabbed my gun and holster and strapped them on; I was getting an inkling of what might have been wrong with that black-haired lovely. Maybe I'd lost Whitey and Pretty Boy, but with luck I could still get my hands on Harrison. Around his throat, say. I charged out of the office. My head hurt all the way but I made it to the lot where I park my convertible Cadillac, leaped in and roared out onto Broadway. From L. A. to downtown Hollywood I broke hell out of the speed limit, and at the hotel I found a parking spot at the side entrance, hurried through the big lobby and into the Cinegrill.

I remembered Harrison was a very tall diplomat-type with hair graying at the temples and bushy eyebrows over dark eyes. Nobody even remotely like him was in the bar. I asked the bartender, “You know a Frank Harrison?"

“Yes, sir."

“He been in here?"

“Yes, sir. He left just a few minutes ago."

“Left the hotel?"

“No, he went into the lobby."

“Thanks.” I hustled back into the lobby and up to the desk. A tall, thin clerk in his middle thirties, wearing rimless glasses looked at me when I stopped.

“I've got an appointment with Mr. Frank Harrison,” I said. “What room is he in?"

“Seven-fourteen, sir.” The clerk looked a little bewildered. “But Mr. Harrison just left."

“Where'd he go? How long ago?"

The clerk shook his head. “He was checking out. I got his card, and when I turned around I saw him going out the door. Just now. It hasn't been a minute. I don't—"

I turned around and ran for the door swearing under my breath. The bastard would have been at the desk when I came in through the side entrance and headed for the Cinegrill. He must have seen me, and that had been all; he'd powdered. He was well powdered, too, because there wasn't a trace of him when I got out onto Hollywood Boulevard.

Inside the hotel again I checked some more with the bartender and desk clerk, plus two bellboys and a dining-room waitress. After a lot of questions I knew Harrison had often been seen in the bar and dining room with two other men. One was stocky, with curly black hair, white skin, cleft chin, quite handsome—Pretty Boy; the other was bigger and huskier and almost always wore a hat. A bellhop said he looked a bit like me. I told him it was me, and left him looking bewildered. Two bellboys and the bartender also told me that Harrison was seen every day, almost all of every day, with a blonde woman a few years under thirty whom they all described as “stacked.” The three men and the blonde were often a foursome. From the bartender I learned that Harrison had gotten a phone call in the Cinegrill about five minutes before I showed up. That would have been from the other two guys on my list, and fit with Harrison's checking out fast—or starting to. I went back to the desk and chatted some more with the thin clerk after showing him the photostat of my license. Pretty Boy—Bob Foster—was in room 624; Whitey—James Flagg—was in 410; Frank Harrison was in 714.

I asked the clerk, “Harrison married to a blonde?"

“I don't believe he is married, sir."

“He's registered alone?” He nodded, and I said, “I understand he's here a lot with a young woman. Right?"

“Yes, sir. That's Miss Willis."

“A blonde?"

“Yes. Quite, ah, curvaceous."

“What room is she in?"

He had to check. He came back with the card in his hand and said, “Isn't this odd? I had never noticed. She's in seven-sixteen."

It wasn't at all odd. I looked behind him to the slots where room keys were kept. There wasn't any key in the slot for 714. Nor was there any key in the 716 slot. I thanked the clerk, took an elevator to the seventh floor and walked to Harrison's room. There were two things I wanted to do. One was look around inside here to see if maybe my ex-client had left something behind which might help me find him; and the other was to talk with the blonde. As it turned out, I killed two birds with one stone.

The door to 714 was locked, and if I had to I was going to bribe a bellboy to let me in. But, first, I knocked.

It took quite a while, and I had almost decided I'd have to bribe the bellhop, but then there was the sound of movement inside, a muffled voice called something I couldn't understand, and I heard the soft thud of feet coming toward the door. A key clicked in the lock and the door swung open. A girl stood there, yawning, her eyes nearly closed, her head drooping as she stared at approximately the top button of my coat.

She was stark naked. Stark. I had seldom seen anything so stark. She had obviously just gotten out of bed, and just as obviously had been sound asleep. She still wasn't awake, because blinking at my chest she mumbled, “Oh, dammit to hell, John."

Then she turned around and walked back into the room. I followed her, as if hypnotized, automatically swinging the door shut behind me. She was about five-six and close to 130 pounds, and she was shaped like what I sometimes muse about after the third highball. Everybody who had described the blonde, and she was a blonde, had been correct: she was not only “stacked” but “ah, curvaceous.” There was no mistaking it, either; the one time a man can be positive that a woman's shape is her own is when she is wearing nothing but her shape, and this gal was really in dandy shape. She walked away from me toward a bedroom next to this room, like a gal moving in her sleep. She walked to the bed and flopped onto it, pulling a sheet up over her, and I followed her clear to the bed, still coming out of shock, my mind not yet working quite like a well-oiled machine. I managed to figure out that my Frank Harrison was actually named John something. Then she yawned, blinked up at me and said, “Well, dammit to hell, John, stop staring."

And then she stopped suddenly with her mouth stretching wider and wider and her eyes growing enormous as she stared at me. Then she screamed. Man, she screamed like a gal who had just crawled into bed with seventeen tarantulas. I was certainly affecting people in peculiar fashion this morning. She threw off the sheet, leaped to the floor and lit out for an open door in the far wall, leading into the bathroom, and by now that didn't surprise me a bit.

She didn't make it, though. She was only a yard from me at the start, and I took one step toward her, grabbed her wrist and hung on. She stopped screaming and slashed long red fingernails at my face, but I grabbed her hand and shoved her back onto the bed, then said, “Relax, sister. Stop clawing at me and keep your yap closed and I'll let go of you."

She was tense, jerking her arms and trying to get free, but suddenly she relaxed. Her face didn't relax, though; she still glared at me, a mixture of hate, anger, and maybe fright, staining her face. She didn't have makeup on, but her face had a hard, tough-kid attractiveness.

I let go of her and she grabbed the sheet, pulled it up in front of her body. “Get the hell out of here,” she said nastily. There was a phone on a bedside stand and her eyes fell on it. She grabbed it, pulled it off the hook. “I'm calling the cops."

I pulled a chair over beside the bed and sat down. Finally she let go of the phone and glared some more at me.

“I didn't think you'd call any cops, sweetheart,” I said. “Maybe I will, but you won't. Quite a shock seeing me here, isn't it? I was supposed to meet Frank—I mean, John—in the Cinegrill, not up here. You're in trouble, baby."

“I don't know what you're talking about."

“Not much. You know who I am—"

“You're crazy."

“Shut up. Miss Willis. I got a call from your boy friend at nine sharp this morning. I was supposed to rush out here for an important job; only there isn't any important job. Your John, the guy I know as Frank Harrison, just wanted me out of my office for an hour or so. Right?"

She didn't say anything.

“So another guy could play Shell Scott for a while. Now you tell me why."

Her lips curled and she swore at me.

I said, “Something you don't know. You must have guessed the caper's gone sour, but you probably don't know John has powdered. Left you flat, honey."

She frowned momentarily, then her face smoothed and got blank. It stayed blank.

She was clammed good. Finally I said, “Look, I know enough of it already. There's John, and Bob Foster, and a big white-haired slob named Flagg who probably got his peroxide from you. And don't play innocent because I know you're thick with all of them, especially John. Hell, this is his room. So get smart and—"

The phone rang. She reached for it, then stopped.

I yanked the .38 out from under my coat and said, “Don't get wise; say hello.” I took the phone off the hook and held it for her. She said, “Hello,” and I put the phone to my ear just in time to hear a man's voice say, “John, baby. I had to blow fast, that bastard was in the hotel. Pack and meet me at Apex.” He stopped.

I covered the mouthpiece and told the blonde, “Tell him O.K. Just that, nothing else."

I stuck the phone up in front of her and she said, “The panic's on. Fade out.” I got the phone back to my ear just in time to hear the click as he hung up.

The blonde was smiling at me. But she stopped smiling when I stuck my gun back in its holster, then juggled the receiver and said, “Get me the Hollywood Detective Division."

“Hey, wait a minute,” the blonde said. “What you calling the cops for?"

“You can't be that stupid. Tehachapi for you, sweetheart. You probably have a lot of friends there. It won't be so bad. Just horrible."

She licked her lips. When the phone was answered I said, “Put Lieutenant Bronson on, will you?"

The gal said, “Wait a minute. Hold off on that call. Let's ... talk about it."

I grinned. “Now you want to talk. No soap. You can talk to the cops. And don't tell me there isn't enough to hold you on."

“Please. I—call him later if you have to.” She let go of the sheet and it fell to her waist. I told myself to be strong and look away, but I was weak.

“You got it all wrong,” she said softly. “Let's—talk.” She tried to smile, but it didn't quite come off. I shook my head.

She threw the sheet all the way back on the bed then, stood up, holding her body erect, and stepped close to me. “Please, honey. We can have fun. Don't you like me, honey?"

“What's with that white-haired ape in my office? And what's Apex?"

“I don't know. I told you before. Honest, Honey, look at me."

That was a pretty silly thing to say, because I sure wasn't looking at the wallpaper. Just then Lieutenant Bronson came on and I said, “Shell Scott here, Bron. Hollywood Roosevelt, room seven-fourteen."

The blonde stepped closer, almost touching me, then picked up my free right hand and passed it around her waist “Hang up,” she said. “You won't be sorry.” Her voice dropped lower, became a husky murmur as she pressed my fingers into the warm flesh. “Forget it honey. I can be awfully nice."

Bronson was asking me what was up. I said, “Just a second, Bron,” then to the girl, “Sounds like a great kick. Just tell me the story, spill your guts—"

She threw my hand away from her, face getting almost ugly, and then she took a wild swing at me. I blocked the blow with my right hand, put my hand flat on her chest and shoved her back against the bed. She sprawled on it, saying some very nasty things.

I said into the phone, “I've got a brassy blonde here for you,"

“What's the score?"

“Frankly, I'm not sure. But I'll sign a complaint. Using foul language, maybe."

“That her? I can hear her."

“Or maybe attempted rape.” I grinned at the blonde as she yanked the sheet over her and used some more foul language. I said to Bronson, “Actually, it looks like some kind of confidence game—with me a sucker. I don't know the gal, but you guys might make her. Probably she's got a record.” I saw the girl's face change as she winced. “Yeah,” I added, “she's got a record. Probably as long as her face is right now."

“I'll send a man up."

“Make it fast, will you? I've got to get out of here, and this beautiful blonde hasn't a stitch of clothes on."

“Huh? She—I'll be right there."

It didn't take him long. By ten-forty-five Bronson, who had arrived grinning—and the three husky sergeants who came with him—had taken the blonde away and I was back in the hotel's lobby. I had given Bronson a rundown on the morning's events, and he'd said they'd keep after the blonde. Neither of us expected any chatter from her, though. After that soft, “I can be awfully nice,” she hadn't said anything except swear words and: “I want a lawyer, I know my rights, I want a lawyer.” She'd get a lawyer. Tomorrow, maybe.

I went into the Cinegrill and had a bourbon and water while I tried to figure my next move. Bron and I had checked the phone book and city directory for an “Apex” and found almost fifty of them, from Apex Diaper Service to an Apex Junk Yard, which was no help at all, though the cops would check. That lead was undoubtedly no good now that the blonde had warned Harrison. I was getting more and more anxious to find out what the score was, because this was sure shaping up like some kind of con, and I wasn't a bit happy about it.

The confidence man is, in many ways, the elite of the criminal world. Usually intelligent, personable, and more persuasive than Svengali, con-men would be the nicest guys in the world except for one thing: they have no conscience at all. I've run up against con-men before, and they're tricky and treacherous. One of my first clients was an Englishman who had been taken on the rag, a stock swindle, for $140,000. He'd tried to find the man, with no luck, then came to me; I didn't have any luck, either. But when he'd finally given up hope of ever seeing his money again, he'd said to me, of the grifter who had taken him, “I shall always remember him as an extrah-dn'rly chahming chap. He was a pleasant bahstahd.” Then he'd paused, thought a bit, and added, “But, by God, he was a bahstahd!"

The Englishman was right. Confidence men are psychologists with diplomas from sad people: the suckers, the marks, that the con-boys have taken; and there's not a con-man worthy of the name who wouldn't take a starving widow's last penny or a bishop's last C-note, with never a twinge of remorse. They are the pleasant bastards, the con-men, and they thrive because they can make other men believe that opportunity is not only knocking but chopping the door down—and because of men's desire for a fast, even if dishonest, buck, or else the normal greed that's in most of us. They are the spellbinders, and ordinarily don't resort to violence, or go around shooting holes in people.

And it looked as if three of them, or at least two, were up against me. The other one. Pretty Boy Foster, was a bit violent, I remembered, and swung a mean sap. My head still throbbed. All three men, now that the blonde had told Harrison there was big trouble, would probably be making themselves scarce.

But there was still the girl. The gorgeous little gal with black hair and light blue eyes and the chrome-plated pistol. I thought back over what she'd said to me.

There'd been a lot of gibberish about $24,000 and my being a crook and—something else. Something about Folsom's Market. It was worth a check. I looked the place up in the phone book, found it listed on Van Ness Avenue, finished my drink and headed for Folsom's Market.

It was on Van Ness near Washington. I parked, went inside and looked around. Just an ordinary small store; the usual groceries and a glass-faced meat counter extending the length of the left wall. The place was doing a good business. I walked to the single counter where a young red-haired girl about twenty was ringing up a customer's sales on the cash register, and when she'd finished I told her I wanted to speak with the manager. She smiled, then leaned forward to a small mike and said, “Mr. Gordon. Mr. Gordon, please."

In a few seconds a short man in a business suit, with a fleshy pink face and a slight potbelly walked up to me. I told him my name and business, showed him my credentials, then said, “Actually, Mr. Gordon, I don't know if you can help me or not. This morning I talked briefly with a young lady who seemed quite angry with me. She thought I was some kind of crook and mentioned this place, Folsom's Market. Perhaps you know her.” I described the little doll, and she was easy enough to describe, particularly with the odd gray streak in her dark hair. That gal was burned into my memory and I remembered every lovely thing about her, but when I finished the manager shook his head.

“Don't remember anything like her around here,” he said.

“She mentioned something about her father, and twenty-four thousand dollars. I don't—"

I stopped, because Mr. Gordon suddenly started chuckling. The cashier said, “Oh, it must be that poor old man."

The manager laughed. “This'll kill you,” he said. “Some old foreigner about sixty years old came in here this morning, right at eight when we opened up. Said he just wanted to look his store over. His store, get that, Mr. Scott. Claimed he'd bought the place, and—this'll kill you—for twenty-four thousand dollars. Oh, boy, a hundred grand wouldn't half buy this spot."

He was laughing about every third word. It had been very funny, he thought. Only it wasn't a bit funny to me, and I felt sick already. The way this deal was starting to figure, I didn't blame the little cutey for taking a few shots at me.

I said slowly, “Exactly what happened? What else did this ... this foreigner do?"

The manager's potbelly shook a little. “Ah, he gawked around for a while, then I talked to the guy. I guess it must of taken me half an hour to convince him Mr. Borrage owns this place—you know Borrage, maybe, owns a dozen independent places like this, real rich fellow—anyway this stupid old guy swore he'd bought the place. For the money and his little grocery store. You imagine that? Finally I gave him Borrage's address and told him to beat it. Hell, I called Borrage, naturally. He got a chuckle out of it, too, when I told him."

Anger was beginning to flicker in me. “Who was this stupid old man?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Hell, I don't know. I just told him finally to beat it. I couldn't have him hanging around here."

“No.” I said. “Of course not. He was a foreigner, huh? You mean he wasn't an Indian?"

Mr. Gordon blinked at me, said, “Hey?” then described the man as well as he could. He told me he'd never seen the guy before, and walked away.

The cashier said softly, “It wasn't like that at all, Mr. Scott. And he left his name with me."

“Swell, honey. Can you give it to me?"

Her face was sober, unsmiling as she nodded. “I just hate that Mr. Gordon,” she said. “The way it was, this little man came in early and just stood around, looking pleased and happy, kind of smiling all the time. I noticed he was watching me for a while, when I checked out the customers, then he came over to me and smiled. ‘You're a fast worker,’ he said to me. ‘Very good worker, I'm watching you.’ Then he told me I was going to be working for him, that he'd bought this place and was going to move in tomorrow.” She frowned. “I didn't know any better. For all I knew, he might have bought the store. I wish he had.” She glanced toward the back of the store where Mr. Gordon had gone. “He was a sweet little man."

“What finally happened?"

“Well, he kept standing around, then Mr. Gordon came up here and I asked him if the store had been sold. He went over and talked to the old man a while, started laughing, and talked some more. The old man got all excited and waved his arms around and started shouting. Finally Mr. Gordon got a little sharp—he's like that—and pointed to the door. In a minute the little guy came over to me and wrote his name and address down. He said there was some kind of mistake, but it would be straightened out. Then he left.” She paused. “He looked like he was going to cry."

“I see. You got that name handy?"

“Uh-huh.” She opened the cash register and took a slip of paper out of it. “He wanted us to be able to get in touch with him; he acted sort of dazed."

“He would have,” I said. She handed me the note. On it, in a shaky, laboriously scrawled script, was written an address and: Emil Elmlund, Elmlund's Neighborhood Grocery. Phone WI 2-1258.

“Use your phone?” I asked.

“Sure."

I dialed WI 2-1258. The phone rang several times, then a girl's voice answered, “Hello."

“Hello. Who is this, please?"

“This is Janet Elmlund."

That was what Pretty-Boy had called the girl in Pete's; Janet, and Jan. I said, “Is Mrs. McCurdy there?"

“McCurdy? I—you must have the wrong number."

I told her I wanted WI 2-1259, apologized, and hung up. I didn't want her to know I was coming out there. This time she might have a rifle. Then I thanked the cashier, went out to the Cad and headed for Elmlund's Neighborhood Grocery.

It was a small store on a tree-lined street, the kind of “Neighborhood Grocery” you used to see a lot of in the days before supermarkets sprang up on every other corner. A sign on the door said, “Closed Today.” A path had been worn in the grass alongside the store's right wall, leading to a small house in the rear. I walked along the path and paused momentarily before the house. It was white, neat, with green trim around the windows, a porch along its front. A man sat on the porch in a wooden chair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He was looking right at me as I walked toward him, but he didn't give any sign that he'd noticed me, and his face didn't change expression.

I walked up onto the porch. “Mr. Elmlund?"

He slowly raised his head and looked at me. He was a small man, with a lined brown face and very light blue eyes. Wisps of gray hair still clung to his head. He looked at me and blinked, then said, “Yes."

He looked away from me then, out into the yard again. It was as if I weren't there at all. And, actually, my presence probably didn't mean a thing to him. It was obvious that he had been taken in a confidence game, taken for $24,000 and maybe a dream. I couldn't know all of it yet, but I new enough about how he must feel now, still shocked, dazed, probably not yet thinking at all.

I squatted beside him and said, “Mr. Elmlund, my name is Shell Scott."

For a minute nothing happened, then his eyebrows twitched, pulled down. Frowning, he looked at me. “What?” he said.

I heard the click of high heels, the front door was pushed open and a girl stood there, holding a tray before her with two sandwiches on it. It was the same little lovely, black hair pulled back now and tied with a blue ribbon. She still wore the blue clam-diggers and the man's shirt.

I stood up fast. “Hold everything,” I said to her. “Get this through your head—there's a guy in town about my size, with hair the same color as mine, and he's pretending to be me. He's taken my name, and he's used my office. But I never heard of you, or Mr. Elmlund, or Folson's Market until this morning. Now don't throw any sandwiches at me and for Pete's sake don't start shooting."

She had been staring at me open-mouthed ever since she opened the door and spotted me. Finally her mouth came shut with a click and her hands dropped. The tray fell clattering to the porch and the sandwiches rolled almost to my feet. She stared at me for another half-minute without speaking, comprehension growing on her face, then she said, “Oh, no. Oh, no."

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Now suppose we all sit down and get to the bottom of this mess."

She said, “Really? Please—you wouldn't—"

“I wouldn't.” I showed her several different kinds of identification from my wallet, license, picture, even a fingerprint, and when I finished she was convinced. She blinked those startling blue eyes at me and said, “How awful. I'm so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?"

“Yes. Yes, indeed. Right now, I forgive you."

“You don't. You can't.” For the first time since I'd seen her, she wasn't looking furious or shocked, and for the moment at least she seemed even to have forgotten about the money they'd lost. I had, I suppose, spoken with almost frantic eagerness, and now she lowered her head slightly and blinked dark lashes once, and her red lips curved ever so slightly in a soft smile. At that moment I could have forgiven her if she'd been cutting my throat with a hack saw. She said again, “You can't."

“Oh, yes I can. Forget it. Could have happened to anybody."

She laughed softly, then her face sobered as she apparently remembered why I was here. I remembered, too, and started asking questions. Ten minutes later we were all sitting on the porch eating picnic sandwiches and drinking beer, and I had most of the story. Mr. Elmlund—a widower, and Janet's father—had run the store here for more than ten years, paid for it, saved $24,000. He was looking for a larger place and had been talking about this to a customer one day, a well-dressed man, smooth-talking, very tall, graying at the temples. The guy's name was William Klein, but he was also apparently my own Frank Harrison. It seemed Harrison was a real-estate broker and had casually mentioned that he'd let Mr. Elmlund know if he ran across anything that looked good.

Mr. Elmlund sipped his beer and kept talking. Elmlund said to me, “He seemed like a very nice man, friendly. Then when he come in and told me about this place it sounded good. He said this woman was selling the store because her husband had died not long ago. She was selling the store and everything and going back East, wasn't really much interested in making a lot of money out of it. She was rich, had a million dollars or more. She just wanted to get away fast, he said, and would sell for sixty thousand cash. Well, I told him that was too much, but he asked me to look at it—that was Folsom's Market—maybe we could work a deal, he said. So the next Sunday we went there; I didn't think it would hurt none to look."

“Sunday? Was the store open?"

“No, it was closed, but he had a key. That seemed right because he was—he said he was agent for it. Well, it was just like I'd always wanted, a nice store. Nice market there, and plenty room, good location—” He let the words trail off.

The rest of it was more of the same. The old con play; give the mark a glimpse of something he wants bad, then make him think he can have it for little or nothing, tighten the screws. A good con-man can tie up a mark so tight that normal reasoning powers go out the window. And getting a key which would open the store wouldn't have been any more trouble than getting the one which opened my office.

Last Sunday, a week after they'd looked over the store, Harrison had come to Elmlund all excited, saying the widow was anxious to sell and was going to advertise the store for sale in the local papers. If Elmlund wanted the place at a bargain price he'd have to act fast. Thursday—today, now—the ads would appear and the news would be all over town; right then only the widow, Harrison, and Elmlund himself knew about it. So went Harrison's story. After some more talk Harrison had asked how much cash Elmlund could scrape together. When Harrison learned $24,000 was tops, why naturally that was just enough cash—plus the deed to Elmlund's old store—to maybe swing a fast deal. All con-men are actors, expert at making their lines up as they go along, and Harrison must have made up the bit about throwing the deed in merely to make Elmlund think he was paying a more legitimate price; no well-played mark would think of wondering why a widow getting rid of one store so she could blow would take another as part payment.

Janet broke in, looking at me. “That was when Dad thought about having the transaction investigated. He talked to me about it and decided to see you, have you look into it. You see, he thought the sale was still secret, and you could check on it before the ads came out in the papers. And—he just couldn't believe it. He intended originally to invest only about ten thousand above what we'd get out of our store, but, well, it seemed like such a wonderful chance for him, for us. We were both a little suspicious, though."

“Uh-huh.” I could see why Elmlund might want the deal checked, and I could even understand why he'd decided to see me instead of somebody else. The last six months I'd been mixed up in a couple cases that got splashed all over the newspapers, and my name was familiar to most of Los Angeles. But another bit puzzled me.

I said, “Janet, this morning in Pete's—” she made a face—"who was the man who charged in and yelled at you? Just as you were—leaving."

“Man? I didn't see any man. I—lost my head.” She smiled slightly. “I guess you know. And after—afterwards, I got scared and ran, just wanted to get away. I thought maybe I'd killed somebody."

“I thought maybe you had, myself."

She said, “I was almost crazy. Dad had just told me what had happened, and I was furious. And you'd told Dad everything was fine, that the transaction was on the level—I mean he had, that other Shell Scott—you know."

“Yeah. What about that?” I turned to Mr. Elmlund. “When did you see this egg in my office?” I already knew, but I wanted to be sure.

“At nine-thirty on Monday morning, this last Monday. I went in right at nine-thirty, there in the Hamilton Building, and talked to him. He said he'd investigate it for me. Then yesterday morning he came out to the store here and said it was all right. It cost me fifty dollars."

“Sure. That made the con more realistic. You'd have thought it was funny if you weren't soaked a little for the job."

He shrugged and said, “Then, right after I talked yesterday to the detective—that one—he drove me and Janet from here to the real-estate office, the Angelus Realty. Said he was going by there. Well, I stopped at the bank—those ads were supposed to come out in the papers today, you know—and got the money. Then at that office I gave them the money and signed all the papers and things and—that was all. I wasn't supposed to go to the store till tomorrow, but I couldn't wait."

Janet told me where the “real-estate office” was, on Twelfth Street, but I knew that info was no help now. She said that this morning, before she'd come charging in at me, she'd first gone to the Angelus Realtors—probably planning to shoot holes in Harrison, though she didn't say so. But the place had been locked and she'd then come to the Hamilton Building. She remembered the sign “Angelus Realtors” had still been painted on the door, but I knew, sign or no sign, that office would be empty.

I looked at Janet. “This guy I was talking about, the one in Pete's Bar this A. M., was about five-ten, stocky, I suppose you'd say he was damned good-looking. Black hair, even features."

“That sounds like Bob Foster. Cleft chin and brown eyes?"

“That's him. Did you meet him before or after this deal came up?"

“Bob? Why, you can't think he—"

“I can and do. I'm just wondering which way it was; did he set up the con, or did he come in afterwards."

“Why, I met Bob a month before the realtor showed up. Bob and I went out several times."

“Then dear Bob told him to come around, I imagine. I suppose Bob knew your father was thinking about a new store."

“Yes, but—"

“And after you and your father talked about hiring me to make sure the deal was square, did Bob happen to learn about it?"

“Why—he was here when we discussed it. He—” she stopped, eyes widening. “I'd forgotten it until now, but Bob suggested that Dad engage an investigator. When we told him we couldn't believe it, that there just had to be something wrong or dishonest about the sale for the price to be so low, he suggested we hire a detective to investigate the man and all the rest of it.” She paused again. “He even suggested your name, asked us if we'd heard of you or met you. We hadn't met you, but of course we'd read about you in the papers, and told Bob so. He said he knew you, that you were capable and thoroughly honest—and he—made the appointment with you for nine-thirty Monday."

“Good old Bob,” I said. “That made it perfect. That would get rid of the last of your doubts. Janet, Bob Foster is probably no more his right name than Harrison is a real-estate dealer. The guy I know as Harrison, you know as Klein; his girl friend calls him John, and his real name is probably Willie Zilch. And I'm not getting these answers by voodoo. Harrison, Foster, and the guy who said he was Shell Scott all stay at the same hotel. They're a team, with so many fake names they sound like a community."

“But Bob—I thought he was interested in me. He was always nice."

“Yeah, pleasant. So you saw him a few times, and then be learned your dad was ripe for a swindle. He tipped Harrison, the inside-man, and they set up the play. The detective angle just tied it tighter. It was easy enough. A phone call to me to get me out of the office, another guy bleaches his hair, walks in and waits for your dad to show, then kills a couple days and reports all's well."

It was quiet for a minute, then I said, “The thing I don't get is how he happened to show up at Pete's right after you did?"

Mr. Elmlund answered that one. “He and Jan were going on a picnic today. When I told her about—about losing my money she ran to the car and drove away. Right after, Bob come in and asked for Janet. I told him what happened. Said she mentioned going to see that Klein and you. Now I think of it, he got a funny look and run off to his car."

“I hate to say it, Janet,” I said, “but Bob was probably less interested in the picnic—under the circumstances—than in finding out if everything was still under control."

I thought a minute. The white-haired egg had probably been planted outside waiting for me to leave; when I did, he went up to the office. Bob must have showed up and checked with Hazel, reached Pete's just as Janet started spraying bullets around, chased her but couldn't find her or else knew he'd better tip Whitey fast. So he'd charged to the office just in time to sap me. Something jarred my thoughts there. It bothered me but I couldn't figure out what it was.

I said, “Have you been to the police yet?"

Janet said, “No. We've been so—upset. We haven't done anything since I got back home."

“I'll take care of it, then.” I got up. “That's about it, I guess. I'll try running the men down, but it's not likely they'll be easily found. I'll do what I can."

Janet had been sitting quietly, looking at me. Now she got up, took my hand, and pulled me after her into the front room of the house. Inside, she put a hand on my arm and said softly, “You know how sorry I am about this morning. I was a little crazy for a while there. But I want to thank you for coming out, saying you'll help."

“I'll be helping myself, too, Janet."

“I get sick when I think I might actually have shot you.” She looked at the raw spot on my chin. “Did I—shoot you there?"

I grinned at her. “It might have been a piece of glass. I landed in some."

“Just a minute.” She went away and came back with a bit of gauze and a piece of tape. She pressed it gently against the “wound,” as she called it, her fingers cool and soft against my cheek. Her touch sent a tingle over my skin, a slight shiver between my shoulder blades. Then she stretched up and gently pressed her lips against my cheek.

“That better?"

It's funny; some women can leap into your lap, practically strangle you, mash their mouth all over you, kiss you with their lips and tongues and bodies, and leave you cold—I'm talking about you, of course. But just the gentle touch of this gal's lips on my cheek turned my spine to spaghetti. That was the fastest fever I ever got; a thermometer in my mouth would have popped open and spouted mercury every which way.

I said, “Get your .22. I'm about to shoot myself full of holes."

She laughed softly, her arms going around my neck, then she started to pull herself up but my head was already on its way down, and when her lips met mine it was a new kind of shock. The blonde back there in the hotel room had been fairly enjoyable, but Janet had more sex and fire and hunger in just her lips than the blonde had in her entire stark body. When Jan's hands slid from my neck and she stepped back I automatically moved toward her, but she put a hand on my chest, smiling, glanced toward the porch, then took my arm and led me outside again.

When my breathing was reasonably normal I said, “Mr. Elmlund, I'm leaving now but if I get any news at all, I'll hurry back—I mean, ha, come back."

Janet chuckled. “Hurry's all right,” she said.

Mr. Elmlund said, “Mr. Scott, if you can get our money again I'll pay you anything—half of it—"

“Forget that part. I don't want any money. If I should miraculously get it back, it's all yours."

He looked puzzled. “Why? Why should you help me?"

I said, “Actually, Mr. Elmlund, this is just as important to me. I don't like guys using my name to swindle people; I could get a very nasty reputation that way. Not to mention my dislike for being conned myself and getting hit over the head. For all I know there are guys named Shell Scott all over town, conning people, maybe shooting people. The con worked so well for these guys once, they'll probably try the same angles again—or would have if I hadn't walked in—on—” I stopped. That same idea jarred my thoughts as it had before when I'd been thinking about the guy in my office. It was so simple I should have had it long ago. But now a chill ran down my spine and I leaned toward Mr. Elmlund.

“You weren't supposed to see me—the detective—this morning were you?"

“Why, no. Everything was finished, he already give me his report."

I didn't hear the rest of what he said. I was wondering why the hell Harrison had called me again, why Whitey had needed my office again, if not for Mr. Elmlund.

I swung toward Janet. “Where's your phone? Quick."

She blinked at me, then turned and went into the house. I followed, right on her heels.

“Show me. Hurry."

She pointed out the phone on a table and I grabbed it, dialed the Hamilton Building. There was just a chance—but it was already after noon.

Hazel came on. “This is Shell. Anyone looking for me?"

“Hi, Shell. How's your hangover—"

“This is important, hell with the hangover. Anybody there right after I took off?"

Her voice got brisk. “One man, about fifty, named Carl Strossmin. Said he had an appointment for nine-thirty."

“He say what about?"

“No. I took his name and address. Thirty-six, twenty-two Gramercy. Said he'd phone back; he hasn't called."

“Anything else?"

“That's all."

“Thanks.” I hung up. I said aloud, “I'll be damned. They've got another mark."

Jan said, “What?” but I was running for the door. I leaped into the Cad, gunned the motor and swung around in a U-turn. It was clear enough. Somewhere the boys had landed another sucker, and the “investigation” by Shell Scott had worked so well once that they must have used the gimmick again. They would still be around, but if they made this score they'd almost surely be off for Chicago, or Buenos Aires, or no telling where.

Carl Strossmin—I remembered hearing about him. He'd made a lot of money, most of it in deals barely this side of the law; he'd be the perfect mark because he was always looking for the best of it. Where Elmlund had thought he was merely getting an amazing piece of good fortune, Strossmin might well think he was throwing the blocks to somebody else. I didn't much like what I'd heard about Strossmin, but I liked not at all what I knew of Foster and Whitey and Harrison.

When I spotted the number I wanted on Gramercy I slammed on the brakes, jumped out and ran up to the front door of 3622. I rang the bell and banged on the door until a middle-aged woman looked out at me, frowning.

“Say,” she said. “What is the matter with you?"

“Mrs. Strossmin?"

“Yes."

“Your husband here?"

Her eyes narrowed. “No. Why? What do you want him for?"

I groaned. “He isn't closing any business deal, is he?"

Her eyes were slits now. “What are you interested for?” She looked me up and down. “They told us there were other people interested. You—"

“Lady, listen. He isn't buying a store, or an old locomotive or anything, is he?"

She pressed her lips together. “I don't think I'd better say anything till he gets back."

“That's fine,” I said. “That's great. Because the nice businessmen are crooks. They're confidence men, thieves, they're wanted by police of seventy counties. Kiss your cabbage good-bye, lady—or else start telling me about it fast."

Her lips weren't pressed together any more. They peeled apart like a couple of liver chunks. “Crooks?” she groaned. “Crooks?"

“Crooks, gyps, robbers, murderers. Lady, they're dishonest."

She let out a wavering scream and threw her hands in the air. “Crooks!” she wailed. “I told him they were crooks. Oh, I told the old fool, you can bet—!” She fainted.

I swore nastily, jerked the screen door open and picked her up, then carried her to a couch. Finally she came out of it and blinked at me. She opened her mouth.

I said, “If you say ‘crooks’ once again I'll bat you. Now where the hell did your husband go?"

She started babbling, not one word understandable. But finally she got to her feet and started tottering around. “I wrote it down,” she said. “I wrote it down. I wrote—"

“What did you write down?"

“Where he was going. The address.” She threw up her hands. “Forty-one thousand dollars! Crooks! Forty-one—"

“Listen,” I said. “He have that much money on him?” “No. He had to go to the bank.” “What bank?” By the time she answered I'd already spotted the phone and was dialing. A bank clerk told me that Carl Strossmin had drawn $41,000 out of his account only half an hour ago. He'd been very excited, but he'd made no mention of what he wanted the money for. I hung up. I knew why Carl hadn't mentioned anything about it: it was a secret.

Mrs. Strossmin was still puttering around, pulling out drawers and occasionally throwing her hands up into the air and screeching. Gradually I got her story and, with what I already knew, put the pieces together. Her husband's appointment with “Shell Scott” had been made two days ago by real-estate dealer “Harrison” himself, here in Strossmin's home. After suggesting that since Strossmin seemed a bit undecided he might feel safer if he engaged a “completely honest” detective, Harrison had dialed a number, chatted a bit, and handed Strossmin the phone. Finally an appointment had been made for nine-thirty this A. M. Strossmin had been talking, of course, to Whitey who most likely was in a phone booth or bar.

Harrison probably wouldn't have suggested me by name to Strossmin, expecting the mark to accept his, the realtor's, suggestion, except for one thing, which was itself important to the con: my reputation in L. A. A lot of people here believe I'm crazy, others think I'm stupid, and many, particularly old maids, are sure I'm a fiendish lecher; but there's never been any question about my being honest. This phase of the con was based on making Strossmin—and Elmlund before him—think he was really talking to me when he met Whitey, the Shell Scott of the con, in my office. However when I popped back into the office and messed up that play this morning, the boys had to change their plans fast.

At eleven-thirty, about the time I was driving to Elmlund's, Whitey had come here to Strossmin's home, apologized for not being in his office when Strossmin had arrived this A. M., and said he'd come here to spare Strossmin another trip downtown. After learning what Strossmin wanted investigated, Whitey had pretended surprise and declared solemnly that this was a strange coincidence indeed, because Strossmin was the second man to ask for the identical investigation. Oh, yes, he'd already investigated—for this other eager buyer—and told him that the deal was on the level. No doubt about it, this was the opportunity of the century—and time, sad to say, was terribly short. Apparently, said Whitey, negotiations were going on with dozens of other people—and so on until Strossmin had been in a frenzy of impatience.

Finally Mrs. Strossmin found her slip of paper and thrust it at me. An address was scribbled on it: Apex Realtors, 4870 Normandie Avenue. I grabbed the paper and ran to the Cad.

Apex Realtors was, logically enough, no more than an ordinary house with a sign in the window: Apex Realtors. When I reached it and parked, a small, well-dressed man with a thick mustache was just climbing into a new Buick at the curb. I ran from the Cad to his Buick and stopped him just as he started the engine.

“Mr. Strossmin?"

He was just like his wife. His eyes narrowed. “Yes."

I took a deep breath and blurted it out, “Did you just buy Folsom's Market?"

He grinned. “Beat you, didn't I? You're too late—"

“Shut up. You bought nothing but a headache. How many men inside there?"

He chuckled. “They told me I'd have to hurry. Sorry my good man, but—"

About ready to flip, I yanked out my gun and pointed it at him. "How many men in there?"

I thought for a minute he was going to faint, too, but he managed to gasp, “Three."

I said, “You wait here,” then turned and ran up to the house. The door was partly ajar, and I hit it and charged inside, the gun in my right hand. There wasn't anybody in sight, but another door straight ahead of me had a sign, “Office,” on it. As I went through the door a car motor growled into life behind the house. I ran for the back, found a door standing wide open and jumped through it just as a sky-blue Oldsmobile sedan parked in the alley took off fast. I barely got a glimpse of it, but I knew who was in it. The three con-men were powdering now that they had all the dough they were after. There was a chance they'd seen me, but it wasn't likely. Probably they'd grabbed the dough and left by the back way as soon as Strossmin stepped through the front door.

I raced out front again and sprinted for the Cad, yelling to Strossmin, “Call the police!” He sat there, probably feeling pleased at the coup he'd just put over. He'd call the cops, next week, maybe. I ripped the Cad into gear and roared to the corner, took a right and stepped on the gas. I had to slow at the next intersection, looked both directions and caught a flash of blue two blocks away on my right, swung in after them and pushed the accelerator to the floorboards. I was gaining on them rapidly, and now I had a few seconds to try figuring out how to stop them. Up close I could see the Olds sedan, and the figures of three men inside it, two in the front seat and one in back. Con-men don't usually carry guns, but these guys operated a little differently from most con-men. In the first place they usually make the mark think he's in on a crooked deal, and in the second they almost always try to cool the mark out, allay his suspicions so he doesn't know, at least for a long time, that he's been taken. The boys ahead of me had broken both those rules, and there was a good chance they'd also broken the rule about guns.

But I was less than half a block behind them now and they apparently hadn't tumbled. They must figure they were in the clear, so I had surprise on my side. Well, I'd surprise them.

We were a long way from downtown here, but still in the residential section. I caught up with their car, pulled out on their left and slightly ahead, then as we reached an intersection I swung to my right, cutting them off just as I heard one of the men in the blue Olds yell loudly.

The driver did the instinctive thing, jerked his steering wheel to the right and they went clear up over the curb and stalled on a green lawn before a small house. I was out of my Cad and running toward them, the Colt in my fist, before their car stopped moving twenty feet from me. And one of them did have a gun.

They sure as hell knew who I was by now, and I heard the gun crack. A slug snapped past me as I dived for the lawn, skidded a yard. Doors swung open on both sides of the blue Olds. Black-haired Pretty Boy jumped from the back and started running away from me, lugging a briefcase.

I got to my knees, and yelled, “Stop! Hold it or you get it, Foster."

He swung around, crouching, and light gleamed on the metal of a gun in his hand. He fired once at me and missed, and I didn't hold back any longer. I snapped the first shot from my .38 but I aimed the next two times, and he sagged slowly to his knees, then fell forward on his face.

Gray-haired Harrison was a few steps from the car, standing frozen, staring at Foster's body, but Whitey was fifty feet beyond him running like mad. I took out after him, but as I went by Harrison I let him have the full weight of my .38 on the back of his skull. I didn't even look back; he'd keep for a while.

I jammed my gun into its holster and sprinted down the sidewalk, Whitey half a block ahead but losing ground. He wasn't in very good shape, apparently, and after a single block he was damn near staggering. He heard my feet splatting on the pavement behind him and for a moment he held his few yards’ advantage, then he slowed again. He must have known I had him, because he stopped and whirled around to face me, ready to go down fighting.

He went down, all right, but not fighting. When he stopped I bad been less than ten feet from him, travelling like a fiend, and he spun around just in time to connect his face with my right fist. I must have started the blow from six feet away, just as he began turning, and what with my speed from running, and the force of the blow itself, my fist must have been travelling fifty miles an hour.

It was awful what it did to him. I caught only a flashing glimpse of his face as he swung around, lips peeled back and hands coming up, and then my knuckles landed squarely on his mouth and his lips really peeled back and he started going the same direction I was going and almost as fast. I ran several steps past him before I could stop, but when I turned around he was practically behind me and there was a thin streak of blood for two yards on the sidewalk. He was all crumpled up, out cold, and for a minute I thought he was out for good. But I felt for his heartbeat and found it.

So I squatted by him and waited. Before he came out of it, a little crowd gathered: half a dozen kids and some housewives, one young guy about thirty who came running from half a block away. I told him to call the cops and he phoned. Whitey was still out when the guy came back and said a car was on its way.

Finally Whitey stirred, moaned. I looked around and said to the women, “Get the kids out of here. And maybe you better not stick around yourselves."

The women frowned, shifted uneasily, but they shooed the kids away. Whitey shook his head. Finally he was able to sit up. His face wasn't pretty at all. I grabbed his coat and pulled him close to me.

I said, “Shell Scott, huh? I hear you're a tough baby. Get up, friend."

I stood up and watched him while he got his feet under him. It took him a while, and all the time he didn't say a word. I suppose the decent thing would have been to let him get all the way up, but I didn't wait. When he was halfway up I balled my left fist and slammed it under his chin. It straightened him just enough so I could set myself solidly, and get him good with my right fist. It landed where I wanted it to, on his nose, and he left us for a while longer. He fell onto the grass on his back, and perhaps he had looked a bit like me at one time, but he didn't any more.

The guy who had called the cops helped me carry Whitey back to the blue Oldsmobile. We dumped him and Harrison inside and I climbed in back with them—and with the briefcase—while he went out to the curb and waited for a prowl car. I got busy. When I finished, these three boys had very little money in their wallets and none was in the briefcase. It added up to $67,500. There was Elmlund's $24,000, I figured, plus Strossmin's $41,000, plus my $2500. I lit a cigarette and waited for the cops.

It was two P. M. before I got away. Both cops in the patrol car were men I knew well; Borden and Lane. Lane and I especially were good friends. I gave my story and my angles to Lane, and finally he went along with what I wanted.

I finished it with, “This Strossmin is still so wound up by these guys he'll probably figure it out about next week, but when he does, he should be a good witness. No reason why Elmlund can't be left out of it."

Lane shook his head and rubbed a heavy chin where bristles were already sprouting. “Well ... if this Strossmin doesn't come through in court, we'll need Elmlund."

“You'll get him. Besides, I'll be in court, remember. Enjoying myself."

He nodded. “O. K., Shell."

I handed him the briefcase with $41,000 inside it, told him I'd come to headquarters later, and took off. I'd given Lane the address where I'd left Strossmin, as well as his home address, but Strossmin hadn't waited. I drove to his house.

I could hear them going at it hammer and tongs. Mrs. Strossmin didn't even stop when I rang the bell, but finally her husband opened the door. He just stood there glowering at me. “Well?” he said.

“I just wanted to let you know, Mr. Strossmin, that the police have caught the men who tricked you."

I was going on, but he said, “Trick me? Nobody tricked me. You're trying to trick me."

“Look, mister, I just want you to know your money's safe. The cops have it. My name is Shell Scott—"

“Ha!” he said. “It is, hey? No, it's not, that's not your name, can't fool me. You're a crook, that's what you are."

His wife was in the door.

She screeched in his ear, “What did I say? Old fool, I warned you."

“Mattie,” he said. “If you don't sit down and shut up—"

I tried some more, but he just wouldn't believe me. A glowing vision could have appeared in the sky crying, “You been tricked, Strossmin!” and the guy wouldn't have believed it. There are marks like him, who beg to be taken.

So finally I said, “Well, you win."

“What?"

“You win. Nothing I can do about it now. Store's yours.” I put on a hangdog look. He cackled.

I said, “You can take over the place today, you know. Well, good-bye—and the better man won."

“Today?"

“Yep. Folsom's Markets, isn't it?"

“Yes, yes."

“Well, you go right down there. Ask for Mr. Gordon."

“Mr. Gordon?"

“Yep.” I shook his hand. He cackled, and Mrs. Strossmin screeched at him, and he told her to shut up and I left. They were still going at it as I drove away to the Elmlunds.

Mr. Elmlund didn't quite know what to do when I dropped the big packet of bills on his table and said the hoods were in the clink. He stared at the money for a long time. When finally he did speak it was just, “I don't know what to say."

Jan came out onto the porch and I told them what happened and I thought they were going to crack up for a while, and then I thought they were going to float off over the trees, but finally Mr. Elmlund said, “I must pay you, Mr. Scott. I must."

I said, “No. Besides, I got paid."

Jan was leaning against the side of the door, smiling at me. She'd changed clothes and was wearing a smooth, clinging print dress now, and the way she looked I really should have had on dark glasses. She looked happy, wonderful, and her light blue eyes were half-lidded, her gaze on my mouth.

“No,” she said. “You haven't been paid."

Her tongue traced a smooth, gleaming line over her lower lip, and I remembered her fingers on my cheek, her lips against my skin.

“You haven't been paid, Shell."

I had a hunch she was right.

Film Strip

Robbie was wearing a two-piece pink bikini in extremely brazen fashion, or at least without false modesty, and seldom had such astounding curves been so joyously uncensored.

The day was a sparkling Sunday in July, the place was a secluded half-moon beach on California's coast a few miles south of Laguna. It was my first day in a long time away from downtown Los Angeles and my office, but one day like this could make up for months of smog.

The sun was bright, the air clear, the sand under our bare feet voluptuously warm. The sea was, as always, bluer than I remembered it, and the combers boomed a few yards away, white jets of foam slashing the beach like fangs.

And the girl was Robbie.

Roberta Greta Ducharme. Twenty-four years old, but wiser than twenty-four, and in her blood and bone the best of Mexico, Sweden, and France. Tall enough, with red-burned chestnut hair, sweet lips, gray eyes like warm, solid smoke. And a body—indescribable. I live and work in Hollywood, I've seen a lot of them, but Robbie stood in the sun and left most of the rest in the shade. The measurements were there, splendidly there, but they were statistics which merely whispered; her body did the shouting.

Robbie, at the moment, was very much full of hell.

I was trying out a big Zoomar telescopic lens on my new Bell & Howell movie camera, holding on Robbie while she danced and pranced. She posed, flew around, wiggled a little. The word for it was: sensational.

“Shell,” Robbie called to me.

“Yeah?"

“Let me take a picture—I haven't any of you yet."

“Ah, what a tragic—"

“Really. You can give it to me when it's developed, so I'll have proof."

“Proof?"

“Uh-huh. If I tell my girl friends I went out with a devilish private detective with all those muscles and all, they wouldn't believe me. But if I have a movie to show them—” She frowned, very prettily. “They may still not believe me."

I grabbed her, picked her up and ran toward the water, but she squealed and wriggled so frantically, yelling, “My hair, my hair! You'll get my hair wet!” that I stopped before she got inundated, turned and carried her up the beach again. She rested limp in my arms, let her head fall back, thick glossy hair brushing my thigh. She sighed, then said, “Fun, Shell. Very Fun."

“True, Robbie. Very fun."

It was. I'd talked to Robbie several times before. She was a model, part-time actress, part-time cocktail waitress. I'd met her during a part-time cocktail-waitress period and we'd had fun yakking, but this was our first date, first outing together. The beach had been the right choice, for sure. We were completely alone here, sea on one side, half-circle of cliffs on the other. The only ways in or out were along narrow paths down the cliffs, one at each end of the beach.

I put Robbie on her feet again and she winked at me, tossed her hair and pranced away like a skittish colt. I got the camera focused on her, took a long shot and then pushed the little lever which moved the adjustable lens, to bring her up close in the view finder, and zoom, right up there! It was wonderful, and got even better. These were shots I would look at when I got old, to get me young again.

“Shell,” Robbie called, gyrating around, “I never told you."

“Told me what?"

“Ever since I was a teenager, I've had a suppressed desire to be a striptease dancer."

“Aha, so that's what you're doing out there?” I lowered the camera and grinned at her.

I thought something moved against the skyline a couple of hundred yards away, up at the top of the cliffs. I glanced in that direction, but nothing was in sight. A comber hit jagged rocks at the cuff's base and spurted thick feathers of spray high above them. Maybe that was what I'd seen.

Robbie laughed. “I'm just getting loosened up now. But really—I'm serious. Just once, just once, I'd love to really do it! It's crazy, I know—"

“No, it's not."

“—but I almost have to fight it sometimes."

“Robbie dear, don't fight it Don't you know suppression can warp your tender little brain all out of whack? You can get whacky, you can get—complexes and all that jazz."

“Some of those girls must have fun when they slither out on the stage—” she made a little slithering motion—"and sway and wiggle around—” she made some little swaying and wiggling around motions—"and then—get all wound up—and let—go — Oh, what am I saying? I almost got carried away."

“Don't stop, don't stop. You were just going good there—"

She laughed again. “I've seen them on the stage in the lights. The men just whoop and holler, you know it?"

“Yeah, I know it. In fact—"

“And they actually whistle when the girl glides around and then stops and—gets all wound up—and lets—go — Oh, there I go again."

“Drat it, you didn't go. Robbie, you can't just—are you going to leave everything so—all half-finished—and just dangling like—"

“I tell you what I'll do, Shell."

“Yeah?"

“I'll do it. Do a striptease, right here I mean, just like on a stage. And you can make a movie of it—if you promise never to show it to anybody but me."

"I promise!"

“You won't think I'm awful, will you—?"

“What a ridiculous—"

“—or a brazen hussy, or bad or anything?"

“No, no—"

“I just feel so free—"

“Free—"

“—so good—"

“—Good—"

She'd been prancing about, but now she stopped and stared at me, head slightly lowered, smiling, white teeth pressed together. “I'll really do it—unless you stop me."

Well, you know it: I sure as hell didn't stop her. Still smiling she began to dance again. Slowly at first, then a little more wildly.

“Make the movie!” she said laughing.

I shot a few feet of film as she spun and arched and whirled. I thought something moved again on the edge of that cliff, but just then Robbie stretched both hands behind her back, reaching for the bowknot of the bikini bra. And I forgot to look away. The movement made her breasts seem to swell, burst forward against the cloth as if they were going to thrust completely through it.

She pulled at the strings of the bra and it loosened, started to fall. But she brought one arm forward quickly, pressed her hand against the middle of the cloth, held it there while the outer edges fell, half baring the white roundness of her breasts.

Well, it began feeling as if my blood were vulcanizing the lining of my veins, as if I were cooking from the inside out. I could actually feel the increased heat of my skin. Because there was something unique about this Robbie, a kind of wild witchcraft or mesmerism, an electrical atmosphere all around her, impalpable and invisible but there just the same.

It was like getting hit with an invisible sap, almost as if, when she stood twenty feet away and I looked at her, there was really no distance between us. As if she moved in some fourth dimension of her own—and that fourth dimension was sex. It wasn't anything conscious or purposeful; it was just there, all the time, and you couldn't ever be completely unaware of it even when she was sitting still. And she was not sitting still, she was moving, swaying almost lasciviously now, the bra sliding, slipping.

And I guess I slipped, mentally, into some kind of different dimension myself. Because there were men on the brink of the cliff now, two of them clearly outlined against the sky. A tall man and a short one, the shorter man slumped, held almost erect by the other. Part of my mind noted those other movements, registered them all, but none of it penetrated more than a few cells deep into my brain, not at first.

Robbie laughed softly, delightedly, let her arm fall to her side, the pink brassiere dangling from her fingers. Sunlight silvered the tops of her full, bare breasts, shimmered on them as they swayed and trembled.

On the cliff, the men awkwardly moved a step or two forward, onto the very edge, seeming to float above the emptiness at their feet.

Robbie spread her legs and leaned back, away from me, shoulders rocking slowly, then faster, faster. The film mechanism stopped. She straightened again. I found the camera quickly as she twirled the brassiere around her head, threw it to the sand. I put the camera to my eye again, let film click past the lens. She stood in one spot for seconds, posing. Body straight, head back, hands gliding slowly up her sides and past her face, brushing her thick, red-brown hair with the backs of her hands and letting it fall, tangled, against her shoulders.

The taller man gave the other a shove. He went over the cliff's edge, fell, turning. Robbie's hands were fumbling at the side of her narrow bikini trunks. The falling man hit a projecting ledge of earth, skidded, went spinning over the side, arms and legs flailing crazily. There was another forty feet of space between him and the rock-studded beach below.

It was sudden, quick. I knew what was happening, but dimly, vaguely. It was occupying more of my mind. Not quite enough yet.

Robbie said something to me but I didn't understand her bubbling words. The bikini briefs were untied now, held up only by the light touch of her fingers, hands at the curve of her hips. She leaned forward slightly, breasts swaying, slid the bikini briefs down. It seemed to me that she moved very slowly—and that the tumbling man fell very slowly, too. The pink cloth slid downward, her hands brushing the white flare of her hips. Then I heard the thud.

He hit the beach almost two hundred yards away, but I heard the dull, deadly sound clearly. Before, it had been like a silent movie, shadow without substance; but that ugly sound suddenly made it real. I jerked my head. The other man was scrambling down the path.

From the corner of my eye I saw Robbie bend forward, raise one leg, reach and grab something pink before she straightened up. Only now the impressions were reversed. Robbie was on the periphery, and in the center of my consciousness was—murder.

It sent a chill over my skin. I glanced at Robbie. One vivid glimpse of her standing a few feet away in sun-limned nakedness, splash of pinkness in one hand, standing straight, back slightly arched. Just a glimpse of her, half a second—and then I was running. That taller man was still scrambling down the path. He'd probably thrown the other man over the cliff alive but unconscious, and was going down to make sure he was dead.

When I was halfway to the body, the man saw me. He froze on the steeply slanting path, jerked his head toward me. Then he turned started back up in a hurry, feet sliding. There wasn't a chance I could catch him. He'd be gone in seconds—and I didn't have any idea who he was, what he looked like.

The camera was still in my hand; I'd forgotten it, been unaware of it while running. I slid to a stop, raised the camera and centered it on the man, shoved the Zoomer lever forward as I started the film unwinding. His body grew larger in the viewfinder. I shouted as loudly as I could, and he turned. He stared—and I had him. Then I lowered the camera, ran forward again. Twenty yards away now lay the sprawled body. As my eyes fell on it, there was a sudden sharp sound. A spurt of sand leaped close on my left. That sound I knew well—a gunshot. I dug one foot into the sand, skidded, slowed and then jumped forward, jerking my head up. He was below the top of the cliff, facing me, right arm extended. The gun cracked again, but the bullet hit yards from me. All I could think of for a moment was that if I got a film of him shooting at me, his goose would be cooked to a crisp. It didn't occur to me that I might get a film of the ape killing me; that the .38 Colt Special I usually carry was now 200 yards down the beach; that I was standing out here in the bright sunlight shooting a camera at a guy who was shooting a real gun at me. I just swung the camera up, held it on him for two or three seconds getting a stupendous shot—through the telescopic lens I could even see the faint flash of fire from the gun's muzzle. It was an astounding, a remarkable shot, a real murderer, real bullets —

That was the one that filtered. That brought me to my few senses. Real—bullets?

I let out a great blast of sound and jumped six feet through the air. That gun cracked again. I felt the impact, the sudden shock. It jarred me, turned me. The camera flew from my hands. I slammed down on one knee. I rolled, got to my feet again, squatting low, looked up. The man was scrambling upward again, and as I watched he went over the cliff's edge and out of sight.

Slowly I straightened up, heart pounding. I looked down over my bare skin, felt over my back and swim trunks. No blood. No holes. Then I saw the Bell & Howell on the sand. He hadn't hit me; he'd hit the camera. It was twisted, case sprung open and film half out of the sprockets, sunlight glaring on it all.

I clambered up the face of the cliff, but he was long gone. A haze of dust hung over the dirt road leading to Coast Boulevard a quarter of a mile away. From the cliff's edge I looked down the beach. The sun was getting low, and the hellish glare that, at certain hours, bounces from the sea, almost blinded me. I couldn't see Robbie unless I squinted and looked carefully—which explained why the guy hadn't seen us down there.

On the beach again, I picked the camera up, forced the gate closed over the ruined film walked to the body on the beach. The man was quite dead. But he was still warm, limp, not dead long. Almost surety he'd been alive when pushed over the cliff's edge. It would probably have passed as an accidental death, instead of the murder it was. He was a short man, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, bald, his skull caved in above his left eye. His face was deeply pimpled where it had hit the sand.

I left him, walked back down the beach.

Robbie was in her bikini again, still a gorgeous sight, but somehow not quite the same now. The difference between my one brief but marvelously vivid glimpse of Robbie unadorned, unashamed, compared to Robbie adorned—even in a brief pink bikini—was the difference between prime ribs and hamburger, between wine and sour grapes. And in me started growing a cold, concerntrated, surging desire to get my hands on that slob who'd just gotten away, and slowly pull off his head.

As I stopped near her, Robbie said, with a chill as of early winter in her voice, “You can take me home now, Scott.” Scott. Not Shell any more. That probably meant she wanted to hit me over the skull with something large and heavy. What was the matter with her? Didn't she realize I'd had no choice?

I said, “Simmer down. Didn't you hear those shots?"

“Shots? Is that what they were? I heard some noises.” She tossed her head. “All I know is, there I was all—well—and off you went. Actually running. Running away."

Nobody will deny that women have a different approach to logic than do men. They sort of sneak up on it from behind, like an Indian skulking through the grass. But this was too much.

“Robbie, my dear little imbecile,” I said with some heat, “I have just been eyeballing a most unpleasant corpse, not to mention the fact that I just got shot at several dozen times—three or four times, anyway—and the stupendous damned movie I took of the killer is all shot to hell—get it through your head a guy has just been murdered."

“I'll murder you."

“I'm serious!"

“I'm not?"

“Robbie. You really don't understand!” I took a deep breath. “Dear Robbie. I am aware of what's eating you. I realize it is not considered cricket in your dizzy set—in which at the moment I include all women—for a man to race wildly over the sand immediately after—"

“What do I care? I really couldn't care less. I really couldn't. Take me home."

I grabbed her shoulders, looked into her face. “I have a surprise for you. There is a dead guy lying down the beach a ways. His head is all crashed in, and most unbeautiful. That's why I went tripping away, dear heart. I saw a tall cat fling him off the cliff."

Apparently she hadn't seen anything except me whooping along the tidemarks, running like a coward. Coward—little did she know.

“Of course,” she said. “There's a whole massacre."

I grabbed her hand and yanked her after me. In arguments with women there comes a time when words are useless, and positive action is indicated. I hauled her after me, her feet dragging and kicking, and she rattled a great deal of popcorn-popping Spanish at me, a language she used when at a temperature which would split clinical thermometers. She didn't even see the dead man until we were almost on top of him.

Then I stopped, turned her around and pointed. “There, lamebrain. I was telling you the complete and total truth. I did see a guy fling him off—"

I won that argument. She fainted.

Night fell softly as we drove back toward Los Angeles. The police had been notified, the body trundled away, and Robbie and I had that behind us now, the evening ahead.

She had forgiven me. Not all at once, but unreservedly at last. Now she was snuggled close to me on the seat, hanging onto my arm. The top was down on my Cadillac, and a spiced breeze washed around us.

We had been discussing the afternoon, and now she asked me a question she hadn't asked before. “Shell, the man who pushed the other one off the cliff. What did he look like?"

“Why, he was—I don't know. I was so busy trying to get the film of him, and then dodging bullets, I never did really get a look at him.” I considered the sad fact. “I haven't the faintest idea what he looks like. And I don't have the film now, either."

“How will they catch him?"

“Part of it could depend on how soon they identify the body. There were no papers on him, no clue yet to who he was. Once they figure out who had a motive to kill him, the field might narrow down. Right now it's wide open."

“Maybe he'll even get away with it."

I snarled silently, glaring ahead. “Not if I—have anything—to say about it.” I was remembering what he had interrupted back there on the beach. Of all times for an ape to start sailing bodies around. And that slug in my camera had not only ruined the shots of him, but of Robbie. “I will tear him limb from limb. I will beat one half of him to death with the other half of him."

She purred softly, snuggled closer and hugged my arm.

I discovered I was halfway into the left lane, driving along with a sappy smile on my face. I pulled over where I belonged. Once again I had been remembering Robbie standing on the beach, blue sea behind her—just before that other body went flying through the air. I'd gotten one look, but only one, and oh so brief, of her standing there, pink pants in her hand. Maybe in the space of a few seconds then, I had been subjected to so many sensational sensations and brain-twisting sights that it had blown a neuronic fuse in my nervous system—but something new had indeed been added.

Robbie was—and for that one super-stimulating half-second there on the sun-warmed beach had been—so absolutely stunning that now it was as though a small perfect replica of her had been heated to a white-hot sizzle and used to brand my brain. It stayed up there, about the fourth convolution over, glowing and letting off pretty sparks. It was a new experience in many ways. I could merely close my eyes and see us up there, sparking. Or, rather, see her up there. I shook my head, trying to organize my striking thoughts. But they remained disorganized.

Robbie didn't speak again until we were on North Rossmore in Hollywood, almost to the Spartan Apartment Hotel, where I live. And where we were going. Then she said, “I was just thinking about that man, Shell. You don't know what he looks like. But I wonder if he got a good look at you?"

I hadn't carefully considered that angle until now. I pulled over to the curb, parked across the street from the Spartan. “That's a good question,” I said.

I took the keys from the ignition, opened the car door and stepped into the dimly-lighted street. “A disturbing question, Robbie. Unfortunately, I don't have the answer.” I stared around to open the door on her side, and blam-blam, two quick shots, one after the other. The first one got me. It spun me to my left, banged me against the car, knocked me off balance. I fell awkwardly, turning, thudded down on my right shoulder and rolled onto my back. I came up fast, yanking the .38 from under my coat, bent forward in a crouch. I didn't even know where the shots had come from. But then I heard the slap of fast-pounding feet, a short silence, then the roar of a car's engine, the shrill scrape of tires sliding on asphalt.

I jumped toward the Cad, then remembered I'd had the keys in my hand. I'd dropped them, they were somewhere here in the street. I found them, but by then the guy was at least a mile away.

I swore softly, then felt over my chest and arm, near where that slug had smacked me. I didn't know how badly I'd been hit; you seldom do for a while. But then I found the spot. The bullet had passed between my bolstered gun and side, gouging out a cubic inch or two of skin and flesh. Nothing serious. My holster had taken most of the blow; that had really been what spun me around. My gun seemed all right, but the holster was ruined. Fine; that was better than me being ruined.

Robbie's head appeared in the window on my side.

“She-ell,” she said shakily.

“It's O.K., honey. Everything's all right. Except that sonofa—he got away.” I paused, hauled in a couple of deep breaths. “Incidentally, Robbie. That question you just asked me. Now I can answer it."

“What—what'll we do?"

“We'll go inside, up to my apartment, and have a tall, cool, potent drink."

We did. I unlocked the door of my apartment, pointed out the tanks of tropical fish for Robbie, ignored Amelia—Robbie would inevitably lamp that yard-square nude painting I found in a pawn shop, and cherish—and showed her where the booze and ice were in the kitchenette.

“Fix us something exciting,” I said; then went into the bathroom, peeled off my coat and shirt.

The slug had chewed me up a bit, and the wound was beginning to feel unpleasant, but it wasn't bad. Just bloody. There was quite a lot of blood.

I dunked a washrag in warm water, and right then Robbie said from behind me, “Try this."

I turned around. She had two tall glasses in her hands. Then her eyes dropped to the side of my chest and her mouth stretched wide as if she were going to scream, though no sound came out.

Finally she said, “You're bleeding! Shell, you're bleeding!"

“Don't get excited. It's nothing to—"

“But you're shot! You're in pain!"

“It's—only a little shooting pain."

“I'll call an ambulance."

“Robbie, dammit. I've got healed scars on me more dangerous than this. Really, relax.” Her face was pale and she looked weak. I said, “Robbie, we'll get it all fixed. But it isn't bad—it's just all the blood.” I grinned. “My blood, you see, is so red—"

“Are you really all right?"

“Yes. I'm just so red-blooded—"

“Come in and sit down."

She wouldn't let me get the conversation headed in the right direction at all. I mopped some of the blood off, clamped a towel under my arm and went into the front room with her. She insisted we call a doctor—which I had fully intended to do anyway—so after phoning the police I called the room two doors from my own, where Dr. Paul Anson lives. Paul is a good M.D., with a very sharp eye for the ladies, and is also a very good friend of mine. He said he'd be over in a couple of minutes. When he knocked I yelled for him to come in and he stepped inside, pushed the door shut with his medical bag. Then he walked toward the chocolate-brown divan on which Robbie and I were sitting, and he did not see me at all. His eyes landed on Robbie and opened wide, then went back to normal, except that they had a sly little squint to them, a squint I had seen before.

Very tall, ruggedly good-looking, fired with purpose, he strode straight across the room to Robbie and said, in his best bedside manner, “Well, what seems to be wrong with us, my dear?"

"I," I said, “am what's wrong with us."

He looked at me and grinned. “Ah, well. What is it this time? Shot again, hit on the head, busted eardrum—"

“Your tender solicitude gags me, Doctor. Dedicated Paul Anson, swooning on the altar of humanity. ‘I swear on the holy scalpel of Hopocraxopy—‘"

“Hippocrates?"

“You know what the hell I mean. I'm shot. I'm bleeding to death. I feel faint, I'm getting dippy!"

“You sure are. Let's take a look.” He examined the sliced area of my chest and side, going “Hmm,” and “Ahh,” and then said, “I think a large bandage will do it. But I'll give you an expensive shot."

He expertly cleaned and bandaged what he referred to as my mortal wound, stuck a needle into me, keeping up a running fire of sophisticated chatter and worldly commentary—looking at Robbie all the time; he didn't say another word to me—then had a drink with us. Just before he left—I had to tell him to get the hell out, of course—he tugged his eyes from Robbie, leaned close to my ear and said, “You rotter, you despoiler—wait till you get my bill."

“I know. Two appendectomies, a tonsillitis—"

“Tonsillectomy, you ignorant—"

“—removal of spleen and gizzard, go."

He went. With one last leer at Robbie.

As the door closed behind him she said, “He's nice, isn't he?"

“Is he? I hadn't noticed—"

“But he's so witty, and knows so much about the world and all—"

“Nuts, he makes half of it up. Sheer fabrication. It just sounds good in that oily voice of his. Hah, witty, knows so much—"

“Why, Shell, you actually sound jealous."

“Jealous? Me? Why, I never heard such a—"

“She laughed. “Are you all right?"

“Yeah, now that he's gone, I'm all right. What do you mean, witty? He didn't say anything even intelligent—"

“Shell, lean over here and rest a little."

She indicated, with a gentle pat of her hand, where I was to lean. I stopped arguing. I leaned. Resting dandily, I said, “Robbie, I have a splendid idea. You must stay here while I recuperate. It may take days, of course, but—"

“The doctor's right down the hall. What could I do?"

“Well, you could—what good is a doctor? You can be my nurse, dear. And nurse me back to health."

“What exactly do you mean by that?"

“Why, you could undress my wounds—dress them, I mean, and cool my fevered brow, fever my—"

“You be quiet. Now I'm sure you're all right. And I have to go."

“Go?” I said. “GO?"

“Yes. I can't stay here."

“Who says?"

“I says. Really. Oh, Shell, sit down. Don't stand out there waving your arms. You'll spring open and bleed to death."

“It wouldn't happen. Even if it did, I have blood to spare, red blood, wild blood, it sings in my veins and yodels in my arteries, savage blood—listen to the drums! Don't you hear it? Can't you feel it? I—"

“Shell, stop waving your arms around. And sit down here and rest.” She patted again. “Or don't you want to rest?"

“It isn't exactly what I had in mind. Listen, you don't know all there is to know about my blood yet—"

“I know more than I realized was possible. And if you want the truth, I believe you. But I really do have to go."

"Go?" I said. "GO?"

“Yes. In about—five minutes. But I'll go right now if you don't sit down and behave yourself."

“Well, O.K. I'll sit down."

She meant what she'd said. After five minutes of resting, she got up and said, “Will I see you tomorrow?"

“Yep. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow—"

“I'll call a cab."

“The devil you say. I'll drive you home."

“No, I wouldn't think of it."

“I will drive you home."

I won that argument, too. The first one since she'd fainted.

Later, alone and relaxing in bed before going to sleep, I thought about what had happened today. The police didn't yet know who the dead man was, much less the identity of his killer; the killer, therefore, might be roaming around free for days or even weeks. He, on the other hand, obviously knew who I was, realized I'd made a movie of him which could be his ticket to the gas chamber, and probably believed I knew what he looked like. Clearly he did not know his last shot at me had ruined the films.

So he would be roaming around with a purpose: to get those films—and kill me.

Maybe I ought to take a full-page ad in the local papers, I thought, addressed to the killer: “You shot a hole in my camera before you shot a hole in me. The films are kaput. Stop worrying!” And sign it Shell Scott. But he probably wouldn't believe me. The fool would probably just go on trying to murder me.

Then another link formed in my chain of thought. Maybe I should take that ad after all, and phrase it differently. Something like: “Sensational Films of Murderer! Shell Scott shoots killer, killer shoots Shell Scott! Stupendous film sequence, blazing guns, murderer fleeing! Have You Seen This Man? See colossal preview this afternoon at the—at the Chasen Theater—"

I grinned in the darkness. It might work. Still thinking about it, I fell asleep.

It was ten A. M. Tuesday morning, I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard toward the Chasen Theater, off Hollywood on Van Ness Avenue. The thing was set. I knew Jim Chasen, owner of the theater, which was why I'd chosen his movie house. With his cooperation, I had run my advertisements in several newspapers yesterday and today. As long as the killer believed his chops were really going to be on the big screen, he would almost certainly try to grab the films. Since we had no way of recognizing the man among the other customers, and therefore couldn't keep him from getting inside with the crowd, we'd have to wait until he made his move. Jim figured, and so did I, that the action would take place in the projection room, where the killer would naturally expect the films to be.

The Chasen wouldn't open for business until one-thirty p.m., the bill to start at two, but I wanted to be staked out inside well before then. The Fleeing Murderer—Guns Blazing! added attraction was scheduled for 3:45 P. M., at the break between two halves of a double feature. We figured our man would make his move sometime during the first half of the twin bill. It all seemed logical.

Robbie, however, had not been logical. I hadn't told her of my plan, but she'd seen the ad and called me, raising hell. If I was going to the theater, she wanted to go along; I'd do something crazy and get killed if she didn't keep an eye on me; a lot of other people would be there, one more wouldn't hurt. I told her no. We argued. I told her no. Firmly. And that settled that.

I parked a block from the Chasen, walked to the alley entrance behind it. Jim Chasen let me in.

“All quiet?” I said.

“Yeah. Glad you're here, though. I'll be in the projection booth, you know."

“So will I. He'll have to shoot me before he can shoot you, Jim.” I grinned. “He may not even show up. If he does, there probably won't be any trouble."

He laughed sourly. “You make it sound like fun. Want some coffee?"

“Sounds good."

We walked through the empty theater. Soft music was playing; as we went into the projection booth up front I commented on it and Jim said, “I always pipe the records in while I'm setting up. Sort of creepy otherwise. Good for the customers, too, when they come in. Gets them in a pleasant mood while they're waiting for the show.” He poured hot black coffee. I raised the steaming brew toward my mouth, then froze, cup halfway to my lips. “Jim,” I said. “I'm an idiot."

“Huh? What's the matter?"

“We've been figuring the guy would walk in unobserved with the other customers. We'd have to let him come in, because we don't know what he looks like. But he doesn't know that. He undoubtedly thinks we've got him made, even having a moving picture of him—that's the whole idea of this setup. We've been looking at this from our point of view, instead of his."

“Sure, I—Oh."

“Yeah. If he thinks we know his face, he's not likely to show it on the way in.” I swore. “More likely, he'd try to sneak in here before the rest of the customers. Maybe—about now."

Jim tried not to show that he was worried. He just spilled his coffee. “You don't think—"

“Did you look the place over yet? Johns, closets, backstage?"

“No.” He swallowed. “I thought—you said—"

“Yeah. I know what I said.” I stood up. “Maybe it'll work out that way, too. But I'll take a look around, anyway.” I paused. “Just in case—maybe you'd better wait out front until I give you the all clear. If he should be here—"

“You're right!” He didn't let me finish. “If something happens, ah, I can call a cop. That seems like a good idea anyway. Call several cops."

“Yeah. They won't be overjoyed by my little plan, but that seems the least of our worries at the moment."

He said there were two rest rooms off the lobby, another small one, for employees, down at the left-front corner of the theater, and told me where closets and a storeroom were. We left the projection booth and went into the empty lobby. As I took my Colt from its new clamshell holster, Jim scooted with unseemly haste out through the lobby doors. I checked both rest rooms. They were empty. I walked back past the projection booth, down the carpeted aisle. When I was a few feet from the rear entrance through which Jim had admitted me earlier, I heard the door rattle softly. The knob moved slightly; it couldn't be turned from the outside, but could be opened from inside.

I stepped quickly to the door, held my gun ready, turned the knob and yanked. As the door flew open I stepped forward, brought up my gun and jabbed it into a soft, white breast. I knew it was soft; I knew it was white; it was Robbie's.

For a moment my nerves sputtered, and I sputtered, and then I grabbed Robbie's arm and yanked her inside, pushed the door shut. “You little fool,” I said. “What in hell do you think—"

“Don't be angry—"

“Don't be angry? Don't be—"

“I just wanted to be here. I was in at the start, and I want to be in at the finish."

“It'll be your finish, if you don't—"

“Anyway, I told you I was coming."

“And I told you you weren't."

“Poof."

I groaned, turned around and slapped a hand on my head. Then I got a grip on myself. “Robbie, please listen. The guy may be here right now. Or he may show up any second."

“But you said—"

“I know what the hell I said.” I paused, thinking. “Did anybody see you come down the alley? Or come inside?"

“No. Nobody was out there. Only a fellow sweeping."

“Sweeping? Sweeping the alley?"

“No, silly. Just in back of his shop. I suppose it was his shop. They sell things made out of driftwood—"

“Maybe it was his shop. I'll brace that guy and make sure before you go back out there. You'd better wait in the projection booth—No. That's the place he'll head for. Just stand still a minute."

I eased the door open, looked up and down the alley. Nothing. Nobody was in sight. Probably Robbie was right, just a guy sweeping out his shop. But I couldn't be sure—and if he'd seen her come in —

I turned to Robbie. “Of all the damnfool—"

“Don't swear at me."

“Well, if this isn't a damnfool—"

“I thought you'd be glad."

“You what?"

“I thought you'd be glad. That I wanted to be with you, in the heat of battle, in the thick of—"

“Never mind. Boy, here we stand yakking like a couple of psychos while that guy may be drawing a bead on my fat head, squeezing—look, you stand right here while I look around—no, I can't leave you alone. Come with me. No—"

“Make up your mind."

“I will make up my mind to sock you if you don't shut up. Come along while I check this joint. But stay behind me. I'm thick enough to stop at least a couple of bullets. And I probably will now. Oh, brother, one of these days—"

“I thought you'd be—glad."

I quit. “Come on,” I said.

We gave the backstage area a good going over. It was a little spooky back there, with the ropes and electrical cables, speakers and back side of the big screen, and the gloomy corners. But the area was empty of people. I figured I'd checked everything except the employees’ john that Jim had mentioned. It was reached through a short hallway behind curtains at stage left, under a softly glowing “Exit” sign. I went down the little hallway, Robbie silent behind me, and reached the door of the small rest room.

I was thinking that after I had checked this spot, and looked around in the alley for the egg who'd been sweeping, I could send Robbie on her way. I was thinking that the guy I was after might be clear across the Mexican border by now. I was thinking once in a while of Robbie, and the fact that although she'd complicated things a bit, it was pleasant in a way that she'd wanted to be with me, and even thinking—briefly—of other facets of Robbie. I was thinking of entirely too many things.

I pushed open the door and didn't see anybody, and stuck my head inside for a better look, and from behind the door on my left he jammed the gun so hard against my temples that it knocked my head six inches sideways.

The .38 was in my right hand. I started to slap it forward. Six inches from my ear the click-click of the hammer going back on a revolver. And two words: “Go ahead."

I heard the soft intake of breath outside, a few feet away. Robbie. For a moment she was all I could think of. I wondered if the guy had heard her soft, sudden breath. I hadn't even seen the man yet.

There were faint whispering movements behind me. Robbie. Moving, no telling where. I started talking, not worrying about what I said, just stringing words together to cover the sounds Robbie was making.

“You're stuck, friend. You can't get out of here—the place is lousy with law. You don't think I'd come here alone, do you?” My head was throbbing; he'd really banged me with the gun.

He spoke again, his voice flat. “I figured it for a setup. But I also figured you'd expect me today, pal. That's why I came in last night. I'll get out, Scott."

“You know my name, huh?"

“Sure. And you know me. Drop the heater."

I dropped it, slowly turned my head. As I did, he stepped back, kept the gun in his hand out of my reach. But it looked me in the eye.

I did know the guy. Only by reputation, mugg shots. And I'd seen him a time or two in bars where heavy men hang out. His name was Billings, or something like that, but he was called Spade because another gambler had caught him with an extra ace—the ace of spades—in a poker game and shot him. Unfortunately it hadn't killed him. He was a professional thief, a safe-cracker.

He was about my height, thin, with a dark angular face and a nose sharp enough to slice cheese. His eyes were red-rimmed, lids drooping. I said, “You were right. It is a setup. And you walked into it."

“I'll walk out, too. Pal, we're going to get them films—only I'm not going to try getting away with them. I'll ruin them right here, see? When they're gone, there's nothing left but your word—and I can beat that if it ever comes to court. That's if I'm stopped. But I figure to make it out, pal."

“Not if I can help it."

He grinned unpleasantly. “You won't be able to help it. And if there's no films, and no Scott, nobody's going to tag me with any murder rap. Not in a hundred years."

He didn't know how right he was. Even I hadn't known until now that it was Spade we wanted. He'd actually be in the clear—if he got out. I said, “There's just one thing wrong, Spade. You got in all right. But the only way you'll get out now is on a stretcher."

“You're just as dumb as all the cops I ever met. I told you I figured this for a trap. So I don't plan to be seen going out.” He stepped back against the wall. “Take a look, pal."

I moved forward a little as he gestured with his gun. “Maybe I'm not so dumb, Scott."

Maybe he wasn't. I started to get it when I saw the hole. In the wall of the rest room was a jagged hole about two feet in diameter. The wall of this rest room was also the outer wall of the Chasen Theater. But I didn't know what was on the other side of the wall.

Spade told me, bragging a little. “Next door's a shoe store, Scott. I had a friend get me the architect's plans of this dump, plus the joints on both sides. The shoe store was perfect.” He gestured at the hole. “Through there's a storeroom, back end of the shoe store. The old duck that runs it's in there now, tied up and gagged.” He grinned. “Took me most of the night to get through. Just about like the Western-Federal job."

That rang a bell. Six months or so back, the Western-Federal Savings and Loan had been burglarized. The thieves had broken through the wall between it and the adjoining clothing store, blown the safe, and left before dawn with eighty thousand dollars. Leaving, they'd been spotted by a police car and chased, but they'd gotten away, after several shots had been fired. A police officer in the car had been hit, and died the next day.

This guy just might make it, I thought. Through the hole, out the shoe store, and home free.

“O.K., Scott, let's get the films. In case anything goes wrong, you get a pill in the head.” He paused. “And don't try to get close to me. I've been awake all night. I'm tired. I'm sleepy and damned hungry. What I mean, I'm on edge."

I didn't say anything. We went out, down the short hallway into the empty theater. If I told Spade there weren't any films, he wouldn't believe me; and no matter what I said, he'd check for himself after coming this far. We started up the aisle. The music still throbbed around us; it was an incongruous note now. I felt a little as if this were a funeral march, but the record was When the Saints Come Marching In! Which isn't exactly a funeral march these days.

I said, “Why'd you kill the guy at the beach, Spade?"

“Personal thing, Scott. He was the only guy knew I shot that cop after the Western-Federal job. He was cracking up, first the booze, then H. Sooner or later the cops would sweat him, keep him off the dope—and my tail would be in the sling. Just one of those things that had to be done. Like this."

We were twenty or thirty feet up the aisle when a weird sense of unreality started creeping over me. I thought I had heard a squeal. One of those high-pitched feminine squeals you sometimes hear —

I shook it off, took another step. Couldn't be. Just something wrong with my ears. Then I heard it again. Either my ears were getting very musical, or—I knew. All of a sudden, I knew.

Before I stopped, before I turned my head and looked, before the sight actually walloped me in the eyes, I realized what was happening. As I stopped stock still and started craning my head around, and Spade mumbled something I didn't catch, I heard it again: "Yee-yi!" it sounded like. High and full and fruity.

“No—” I said to myself, aloud, my voice hollow. “No—It can't be—"

It was.

Robbie. There she was, on the stage, gliding about, wiggling, gyrating. She wore a pink brassiere and pink pants and was twirling her skirt around her head. "Eee-yi-ooh!" she went.

Spade shook all over, yanked his head around and gawked at me, his face twitching. “What in the hell?” he said.

My mind was racing—every which way. He might decide just to shoot me. He might decide to shoot Robbie. He might decide anything. He backed over against the seats at the edge of the aisle, moved up a couple of feet to where he could watch me and the stage at the same time.

“What in the hell,” he said again.

I didn't say anything. My mind refused to function. I opened my mouth, in there trying, but nothing came out.

On the stage: “Eeee-ooo-eee!"

The skirt had gone flying through the air, and her brassiere was sliding off. While she swayed and gyrated and snapped her head, brush of auburn hair flying wickedly.

When the Saints—come marching in—POM—POM!

When the Saints—POM—come marching—in — POM-POM!

Oh, she was glorious, stupendous, unbelievable. Only I couldn't enjoy a bit of it. Not a glide. Not a POM! I broke out in a cold sweat, then hot flashes, then got gooey all over. My brain seemed to unravel, crumble, get all soupy. I couldn't think straight. What in hell did she think she was doing up there? Why here? Why now? Why?

Spade's head snapped back and forth, from me to the stage, his jaw sagging about half an inch. He was bewildered—even more bewildered than I. And a small surge of hope fluttered in me. His snaps were getting less snappy. He was looking more at the stage, just rolling his eyeballs back toward me.

And slowly hope turned to certainty. My confusion disappeared, my thoughts steadied, focused. In a moment of peculiar clarity it seemed that this had a kind of inevitability about it, and all I had to do now was let it happen—merely watch history unroll while I played my small part in it.

Because history, I suddenly realized, was now repeating itself. This was essentially the same scene with which all the trouble had started. Same girl, Robbie; same dance; same guy, me; same lousy intruder, Spade. Except that it had then been on the beach and was now in a theater, all of the original elements were again present—only, like a big flea with small cats on it, the positions were reversed.

Then it had been Spade who ruined everything for me—and maybe for Robbie. Now, with Robbie's marvelous help, I was going to ruin everything for Spade. It seemed a thing of beauty, almost poetic: Justice!

I almost smiled as Spade's eyes wobbled toward me and then snapped back toward the stage. In a kind of starchy tone, stiff and yet gummy, he said, “Do you see what I see?"

“What are you talking about? I don't see anything.” It was a hot flash of inspiration. Logic would tell him this couldn't be happening. If I agreed with logic, he might get completely unstrung.

“But—that music,” he said. “What music?” He twitched. “Don't you hear the music? Don't you hear the music?” “What music?” “Something is cuckoo."

“Spade,” I said, “you are getting all pale, Spade.” On the stage, plenty of movement. Just high-heeled shoes and pink pants now. And Robbie's hands were at the top of the pink, diddling and dawdling as she had diddled and dawdled that grand afternoon at the beach. I remembered how that sight had transfixed me, riveted my entire attention even while murder had flickered in the corner of my eye. I took a deep breath, squeezed the fingers of my right hand together.

“She's there!” Spade cried. “Hear the music?” “Spade, you're getting awfully pale.” I guess at this point he didn't care if he turned purple.

Spade hadn't forgotten me completely, but I was growing less important by the minute. It was inevitable. Robbie's fourth dimension had practically zoomed into the fifth, and now she was approaching the most climactic climax this stage—maybe any stage—had ever experienced.

Down slipped the pink, then it was a pink blur in her hand, and a moment later, flying through the air. Spade's jaw sagged two more inches.

Robbie gyrated, wound up. The music was screeching to a nerve-shattering peak of wildness. Any second, it was going to happen. It was, I knew, going to be memorable, marvelous.

Something had happened to Robbie up there. She knew she had an audience, she was on stage, doing the thing she'd always wanted to do, and it was as though slow lightning flowed through her. She was getting rid of those repressions and suppressed desires all at once, flinging them every which way, and she had in these moments risen to peaks of magnificence even she might never reach again.

And, as I moved toward Spade, a kind of hot sadness wallowed all over me. I'd missed three on the beach, and now I was going to miss the grandest one of all. But it was sure doing the trick. I pulled my eyes from Robbie and looked at Spade, stepped toward him.

Spade didn't know I was there. He didn't know he was there. All he knew was that Robbie was there.

He was bent slightly forward stretched taut like a bowstring and sort of tilted toward the stage, his eyes stretched wide and protruding just a little. His mouth flopped open completely and his gun wavered a full six inches. I planted my feet solidly, hauled back my right arm, wound my fingers into a fist like a gob of cement, and started to launch the blow.

I must have started to launch at the same split second when Robbie started to really let go. The music had risen to its crashing crescendo, as if the musicians were all busting their lungs. My fist whistled through the air, past my ear, on toward Spade's chops. In that last grand, climactic moment, he was transfixed in a kind of rapture. Timed to perfection, the music, Robbie's masterpiece, my fist, and Spade's transfixed expression all blended into a moment of explosive completeness—POW!

Spade had completely, entirely, absolutely forgotten about me. His concentration had been totally on Robbie's masterpiece, it was his entire area of being, his all, and that sudden POW! must have been the most shocking thing that had ever, ever happened to him. He must have thought the impossible had happened and it had catapulted through space and smacked him. Maybe she was there, maybe she wasn't there, but something had sure walloped him a good one.

He didn't go out immediately. There was a delayed reaction of perhaps two or three seconds, as if he were by sheer force of will and gargantuan desire hanging on in defiance of man and nature. He twirled around, slammed back against the edge of a seat, and there was for a moment on his face the most stunned and perplexed expression imaginable, a kind of stupefied disbelief blending with petrified contentment.

Then his eyes suddenly looked artificial, his face went blank, and he flopped to the floor.

As he fell, his gun went off. Either he'd convulsively squeezed the trigger, or the impact had fired the gun, but it made a great crash.

I bent over and grabbed the revolver, straightened up as a door slammed. Feet pounded, getting closer. On the stage, Robbie looked toward the entrance of the theater and let out a squeal, hopped four inches up in the air, spun around and grabbed her clothes, ran off stage. I got a glimpse. Again.

That's all. Just a glimpse. It seemed like that was all I ever got. Bodies falling, squinty-eyed doctors, safe-crackers interrupting everything, doors slamming. I was beginning to get pretty sour about it.

A uniformed policeman ran up. I briefed him quickly, wound it up, “This is the character who did it,” and started backstage. Then I stopped, turned to the officer and said, “Incidentally, when he comes to, don't believe everything he tells you. Some of it may sound strange. We—I hit him pretty hard."

He bent down by Spade. I trotted back stage. Robbie was practically dressed, just zipping up her skirt. As she slipped on her blouse I told her she was marvelous, she'd saved the day, but what in hell had ever possessed her to do it?

“First, I just got away,” she said rapidly, a throb of excitement in her voice, “went backstage and hid there. I was scared—that was all I could think of. But then I started worrying about you—then I heard you both talking. I looked, saw you both walking up the aisle, and he was pointing a gun at you. I almost died!"

She paused, eyes wide. “Yes,” I said, really interested now. “Go on, go on."

“I knew I had to do something, but I thought: What can I do? What can I do? I'm only a woman, only a woman—And suddenly it came to me. I couldn't help myself. Something moved me."

“It sure moved you in the right directions,” I said.

“Actually, there wasn't time to think about it.” She chuckled suddenly. “I always wanted to—to, you know—anyway. And all of a sudden I was doing it.” She sighed. “It was as if my cocoon dropped away, as if something told me."

Her face was flushed; she looked ecstatic.

She sighed again. “I knew if I could get his attention, you'd do something clever."

“Not so clever. All I did was sock him."

“That was clever. Anyway, I knew you'd do something. And I thought I knew how to get his attention."

“You sure did. You petrified it. And it was wonderful. Probably saved my life."

“Oh, that,” she said, as if it were nothing. “But how was I? How was my dancing?"

“Tremendous,” I said a little sadly, thinking of how much of it I'd missed. As I thought about that, the sadness started getting a bitter edge to it. Would it always be like this? Would history keep repealing itself in a vicious circle? With me always brought to the brink but never shoved over the cliff? Always a bridesmaid and never a bride?

While I was trying to untangle that, Robbie said, “Shell, how was that last one? The only real one. And I did it for an audience. It gave me goosebumps."

“Yeah."

All we ever seemed to do was talk about it. It was really starting to sort of burn hell out of me. Here it was all over, and she was buttoning up her blouse.

“Well, how did I look?” she asked me.

I could feel the corners of my mouth turning down. “I haven't the faintest idea,” I said. “How in hell would I know? I'd be the last person to know—"

“I mean there at the end, when I just got all zizzly and went around, and around, and then—oh, there I go, almost did it again."

“Yeah. Almost. Yeah. It's always almost. Dammit. Yeah."

“Shell, what's the matter?"

“Matter? Nothing's the matter. Dammit. Everything's grand. Swell. Dammit. Hunky-dory. Yeah, dammit, I swear—"

“Shell, what in the world is the matter?"

I told her. She put her arms around my neck, pressed close, and said, “Is that all?” and spoke in whispers.

“Let's go!” I said.

“Let's go'” she said.

We went.

Seldom had such astounding curves been so joyously uncensored. The day was a sparkling Tuesday in July, the place was a secluded half-moon beach, the sun was bright, the air clear, the sand voluptuously warm —

And the girl was Robbie.

Well, friends, that was all months ago. And the spirit which moved Robbie that day continued to move her. Maybe that, too, was inevitable. There was an enormous amount of publicity, and Robbie was all fired up with hot goosebumps anyway. She went on to become the toast of Hollywood, then the toast of New Orleans, Miami, New York—everything but a command performance, which she may get yet. Maybe you saw her here on the Coast, or back East—you'd know her name, if I told you. Robbie, of course, is not her real name.

Those next months led to several interesting escapades, some involving me —

But that's another story.

THE END

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1963 by Richard S. Prather

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

ISBN 978-1-4804-9853-2

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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