MOURN

THE

HANGMAN

HARRY WHITTINGTON

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

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Also Available

Copyright

1

RAIN WAS the evil omen….

Only Steve Blake wasn’t thinking about evil omens that April afternoon as he returned home to Gulf City, Florida.

He wasn’t even thinking about the rain. He came off the Silver Meteor into the Seaboard Station, shrugging his lightweight topcoat up snugly about his neck. The porter grinned when Blake tipped him a dollar. His grin bared his teeth, even, white and gleaming. He said, “Thank you, Mistuh Blake!” It was the fourth time in a month Blake had made this trip.

Blake claimed his brown leather traveling bag and crossed the narrow waiting room to the taxi stands. Palm trees hung bedraggled and dripping over sodden grass plots. Oil slick puddles stood in the street and trickled into sluggish rivers at the gutters.

The taxi driver leaned over and swung open the rear door as Blake hurdled a puddle and slid into the hack. “Howdy, Mister Blake! Welcome back!” the cabbie said. “Home?”

Blake’s rugged face pulled into an abstracted smile. He looked up at the driver, his green eyes thanking him for asking, and shook his head ruefully. He settled back against the seat and glanced at the Gruen watch strapped about his thick, hairy wrist.

“Not yet, I guess,” Blake said. You’d better drop me at the Federal Building.”

The driver regarded him with a puzzled smile. Then he shrugged. Four times he’d hacked Steven Blake from the station this month and four times he’d gotten his orders — “Home, Nick! Two dollars says you can’t make it in six minutes.”

The driver pulled out into Ninth Street, cut sharply right to Central and made another right turn as the caution light switched into red.

“You can take it easy, Nick,” Blake said from the back seat. “I’m in no hurry.”

When Blake stepped out of the taxi, a newsboy ran out from the shelter at the entrance of the Federal Building. “Hello, Mr. Blake! Paper?”

Blake nodded, pulling change from his trouser pocket. He dropped a quarter in the boy’s hand and took the green “sheet of the Independent. “Selling many today, Ted?”

The boy’s freckled face pulled into a wide grin. “Sure, Mr. Blake. They make a swell umbrella!”

Blake glanced at the headlines: U.S. CRACKS DOWN ON CONTRACT PROFITEERS. Blake thought wryly, Oh, Brother Arrenhower, does that mean you! He looked down at the freckled newsboy and made a wry face, spreading the newspaper tent-like over his snap-brim felt hat. “By golly, you’re right,” he said.

There was a floral design in the frosted window. Blake hesitated a moment and then entered the florist shop. A young woman came from behind a sweated showcase. She bulged delectably against the sheer black material of her frock. Her pale blonde hair was caught loosely at the nape of her neck. She had a pencil mark across the tip of her nose. She looked at Blake and the direction of her thoughts showed in her slow, warm smile. “Yes, sir?” she said.

“I’d like a dozen roses,” Blake said. “Long stems.” He gave her a ten dollar bill. “Would you leave them out at the cigar stand in the corridor? I’ll pick ’em up on my way out.”

She nodded and watched him move to the corridor entrance of the shop. At the door, he turned suddenly, grinning, and winked at her. Caught gaping at him, she flushed slightly and then smiled.

The barber in the Federal Barber Shop looked up and waved a soap-heaped razor. Blake worked against the outgoing tide of five o’clock workers. The redhaired girl at the cigar counter was leaning on her elbows listening listlessly to a customer’s delicately worded proposition. Her gaze, fixed across his shoulder, moved over the crowd. When she saw Blake, she said rudely, “Sorry, I have a customer. Was that all you wanted?”

But the smile she bestowed on Steve was etched in thick honey.

“Hi, Peggy,” Blake said. “What’s the good word?”

Her eyes glazed a little, meeting his. “The same old one’s good enough for me, Mister Blake.”

“Why, Peggy. I’ll have to wash your mouth out with Schenley’s.”

“Any time, Mr. Blake. Any time at all.”

He held up his hand as though warding her off. “I love you, kid, but, oh, my wife,” he quoted. He pointed to a large box of chocolates. “Wrap it up, will you, Peggy? I’ll pick it up on my way out.”

On the tenth floor, he moved more slowly along the wide corridor, still carrying the brown valise, his shoulders sagging a little. At 1012, he hesitated, reading without pleasure his name in gold leaf on the frosted glass of the door: BRUCE BRICKER & STEVEN BLAKE, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS. Blake grimaced and swung open the door. The secretary, Prue Quincy, was just settling the dust cover over her typewriter. She was about thirty and a look of indrawn chastity kept her from being pretty to Blake’s disenchanted eyes. She held her red mouth in a perpetually tight circle.

“Hi, doll,” he said. “You’re looking.”

She smiled tautly. “You’re looking, too, Mr. Blake. We didn’t expect you back this weekend.”

He dropped his hat on a chair and set his valise on the floor beside it. Pulling off his coat, he started toward the inner office. “Bricker decent?” he said over his shoulder to Prue. She nodded and sat in the chair behind her desk to wait.

Bricker was getting his hat and rain slicker from the coat closet. When he heard the door close, he spun around with a smile — a smile meant for Prue Quincy, Blake knew — and the smile died when he met Steve’s eyes. Bricker dropped his hat and rain slicker on a chair and returned to his desk, moving with deliberate speed.

He put his hands, fingers wide, over the papers spread out on the desk blotter and smiled falsely. “Well, Stevie! We thought we were rid of you for a week more. Welcome home, boy. You got news?”

Blake shook his head. But he was thinking of the first man who’d tackled this undercover job in Arrenhower’s big plant. That man’s name had been Roberts. His eye had been quick and his ears had been open. But his eyes should have been open and his gun should have been quick. Roberts was dead. Accidental death. A foolproof die casting machine had blown up and left a gaping hole in Roberts’ head where his face had been with its quick eyes and open ears. Dickerson of American Materials had come to Bricker & Blake two months ago. Dickerson had hired Steve to work in Arrenhower’s giant plant to find out what Roberts had learned, why he’d been killed, or if his death had been accidental as reported.

An involuntary shudder moved through Steve’s body. “They sent me out to an old deserted building down on the bayfront docks in Tampa today,” Steve said. “That building isn’t deserted, Bruce. There must be a million airplane parts in there. Only they’re crated. The building’s near the banana wharfs, so I guess the crates will go out some night with some banana boat flying a neutral country flag. Only I don’t know that. I haven’t seen it happen.” He shrugged his coat up about his neck. “Dickerson has put us on the spot, Bruce. I’m beginning to pity that poor devil Roberts. We’re spying on a man that’s playing for keeps. I’m up to here with it. Arrenhower’s stake is millions.”

“It’s tough,” Bricker said soothingly, still smiling. “But I thought you’d stay over there, with Stella out of town and all — ”

Blake slumped to a chair. He spread his long legs out before him and regarded the rain splattered tops of his black shoes, size 10-C.

“Stella is the reason I came back, Bruce. You’re looking at a man possessed, old son. A man in love. I hope to Christ it never happens to you.”

“Sex is good enough for me,” Bricker said with a nervous glance toward the door. His voice tightened slightly. “Looks like if you were coming on to something, trouble between you and Stella could wait.”

“That business is the trouble with Stella and me. I’m pulling out, Bruce. You can print Bricker in ten inch Gothic Bold on that door out there. It’s all yours.”

Bricker leaned across his desk. “Let’s take it slower,” he said. “You’re letting this Arrenhower business scare you. You’re the one guy I know who can take care of himself anywhere, Steve. What’s your being in love with your wife got to do with your quitting this job? It’s money!”

“To hell with money. I’m through being a private snitch — ”

Bricker’s smile faded. “A private snitch? That’s a fine new one. Where’d you pick that one up?”

Blake smiled ironically. “From Stella. That’s what she called me last week. One of the things. While she was drunk. While we were yelling at each other like a couple of screwballs.” He grinned, remembering. “She was drunk when I came home — first time I ever saw her drunk. And she was still drunk when I walked out.” He cursed sharply. “I walked out, Bricker. Me. Am I so holy I can look down my nose at anybody, no matter what they’ve done? I’ve always prided myself. I’m one guy who believes in living and letting live, judging not and casting no stones. And what did I do? I come in and find Stella drunk. I was shocked. Finding out she wasn’t perfect. Like I was some kid coming home to find his old lady screaming with laughter on the boarder’s bed.”

Bricker glanced at his watch, rustled a couple of papers together and shoved them into his desk drawer. He fumbled around for a key, locked the drawer and dropped the key in his vest pocket. He was a two hundred pound man, with thick, narrow shoulders, a barrel chest and short heavy legs. His hair was closecropped brown salted with gray although he wasn’t yet forty. His smile was professional. He could hear himself described as a son-of-a-bitch and go right on smiling, if it meant anything to him in dollars and cents. He and Blake had been partners for four years. Bricker had come from the police, where he’d been a lieutenant of detectives until he was caught spending bribe money.

“What’s that got to do with this agency and Arrenhower?” he smiled.

“Stella married me to make an honest man of me,” Blake replied. “She hates private detectives. Loathes ’em. Something about her first husband. He hired one to spy on her.”

“She knew what you were when she married you, didn’t she?”

Blake grinned crookedly. “She said all she knew when she married me was that I was it. I was it. I was what she was looking for.”

“Okay. So I said you’re a big man,” Bricker said. “You even thrill a divorcee so she thinks she’s never been in love before.” He stood up, waved his hand impatiently. “All right, you’re in love with your wife. You’re on a tough job that would scare the guts out of anyone else I know, including me. That’s still no reason for you to throw it all over.”

Blake stood up, too. “That’s just it,” he said evenly. “Stella was pretty insistent about my quitting before I got in this Arrenhower thing. But since I’ve been in that plant, she’s harped on it night and day — said that’s why she got drunk, so she wouldn’t have to think about it. Now I agree with her. Suppose Arrenhower gets wise and starts playing rough? This kind of life was okay before I met Stella. But she and I want something else — a cottage and chickens. I’ve got what I want with Stella. I’m through playing rough with guys who’ll put a slug in your back between their Canasta hands. This thing is big. You’ve got to have your heart in it, or get out. I’m gettin’ out.”

Bricker strode around the desk. “What’s the matter, Blake? Are they scaring you over there? You ought to be over there right now. Christ, I never knew danger would give you the shakes.”

Blake shook his head. “You never saw danger like this either, sonny. Stella wants me out. I’m getting out. Stella has had a miserable life. Before I came along there was some psychiatrist who tried to tell her what was the matter. She hit the bottle. Then she and I. We were going to be different. Only we’re not. She’s been God’s own angel all the time I’ve known her. She wants me to quit this job and do something honest. Rob banks, anything. Only stop prying into other people’s lives. I put her off. I knew what I was doing scared her and made her sick. But I put her off. Then I come in and find her drunk.” He stood at the window and stared down at the rain-washed street. “This is it, Bruce. I’m through. You can draw up any kind of arrangement you like.”

Bricker took it calmly. He was still smiling. “I’m going to let you think it over,” he said. “I want you to go back over there and think it over — say to Monday.”

Blake turned slowly from the window. “I’ve thought it over, Bruce. I’m home to patch up my life with Stella. I came home because I made a bet with myself. Stella has been as miserable as I have. She’s come back home. She was going to be away two weeks. Two weeks.” He shivered. “No, Bricker. She’s going to be home when I get there. She’s going to be waiting for me. I’m going to tell her what a son-of-a-bitch I am.”

It was silent in the office. They could hear Prue Quincy moving about in the reception room. Bricker gathered up his rain slicker and set his hat on the back of his head. “You’re being a fool,” he said. “The goddamnedest fool I ever met.”

Alone, Blake stood dejectedly in the center of the room. He made an involuntary movement toward the telephone on his desk. Then he stopped. Damned if he’d call. She was going to be there. God only knew how he would stand it if she wasn’t. All he wanted to do was tell her he loved her. He shook his head. A guy that was never in love like that, he wouldn’t know what happened to you. Poor devil. Hell, all he wanted was to see her face, see her smile, see it was all right with them again.

He got his belongings, locked the office. The elevator was empty except for the girl operator. She smiled and he grinned back. At the cigar counter, he picked up the long box of roses, the chocolates.

Peggy smiled impishly. “I can let you have my phone number,” she said. “In case — you want anything — later.”

He winked at her and carrying his packages haphazardly, went out into the early darkness. A taxi cruised by, three people ran shouting after it in the rain.

He hesitated at the corner of Central and decided to walk home. There was no hurry. Stella had written, “I’ll be gone for two weeks. We’ll have time to think and time to want each other again. Don’t try to find me, Steve. Please. Oh, I know you could because you’re a private snitch and that’s what a private snitch is for. But if you found me that way, I’d hate you because I’d know you were a private snitch at heart. Wait, darling. I’ll come back and we’ll both be sad and sorry and glad together.”

He walked east through the empty rain, turned south on Fifth. There ahead of him was the apartment house. Built flush with the sidewalk, it was red brick, wet red brick in the night with the street lights on it. There were seven floors and their apartment was on the fifth one and Steve didn’t look up because he didn’t have the guts to take a chance. There might not be a light in that window. Im almost there now, he thought. Hell, this is going to be a wonderful night.

He pushed open the thick wood door. The corridor was dimly lighted. There were mail boxes in a row, the stairway and the automatic elevator, the door standing open. Sidling in through the narrow door with his packages, he listened to the mechanism hum as he was slowly lifted.

When he stepped out on the fifth floor, Ada Grueter was standing there. A thin spinster of fifty, her face was sharp. Her rain cape was tied in a tight knot at the base of her throat. A black hat was pushed down tightly about her graying hair. She was carrying rubber overshoes and an umbrella.

“Hello,” Blake said. “How are you, Miss Grueter?”

She just looked at him. He smiled a little. Well, so she hadn’t forgiven him yet for the way he and Stella had yelled at each other that Saturday night. He shook his head. Grueter must have heard every well-chosen word of it.

She bobbed her head at him and stepped past him into the elevator. She looked down at the packages he was carrying and her mouth moved disdainfully. Blake bowed to her and she closed the elevator door with a sharp bang.

He went along the corridor, feeling the urgent need for Stella in the crannies of his belly. He had to drop packages and valise and fish the apartment key from his trouser pocket. He inserted the key in the lock, then he took off his hat, beat the rain out of it, set it on the back of his dark head. He shook out his raincoat, picked up the packages and pushed open the door.

And Blake took his first step into hell.

Inside the apartment, the lights were on. Every light in the apartment was burning. He let the packages slip from his arms. He toppled back against the door, closing it, listening to the lock click into place.

He had no idea how long he stood propped against that door.

The room before him was wrecked. His shocked gaze moved to Stella. He felt his legs tremble and almost buckle under him. She was battered and bloody, almost nude, sprawled across the divan, her eyes wide and staring in death.

For God only knew how long, Blake stood with his back against the door. He thought nothing. He had no strength or will to move.

His eyes went over it all a hundred times. Stella had been brutally bludgeoned to death. Someone had killed her after a violent struggle that wrecked the room.

First, Blake’s knees began to bend under him and he thought he would fall, for he had no will to go on standing. Then it began to form in his belly, the grief and the agony and the tears, all balling up and burning upward through his throat. And he knew he was going to sob and groan, that he would cry and never stop crying. And then as it filled his throat, scalding and searing, it stopped there, choking him. And he knew he wasn’t going to cry. He knew with horrible clarity that it would be better if he did let it out of him. But he also knew he couldn’t. Steve Blake died, he thought coldly, just as he was about to sob and go on living.

I’m dead, Steve Blake thought, standing there, and I can’t cry. Who will I cry for? For Stella, who’d never hear me now? Maybe I’ll cry for the man who killed her. Maybe I’ll cry for him when I find him — and maybe God himself will cry for him before I’m through….

2

WHO HAD KILLED her? Who had any reason to kill her?

Blake stiffened, straightening up slowly. He moved woodenly across the cluttered rug to the telephone. It had been knocked off the end table, but it had been righted. The receiver was replaced carefully in its cradle. His whole body ached from the fatigue caused by strain and shock. But he was acting now from the force of long habit.

The police, he thought, I’ve got to call the police.

His hand was almost upon the telephone when he stopped it in mid-air, making a numb claw over the instrument.

No, he thought. No. They can’t have her. Not yet. And they can’t have him yet. Not until I’ve had him first.

He straightened up again, lines plowed like ruts in his cheeks, his mouth tight, his green eyes cold with hatred, the way only green eyes can show hatred.

He began to plod through the small apartment. From the wrecked front room, he moved to the tiny corridor that opened on bedroom, bath and kitchenette.

At the bathroom door, he stood and stared at the instrument of Stella’s death. It was the heavy base of one of the small lamps from her vanity dresser. Whoever did it, he thought, meant to kill her. And meant to escape undetected. He had ripped the lamp cord from the wall and wrapped a hand towel about the light socket, using the thing as a club. The base of the lamp was clotted with blood and Stella’s blonde hair. He knew that at any other moment in his life he would have been sick at the sight of her blood like that. But he was gone beyond sickness now. He was beyond hurt. He had died inside at the sight of Stella sprawled in death on the divan. He walked and moved and breathed for only one reason — he was going to find the man who had killed his love.

He even stared at the towel wrapped about the lamp socket and growled a wry and bitter laugh across his taut, drawn lips. Whoever had wrapped that towel had meant to leave no fingerprints. Probably there were none. No matter how smart you were, Blake thought coldly, it won’t help you. Nothing in God’s world can save you from me now.

He turned away and leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door. The electric refrigerator stood open. A burner on the electric stove glowed stoplight red. He snapped off the stove, slammed the refrigerator door.

He turned then and looked about the room. A can of vegetable soup stood open beside a saucepan on the drainboard. A white shirtwaist was rolled up as though Stella had dampened it, intending to iron. At the sight of the rolled shirtwaist, he felt the agony tremble in his belly for an instant. But only for an instant.

Blake walked across the corridor into the bedroom. Stella’s suitcase was opened upon the bed, still only half-unpacked. A gray gabardine traveling suit was draped across the foot board. A saucy, red-plumed gray beanie was placed beside it.

These were the things Stella wore home, Blake thought. He stood looking at them. She must have come in a few hours ago — maybe less. She must have come home alone. She had undressed in here, started unpacking and then, in her slip, had gone into the kitchen to dampen a shirtwaist for ironing and to fix a bowl of soup while she waited. She had been lonely, he thought. She had come home.

He looked down at his hands and they were trembling. He was aware that he was shivering all over and that his teeth were chattering. His damp trousers clung to his ankles. A filmy white curtain stirred. He saw that the window was open, the rain was making a rivulet along the baseboard.

He walked over to pull it down. He stopped and stared down at the sill. There was a smudge, a place that could have been made by a heel in the mud formed by rain water and dust. He bent over and leaned out of the window.

He looked down five stories to the blackness of the rain-swelled alleyway. His head swiveled right and then left. There was the fire escape. Whoever he was, Blake thought, he could have gone out this way. If he was fool enough to take the chance. The fire escape was three feet from the window at least. A leap. Grab at the bars. Pray to make it. He growled his bitter laughter again. You should have prayed you didn’t make it. The fall would have been easier. The fall would have been quicker.

He backed away from the window and stood erect. He returned to the front room. He went down on his haunches beside the divan. He looked at Stella’s broken face. He touched her arm gently. But it was cold to his touch. It was as though she’d been created like that, a wax exhibit for the horror shows. Both the straps of her slip had been ripped off and part of the bodice was torn away. He wanted to cover her, put clothes on her before they came. But he knew he couldn’t. She had done everything she could think of to make him happy and now there was nothing he could do for her any more.

One of her shoes was off, her bare foot was twisted and it hung off the side of the divan, toenails bright and red. He looked about for her other shoe, but couldn’t find it.

At last he got up and backed away from her. The backs of his legs bumped a chair. He sat down with his arms resting on his knees, staring at her. Who had killed her? The thought returned now.

Who had reason to kill her? Who had hit her and gone on hitting her, brutally, even when he must have known she was dead?

He was glad he was dead inside. The hurt and the anguish were all about him in the room, but inside he was cold and dead. And because he was, he could think. His mind was clear. He looked about the room. Soon, he knew, it would be overrun with men from homicide, the sheriff and his deputies, the constable and the coroner. Every resource they had would be geared to finding Stella’s slayer. Blake’s mouth twisted. Blake knew that he would find that killer first.

He straightened a little in the chair. He needed a reason. He had learned to look for reasons while other men looked for clues. He had been a police detective and his record had been good. And now in his mind, he cast back for some somber shadow foretelling this tragedy. Because he couldn’t find at once why anyone would want to kill Stella, he began to think about himself. Murderers always have motives. Sometimes they are not aimed against the actual victim. Blake had made plenty of enemies. The job he was on now was a dangerous one in which he dared trust nobody.

He dug at his eyes with the backs of his hands. He was getting nowhere sitting there. His eyes always came back to Stella on the divan. Stella. Stella. Stella. He had to get his thoughts away from her. He had to get himself away from her.

Blake got up and walked across the room, moving like a sleepwalker. He snapped off the light, opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. He removed the key from the lock. In the elevator, he went down to the basement garage to get their car, thinking maybe it would help to ride around.

As Blake came out of the elevator, young Glintner walked around a line of cars. Glintner was a tall, blonde kid who looked like a movie type: wavy hair, blue eyes, a girlish pout about his mouth. He wore tight shirts that displayed his tautly developed muscles in cords across his wide shoulders and in his biceps.

“Why didn’t you call down, Mr. Blake?” he said. “I’d have had your car out front.”

Blake stared at him. The youth flushed slightly. “I don’t know, kid. I guess I don’t want the car. I’ll walk.”

He saw Glintner resent being called kid. “It’s still raining,” Glintner said.

“Yeah,” Blake said. “It’s raining. I’m not going far.”

Glintner shrugged and started back toward the office. Blake stood there a moment. “Glintner,” he said.

The immaculate youth turned slowly. “Yeah?”

“What time did Mrs. Blake come home?” Blake said.

Glintner looked at him. “I don’t know,” he said. “She didn’t take the car. The car’s been in here all week. We ran it the other day to keep the battery charged.”

“All right, Glintner. Thanks.” Blake turned and started up the cement ramp to the street. He could hear the droning patter of the rain on the walk as he neared it and then he began to feel the chill of the wind. He turned up his coat collar and jammed his hands into his pockets as he walked.

Blake walked steadily against the insistent drizzle of the rain. There was a bar at the corner of Fourth. He stopped outside, his shoulders hunched, and looked up at the pink and green neon sign — The Palm Club. He and Stella had been in here a few times for a drink. Well, there was no sense in attempting to run from every memory of her. There were too many memories. He couldn’t hope to run far enough, or fast enough.

A man stumbled as he came out of the front door. He bumped hard against Blake’s shoulder. Blake caught his balance. The man snarled, “Whyn’t you look where you’re going?”

Blake just looked at him. The man must have seen the hatred that had made slate marbles of Blake’s wide-set eyes.

“Whatsa matter?” the man said. “You wanta make something?”

“Go on,” Blake said. “Get out of here. I want to hit you. God help you if I do.”

The man caught his breath and swung around. “Why, you bastard,” he said. And then his eyes met Blake’s again. His fists relaxed at his sides. “Okay,” he said. His voice dropped slightly. “I bumped you. Okay.” He took two backward steps. He turned then and started away. Blake watched him. He let him go. He was wishing he could have hit him. He wanted to hit him, wanted to feel that man’s face give under his fist. Some poor devil he’d never even seen before….

He pushed through the heavy glass door, hearing the juke box wail, the clatter of bottles, the clink of glasses, the muted chatter of people in out of the rain.

He walked through the path between the tables, hoping there was no one he knew. He made it to the bar and put his hand against it to steady himself. He sat on one of the high stools. He could see his vague reflection in the blue mirror behind the glass shelf of labeled whiskey bottles. It was all there in the way his face was pulled down, even his lower lids seemed pulled away from his eyes. No wonder the poor devil ran, Blake thought. And, he thought, Blake, the man who needs to cry, who needs to smash something. God have mercy on Blake.

A white-aproned man moved between his distended eyes and the faintly tinted mirror. The bartender was bald and his face was sweated. “What you going to have?” he said to Blake.

“Whiskey,” Blake said.

“Chaser?”

“No.” Blake shook his head. “No. No. Just a glass.”

“You sure you’re okay, jack?” The bartender said.

Blake looked up at him. “I’m all right. I just want a drink. Okay?”

The bartender shrugged and measured out a double shot in a tumbler. Blake laid a dollar on the bar. The bartender took it, rang it up and slid the change across the bar. Blake had three drinks, paying for each one as he drank. He decided he was hungry, but knew he couldn’t eat. There was no food for his kind of hunger.

A tight-smocked waitress bumped his shoulder. He was aware that she flashed a quick smile at him as she picked up her order from the bar. Another order was placed on the bar. There was another waitress. She dropped some change into a beer mug behind the bar. Probably they were forced to turn in their tips.

He turned away. There was a couple entering the front door. Blake frowned. He knew them. Nort and Paula Donaldson. He tried to turn his head before they recognized him. But for the space of a second, his eyes met Nort Donaldson’s. Blake saw Donaldson flush, take his wife’s arm firmly and move her to a booth across the room.

Blake felt the breath exhale out of him. He turned back to his drink. Then he was aware of Donaldson standing at his shoulder. “Hello, Blake,” he said. “You gone snotty?”

“Yeah,” Blake said without turning, “I’ve gone snotty, Nort. Explain to your wife, will you?”

“Why don’t you come over?” Nort said. “You explain to her. Matter of fact, she sent me over to get you.”

“No,” Blake said. “No. Tell her I’m sorry. I’m just leaving. Some other time.”

“Okay,” Donaldson said. “Remember me to Stella, will you?”

Blake nodded. He hunched over his drink and didn’t speak again. Remember me to Stella. Nort and Paula Donaldson were friends of Stella’s — people she’d known in that other life of hers, the years when she was Mrs. Manley Reeder.

Manley Reeder. Blake’s hand began to shake.

There was something he had to remember. He pulled out his wallet and laid it on the bar before him. Brusquely, he ordered another drink and then sat there with his fingers straining around the glass.

It had happened just after he and Stella had married. They had gone into a cocktail lounge downtown. Manley Reeder had been at a table alone when they came in. When he saw them, he stood up. And then they saw how drunk he was.

He walked with the exaggerated dignity of the very drunk. He stopped before them. Stella said tautly, her voice a whisper, “You’re drunk, Manley. Go back to your table like a good little rat.”

“Rat?” Manley had said loudly. “I’m no rat. No self-respecting rat would speak to you.” He looked at Blake, his mouth twisting with hatred. “She been chasin’ cars lately, Blake? That’s the only thing about her. She’s housebroke, Blake. But she chases cars. Yeah. She barks at cars.”

Blake couldn’t hate him. He couldn’t even answer him. Manley Reeder was wearing his heartbreak in his tortured eyes.

“He’s got a strong leash,” Stella said in that quiet, tense voice. “Get out of the way, Manley — ”

“A strong leash! He’ll need it. You’ll need it, Blake. But it won’t help you keep her. You think you’ll keep her. You won’t keep her. I couldn’t keep her. And you won’t keep her!”

Sitting alone at the bar all this time later, Blake was aware that he was breathing through his mouth. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. But maybe it had been Manley Reeder’s threat — I can’t have Stella; no one can have her. There had been ragged heartbreak in his eyes that night and savage hatred.

Blake straightened up on the bar stool.

The pretty brunette waitress handed him a cherry. For a moment, frowning, he looked at her and was scarcely aware of her at all.

“Here, take it,” she said with a smile. She reached into the gallon jug and plopped a cherry into her own mouth. “It’s for being a good boy. The girls bet you sat here to try and make a date. That stool is called the Hot Seat in this place.”

Blake just stared at her. He dropped the cherry on the bar. The waitress tilted her left eyebrow slightly.

He looked beyond her shoulder. There was the telephone booth at the rear of the room. He slid off the stool and walked past the waitress to the telephone booth. He was aware that Paula and Nort Donaldson were watching him and he saw Paula lean over and speak quietly to Nort. Donaldson nodded, his eyes on Blake.

He waited until the door was closed behind him. He dropped in a coin, dialed long distance. The wires hummed. Blake stared at the telephone numbers penciled on the wall.

“Long distance,” the operator said.

“I’d like to call Manley Reeder. He lives in Hyde Park in Tampa.”

“One moment, please. Will you please have two quarters ready to deposit when I tell you?”

“All right,” Blake said. He felt in his trouser pocket and laid two quarters on the rack beside the telephone. He could hear the operator talking to the Tampa exchange.

“Go ahead,” the operator said. Blake deposited the quarters. He heard the telephone ringing and he thought: It’s ringing in Reeder’s big house. It’s screaming at him. It’s warning him that nothing can save him if he killed Stella.

He heard the click as the receiver was removed from the hook. He heard a man say, “Hello. Hello.”

Blake’s fingers tensed on the receiver. He put his parted lips close to the mouthpiece. “Is this Manley Reeder?” he said.

“Speaking.”

Slowly, Blake replaced the receiver on the hook. Before the connection was broken, he heard Manley Reeder’s voice rising as he shouted into the telephone. “Hello. Hello. Hello!”

You’ll get your chance to talk, Blake thought. Oh, you’ll get your chance to talk, Reeder.

He stepped out of the booth and started toward the front of the Palm Club. He heard Nort Donaldson speak his name from the green booth against the lavender wall, but he didn’t even turn his head. He kept walking steadily as though he hadn’t heard Donaldson’s voice.

The brunette waitress caught his arm just as he reached the door. Impatiently, he turned and faced her.

“What you want?” he said.

She smiled.

“You didn’t pay for your last drink, mister,” she said. “I’d have paid for it for you, but I wanted to say I’m sorry I was fresh.”

He reached into his hip pocket for his wallet. It wasn’t there. Then he remembered he had laid it on the counter.

She was holding it out in her slender, tanned hand.

“Is this it?” she said.

He thanked her without smiling. He propped the wallet open with thumb and index finger. He fished out a five dollar bill. “For your trouble,” he said.

“It was no trouble,” she said. “Only you’re awfully careless with things.”

He tried to remember to be civil. “Don’t put that money in that beer mug,” he said.

She smiled. Her teeth were even and white. But one of the front ones had been chipped slightly by her continually opening bobby pins. “I won’t,” she promised. She rolled the bill, tucked it into her bra, in the hollow between her full, high breasts.

And then Blake pushed through the door to the street. The rain had let up now, but the night was chilled and wet. The music from the Palm Club juke box trailed after him. Love songs. Soft insinuating voices. Things like that, he thought, are for people who are still alive. Not for Blake. He didn’t even have to close his eyes to see Stella before him. There was no reality except the way she looked, sprawled on that divan.

He struck off along the sidewalk, taking giant strides in the darkness. He was on his way to see Manley Reeder. He had never hated him until now. Always before he had pitied him. Manley had loved Stella and had lost her. Blake had felt sorry for him. Blake had known what it would do to him ever to lose Stella. But now, all that was different. Blake had lost her now. There was no compassion in Blake any more. All he wanted to do was see Manley Reeder’s face, hear him talk, force him to talk, watch him spill his guts.

He told himself: Reeder will talk. And if he killed her, nothing can save him. And when I’m through with you, Reeder, the police can have you.

But not until then. As he strode into the bus station, he heard a siren wail in the night. Crying after the hurt and the dead. A lonely, empty sound.

3

MANLEY REEDER opened the door.

It was a big house just off the bayshore. You could smell the bay from up here and you could smell the honeysuckle, too. There was a sick-sweet wall of it at the end of the wide veranda. The vines twined about the white railing and the white column. There was a wide swing hemmed in by the honeysuckle and old-fashioned wicker rocking chairs. Blake had come up the flower-bordered walk thinking this was a house from another age. It had belonged to Manley Reeder’s grandparents and there weren’t many houses left like it any more. Not even here in the old part of Tampa. It was somber, brown, two story with attic and scrolls and paint-peeled gables. Reeder lived here alone with only a servant since his divorce from Stella. But to Blake, that wasn’t the wonder at all. He couldn’t picture in his mind Stella’s living four years of her life in this dark place.

Manley Reeder was an extremely handsome man of about thirty-five. He snapped on an overhead porch light when he finally answered Blake’s ring. He opened the heavy old oakwood door and stared at Blake through the screen. His oil-glistening blond hair was parted on the left side and brushed in even waves across his narrow head. His forehead was high, his pale cheeks hollow, his cleft chin almost pointed. His pale blue eyes narrowed at the sight of Blake. Reeder’s mouth twisted. “To what do I owe the horror of this visit, shamus?”

Blake didn’t smile. He was aware of Reeder’s arrogant appraisal of his appearance. Reeder wasn’t missing the rain-splattered coat, the soggy trouser cuffs, the soaked shoes. “I want to talk to you,” Blake said.

Reeder smiled disdainfully. “Do. I’d like to have you come in. The meeting of our minds should be charming. The men who have loved Stella Reeder. We should start a club. I could be a charter member.”

The smile remained fixed on his handsome, long-nosed face. He let the sentence go unfinished, pretending to be busy admitting Blake to the musty-smelling corridor.

Blake stepped inside. Reeder closed the door behind them and motioned toward the dimly lighted library with a nod of his blonde head. Blake looked around, trying to find something that might prove that Stella could have lived in this austere house. She’d have hated the black hall tree with its oval mirror, Blake was sure. The dark hallway ran the depth of the house. Stella was afraid of the dark. There was a dim light in the upstairs corridor, he noted, but the house had the look of darkness, the feel of silence. The darkness and the silence. How had Stella stood it at all?

Reeder motioned Blake ahead of him into the book-lined library. Reeder went over to the hearth and stirred up the blaze with the fire tongs, then turned, the guttering light at his back.

“Have a drink.” He motioned toward the side table. Blake hesitated and then poured himself a stiff one. Holding the glass in his fist, he drank.

Reeder said stonily, “Very manly performance, Blake. Or didn’t you want to impress me with what a hell of a fellow you are?”

Blake looked at him. “I don’t give a damn what you think.”

“Don’t you? Haven’t you come because Stella is out somewhere and you don’t know where?”

“I know where she is.”

“You don’t have to be belligerent with me, Blake. I know what you’re going through. I learned to hate Stella because she put me through it — ”

“You can stop hating her,” Blake said.

Reeder laughed. “I won’t ever stop hating her. And neither will you, Blake, when you know her as I do.”

“She’s dead,” Blake said coldly.

Reeder went on smiling for a moment, opened his mouth to speak. Then he rocked on his heels as though he’d been struck in the chest. Blake could see the blood drain down from his pale face.

“You’re lying,” Reeder whispered.

“I’m not lying.”

Reeder took a step toward him. Face muscles rigid, he stared at Blake. “She’s not dead,” he said numbly. He turned his back to Blake, his shoulders sagging. He reached out to steady himself against the ornate library desk. He spoke over his shoulder. “What happened, Blake?”

“Somebody killed her.”

“How?”

“They — beat her to death with — a lamp from her vanity dresser.”

“When, Blake? When did it happen?”

“I don’t know. I came home. She was already dead.”

Reeder heeled around then. Blake watched his fingers tighten on the desk edge, turning white. He could feel Reader’s grief in the chilled room. Reeder will get over it, he thought, but I can’t get over it. There’ll never be anything for me but Stella and the way she died and the man who killed her — and my hands about his throat.

Reeder slumped into the chair behind his desk. His blue eyes were cold with hatred. “Is that why you came to see me?” Reeder said. “You think I did it?”

“I don’t know.”

Reeder’s lips pulled away from his teeth. “What did you want to ask me? Ask me and get out.”

Blake looked at him. The man was grief struck. The hell with his grief, Blake thought. There’s my grief. Somewhere there’s the man who killed Stella. Maybe there. Across that prissy desk. “I hope you won’t lie to me,” Blake said. “I’ll beat the truth out of you if you do.”

Reeder leaned forward, looking up at Blake across the desk. “I’m telling you again. Ask me what you want and get out. Make it fast, Blake.”

“Were you over there today? Were you in Gulf City today?”

Reeder looked up at him. He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“Did you see her? Did you see Stella?”

“I went over there to see her.” He laughed harshly. “I may as well tell you I spent a great deal of money on Stella just before she divorced me. I felt she owed it to me. It wasn’t the money. It was the principle.”

Blake was breathing across his open mouth. “It was your hatred,” he muttered.

Reeder’s mouth moved into a contemptuous smile. “All right, it was my hatred. If she is going to be so happy with you, why should I pay for it?”

Blake stepped toward the desk. “Did you see her?”

“You might as well stand where you are, shamus. You can’t frighten me. What in God’s name could your fists do to me? Stella has done all the hurt that can ever be inflicted on me, Blake, and she did it a long time ago.”

“I want to know if you saw her?”

Reeder laughed at him. “You want to know if I killed her, don’t you? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?”

“How long did you stay over in Gulf City?”

“There’s no use asking me any more. I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want you to find out who killed Stella. That’s the kind of revenge that pleases me. You and Stella. So damned happy. I hope you never find who killed her. Never know the truth about why she died.”

Blake stared at him. “Are you crazy? Why shouldn’t Stella and I have been happy? What did it have to do with you? You and Stella were divorced before I even met her.”

Reeder smiled thinly. “I lost Stella. I hated her. Now you’ve lost her. That’s good enough for me.” He clenched his pale fists. “You want the truth about her, Blake? I met her during the war. I was a lieutenant in the Air Corps. I was stationed in Alabama. She’d once won a beauty contest and half the men in the camp were in love with her. We became engaged. A week before we were to be married, she ran off with another officer on Saturday. She came back on Monday. She didn’t even ask if I wanted to break the engagement. She just sent the ring back. I stayed away until Wednesday. That doesn’t seem very long to you, does it, Blake? Well, every hour had sixty long minutes in it. I was sick and crazy. I went to her and begged her to marry me. She said she didn’t love me. I told her I knew it would be different after we were married. It was different, Blake. A hell of a lot different. It was worse. She began to drink. I suspected her of running around. I hired detectives. They could never prove it. But she wouldn’t stay home. I learned to hate her. I sent her to a hospital when her drinking got out of hand. They cured her of drinking, but she wouldn’t come back to me.” A savage smile of pleasure worked across Reeder’s lips. “I don’t leave you much, do I, Blake?” He nodded with grim satisfaction. “That’s the way I want it. That’s why I hope you never find the man who killed her. It matters to you. You’re a tough guy. And you want vengeance. Well, I hope you. never find him. This proves to me that Stella wasn’t happy with you — or faithful to you. I hope you live with that the rest of your life.”

“I’ll find him,” Blake said.

“You still want to find him? After what I’ve told you?”

“What you’ve told me proves you’re a creep. All I know is that Stella and I were in love. So Stella had dates before you were married. Is that unheard of? Other girls have done it. So she started drinking after you were married? Maybe living with a jerk like you did that to her. I know what she was to me. That’s all that matters. I’ll find him. God help him when I do. God help you if I find out you did it.”

Reeder stood up. “You can get out now.”

Blake motioned toward the telephone. “I’d like to call a cab.”

Reeder smiled. “Let me do it for you.” He dialed a number, gave his address, replaced the receiver. “They’ll be here for you in a few minutes. I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait for it outside. On the sidewalk.”

“That’s all right with me. You can go to hell, Reeder.”

“I’ve been there for a long time, Blake. If you’ll just close the front door on your way out, please.”

He went back to his desk. He was leaning over the telephone, dialing a number as Blake went out the front door. Blake shrugged. To hell with him.

Blake let the front door click shut after him. He crossed the front porch. The sick-sweet smell of honeysuckle was stifling. He hurried down the steps and out along the walk to escape it. The cloying fragrance trailed after him like something unwholesome. It was as though Reeder walked beside him in the chilled darkness. God! No wonder Stella hit the bottle. Living with that creep.

As Blake reached the walk, the front porch light was snapped off behind him. The rain had stopped. The wind was rising. The houses along the street were dark and silent. He began to walk up and down to keep warm. His hands began to shake from cold. He rammed them into his pockets and walked faster up and down before the dark old house. He began to shake, first in his chest, along his arms and then in his legs. The taxi came. Blake was trembling all over. His teeth were chattering. It took him two minutes to make the driver understand he wanted to be taken to the bus station.

4

BLAKE CROWDED into the Gulf City bus. He found a seat halfway back and huddled in it against the window. The shaking had subsided now and his teeth no longer chattered, but he was still cold. He wondered if he would ever be warm again.

A stout man punched into the seat beside Blake. He smiled widely, showing yellowed false teeth. “Hello, mister,” he said to Blake. “My name’s Frazer. Salesman with Wall Papers. Wall Papers. Yes sir, lot of people think we sell wallpapers. But Mr. Wall owns the firm. We’re one of the biggest in the bay area. Though — ” his voice dropped confidentially, “don’t know how long we will be, the paper situation the way it is. Why it’s just about impossible to get paper, the world conditions being what they are. But it’s a mighty interesting business. You ever stop to think of all the different kinds of paper there are, mister?”

“No,” Blake said. “No. I never did.”

The stout man laughed. “Well, mighty few people ever do. Very few stop to think what paper means to us. Give ’em a little toilet tissue and the morning news and they’re content-”

Blake closed his ears against the sound of the stout man’s loud voice. He had to think. Think. He wondered how in hell he could think with that man sounding off at his side. He stared out of the window at the lights of the town moving past him.

With the salesman chattering in his ear, Blake thought about Manley Reeder. Manley admitted he had been in Gulf City. He had been hard hit when Blake told him that Stella was dead. But Manley had said he hoped Blake would never find the man who killed Stella. That could be his expressed desire for ceaseless vengeance against Blake. Or it could be that Manley Reeder knew a lot more than he would ever tell willingly. One thing was sure, Reeder hated his guts. Blake shuddered. And there was one more thing. Manley Reeder was ill. A sick man full of hate and bitterness, living alone in that dark house pervaded with the funereal scent of honeysuckle.

I’ll find out about him, Blake vowed, I’ll know everything Manley Reeder did in Gulf City today. Then he shook his head. He was being a private snitch now. Stella had called him that and she had hated it and all it stood for. Just this one last time, Stella, Blake whispered soundlessly.

The stout man was still talking when the bus pulled into the Gulf City terminal. He shook hands with Blake enthusiastically and then clambered forward, brushing people aside as he went along the aisle.

Blake came off the bus behind a pudgy woman carrying a sleeping baby in her arms. The bus driver was talking to a flashy little twist He didn’t even turn to look at the woman and her baby. Blake caught her as she stumbled. She turned and smiled wearily at him. Blake nodded to her and looked up at the terminal clock. It was then twenty-seven minutes past midnight.

As his gaze lowered, he saw that an outgoing bus was loading at the next ramp. He saw the harness cop first. He was standing with his hands on his hips watching each passenger go through the exit to the bus. Blake felt the tremors of premonition flicker across his belly like startled flies. The plainclothes detective sergeant was lounging against the counter in an attitude of disinterest. But Blake saw that he was watching even more alertly than the cop.

It could be anything, Blake told himself. They don’t even know that Stella is dead yet. Still the warning bell went on clanging inside his brain: take it easy, take it easy, take it easy. Suppose they have found Stella. It’s been seven hours since I found her body. If they have found her, they’ll be looking for me.

The stout woman was trying to lift a heavy suitcase from the floor without waking her baby. Blake reached beyond her and picked it up. “Let me carry it out for you,” he said. “You look like you have more than you can handle.”

“Thanks,” the woman sighed. “We were just going to the corner. I’ll have to catch a city bus out home.”

“At this hour, with the baby?” Blake protested. “I’ll stake you to a taxi.”

The woman shook her head. “I couldn’t let you spend the money.”

“Well, you are going to let me,” Blake said emphatically. He had turned his head and was looking down at her as they passed the detective. Blake hoped they looked like a travel-weary couple and child, tired and argumentative. At least the detective didn’t give them a second glance.

The woman was too exhausted to argue any more. Her face shone with relief when Blake helped her into a taxi and paid her fare in advance. “I can’t repay you,” she said.

“You have repaid me,” Blake told her. He stepped back from the cab. She was staring out at him, frowning puzzledly as the car leaped away from the curb.

The outgoing bus was just pulling out of the terminal exit. The cop and detective would be out of the bus station in a moment. Blake wasn’t convinced yet that he was being sought. But there was no use in taking chances. He stepped into another cab and gave his home address. “Just drive by slow,” he told the driver.

The street was silent and deserted when the cab turned into Fifth Avenue. Blake told himself he was just jumpy. “It’s all right,” he said. “You can stop at the curb. I’ll get out.”

He had paid the hack driver and stepped out on the sidewalk before he saw them. At first, it was just shadow against shadow and then shadows moving in the gloom. And he knew he had walked into a trap.

His heart began to thud raggedly. He felt the backs of his legs tremble slightly. The place was alive with cops. They’d found Stella. They’d had time to prepare for his return, if he dared to. There wasn’t a police cruiser in sight along the street and yet the shadows were crawling with cops.

He started up the short walk to the entrance of the red brick apartment building. He moved casually and he didn’t look up to his window on the fifth floor. Somebody tipped off the cops that Stella was dead, he told himself coldly. Who could have called? In his mind, the thought kept recurring: frame-up. It’s some kind of frame-up. He tried to tell himself he thought that because he’d been a private snitch so long that he thought like one, even when his own wife was murdered. But the suspicion persisted. He pushed open the door and stepped into the small corridor. He saw a shadow start down from the first landing.

The door of the automatic elevator was standing open. Blake stepped into it. As he closed the door, the man rounded the stairs and started into the foyer. Blake pushed the basement button and it seemed a creeping eternity before the mechanism began to groan and the elevator creaked downward.

Through the small aperture in the elevator door, Blake inspected the basement garage before he stepped out into it. He saw why there were no cruisers parked in the street. They were all parked down here. He knew that the detective from the foyer was on his way to the basement. He had to leave the elevator. He had to take his chance in the garage.

As he stepped out of the elevator, handsome young Glintner walked around the rear end of a Cadillac. For a full second they stood frozen and stared at each other. Blake moved first. He went forward on the balls of his feet. With his left hand, he caught Glintner’s cheeks. He clamped the palm of his hand hard over Glintner’s mouth just as the youth opened it to yell. Blake’s fingers dug so hard, they pulled Glinter’s eyelids down and stretched his pretty face out of shape.

Glintner jerked his head back. Blake drove his doubled fist just under Glintner’s belt buckle. Agony leaped into Glintner’s blue eyes. Blake released him and the attendant stumbled forward retching up his insides.

Blake didn’t even stop to look at him again. He kept close to the wall, shielded by the line of cars. He moved cautiously out of the garage entrance. He slid around the corner of the wall and stood with his back against it until he could pick out the cops waiting in the shadows. He moved slowly then around the side of the apartment house to the alley.

The alley appeared silent, empty and inviting. For a moment, Blake hesitated. But it was too silent. He didn’t like it. Cops don’t have to be smart, he thought, they just have to be patient. He walked across the alley and went through an oleander hedge into the yard of the big, old guest home. He walked out on the sidewalk as though he had come out the front door and then began to walk steadily toward the corner of Fourth Street.

He heard the roar of a police cruiser as it was raced up the ramp out of the apartment house garage behind him.

He tried to keep walking steadily, but his gait increased and suddenly he was running, his head turned as he watched over his shoulder. He saw the headlights spearing ahead of the cruiser in the darkness. Just as the car swung out into Fourth, its tires squealing, Blake leaped into the darkness of a hedge. The cruiser sped past, was whipped around in a circle at the next block and now inched past along the street, its spotlight bobbing along the dark places of the sidewalk.

Holding his breath, Blake inched back out of reach of the probing light. The backs of his legs brushed a small picket fence. He stepped over it and walked stealthily across the yard. He rounded the corner of the house and started toward the street. He was almost there when a second cruiser came west up the avenue, moving slowly, its spotlight bobbing along ahead of it.

He stood stock still and then he backed slowly around the house. He knew this wasn’t going to last long. They’d have every cop in the area beating through the yards and the alleys. Any moment now, lights would begin to pop on through the windows of the houses along here.

He waited until the cruiser idled past the yard, then he walked out to the sidewalk and turned east. He walked swiftly, doggedly, trying to keep from running. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. But he knew if he ran, he’d meet a cop before he could see him. The cops weren’t looking for a man of any particular description, although they’d probably been briefed as to Blake’s appearance in a general way. Their orders would be to bring in any man caught on the streets.

He crossed the street and turned a corner. He walked north along Third. His stomach was empty with something more than fear. He knew he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since noon. It must be after 1 A.M. now, he was sure. He could hear the cars behind him. In his weariness and his hunger, it seemed to him that the sounds were exaggeratedly loud.

He was so tired he felt that it would be nice to lie down on the wet grass and sleep. The shock of finding Stella dead in their apartment had weakened him physically and mentally. Weariness was settling over him and now anxiety was about to finish him. He had to rest soon and he had to eat soon. It was almost a temptation to allow the cops to take him in. In the jail there would be a cot and in the morning, coffee.

He shook his head and kept moving one foot ahead of the other, persistently. He had to find the man who killed Stella. He had to find him before the police did. He had to stay free to find him. If the police got him, he knew it would be a long time before he was free. And if it was some kind of frame-up, he might never be freed. His lagging steps hurried.

It seemed to Blake that he must be very light-headed. His own footsteps were loud in his ears and the sound of them was doubled. Abruptly, he stopped walking. The second sound lasted just a second too long. There was someone following him.

When he looked over his shoulder, there was only silence and darkness in the street behind him.

It’s not a cop, he thought. A cop’s orders would be to shoot, to bring him in. It wasn’t a cop back there. Blake shrugged his coat up on his shoulders and began walking again.

There was an open-all-night café just around the corner on Central. Blake walked past it once. There were no cops inside. Two taxi drivers talked over their coffee. A short-order man and a blowsy waitress talked at the end of the long counter.

Blake started in: The warm odors of food through the front door were tormenting him. But with his hand on the knob, he stopped. He walked back to the corner then and stepping out beyond the building, looked down Third. At the alley, a shadow leaped back into the security of darkness.

Blake let his breath out slowly. He was being followed. It wasn’t a cop.

He returned to the restaurant and went in to one of the booths at the rear of the room. He sat facing the front door, but pulled around so that he was pretty sure he couldn’t be seen from the street.

The blowsy waitress sauntered over. She scrubbed at her pink nostrils with the back of her hand and sniffled.

Blake looked at the menu. He ordered a sirloin steak and French fried potatoes. “I want the steak well done,” he said, “and coffee, black.”

He was pretty certain he saw the thick shadow of a man stroll past the sweated window of the restaurant. The cook was frying the steak at a griddle near him though and the aroma of the sizzling meat struck him. He made up his mind to eat this meal if he hung for it. Only, you don’t hang in Florida, he thought grimly, they lead you into a little room and cook you, the way that steak’s frying on that griddle.

When the waitress brought his meal and slid it into place before him, Blake said, “I’m a stranger here, Miss. Is there a good hotel near? Reasonable, you know.”

She looked at him. “There’s one upstairs over this joint,” she said, “if reasonable’s all you want.”

“That’s what I want,” Blake told her, attacking his steak. It was well-done on the outside, leather brown, in fact. But blood oozed out of the middle of it. Blake had to swallow hard. But he sat there until he had eaten it all. Only the hell of it was, it didn’t help him. The food and the coffee made a scalding knot in the middle of his belly. Food is for the living, too, Blake, he told himself. And you’ll begin to live when you find the man who killed Stella.

He got up, left a tip under the side of his plate, picked up his check and paid the short-order man at the front of the café. He went out the door then and stood for a moment in the light. Wind tumbled newspapers along the vacant street. A truck turned out into the avenue two blocks away. The silence was thick through the heavy sleeping town. The man who was following Blake was nowhere to be seen.

Blake started walking slowly west toward Third. Keenly aware of every movement, he was sure that the man had stepped out of a doorway east of the restaurant. He counted five. Then he turned and looked over his shoulder. A man was entering the café. He was wearing a brown suit and a brown hat pulled low on his head, the brim snapped over his eyes. He was too far away for Blake to recognize him. Still, Blake was sure there was something familiar about him.

He took long strides across Central to a small walk-up hotel on the south side of the street. A faded sign advertised it to be the Regal Hotel. Steve stepped quickly inside the frosted door. There was a littered stairway leading to the desk and lobby on the second floor.

Blake waited just inside the door until the big man came out of the restaurant across the street. The fellow moved purposefully now. He entered the doorway of the hotel at the west side of the café. When the door closed behind him, Steve sighed heavily and started up the shabby runner to the second floor of the Regal Hotel.

He climbed slowly, letting his thoughts race ahead of him. It was a frame. Whoever had killed Stella was out to get Steve Blake. They had attempted to set him in the middle of a murder rap. Well, he was still free and he was still breathing and whoever had done it would live to regret it under Steve Blake’s merciless hands. He shivered. He couldn’t imagine anything that would keep him from violently throttling Stella’s murderer.

Blake had to ring the bell four times before a thin, gray little man came through a door behind the counter, yawning and peering at Steve through thick-lensed glasses.

“I’d like a room,” Steve said.

“Four dollars,” the little man yawned. He pushed a card toward Steve. Steve hesitated a moment. Then he scrawled, “Robert Cole, Tampa,” on the card. Instantly, he wished he hadn’t. It was just that he had not thought, his brain was too foggy. That was the name he worked under in Arrenhower’s big industrial plant. But it was too late to change it.

At least, maybe the name would buy him a few hours of sleep.

At most, he thought cynically, it might buy you a fast ride to the death house in Raiford.

He shoved the card away. The gray little man glanced at it sleepily. “Be four dollars in advance,” he said.

Steve paid him. “Any place I could get these clothes pressed?” he asked.

The man looked at him and shook his head. “Nowhere until in the morning, mister.” He handed him a key. “Room 308, up on next floor. It’s got a private bath. You got no luggage?”

“No. I came in on the bus. I must have beat my suitcase to town.”

The man shrugged. “That happens. Well, goodnight, mister.” He yawned.

“Will you send a paper to my room in the morning?” Steve said.

“Sure.” The little man made a note on the card Steve had signed.

Sluggishly, Steve climbed the stairs to the third floor. The numerals were screwed on the door facings, large, cheap tin figures from Kress’s. There was a line of light under the door at 305 and faint music streamed out of the radio. Some faraway, all-night radio broadcast, a sleepy disc jockey and a man sleepless in room 305.

Blake unlocked 308, snapped on the light and then closed the door behind him. It locked automatically. There was a chain latch. Steve dropped it into place. There was a sign pinned to the door. “Not Responsible for Theft. Keep Your Door Locked.”

Charming hole, Blake thought bitterly.

The window was down, the room was warm. There was a musty odor, but Blake decided he’d rather have warmth than fresh air. There were blankets on the old-fashioned iron bed and Blake was thankful for that. He looked forward to lying under those blankets, warm and asleep.

He undressed quickly. He put his shoes on top of the lukewarm radiator. He hung his underwear over the back of the straight chair. He put his wallet and room key on the dresser. Then he shook out his sodden trousers and folded them where the crease had been, once. He pulled back the mattress then, spread an old newspaper over the springs and carefully laid out his trousers. He let the mattress down easily.

In the bathroom, he took a shower. The water was hot. He began to feel warm and he was sure the blood was stirring through his veins for the first time in hours. When he had dried with the big towel, he came back into the bedroom, yawning. He was bone tired, but he felt almost human again.

He went over and turned down the covers on the bed. That’s when he heard the stealthy movement in the hallway. He straightened slowly, listening.

Someone was breathing shallowly just beyond his door. He looked at the chain catch and swore soundlessly. He moved cautiously over to the wall beside the door. Painstakingly, he lifted the chain from the catch and inched it back against the door so there wasn’t a sound.

He could hear movement as the man outside pressed closer to the door, listening. Steve put his hand on the knob of the automatic lock. With his left hand he grasped the doorknob. He twisted both of them at once and flung the door open.

The big man in the brown suit half fell into the room upon him. While the fellow was still off balance, Blake chopped down across his neck with the side of his thick hand. The man grunted just once. His knees bumped and then he sprawled forward on his face.

Steve closed the door, cutting off the faint sound of the radio down the corridor. The man’s rain-splattered hat had fallen off. His head was large and balding. Steve bent down and roughly turned him over on his back.

He recognized him then. And the cold came back. And Steve knew he was going to get the shakes again. The man’s name was Terravasi. He was one of Arrenhower’s company police goons.

They know, he thought sickly.

Arrenhower has somehow discovered who I am, what I am and what I was doing in his big plant. And then he thought, how long have they known? How long have they been watching me?

Long enough to plan Stella’s murder? Long enough to set a murder-frame to catch me in?

He shook his head weakly. It was a chance you took in his racket. But you can’t ever know what it will be like to be caught. Not until it’s too late. Not until they send their goons to follow you in the night.

Poor Stella, he thought anguishedly, it must have been hell for her, facing it alone. He felt a shudder wrack at his belly.

He looked down at Terravasi. The big man was beginning to stir on the scabrous rug. There was a man in the room with Steve Blake. But he had never felt so alone in all his life.

5

BLAKE WENT in the bathroom, got the towel he’d dried with after his shower and knotted it about his flat-bellied waist.

He sat down then on a straight chair. He could feel that knot of fear congealing in his belly. Terravasi was one of Arrenhower’s goons. That meant Arrenhower knew that Robert Cole, employee, was actually Steven Blake, private eye, who had moved in to take the place of the murdered investigator named Roberts.

He sat perfectly still in his chair. Finally, Terravasi sat up on the floor and hung his head loosely forward. A groan bubbled across Terravasi’s mouth.

At last, he looked up. His pain-ridden eyes bored into Blake’s, showing cold hatred.

“All right, guy,” he muttered.

Blake leaned forward. “You want more, Terravasi?”

Terravasi shook his head painfully. “No.”

“It would be no inconvenience,” Blake said evenly. “There’s plenty more where that came from. You’ll remember that, won’t you, Terravasi?”

“I’ll remember it.”

“I’ll remember it, Mr. Blake.”

Terravasi looked at him. “I’ll remember it, Mr. Blake.”

“How long you been tailing me?”

Terravasi just looked at him.

“Did you kill Stella, too?” Blake muttered hoarsely. “Did they send you to take care of all of it, Terravasi?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will, Terravasi. I imagine it would take a lot of noise to disturb the management of this watering place. It wouldn’t take a lot of noise right now for me to beat you to death.”

Terravasi stared up at him from the floor. “Ain’t no use, Blake. I just work. Same as you. Go ahead, beat me. I guess right now you could. But I won’t say anything. What’s the use to talk to keep you from killing me? If I talked to you, I couldn’t even get out of this stinkin’ town alive.”

Blake met Terravasi’s sullen gaze. He knew the swarthy goon was telling the truth. This was the second time in one night that Blake had allowed himself to be dissuaded from using his fists. Somebody has got to talk, he told himself, somewhere they’ve got to begin talking.

There had to be a way to force talk. But he knew that a beating wouldn’t help him with Terravasi.

He stood up, trying to keep the defeat from his face, trying to keep his aloneness from showing in the despairing sag of his bare, cold shoulders.

“Okay, Terravasi, get out. This room is taken. I got a scruple this week, Terravasi. No men guests in my room after midnight.”

Terravasi stood up, holding his head slightly askew.

Blake looked at him. “Sorry about the neck, Terravasi. Next time, let me know when you’re coming. I’ll break it.” Their eyes met. “You know I mean that, don’t you, Terravasi?”

The goon nodded. “I know.”

Blake held the door open. “This is where you came in, Terravasi.”

Terravasi walked past him. The music was still streaming out from under the door of room 305. For a moment, Blake stood and watched the thick-shouldered man plod down the hall. He closed the door again then and bolted it.

He shivered. The room had been warm when he came into it. But it was chilled now. Blake could feel the muscles in his belly constrict with cold. He pulled off the towel and let it fall in a heap on the rug. He sank down on the bed and covered up, lying there staring at the paint-scabbed ceiling. He thought bitterly, I’d hate to be a whore and live in a room like this. Nothing to look at but that filthy ceiling and some man’s filthy eyes. The room was silent now and the thin stream of the music filtered through the walls from the room down the hall.

There was a telephone on the table beside the bed. He turned his head on the pillow, staring at the black instrument and its round dial face. A lot of things you could do with a telephone. You could call the police and tell them to come and get you. And you’d be safe then from Arrenhower and his goons. He shook his head. No, he was like Terravasi in that deal. There was no choice. Heads, I lose. Tails, I lose.

He buried his head in the pillow and tried to sleep. The music sifted through the stuffing of the pillow. It was a haunting love song. He had danced to that song, with Stella. How sweet. How romantic. Christ, didn’t that guy down there ever turn that thing off?

He kept the pillow over his eyes and ears. But though his eyes burned with the weariness, he could not sleep. He thrust the pillow off to the floor, kicked off the covers and sat up on the side of the bed. He was aware that his body was covered with sweat. The room was chilled and the sweat was turning to ice water.

He lifted the telephone off its cradle. He dialed the unlisted number that Dickerson had given him. “Call that number if you’re caught,” Dickerson had told him, “or if you get some news that won’t keep.”

This ought to be it, Blake thought wryly.

He listened to the telephone buzzing. He sat with the receiver held loosely against his ear, listening to the ringing far across the vibrant lines. A man’s voice answered sleepily. “Dickerson. What is it?”

Blake said, “I’ve got to talk to you. This is Steve Blake. Hell has broken loose. I got news that won’t keep.”

He could hear Dickerson grunt groggily. “Won’t it keep two hours to daylight, Blake?”

“It might,” Blake said. “But I won’t. You’d better let me come talk to you now, Dickerson, while you can still listen and while I can still talk.”

“Come out to my place,” Dickerson said. “If you’re followed, don’t stop. I wish you wouldn’t come anyway, Blake.”

“I’m coming,” Blake told him. “Leave a boy scout burning in your window.”

“Be careful!” Dickerson warned.

“It’s too late for that.”

“Then don’t come out here!”

“You might as well hang up,” Blake said. “This is for keeps, Dickerson. What I tell you tonight is going to be the last report on this job. But I think you’d better hear it.”

He could hear the sharp catch of Dickerson’s exasperated breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Blake quietly replaced the receiver. He got his damp trousers from under the mattress and dressed, hearing the faint, taunting strains of the radio. He wound his watch and strapped it back around his wrist. It was 5:28 A.M.

At the door, he looked once more about the room, the towel on the floor, the covers kicked back. Well, he’d thought he could sleep in this room. But sleep, too, was for the living.

He dropped the room key in his pocket. He closed the door of the room after him. He heard the click of a lock and stopped, watching the hall.

The door of room 305 was opened and a dark haired girl stepped out into the hall. She was wearing a white smock, belted tightly at her tiny waist. Her wavy hair was brushed and rolled under a net. For a moment they stared across the space of the dim corridor at each other. Then she smiled. Blake was positive he’d seen her somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember where or when.

“Hello,” she said, “don’t you remember me?”

Blake shook his head, but said, “Yes. You’re the girl in 305. You play your radio all night.”

“It’s the only way I can sleep,” she said. “I’m sorry if it annoyed you. I didn’t know you lived here.”

“I don’t,” Blake said. “I’m burglaring the rooms. Yours is next.”

She looked at him. “You really don’t remember me, do you? At the Palm Club. My name is Sammy. Sammy Anderson. Don’t you know? I returned your wallet — without even looking at the French postcards in it.”

“Oh, yes,” Blake said. “I remember.”

“I still have the five dollars,” she said with a faint smile.

“Then men are bigger fools nowadays than they were when I was young,” Blake said. He started past her along the corridor.

“I’m on my way to breakfast,” Sammy said.

“Are you?” Blake said. He ignored the implied invitation in her voice. “Aren’t you up kind of early — working till midnight at the Palm Club?”

“I — I’ll go back to bed after I eat,” she said. “It’s just that I hate it at night. I don’t like night. I try to make it end as quickly as possible.”

She started walking with him toward the steps. Blake could see that the girl wanted to say something to him, without knowing how to begin. They descended the stairs in silence. When they reached the street, the girl looked up at him in the vague light of the Regal Hotel doorway. Her dark brows were knotted. She bit down on her full underlip. But all she said was, “Be careful.”

There was a cab at the curb and Blake got into it, giving Dickerson’s Gale Island address. He sat back in the cab wondering what Sammy Anderson had wanted to say to him.

He got out a block away from Dickerson’s big stucco house. As he went along the walk, he watched the first fingers of dawn fumbling upward through the rifts in the black sky.

He rang the doorbell once. Dickerson let him stand there for five minutes. Finally, he cracked open the door and said, “All right, Blake. Come in.”

The house was still in darkness. Dickerson led the way through it into the library. He closed the door after them and then snapped on a small light over his blond-wood desk. The faint light left webs of shadow in every corner of the room. Dickerson, a tall, humorless man with gray hair, sat down, gestured to a chair.

But Blake went on standing.

“All right,” Dickerson said. “What is it you’ve got, Steve?”

“Trouble,” Steve replied.

Dickerson didn’t smile. “I hope you know how much trouble, Blake. You’re wanted for murder. Your description is being blared on every radio in the area, every hour on the hour.” Blake felt the shock of that. Had that been what Sammy Anderson had wanted to tell him? “You’re absolutely no more good to me, Blake. I hope you understand that. Your value to us remained in your being just an ordinary guy at work in Arrenhower’s plant. If anyone in that plant knows who you are — ”

“They know,” Steve told him.

“How do you know?”

“Because I believe they framed me for murder.”

“A man like Arrenhower?”

“Why not? Your company hired me to find out why Roberts was killed, didn’t they? I was in a plant where they wouldn’t hire a man who ever even heard of your company. Far as Arrenhower knew, I was carrying news out of there daily — the materials that have been diverted from government contract work to more profitable channels, what happens to finished products the government never gets, any other violations. What better way to get rid of me than frame me for murder?”

Dickerson snarled. “Murdering you would have been simpler.”

“Murder isn’t ever simple. Would you fellows actually murder a man, no matter what he did to you? You wouldn’t want the stink of murder about you. You couldn’t afford it. Not with defense work. Neither could Arrenhower. But a frame for murder would be different.”

Dickerson shook his head. “It would still be murder. If you somehow beat the rap, it would still be murder. Somebody in Arrenhower’s employ would actually be guilty of it. No. I don’t like Arrenhower. I don’t like his way of doing business. They’ve put our material supply company on the spot with Uncle Sam. But you’re off base if you think he’d have a murder done just to get rid of you.”

Blake stared at him. “You don’t think I killed my own wife, do you?”

“I didn’t suggest you did. I merely said I don’t believe that Arrenhower ordered it done.”

“Arrenhower has been having me followed.”

Now, Blake saw, Dickerson was interested. He sat forward, the desk lamp gleaming on his face.

“How do you know?”

“I caught one of his creeps listening at my door,” Blake said. “And get this, Dickerson. If they know about me, they know about you. If they’re watching me, they’ll be watching you. No matter what you believe, I think I got in this mess because I worked for you. Okay, that’s a hazard of my racket. I’m not weeping. I’m just telling you. If the fact that I worked as a spy for you in Arrenhower’s plant gets out, you’re finished down here. I’ve got to stay free, Dickerson. Somebody murdered my wife. The only way I can find who did it, is to stay free. The only way I can stay free is to have help. You’ve got to help me stay free.”

Now Dickerson stood up. His face looked as though he were suffering in the advanced stages of ptomaine poisoning. Even the shadows under his eyes seemed greenish.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Dickerson said coldly. “Where you are dead wrong. My interest is not with you. This thing we are trying to do is too big to be jeopardized by you. Get this. No matter what happens, I’ll deny you have any connection with us. As you know, there is nothing in writing. We even paid the fees in cash to your partner, Bruce Bricker. You’re in trouble with the police, Blake. You’re no good to us. And I’ll tell you this. I’m not going to get myself in trouble with the police by harboring you or concealing your whereabouts.”

Blake looked at him. “When you kick a man that’s down, you do it good, don’t you?”

“There’s only one time to kick a man,” Dickerson said. “You’ll learn that working in any government agency. Kick ’em when they’re down, ride with them when they’re on top.”

“Thanks for the bloody mouth,” Blake said evenly.

“Oh, I’m not as bad as you think,” Dickerson said. “I’m going to give you an hour, Blake. You’ve got one whole hour before I call the police and tell them you were here.”

6

IT WAS full morning as Blake started down the street from Dickerson’s big house on Gale Island. A bright, sunshiny morning. The rich hedges about the rich homes looked richer than ever after last night’s rain. But the world seemed pervaded with wrong this morning. The kind of wrong that eats at you when the man who has hired you and put you on the spot suddenly tells you that you’re on your own. To hell with you. Blake could feel the muscles tighten along his squared jaw.

As he started across the humped-back bridge, a cruising taxi honked at him. Blake flagged it down and told the driver to take him to the Federal Building. The car was being pulled into the curb before Blake realized why the streets were so deserted and quiet. It was Sunday, early Sunday morning.

Blake felt a little ache of agony across the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t Sunday to him, it wasn’t any day at all. It was just long eternal hours since Stella had been killed.

He bought a morning newspaper from the blind news’ vendor in the lobby. The newspaper was wearing its gaudy jacket of Sunday comics. Blake kept it folded under his arm as he went up in the elevator. In the small mirror beside the operator’s head, he could get a nightmare view of his face. His haggard eyes were swollen from lack of sleep. Two hard lines sliced down from his distended nostrils beside the bitter slit of his mouth. His fingers nudged at the heavy blue growth of beard. He averted his gaze.

On the tenth floor, he entered the office he had shared with Bruce Bricker for the last four years. He gave the door a pat in passing and listened to the lock click behind him.

He spread the newspaper out on Prue Quincy’s neat desk, dropped the comic section in the waste basket. And there was his picture and an old photograph of Stella on the front page. The headlines had pushed aside the war and the weather: WOMAN MURDERED; POLICE SEEK HUSBAND.

Slowly, he read the whole story. The coroner had placed the time of her death roughly between 4:30 P.M. and 6 P.M. And, Blake thought grimly, that put him right in the middle of it.

The husband had been seen to enter the apartment (Ah, Ada Grueter had been talking!) and was seen leaving it by the garage attendant, Bix Glintner. Blake reread the whole story, but there was no mention of one thing he felt was vitally important. Who had known Stella was dead inside that locked apartment?

Much was made of the fact that the husband had disappeared and was Number One on the wanted list of Police Lieutenant Ross Connell.

There was a great deal, obviously written by a slob sister, about Stella. Her two marriages — the last one, beginning so idyllically and ending so tragically; the fact that once she had won a beauty contest. Blake was glad they hadn’t published any photos of her as the police must have found her, almost nude, her shoe missing, her face bloodied, on the divan.

The news stories did nothing for Blake but bring it all back to him, the agony and despair he’d felt. He stood by the desk, his fist clenched on its top, feeling the hurt and the need for tears deep in his belly.

He balled up the newspaper in his fist and thrust it into the waste basket. He went into the office he shared with Bricker. He peeled off shirt, coat and tie and went into the small private lavatory to shave.

He knew it was going to hurt, standing there staring into his eyes. What’s worse than looking into your own eyes and knowing you’re alone and despised? Or is it even worse to know that somewhere, near him, the man lived and breathed who had battered Stella to death and he was helpless to find him?

He glared at the hurt, haggard eyes in the glass. He wasn’t helpless, he told those eyes. He was still free. He was still breathing. Finding people was his job. It was the only job he knew. No matter that Stella hated his profession. He had learned it and he was going to be able to get his hands about the throat of the man who’d killed her.

As the tempo of his thoughts increased, his hand moved the razor faster on his cheeks and neck. He washed out the razor and went back to the office for his shirt.

The shirt he had been wearing was soiled and wilted. The wrinkles in it seemed to have been ironed into it. Then he remembered that Bricker kept extra white shirts in one of the filing cabinets. Of course, Bricker was a barrel with short arms. But a clean shirt was all that mattered.

He pulled at the filing cabinet and almost pulled it over on him. Locked. Bricker and his damned keys, he thought vehemently. With the heel of his hand, he jammed at the lock sharply and listened to it snap with grim satisfaction. That’ll show Bricker how effective his keys are against anyone who really wanted to get into these things, he told himself.

He selected a carefully laundered shirt and put it on, stuffing it inside his trousers while his thoughts moved over all that had happened to him, every little thing that might have led to Stella’s murder.

He went over to his desk, flopped down behind it and dialed a number. He listened to the telephone ring a long time. When the man answered, Blake could hear him grumbling about being disturbed this hour on a blamed Sunday morning.

“Edwards?” Blake said.

“Yeah.”

“This is Steve Blake — or Robert Cole.”

He heard Edwards’ sharp little whistle. “Blake will do. That Cole malarkey is gone. Where are you?”

Blake laughed at him. “You ought to know.”

“How the hell should I know?”

Blake decided to hell with arguing that with Edwards. “I want to see Arrenhower,” he said.

“What?”

“You heard me. You could fix it. I’ve got to talk to him.”

Edwards laughed again. Mirthlessly. “You’re wanted for murder, Blake. You’ve been a very naughty boy, pretending to work for Mr. Arrenhower while, really, you were working for somebody else all the time. You’ve been a fool, Blake. But you ain’t a big enough fool to want to talk to Mr. Arrenhower after all that.”

Blake’s voice cracked sharply. “I’ve got to talk to him!”

“Look, Blake, I don’t know what you want. But take my advice. You got troubles enough. Stay away from Arrenhower.”

“I don’t want your advice.”

“Nobody ever does,” Edwards said sadly. “But it’s mighty good advice — and for free, Blake. Arrenhower would chew you up and spit you out — right in the laps of the cops.”

“I’ll worry about that. Somebody killed my wife.”

“You think maybe Mr. Arrenhower did it?” Edwards laughed.

“I don’t know. I only know I didn’t do it. I know Arrenhower has plenty of reason to want to fix my tail — ”

“You are so right.”

“And I want to talk to him.”

Edwards was silent a moment. “Tell you what. Now I shouldn’t do this. But I don’t think you’ll stay out of jail very much longer. So I’ll tell you. Why don’t you get to Tampa about nine o’clock tonight? Mr. Arrenhower loves girlie shows. They have a hot one out in Ybor City at El Toreador. He’ll be there. Why don’t you come? I know Mr. Arrenhower would love to see you. That is if you didn’t stand between him and the girls.”

There was a sharp click and the instrument went dead in Blake’s hand. He tossed it back into its cradle and leaned back in his chair. God gave you brains to think with, Blake, he told himself. Use ’em, use ’em, use ’em.

But the whole business was so wrong that Blake could get nowhere with it. Dickerson, by all rights, should have wanted to keep Blake away from the police. Dickerson’s people didn’t want publicity, not even if they denied it in every newspaper and on every radio in the country. And yet Dickerson told Blake that he was through with him, left him to do what he wanted to do. He felt a little cold at the nape of his neck. Was it that maybe Dickerson was pretty sure Blake wasn’t going to live long enough to talk to the police? Dickerson’s kind loved silence. And is there anything more silent than a dead man?

His jaw tightened and his fists clenched on the edge of his desk before him. That was fine. That was violence and violence he understood. He could fight back. What he couldn’t fight were men who hit at him through Stella and disappeared. He wanted to hit back at something — and there was nothing to hit. Last night, Manley Reeder talked him out of using his fists. Later, Terravasi did the same thing. And he had known they were right. It wasn’t going to help him to fight until he knew what he was fighting.

Well, there had to be an answer somewhere. If Arrenhower had had anything to do with Stella’s death, it had to begin with Arrenhower’s finding out that Blake was a spy, didn’t it?

How could he find out? How?

He got up and paced the room. His shoulder brushed the filing cabinet drawer that he’d left standing open. He thrust it back. It flopped open again, because the lock was broken. Bricker was going to raise hell about that. Bricker —

He wanted to retch. It was as though a hand grasped at his belly and shook it until he was sick.

He stared at Bricker’s desk. He began to see Bricker as his partner had been yesterday afternoon when he arrived in the office. Bricker had been nervous as hell. He hadn’t thought anything about it at the time. He’d thought it was because tight-mouthed little Prue Quincy had hot pants in the outer office.

Bricker had practically sprinted back to his desk. Fumbled around while he talked. And locked something in his desk drawer.

Calmly and coldly, Blake went around Bricker’s desk and sat down. He tested the drawer. It was still locked. His heart had begun to slug hard against his ribs.

First, Blake decided to pick the lock. Then he shook his head. Hell no. Let Bricker know the truth. He had been through Bricker’s desk.

With a sharp thrust of the heel of his hands, he broke the second of Bricker’s locks.

But he didn’t have to go through Bricker’s desk. The papers were there just as Bricker had fumbled them together and shoved them into his drawer yesterday afternoon.

One letter was from Dickerson. Terse, brief, it was dated Friday. It simply terminated any agreement between Dickerson and Bricker & Blake, Confidential Investigations.

Dickerson had called it off on Friday!

Sick at his stomach, Blake remembered how Bricker had smiled when Blake had said he was through on the Dickerson job.

His fingers were trembling slightly as he read the other brief note. It was bold as hell. It was on Arrenhower stationery. It was written, scrawlingly, in ink and unsigned. Simply, “Enclosed. For value received.”

7

BLAKE HEARD the outer door of the office opened and closed.

A smile, grim as the outskirts of hell, sat on his lips. He sat back with the two letters in his hands. He heard the footsteps across the outer office, heard the humming. Then the inner door was shoved open.

The humming stopped. Bricker’s mouth stayed open. His eyes widened. The blood crept down out of his face.

“Did you mess in your pants, Bricker?” Blake inquired. “I hope you didn’t. You’re a big boy now.”

“What — are you doing here?”

“Reading. Waiting. Wondering what in the hell. What made you do it?”

Bricker took another step into the office. Plainly, he was sick at his stomach.

“It was over, Steve. Finished. There wasn’t any choice.”

“What do you mean, there wasn’t any choice? I’m your partner. I was your partner. You sold me out.”

Bricker took another step forward. “Look, Steve. Look at it this way. For the past five years or so, it’s all been investigations of companies like Arrenhower’s, who’ve been cheating on the government. Right? The government couldn’t hit hard enough at profiteers and chiselers. Right? So they wanted Arrenhower investigated, because the small businessmen who supplied his raw materials wanted him investigated. Is that still right?”

“You’re talking, Bricker.”

Bricker dampened his lips. “But now there is a war scare. It’s like the early forties all over again. The government needs the big plants. To hell with investigations. They’re kissing the big boys again. The people being exploited can go to hell. If they howl, the government don’t like it. They’re unpatriotic; they’re practically Commies. So that’s what happened, Steve.”

“Talk sense.”

“But damn it, I am talking sense. Dickerson was in the driver’s seat. He had plenty of money and he hired us. Then all of a sudden, Arrenhower was crying to a few senators and the government withdrew its tacit support of Dickerson. And Dickerson was left holding the bag. Only we were left holding the bag. They came around to me. From Arrenhower. Somebody was working for Dickerson and I had just so long to make up my mind. I could tell them, Steve, or, well, damn it, they’d have put us under. And they could do it if they wanted to!”

“That figures. But there is still something you’re not telling me.”

Bricker was sweating. “Look, Steve. I know you’re upset. My God, it’s a wonder you ain’t crazy. Stella dead and all — ”

“I know how bad you feel, Bricker. I heard you grievin’ when you came into the office.”

“I am sorry, Steve. Sorry as hell. But the police are after you — ”

“I’m still waitin’, Bricker. How about it? How much? Arrenhower’s men weren’t crude enough to threaten you. How much did they offer you — ” his jaw tightened; he felt the muscles in his belly constrict — “to see that I was in that plant yesterday?”

“I tell you we’d have been finished!” Bricker whined. “License revoked. Clients gone. Trouble. Trouble.”

“How much, Bruce?”

“All right, Steve. Ten thousand. Prue and I talked it over — ”

“Prue and you talked it over! Prue and you! Since when have you been partners with Prue Quincy?”

“I had to talk to somebody! I was worried crazy!”

“And I wasn’t around — ”

“No, Steve, you weren’t around — ”

“Bricker, you’re a son-of-a-bitch — ”

“All right, Steve-”

“You’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch — ”

“I said, all right, Steve!”

Blake stood up.

“So you sold me out to Arrenhower? What would you have done if I’d been accidentally killed walking out of his plant? That happened to Roberts, remember? That’s how we got this job in the first place. Suppose I’d been hit by a hit-and-run driver. That happens, doesn’t it, Bricker? Especially to guys who don’t know they’ve been sold out! Would you have sent flowers, Bricker? Is that why you tried so hard to get me to go back over there yesterday?”

Bricker mopped at his face with his handkerchief. “It wasn’t like that, Steve. They just wanted you out of the plant.”

“Yeah. Sure. Lucky for me I was worried about Stella and got out of there before they could put Operation Exterminate to work!”

Bricker came forward slowly. “Why don’t you go to the police, Steve? You didn’t kill Stella — ”

“Do you think I can prove it?”

“You don’t have to prove it! They’ve got to prove that you did!” Bricker cried. “You know that. At least, Steve, you’d be safe from Arrenhower — ”

“What do you care if I’m safe from Arrenhower or not? You got your ten grand, didn’t you? Besides, you just got through saying you knew nothing was going to happen to me! Remember? Arrenhower didn’t want to hurt a hair on my head. Remember? Wasn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah! Sure, Steve. That’s what I thought. God almighty, I’d have never gone along with them if I’d thought anything else. You know that!”

“The world’s flat, Bricker. Ends at the North Pole. I know that.”

“Stop, Steve. Good God, don’t you think it’s hard enough for me?”

“I think it ain’t started being hard for you, Bricker. I think you got out of your warm bed, patted Prue Quincy’s tight little behind and came down here to destroy two letters that you meant to destroy last night. But I came along and you didn’t get a chance to. I think if that had happened, you’d have smiled in my face and told me you didn’t know a goddamned thing about it. You’d have smiled at me all the way down the river. Because that’s the kind of sneak you are!”

“Be reasonable, Steve! I did what I thought I had to do. But I’m trying to make it up to you now. I want you to give yourself up to the police — you’ll be safe from Arrenhower — ”

“Why don’t you give yourself up to the police? Then you’d be safe from me — ”

“Stop it, Steve! Damn it. You shouldn’t have come here. You think that elevator operator didn’t recognize you? She called me instead of the police. That was a lucky break for you-”

“Oh, I’m all over four leaf clovers. I got you on my side.”

“I am on your side, Steve.”

“Then may God help me — ”

“Steve, I’m going to work for you. I didn’t know that Arrenhower was really after you — ”

“How do you know now? How’d you find out?”

“I tell you, I’m working for you. Dickerson called me — ”

“Boy, that busy little telephone of yours!”

“Stop hating me, Steve, and listen. Dickerson called and said you’d told him that one of Arrenhower’s private police was tailing you. Terravasi — ”

Steve felt the jolt of that in his diaphragm. The wrongness again.

“Who?” he said. “Who was tailing me?”

Bricker’s gaze wavered. His face flushed slightly. “That’s — that’s what Dickerson said you told him. Terravasi — ”

“You’re lying, Bricker. Again. I know. I didn’t tell Dickerson. I said that one of Arrenhower’s goons. He must have twenty men on that police squad of his. I didn’t mention any names.”

He started slowly around the desk. Bricker gasped sharply and took a step backward.

“Steve!” he whispered. He jammed his hand into his coat pocket. “Steve, stay where you are. One murder is enough. Stop right there. Don’t make me be guilty of one.”

Steve looked at the outline of the small automatic in Bricker’s coat pocket. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to Bricker’s eyes. Bricker was smiling!

Bricker began to talk, his voice more confident. “You’re in bad trouble, Steve. Trying to assault me wouldn’t help you any. Some day, you’ll thank me for stopping you like this.”

“You’re still a son-of-a-bitch, Bricker. Even with that gun in your hand.”

“Some day you’ll thank me, Steve.”

“Yeah. When they strap me in that electric chair at Raiford, my last thoughts will be of you, Bruce. Believe me.”

“I hate for it to be this way, Steve. Honest to God. But I know how wild you are. With Stella dead and all. I just can’t take any chances with you losing your head — ”

Blake shrugged. “So you might have to shoot me. That would be terrible. You wouldn’t be able to sleep until you got back in bed with Prudence, would you? All right, Bricker. What do we do now? Have you called Ross Connell of Homicide, Dickerson of American Materials or your new boss, Arrenhower?”

“I haven’t called anybody, Steve. You can get out of here. I’ll give you plenty of time.”

“Everybody giving me a chance! Everybody loving me — you guys are going to love me to death.” He walked over and picked up his coat. He slid his arms into it and shrugged it up on his shoulders. “I think Stella was killed because somebody wanted to frame me for her murder. Even you look pretty sour to me, Bricker. It might be a good idea if you shot me now. You’d sleep a lot better if you know too much about this thing — ”

“I don’t know a thing, Steve! So help me God. This — this other thing — with Arrenhower — that was business. I had to do what seemed best. But, my God! Stella was — my friend!”

“Yeah. So was I.”

“Steve — believe me, anything I can do to help you — ”

“Oh, no. I think I’m here because of you. But you could help me a lot if you’d tell me how you knew Terravasi was tailing me.”

“It’s the God’s truth, Steve. Dickerson told me.”

“He couldn’t have! I didn’t mention that name. And Terravasi is working for Arrenhower!” Suddenly, he stared at Bricker. “Or he was working for Arrenhower!”

Bricker dampened his lips. He shook his head. “No, Steve. Dickerson was hiring Terravasi, too. He worked for Dickerson — at Arrenhower’s — just like you did.”

Blake’s shoulders sagged. “It don’t figure,” he whispered.

Bricker stepped away from the door and gestured for Blake to pass through it on his way out. “But that’s the way it is, Steve. I guess Dickerson wanted to know what you were doing, too.”

Blake moved slowly past Bricker. At the door he stopped. “Well, this is it, Bricker. Four years shot to hell. I don’t want you to think it hasn’t been wonderful. Because it hasn’t.”

He turned and walked across the outer office. God, how his little part of the world had tumbled about him. But beside the grief and loneliness he felt at the loss of Stella, losing this partnership and this office and even the plans he’d had for it, meant nothing. To care about things was another luxury peculiar to the living, he told himself bitterly. And there was no place in him for anything except finding Stella’s killer.

Manley had been in town. Bricker had sold him out. Dickerson had tossed him over. Arrenhower had discovered his secret. Those were the things Blake had found out. He had to stay free until he found out what those things meant. Maybe, if he could stay free long enough to get to Arrenhower in Tampa tonight….

He was positive now that Stella had been killed as part of a plan to eliminate Steve Blake via a framed-up murder.

He pushed through the stairway door and started walking slowly down the open iron stairs. Down. Around. Down. The building throbbed with its unaccustomed Sunday morning silence. At the ground floor, Blake stepped out the rear exit into the alley. He looked both ways. He smiled grimly and started walking east in the alleyway.

At Third Street there was a current of churchgoers. Blake counted this as fortunate. He mingled with them, moving sedately in their midst to the corner of Central. He crossed the street then, remembering to wait for the green traffic signal. There was no sense in getting arrested for an ordinance violation.

He still had the key to his room in the Regal Hotel. He wasn’t sure when a day ended in this scabby establishment, but he meant to find out.

He climbed the stairs slowly. There was a clerk on duty in the second floor lobby, but he only looked up disinterestedly as Blake crossed the wide corridor and started up to the third floor landing.

Daylight lent no enchantment to the dim hallway with its pockmarked doors closed and locked against theft, the shabby runner and the ceiling with the paper torn and peeling. At 305, he listened for the radio. But the room was silent. Maybe the girl — Sammy Anderson — could sleep now, in daytime and silence.

At the door of 308, Blake fitted the key into the lock and sighed a little as the door swung open. He didn’t envy Sammy Anderson living in a place like this, but at least 308 would be a haven for a few hours more.

He had already closed the door, hearing the lock click into place, before he was aware of the man across the room.

He was sitting on a straight chair that was propped on two legs against the window that he’d opened to the morning sunlight. He was wearing a lightweight topcoat, and his gray felt hat was in his lap. He wasn’t a handsome man and he wasn’t a big man. He was about medium height, with sandy, thinning hair, a thin nose and tired blue eyes. He was the most patient man that Blake had ever known. His name was Ross Connell.

He was a lieutenant in the homicide bureau of the Gulf City police.

“I thought you were smarter,” Connell said mildly. “Why’d you come back here, Blake? You ought to know. First thing we do is put a check on hotel registers. How long’d you think it would be before we found out you’d been here?”

Blake shrugged. “I thought you’d give me credit for more sense. I thought you’d figure I knew about the hotel check and would stay away.”

“Yeah,” Connell said. “That’s what I thought you’d figure. That’s why I waited.”

8

AT THE police station, Lt. Ross Connell said no to everybody and everything. As if by some kind of magic, a crowd formed in the dusty room when Connell came in with Steve Blake, wife slayer. To them all, Connell gave the same curt negative answer. No reporters. No lawyers. No questions. And no pictures.

But of course, they got pictures. Somebody spoke Blake’s name, softly and urgently. It was an old trick, but Blake fell for it. He turned, his haggard eyes hopeful. Lights flashed, shutters clicked and Connell said, “Damn it all to hell, I said no pictures!”

The photographers must have gotten a dozen more shots. WIFE SLAYER BOOKED…. BELT, SHOESTRINGS, KNIFE TAKEN FROM CAPTURED KILLER…. WILL WIFE MURDERER EVER RECLAIM VALUABLES SHOWN BEING CHECKED BY POLICE SERGEANT? … ALLEGED KILLER, CAGED, ON WAY TO CHAIR.

The temporary cell in city jail must have once been a narrow corridor leading nowhere. It was a few feet removed from the tank where the common drunks, vagrants and petty thieves were lodged. There was only room to stand between the cot and the obscenely scrawled walls. Behind the cot was a commode without wooden seat. Before the cot was a straight chair with a wicker bottom.

Blake sat dispiritedly on the cot. His arms and legs were numb with the lassitude that had attacked him when the chase ended so abruptly in the room at the Regal Hotel.

They had him where they wanted him now and there didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot of use to fight any more.

He could hear them arguing and talking in the tank. At least, he thought, they had not put him in there where someone would have tried to talk to him. Murderers always get more attention than first offenders in some petty crime. He shook his head grimly. A kid on a first rap is tossed in a pen with perverts, goons and two-time losers. But a murderer is protected. He doesn’t have to associate with such scum. With an angry shake of his head, Blake dismissed that vagary. Undoubtedly some man had been worrying about that since the first jail became overcrowded for the first time.

Finally, he sank back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. Such ugly ceilings, he thought. He’d been meeting the poorest type ceilings lately.

He let his thoughts move painstakingly back over everything he had seen, discovered and been told since yesterday afternoon at five o’clock. But no matter how he figured it, the thing looked like a murder frame. Arrenhower had gotten to Bricker. Bricker would sell his mother for greenbacks and Bricker had sold out to Arrenhower. Arrenhower had planned a perfect murder frame. Hell, Bricker might even have told Arrenhower of the violent and drunken quarrel between Stella and Steve the Saturday before!

If that were true, Blake thought, he might as well relax. He was going to grow mighty old just staring at ceilings even filthier than this one.

He pressed his fingertips against his eyelids until comets and rockets burst red behind his eyeballs. It was all so hopeless that he might as well sleep. Except for one thing. Stella’s murderer walked free.

Steve sat up again. Whoever had framed him had overlooked one plain truth. When they killed Stella, they had committed the last act that would hurt Blake on earth. He no longer cared what they did to him now. But he did care what happened to Stella’s slayer!

He had respect for Ross Connell. Connell might find the man who had killed Stella, except for one thing. Every resource had been used to capture Steve Blake. As far as the police were concerned, they had all the evidence, circumstantial and actual, they needed to convict him.

Connell might have found a slayer, except that he was looking for Steve Blake.

Steve stood up and began to pad back and forth beside his cot in his stringless shoes. His shirttail was out and his trousers had slipped down on his hips.

A turnkey opened his cell door.

“All right, Blake,” he said. “Come on.”

“Formal?” Blake inquired. “Or can I come like this?”

The jailer just looked at him, stepped aside as Blake moved past him to the corridor. The jailer pointed with his nightstick. “Right that way, guy.”

Steve shuffled down the damp flooring. At a paint-scabbed door with a lettered plaque screwed on its facing, the turnkey said, “Okay, this is it.”

Steve read the plaque: CONNELL.

The turnkey knocked on the door with his nightstick.

“Come in,” Connell said.

The cop opened the door and nudged Steve ahead of him into the room. Half a dozen men, besides Connell behind his desk, sat in straight chairs on the far side of the room. Two of them Blake recognized as reporters.

There was a chair in the center of the room, directly in front of Connell’s desk.

“Sit down,” Connell said. “We’ve some preliminary questions. You might as well answer them. This is the easy way.”

Blake sat down. Some of the men stirred and coughed.

“What time did you arrive home yesterday, Blake?”

“A little after five o’clock.”

“Tell us what happened,” Connell said.

“When I came in, Stella was on the divan. She was dead. The room had been wrecked — ”

One of the men sat forward on his chair. “She was dead when you got home?”

Steve looked at him. “That’s right.”

The man faced Connell. “The rest of this is useless, Connell. There’s nothing more we can do until the inquest. He’s got his lies fixed — unless you want to try to break them down.”

Connell sat forward and leaned across his desk.

“There are certain facts that are indisputable, Blake,” he said quietly. “And they seem to attest to the fact that your wife was not dead when you arrived home.”

“She was dead,” Steve said.

“Why did you run away then?”

“I didn’t run away. I went out looking for the man who had killed her.”

“Jesus Christ!” the man who had spoken before said. He was stout, with a short bright nose and thin lips.

Connell laughed a little drily. “You just dropped the packages you were carrying inside the door, turned around and ran out of there looking for a killer? Did you see him running? And you followed?”

“No. I couldn’t stand it in that room. I had to think. I had to get away.”

“You had to get away. If your wife were dead when you arrived at home, Blake, why didn’t you call the police? That’s the first thing you should have done. As it is, let’s see what you did. As we see it, of course. You came in. You and your wife continued an argument that evidently had started last week. She started packing her bag — ”

“Her bag was packed. She was unpacking! She was just arriving home.”

“Oh? She’d been away? Your neighbor, Miss Grueter, says no. But we’ll let that go. She was packing. You argued in the bedroom. You fought. You picked up the small lamp from the right side of her vanity dresser. You hit her. She stumbled out into the front room. You kept hitting her as she fought you about the room, wrecking it. You kept hitting her until she was dead.”

Steve looked at him despairingly. “How can I answer that? I weigh a hundred and ninety pounds. I’ve knocked out six foot men with a swinging right. Stella weighed a hundred and ten pounds. How many times would I have had to hit her with the heavy base of that lamp to — to kill her?”

Some of the men leaned their heads together, whispering. “You’re big enough so that she might have eluded you. That would explain the wrecked room,” Connell said. “That would explain the number of times she was hit.”

“Why don’t you explain it another way?” Steve demanded. “Why not somebody who took the time to wrap a towel around that lamp? Why not a man who would have had to fight Stella while he was swinging that lamp?” His voice dropped. “Why don’t you look for the man who killed her?”

Connell smiled thinly. “I’ve looked, Blake. And I’ve kept finding you. Listen, Blake, there is a lot ahead of you today, tonight and tomorrow before you get to that inquest. We won’t let up on you. This is just to give you a chance to save yourself a hell of a lot of grief. You’ve been employed in the Arrenhower plant. That’s twenty-five miles from here, across the bay, in Tampa. And yet, for the past four weeks you’ve been coming into town from Jacksonville on the train, a distance of over two hundred miles. I have the word of the employees of the railroad for that.

“Three times you rode with the same cab driver. You were in a hurry to get home. Yesterday, you were in no hurry — ”

“I was hired as a private detective to work in Tampa. I drove up to Jax every week to be sure I wasn’t followed over here. Three times, I was in a hurry to get home — ”

“But yesterday, you were in no hurry?”

“I didn’t think Stella was home. I thought she was away.”

“And yet you bought her candy and flowers? Were you attempting to patch up a quarrel, Blake? Weren’t you trying to keep your wife from leaving you? Weren’t you trying so hard to keep her from leaving you that you killed her?”

Blake cursed. “That’s a certain way to keep her, Lieutenant.”

Connell smiled at him. “The psychiatrists will look at you tomorrow, Blake. Your reasoning and emotions will be chewed over then.”

“If I wanted her to stay why would I kill her?”

“According to your neighbor, Miss Grueter, your wife had visitors. Is that what you argued about? According to your partner, Bruce Bricker, your wife was planning to leave you after last week’s flare-up.”

Blake laughed shortly. “If they’ve all said it for me, what else is there for me to say?”

“Not much, Blake. I’ll say this for you — a lot of the people we talked to insisted you couldn’t be guilty.”

“Oh, well, you won’t let that influence you,” Blake said ironically.

“No. We won’t,” Connell replied flatly. “Your wife’s friends, Nort and Paula Donaldson, saw you in a beer tavern. You were acting queerly. They went to call on your wife. There was no answer. They only came forward after hearing the report on the radio.”

“Then who called you?” Blake demanded.

“What’s the matter, Blake? Did you think you’d have more time to get away?”

“I didn’t get away. You caught me in town, remember?”

“You’d already been out of town once, Blake. A salesman named Frazer saw your picture in the paper. He remembers you on the bus. Morose. That was the word for you, according to Frazer.”

“He didn’t give me a chance to say anything,” Blake said.

Connell stood up. “Well, Blake, the evidence is all against you. There are no foreign fingerprints in your apartment. Looks like I’m going to have to turn you over to the boys.”

“It’s all thin!” Blake snapped. “I was in love with my wife. We hadn’t been married six months. I had no reason to kill her. You’ve got no evidence against me at all.”

“We’ve evidence, Blake. But there’s one truth that will stand up — you ran. You ran and you kept running. You can sign a statement now, Blake, or you can sit with my boys for a few hours.”

“I’ll sit with the boys,” Blake said tiredly. “I want to see if they’ve learned anything since I worked in this dump.”

Connell pressed a button. The men in the chairs along the wall were whispering together. The jailer opened the door and stepped inside. “Back to his boudoir, Fred,” Connell said tiredly.

“No boys?” Blake inquired.

Connell just looked at him. “We’ll let you know when,” he said.

Blake pulled up his wrinkled trousers and shuffled out of the door after the jailer.

Exhausted, he sat down on the edge of his cot. He thought, when Arrenhower sets a trap for you, it has steel jaws.

It would be bad enough, he thought bitterly, just fighting Connell, the cops and the district attorney’s office. But he had to fight Arrenhower and Arrenhower’s money and influence.

He struck the wall impotently with his fist.

And Stella’s slayer went on walking around free….

If only he could produce an alibi, something or somebody who could swear for him. Anything to get him out of here. All he wanted to do was be alone with the man who had killed Stella.

He shuffled over to the cot and lay down. His eyes burned. He closed them against the light. He could hear the laughter and the talk from the cells along the corridor. The sounds drifted away as smoke drifts on a lazy breeze. Somebody was laughing and then there was silence. And Blake was asleep.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked up. It was the turnkey. “Why, Fred,” Blake said, “are the boys ready for me already?”

He sat up, pushing his hands back through his rumpled, dry hair. His mouth tasted like burnt matches. Silently, the cop handed him his belt and his shoestrings. “Put ’em on,” he said.

Blake stared at him. He frowned. He stood up and slid the belt through the belt straps on his trousers. Then he laced up his shoes. Funny, he thought, you never realize how little things like a belt and shoestrings can make you feel like a human being.

“All right,” Fred said. “Let’s go.”

Puzzled, Blake went along the corridor. He could see that it was night. He looked at the white place on his arm where his wrist watch should be. He wondered what time it was.

“Where to, lover?” he said to the cop.

“Right through there,” Fred answered.

“But that’s where I came in.”

“That’s right.”

They stopped him at a desk. His watch and wallet were returned to him and he receipted a slip for them.

His heart slugging against his ribs, Blake walked across the room to a second desk. The sergeant there just looked at him and shoved a legal document at him. “Don’t read it, fella,” the sergeant said. “Just sign it.”

As he was signing his name, two men in expensively tailored topcoats and suits stepped up behind him. He turned slowly to face them.

“Blake,” the shorter man said. “My name is Alder Harrison. Attorney. Tampa. This is Mr. Arnoldson. Mr. Arnoldson provides bail bonds to any amount. I brought him along in case I met any difficulties.”

Blake just stared at Harrison. He was a dapper, dark haired man of fifty. “You mean I’m free? I can walk out of here?”

Harrison nodded. “Temporarily, you are free, Blake. And you can walk out of here.”

Blake shook his head. “Where’s Connell?”

Harrison smiled. “Lieutenant Connell? Why, I believe he is wearing a restraining jacket at the moment. But he isn’t our consideration just now. If you’ll come with me out to the curb, there is someone I’d like you to meet — the man responsible for your temporary release.”

Blake just nodded. Numbly, he followed Harrison and Arnoldson out to the street. There was a shiny black Cadillac at the curb. The back door stood open, a man hunched forward watching through it. A swarthy chauffeur stood at attention beside it. “I’m Arrenhower,” the man in the car said. “Mountain wouldn’t come to Mohammed — so here I am.”

9

ARRENHOWER put out his pudgy hand. Blake hesitated a moment and then took it. Arrenhower smiled genuinely enough and seemed not to notice the pale look of puzzlement in Blake’s face.

Arrenhower was a fat little man, with barrel chest and bantam weight legs. But there was a look of innate power about him. He appeared well-fed, prosperous, in his two hundred dollar tailored suit and hand-tooled felt hat. His jowls were heavy. But in his eyes and about his movements was the inborn condition that made him feel powerful and that made bigger men instinctively fear and obey him.

He said, “Well, Mr. Blake. I’m glad you’re free.”

Blake released his hand and stepping back from the car, straightened a little. “I’m afraid I don’t get it, Mr. Arrenhower. But I agree with you. I’m glad I’m free.”

He could feel the presence of Harrison and Arnoldson at his back. The chauffeur at his side sported a broken nose, cauliflower ears and a wide chest that was beginning to slip a little. The chauffeur was standing at attention at the open door, but Blake had the upsetting feeling that the man was on the balls of his feet, ready to spring and that though he wasn’t touching anything, the big hands at his sides were not relaxed.

Blake decided there was no such thing as freedom, not on this earth, not any more. You meant something to somebody: taxes, labor, gain or knowledge. He would probably have been safer with the district attorney and twelve citizens in a jury box.

He determined to get the waiting over as quickly as possible. “Well, thanks, Mr. Arrenhower. I can’t repay you for what you’ve done.”

“Maybe you can,” Arrenhower said casually.

“Can I? How?”

Arrenhower looked up at him. He was no longer smiling. But there was no malice in his face, either — just that look of authority. Just the certain knowledge that he would always be able to accomplish anything he wanted. He could even with bond, bribe or legal technicality, get a suspected murderer temporarily freed from jail. In Arrenhower’s face there was no expression of wonder that this should be true, just placid acceptance.

But Blake knew that Arrenhower wanted something from him. Something that could not be had while Blake remained in jail.

Arrenhower’s voice was deceptively soft. “Are you in any hurry, Mr. Blake? Any dates, engagements?”

“I’ve a date with a killer, Mr. Arrenhower. But I guess it can wait.”

“Get in,” Arrenhower said, and then added, softly, “won’t you?”

Blake could feel a fragile silence in the dark street before the police station. It was as though the three men walling him in were, for the moment, not even breathing.

“Thank you,” Blake said. The three men exhaled.

He stepped into the rear of the car. Arrenhower moved over to the far corner and Blake flopped into the seat beside him. Harrison slid in beside Blake. The chauffeur went around the car and got in under the wheel. Arnoldson smiled at all of them, closed the back door and got in the front beside the driver.

The car moved swiftly from the curb, made a U-turn in the middle of the street and was hitting forty in second gear.

Blake relaxed between Arrenhower and the lawyer. They were gliding past every car going north on Fourth street. The silence grew slightly tense. The lawyer took out a pack of Luckies, looked at them longingly and then let them slip back into his pocket. Obviously, Blake thought, Mr. Arrenhower doesn’t smoke.

Arrenhower spoke at last. “Al White, my chauffeur,” he said to Blake. “He was a heavyweight boxer a few years ago. Did you ever see him in the ring, Blake?”

“Yes. A few times, out at Soldiers’ Field,” Blake said. He let his voice lift a little. “He was always pretty slow on his feet.”

Arrenhower smiled chidingly. “It’s no use, Blake. You can’t ride him. Punched a little too much in the head. Slightly deaf.”

Again there was silence. It grew warm in the big car. Finally, Harrison said, “You understand, Blake, you are out under heavy bond. It wouldn’t do for you to attempt to jump. You have no idea how many people would be after you.”

Blake said, “That’s where you’re wrong. I do have an idea.”

Harrison shrugged. “Just so you understand.”

Arnoldson turned slightly and smiled from the front seat.

“That’s the trouble,” Arrenhower said, half to himself, “the smart men. They’re always working against me. And usually for peanuts. You know, I could have used a smart man like you in my outfit, Blake.”

Blake smiled grimly. “I’ve heard that for years, Mr. Arrenhower. Nobody can ever understand why you’re working at the job you have. It isn’t ever good enough. Why are you wasting your brains and your talent? I’ve heard all that. There’s just one answer. To eat. No matter how smart a man is, he’s got to have the breaks. It would have just been the breaks if I’d gotten a job in your outfit. In fact, I got one. But I never got to show what a master mind I had.”

Arrenhower nodded slowly. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just that men in charge of other men don’t see it quite that way. When we see a smart man and know that we have a place for him, we halfway blame that man for not making his knowledge at least available to us. Since we’ve become aware of you, we have made an exhaustive study into your background. Isn’t that right, Harrison?”

The lawyer nodded. “We’ve investigated you pretty thoroughly, Blake.”

“I’m flattered,” Blake said. “Do you do that with every hit-and-run victim?”

There was charged silence in the car.

Arrenhower spoke finally. “Hit and run. You should think more about that idea, Blake. Do I appear to be a man who would order such a thing done?”

“How many teeth do I lose for answering that one?”

Arrenhower smiled thinly. “All right. I have my answer. You think I do. Well, you’re wrong. You’ve been listening to Dickerson. Don’t you see, Blake? His company was in trouble with the government. And the way to get off the hook was to get us on it. And you can always raise a stink with Uncle Sam by yelling profiteer. That’s why I’m trying to break off with American Materials and Dickerson. I don’t want his men in my plants. I want men like Dickerson kept out — and when they work for Dickerson, I want men like you kept out.”

Blake took a deep breath. “It seems to me that I was out. As long as I sat in that jail back there, I wasn’t much threat to you.”

“You never were much threat to me, Blake,” Arrenhower said. “I do not care whether you live or die, return to that jail or go free. I’m sorry you lost your wife. I’ve heard that she was young and quite lovely. That makes it wasteful and sad indeed.”

“Somebody thought that getting her out of the way would get me out of the way,” Blake said evenly.

He felt Harrison’s leg nudge him sharply.

Arrenhower was silent a long time. “A variation of the hit-and-run theme, is that it, Blake? Is that why you called my secretary, Edwards? Is that why you wanted to talk to me today?”

“Somebody killed her,” Blake said softly.

“My business,” Arrenhower said in a strangely taut voice, “is manufacturing. That is my only business. So far, God has been kind to me. I have been able to protect my interests without stooping to inhuman violence.”

“I think,” Blake told him quietly, “somebody ought to tell you what goes on in the lower levels of this giant business of yours.”

“I would like that, Blake,” Arrenhower replied coldly. “Perhaps you will be so kind.”

“It’s none of my business. Unless I found that one of your goons killed Stella. Then I wouldn’t wait to see you about it.”

“My goons?”

“All right. Your private police. Your plant guards. Whatever it pleases you to call them.”

“Well. It might have pleased me to call them goons,” Arrenhower answered. “It’s just that I never thought of that particular word.”

“Mr. Blake is bitter. And young,” Harrison interposed.

“Why should I be bitter?” Blake said sardonically. “You people drag me out of my nice, warm jail bed and bring me over here. I’m a citizen. I’m a taxpayer. I’m a human being. But I could yell my brains out and I’d still be right here with you. My life would still be worth exactly what it’s worth to you right now. A very plugged nickel.”

“Inflation,” Arrenhower said mildly, “has set in everywhere, Blake. But you wrong me. I want only to have a chance to listen to you talk. No one is going to lay a hand on you, except as I order it. I consider you a human being. I see that you have been caused suffering and loss. It is not my wish either to add to your suffering or to deprive you of your rights. But as a matter of fact, you would be reclining in a filthy jail at this moment if I had not come forward. Isn’t that correct?”

“You’re right.”

“So. I’m right. Then why scream that you’re being deprived of your constitutional rights? You had none a few hours ago — even a few minutes ago. What happens to you tonight, Blake, depends entirely upon your own choice. This much I will tell you now. If any man in my employ had any part in the brutal murder of your wife, I’m as anxious to know it as you are. You needn’t worry about swift retribution if you can show me the man who did it and say that the orders came anywhere along the line from me down to him!”

“If I find him,” Blake said, “don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.”

“That being true,” Arrenhower said. “It appears to me that you would be more tolerant of me. Your wife has been slain. You want revenge, right?”

“All right.”

“My wife — my life — my mistress — the business that I built alone, with my own heart and hands and mind — mine and nobody else’s — is threatened. Threatened by men like you — often, like you, hired to do a job without even knowing what lies behind it. I want to protect what is mine. What happens to you, Blake, will happen only because I am trying to protect my own love. Is that clear?”

“If you know all about me, what more can I tell you?”

“That is why we brought you from the jail, Blake. That is what we will find out. That is what we will see.”

No one spoke again. The big car swung north long the bayshore, and then was whipped west along a tree-lined, macadam road. The car lights swung across gate posts. A gate was opened and the car moved along a gravel drive and stopped before a vaguely lighted portico. White columns, two stories tall, stood like sentinels before the closed white door.

Al White killed the engine, sprinted around the car and opened the rear door. Harrison stepped out, Blake followed and then Al White got in the car and helped Arrenhower out. For the first time, Blake saw that Arrenhower suffered from a mild form of paralysis of the legs. Moving was a slow and painful business for the manufacturer.

They started up the wide steps. The house was old Southern Colonial. The town had grown up around it. But from the aged, solid appearance of mansion and grounds, it must have been a country estate when first built. It had been restored, refurbished, repainted without losing its dignity or its agelessness. It was a dowager with her face lifted. A grand dame given every care to preserve her beauty. But something else impressed Blake about the silent old place. There was just one way to get inside this house. By invitation only.

And I’ve been invited, he thought. He was the private eye, Roberts, just before the die casting machine blew his face off. He was a snooper about to be dealt with. He had wanted to see Arrenhower. But he had wanted to ask the questions. He was sure he was answering questions this inning. None of that ingratiating manner and steady smiling was deceiving him or reassuring him either.

They went inside. Arnoldson and White disappeared immediately. After a moment, Harrison was gone. Blake was alone with Arrenhower in the massive library.

Arrenhower let himself into a deep chair. He looked at Blake. “I hope you won’t think we’re forgotten,” he said. “Everyone here has his job.”

“I don’t think we’re forgotten,” Blake said. “I don’t even think we’re not watched.”

Arrenhower smiled deprecatingly. “Oh, it’s not quite that bad, Mr. Blake. You see, I wanted this few minutes alone with. you. I want to make you an offer. I can offer you ten thousand dollars a year and a job in a South American branch of my firm. How does that sound to you?”

“Fishy,” Blake replied honestly.

Arrenhower’s brows drew together. “You’re not a cautious young man, are you, Blake?”

“No. You see, Mr. Arrenhower, my wife has been murdered. I’m sorry. I can’t worry much whether I make friends or influence people. Now, about that South American job. I don’t speak Spanish in the first place. Oh, an Ybor City smattering of Cuban Spanish, but that’s all. I can tell you to get that knife out of my back. That’s about the extent of it. I don’t know enough about your firm to be worth ten thousand dollars a year to you.”

“You couldn’t learn?”

“How long would I have to learn? You want me out of this country, isn’t that it? You know that as Robert Cole I worked in your plant. You know that I undoubtedly have found out quite a few embarrassing truths. And you’d like me out of the country.”

Arrenhower looked pained. “That would be the simple way. The easy way. That’s what I’m offering you first, Blake. You’re a fool to refuse.”

“I’ve already told you. All I want is to find who killed my wife.”

“Your wife is dead. If I sound brutal, it’s because I’m an old man. You’ve got to go on living.”

“Well, thanks. I’ll go on living right here. I’m not taking ten grand to carry me and what I might know out of this country.”

“You might well wish you had listened to me, Blake. An older man. A wiser one. I’m willing to up my offer.”

“You couldn’t offer me enough.”

Arrenhower pulled himself painfully up from the chair. “You have your price! Every man does. Show some sense. You’d better make up your mind to name your price. We’ll come to terms, or what is ahead of you will leave you worth nothing — even to yourself.”

“I won’t haggle with you over what my life is worth to me, Arrenhower. I got into this thing knowing it was dangerous. This is a hazard of my job. Suppose we get on with it.”

For a moment, Arrenhower just looked at him. Then he hobbled across the room and pulled a cord. Alder Harrison, the lawyer, came in immediately. Blake knew he must have been listening outside the library door.

“Will you get Dr. Lowering?” Arrenhower said quietly.

Harrison looked at Blake and then nodded at his boss. He withdrew from the room, closing the door quietly after him.

Arrenhower seemed to forget that Blake was in the room. He went over to his desk and riffled through some papers on top of it. When the door opened again, he glanced up only briefly. Two of his company police stepped inside. One of them crossed to the double windows and stood there, a big man with thick shoulders and, Blake supposed, a thick head. The other, matching him like minted coins, stood beside the door.

Two hospital orderlies came in next. Harrison, Al White and Arnoldson followed and sat silently at the end of the room.

Blake decided the whole business wasn’t real anyway. It was a nightmare out of Dali. “Joe Stalin would envy you,” he said to Arrenhower. But Arrenhower didn’t even look up from the papers on the desk.

The orderlies moved without speaking. A small white table was brought out into the center of the room, a straight chair placed beside it. “Sit down,” one of the orderlies said to Blake.

Blake looked at them for a moment. They stood stolidly, waiting for him to sit down. One of them appeared to be the Hollywood-inspired version of the virile he-man. The other fellow could have been his wife. This little fairy simpered, moving a limp wrist. The other was the hairy-chest type, the aggressive homo, the fellow who looked like a football hero but was the most sickening type of fruit as far as Blake was concerned.

Everyone in the room was watching him. Blake turned from the pair of deuces to Arrenhower. He was looking at Blake now, passively. Blake shrugged and sat down beside the table. There was a time to act like a hero, he thought cynically, and a time to bow to superior forces. Blake was making his bow.

The pansy pair worked deftly. They removed his coat and his shirt. The big one held Blake’s right arm out rigidly. His helper set a board under it and bound it tightly in place with gauze. They told Blake to rest his arm on the table then. The bigger of the two queers swabbed at the blue vein above Blake’s elbow. Dr. Lowering came into the room.

Dr. Lowering was a small man with a large head, milk-pale flesh and spindly body. Arrenhower came forward now. There was pride in his face. “Blake, this is Dr. Lowering,” he said. “I was in his hospital. Dr. Lowering cured me. I have great respect for him. I contribute generously to his private hospital. In return, Dr. Lowering is happy to aid me with recalcitrants. Isn’t that right, Craig?”

Lowering’s voice was heavy basso. Coming from such a thin body, it was startling. “Of course, Mr. Arrenhower,” he said. But Blake saw the little man’s eyes were tortured. Lowering was scared of what he was doing, but he was more afraid of Arrenhower. The doctor looked at Blake. “Mr. Arrenhower wants to talk to you,” he said, his voice very low. “Now what’s going to happen to you won’t hurt you at all, Mr. Blake. Barbiturates don’t even cause local irritation. When I’ve given you this dosage, you’ll go into a dreamless sleep almost immediately. I hope you won’t be tense or frightened. It won’t hurt you to be tense, but it won’t lessen the effect of the sodium pentothal either. Like death and taxes, Mr. Blake, this is going to work, whether you like it or not.”

“Drugged,” Blake said with contempt. He struggled and found his left arm twisted up his back by the big queer. He was surprised at the strength in the man’s hands. Blake had the horrible feeling that the orderly could rip his arm from his shoulder.

“Don’t be contemptuous, Mr. Blake,” Lowering said evenly. “This is a little more than injecting a few cc.’s of barbiturate powder and water solution. Your respiration, circulation, metabolism and smooth muscles will remain normal. You’re going to sleep, Mr. Blake, only you’re going to be awake. You’re going to do what I tell you to do.”

“Go to hell,” Blake said.

Lowering nodded at the smaller orderly, “The solution, please.” He held the hypodermic needle upward in his hand, grimacing a little as he studied it in the light. “We could have given you this by capsule or tablet or dissolved in a hot liquid. But that is slower. Takes from ten to thirty minutes to begin to have any effect. There might be excitement, inebriation or even delirium which would cause further delay.”

As he talked, he injected the point of the needle into the blue line of Blake’s vein. “Slowly,” Lowering said. “This is accomplished slowly, Mr. Blake. No thrusting in a needle and shooting the solution in. This takes a little time. But you’ll be patient, won’t you, Mr. Blake?”

Blake was aware that someone had snapped off the overhead light. Only a bright light glowed in a reflector on the white desk cross the room. Blake decided he wouldn’t look at it. But the glare pained his eyes no matter where he turned. Defiantly, he closed his eyes.

The light was still there.

Lowering’s voice was soothing now, low, quiet, gray. Gray as gray cats, as gray shadows, as gray fog. He could no longer see the men at the far end of the room. Lowering’s voice was coming from some distant place.

Suddenly, Blake reared up in the chair. He felt restraining hands thrust him back. Then through the gray mists, he was aware of Arrenhower at Lowering’s side. “You bastard,” Blake said.

“The hypnotic trance is preceded by this period of delirium and excitement,” Lowering was saying. “It will be very brief. See, the pupils of his eyes are contracted, they’re fixed and irresponsive to the brilliance of the light. It won’t be long. He’ll be ready for you.”

The need for sleep overcoming him, Blake slumped in the chair. He heard Arrenhower protest, “If he sleeps, how can we talk to him?”

“Don’t worry,” Lowering said. “He’ll want to sleep. He’ll hate us because we won’t let him sleep. But he’ll talk, Mr. Arrenhower. Ask him what you want to know and he’ll blab his little heart out, won’t you, Blake?”

10

WHO HIRED you?” Arrenhower said.

Blake looked up blurredly at the tycoon. He wanted to spit in the fat, jowled face. But he had no will, no strength to spit. He knew Arrenhower had cleared the room. Only the manufacturer, Harrison and the doctor remained in a vulture’s circle about his chair. But it no longer mattered. Blake was helpless to move. He could only nod his head and say, “Dickerson hired me, for his company. American Materials.”

“Why?”

“Sleep. Must sleep.”

“Why, Blake?”

“Find out why Roberts died. Find out why American Materials furnishes raw stuff that government never gets benefit of. Why some of your finished parts are never sold in this country. Where they go. Why? You’re credited with a lot of raw material. But government isn’t getting enough finished work. Very naughty. Very naughty man, Arrenhower.” Blake’s head slumped forward on his chest. His eyes burned, the lids felt as if they were unbearably weighted.

“What else, Blake? What else?”

“Why men afraid to join union. Sleep. Let me sleep.”

Lowering’s voice came distantly, commandingly. “Sit up straight, Blake.”

Blake craned his head around slowly. He tried to twist the muscles of his face into a sneer. But he was pushing his head up straight instead!

“Did you find out why men are afraid to join a union?” Arrenhower said. He was bending forward, his well-fed face sweated. He was peering into the contracted pupils of Blake’s dry eyes as though he hoped to read his answer there.

Blake’s head slumped. He felt he had to sleep before the need for it killed him. He said, “Yes. I found out. Company police. Watchers. Spotters. Very nasty. Man can’t call his soul his own. Very nasty. Loyalty tests. Snitches. Rats. Getting extra pay to snitch on men they work with.”

Arrenhower spoke to the other two men in the room. “This Blake was a very busy little fellow! And working right under our noses!” He wheeled back to Steve. “Who else, Blake? Who else works for Dickerson in my plant?”

Blake’s head went up. “I’m no snitch,” he muttered. “Not gonna ‘danger life of some working stiff.” No wonder poor Terravasi had been shadowing him! Terravasi was mortally afraid that Blake might be forced to talk to Arrenhower. Terravasi might die! Blake shook his head.

From afar, through the shadowy gloom, the doctor spoke. “Tell Mr. Arrenhower, Blake. Tell him everything you know.”

Blake was talking, powerless to remain silent. “Terravasi. Company police. He was one. He was watching. Knew all about company police. I was watching in plant. Sleep. Let me sleep.”

“Talk! You’ll sleep when I’m ready for you to sleep!” Arrenhower snarled at him. And it went on. For hours they kept at him under the glare of the white light on Arrenhower’s desk. Harrison questioned him. And then Arrenhower was back at him. They kept talking even when Lowering was supporting Blake’s head with a handful of hair caught in his fist.

From somewhere, a hundred miles removed, Blake heard Arrenhower say, “Is that it, Harrison?”

God knew they had his guts, Blake thought. There was nothing left in him — no secrets, no life, no strength. The lawyer swam into Blake’s dimmed vision.

“It should do for now,” Harrison said. “You know whom you have to deal with now. This man’s just a private dick, working for pay. Your game is with the men who hired him.”

“Yes,” Arrenhower agreed. Blake saw him swing back around. Arrenhower doubled his fist and struck Blake back-handedly across the face as hard as he could swing. “Sleep, damn you, and you’re getting off easy!”

Blake just stared up at him. The blood in his mouth was nothing. He couldn’t even taste it.

He heard Lowering’s voice from afar. “It’s all right, Blake. You can sleep now.”

And Blake slept….

Monday morning sunlight streamed into the upstairs bedroom window. Listlessly, Blake opened his eyes. His head moved languidly on the pillow. He was in a warm white bed with the covers up about his chest. His mouth was cottony and bitter. His parched throat burned. He wanted a drink of water and knew the taste of it would make him ill.

His eyes found Al White sitting loosely in a wicker rocker across the room. Their gazes met, locked and Al White straightened a little.

“You ‘wake, sonny?” he said.

“I’m awake,” Blake said.

“Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“You out of it? You know what I’m saying?”

“Say something. I’ll let you know.”

Al White nodded. He leaned forward a little, the muscles bunching across his yard wide shoulders.

“I ain’t slow on my feet,” he said gravely. “I wasn’t ever. Not when you saw me at Soldiers’ Field. Not now.”

Blake grinned tiredly. “Okay. So you heard me. Okay, so you don’t like me. I’m going to hate myself all day.”

“Doc says you ain’t going to have strength enough all day to hate yourself,” Al White smiled. This seemed to please him.

“The doctor doesn’t know how much I have to do,” Blake replied. But the weariness he felt in his brain was even worse in the muscles of his body.

“You might as well forget what you got to do,” Al White said. “You ain’t going anywhere. You’re going to stay here. Just you and me.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Don’t you count on it. You spilled your guts, brother, last night. You ain’t worth much this morning.”

“Is that what happened to Roberts the night before the die casting machine blew up in his face?” Blake inquired.

Al White stiffened. “I don’t know nothing about it,” he said. “You’d be a lot better off right now if you didn’t know nothing either.”

Blake looked at him. “You’re pretty loyal to your boss, eh, Al?”

“I get along. I’m smart enough to live.”

“And I’m not?”

Al White just grinned at him.

“Why are you loyal?” Blake taunted after a moment. “Because you believe in that human vulture? Or because you’ve got a price and Arrenhower has met it?”

Al White leaned forward. His face was taut. “I get along all right.”

“Up until now,” Blake said. “You never met me, Al. You never tried to keep me where I didn’t want to stay. You better get help.”

“I’ll do all right.” He sank back and smiled contentedly. “You talk brave. A brave little man. They’re the kind that die early. Runnin’ around pokin’ their noses in other people’s business.”

“Is that all you got to say?”

“Not quite, sonny.”

“Say the rest of it.”

“Okay. Mr. Arrenhower says for you and me to sit here until he sends for you. If you got any idea that you’re getting out of here to talk about what happened to you last night, forget it.”

“I’ll never forget it,” Blake answered. “You can tell him that.”

“I heard a lot of tough talk in my time,” Al White said. “It don’t mean much to me any more. I’m just telling you. The boss says you should be happy. You’re still alive.”

Blake looked at him. “For how long?”

He struggled up on the bed. The room careened dizzily for a moment. Blake closed his eyes tightly. The spinning stopped and when he opened his eyes, Al White was standing at the foot of the bed, grinning disparagingly at him.

“Listen,” Blake said raggedly. “You tell Arrenhower — you tell him I’m looking for a murderer. I’m gettin’ out of here, if I have to walk over him to do it.”

Al White shrugged and went on grinning. “Just tell us where you want the body sent,” he said indifferently.

“It’ll be in my wallet,” Blake told him. “It’ll be there when you pick my pockets.”

• • •

It was late afternoon before Al White left the room at all. Blake got out of bed groggily. No wonder they called them goof pills, he thought. He walked as far as the door. He was sweated down. His legs were trembling. He sank down on a straight chair, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

He looked longingly at the comfortable bed. He wanted to get back into it. He wanted more sleep. There was no relief from the effects of the drug yet. But the fact of Stella’s brutal murder worked its way through to his mind and he knew he could not rest.

He dressed slowly. He knew only the fact that Stella’s murderer still moved free forced him to get dressed. Now it forced him to stand up again, his eyes aching, his legs weak.

The door was unlocked. He smiled grimly. Al White had underestimated him. He left the room and started down the hallway. He was tense in every muscle, waiting for the sound of Al White’s roar to pin him helpless against the wall.

He straightened his coat on his shoulders. There was a chair near the head of the stairs. He was breathless and bone weary. He sat down to rest, feeling the sweat in cold beads across his forehead.

When he looked up, he saw Al White. The big boxer was standing at the head of the stairs, smilingly pleasedly.

“Big brave man,” Al White said. “Going to walk right out.”

Blake stood up. “Get out of my way,” he said.

White laughed. “You’re going back to bed, sonny. Come on.”

“I’m warning you, White. Keep out of my way.” Blake felt his lips pull back, baring his teeth.

“I told you. I heard me tough talk before, sonny,” Al White said.

“You ever see a man who’d love to kill you?”

“Plenty of times.”

“You’re looking at another one. Get out of my way, White.”

“Temper! Now look here, guy. You won’t have any trouble if you’ll come back to your bed like I tell you.”

“I told you, White. I’m looking for the man who killed my wife. That’s all there is to it. I’m not going back in there. I’m not staying here. I’m leaving.”

“Don’t talk to me that way. It makes me mad. I don’t like to get mad.”

“Get out of my way. This is the last time I’m telling you.”

White reached out for him. He made one serious error. He reached with his long right arm. As the huge fist closed on Blake’s shoulder, Steve stepped in close, sweating and trembling, and drove his left fist as deeply as he could sink it into the ex-fighter’s pot belly.

There wasn’t anything behind that fist but desperation. But it paid off. Blake heard the breath retch outward across White’s mouth. The big man’s face went pale and he doubled slowly forward. Stepping aside, Steve chopped down across the back of White’s neck with his hand. White seemed to gather momentum and struck the hallway runner hard, on his face.

Steve, breathing through his mouth, looked around. The house was silent. But he knew how well it was guarded. Now there was only one thing to do. Get out of here alive. And fast.

11

BLAKE LOOKED once more at Al White sprawled across the runner at the head of the stairs. He turned then and walked back along the upper hallway. At the rear stairs, he hurled one last look across his shoulder and went down the steps, running.

He could hear muted voices from the kitchen when he reached the lower hall. As he moved, he considered ways of getting out of the rear of this house. He was unarmed. He supposed his hand thrust threateningly into his coat pocket might deceive a cook and his helper long enough to get him across the room. But he discarded that idea. That was a fool’s game. Once he was out of the house, the cook would yell for help. The chase would be on. As a matter of fact, he had only until Al White came to his senses enough to cry out. He had better play those precious moments for all they were worth.

He stood for a moment in the gray hallway. There was what appeared to be a maze of doorways. Open the wrong door, he thought, and you are lost.

He heard a door slam. He smiled grimly. A side entrance. A carriage entrance. Stealthily he moved along the hall toward the place where the door had slammed. He stopped. There was a right turn in the corridor and there was the carriage door with the sunlight and freedom shining just beyond it.

And one of Arrenhower’s brown uniformed company police standing just inside it.

In desperation, Blake looked around. There was nothing. No weapon in the hallway. He looked again at the vase of flowers on an end table.

Holding his breath, he removed the flowers with both hands and set them, dripping, on an antique oakwood straight chair.

The police officer must have heard him. He said, “Who’s there?” and started across the short corridor. Blake’s hand closed on the neck of the vase.

For a moment they stared at each other. The big policeman slapped at the gun holstered on his hip. Blake didn’t wait any longer. “Here,” he said. “Catch.”

He brought the vase around overhanded, hurling it with all his strength. The company cop gasped and tried to dodge, but the distance was too short, the vase hurled too swiftly. He could only stand there, his eyes widening as the heavy glass vase struck him squarely between the eyes, with such force that it shattered.

The cop took a step forward. Behind him, Blake could hear the cries and footsteps of the kitchen help. The cop was staggering. Blake’s fist in his belly only hastened the moment of striking the floor.

Blake went through the side door of Arrenhower’s huge old house with no idea what he was going to meet in the driveway. He expected another company goon. He knew by now that they usually traveled in pairs. But there was no one in the tan Arrenhower Corporation Plant Guard car.

Blake ran around it and slid under the wheel. There were no keys in the ignition, either. His hands sweating and trembling, he felt under the dash, ripped loose the ignition wiring. Without taking his eyes from that side door, he twisted the wires together, and stepped on the starter. The engine roared into life. The car leaped away in a cloud of exhaust smoke and a shower of gravel.

“Hey!” It was the guard. He was standing in the doorway. He was still too stunned to run. The best he could do was stand with one hand across his bleeding nose and yell.

The company car had been facing the rear of the property. Blake knew the front gates would be closed and locked anyhow. There was no point in turning the car around. The main hope he had anyway was to get as far away from the house as possible before he was stopped. The gravel drive wound toward garages and stables. Both hands on the wheel, Blake drove swiftly. He wished for a gun. That sort of personal protection seemed indicated from this moment forward.

He looked around. There was undoubtedly a police positive holstered somewhere in the car. The goons would have used it for a kind of hideaway. The outbuildings loomed close ahead. Frantically, Blake searched with his hands along the side of the seat. He found the gun and with a laugh thrust it into his coat pocket.

For a moment, Blake was afraid his wild ride across Arrenhower Land was going to end in the stables. But the gravel drive curved sharply around them. There was a straight, short road to a wire fence — cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.

In his rear view mirror, Blake could see men running across the rolling grass toward him. There were two other tan cars like the one he was driving, whipping along the gravel drive.

He skidded the car hard against the fence. It bounced a little, but otherwise, nothing happened. He stepped on the gas again and stalled the engine with the car jammed against the wire. He could already hear them shouting behind him.

He came out of the car, climbed up on the hood. He pulled off his coat and spread it flat across the barbs of the wire. Then he got on top of the car, fell across the coat. He leaped outward then, dragging his coat after him. He cleared the fence and landed on his feet on the ground outside Arrenhower’s property. But the coat was impaled on the barbs of the wire.

He wasted only half a minute looking at that coat. It was lost to him. But there was no time to worry about that. The first of the company police cars was almost to the fence, with one of the goons leaning far out the window with a pistol in his hand.

Blake turned and ran into the thick brush. Ahead of him he could see cleared fields, and rows of small, low-priced homes of somebody’s subdivision. And a couple of blocks away was the noise and clamor of McDill Highway.

He began to run across the open field. His luck held. As he reached the corner of the highway, a yellow cab loomed into view. He ran out into the street and waved his arms. The cab screamed to a halt. The driver threw the door open. “Where to, mister?” he said.

“Take me to town,” Blake said. “And hurry. I’m trying to catch a plane.”

The cabbie shook his head. “Ain’t no planes in town, mister.”

“That’s where I’m catching one,” Blake said. “Let’s go.”

He left the cab at the entrance of the Union Bus station. He bought a ticket for Gulf City and then walked through the exit gates and through the loading ramps to the street beyond. He got into another taxi. He wanted to go to see Manley Reeder in Hyde Park. To hell now with being polite. If Reeder knew anything Blake should know, Blake knew the way to force Stella’s ex-husband to talk. But when the driver asked him where he wanted to go, Blake smiled grimly and gave the address of Clinton Edwards’ home in Seminole Heights. Hell, Blake thought, Arrenhower’s goons would be combing Tampa for him by now. But which one of them was smart enough to look for Blake in the home of Arrenhower’s private secretary?

• • •

Clinton Edwards opened the door of his Seminole Heights home. When he saw Blake, he seemed to go lax all over. His mouth fell open. He stepped back and tried to slam the door. Blake thrust his shoulder against it and pushed his way inside. Edwards wheeled, starting for the foyer telephone. Blake caught his shoulder in his hand, spun him around.

Edwards stared up at Blake’s murderous green eyes. His voice quavered. “What is this, Blake?” he demanded. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“It’s easy to see you, Edwards,” Blake said. “A lot easier than it would be to see Arrenhower. I want you to answer some questions.”

Edwards tried to laugh. “Why should I? How long do you think it will be before Mr. Arrenhower’s men find you and pick you up?”

“Maybe longer than you think,” Blake replied. “And here’s another angle. Maybe they are going to kill me. Maybe I will be the next hit-and-run victim on page five of the Times. I haven’t got much to lose, have I, Edwards? It won’t make much difference what I do to you, will it? They can only kill me once, Edwards. I’m a guy with nothing to lose. That’s the one guy in the world you don’t want to fool with.”

“You’ll never make me talk to you. I know my rights.”

Blake laughed coldly. “Your rights! The private secretary to the great Arrenhower. This is my life, Edwards. And your rights aren’t going to do you any good with your face shoved in. It’s up to you.”

The defiance in Edwards’ face weakened. “When they get you — ” he faltered.

“Sure — but that’s later. This is right now.” His hand tightened mercilessly on the thin shoulder. “Arrenhower and his boys kicked me around. Now it’s my turn.” He doubled his fist. “Your face a pulp, Edwards, or you tell me what I want to know.”

Edwards made one last attempt to laugh. “There isn’t much I could tell you — if I would,” he said.

Blake’s fist cracked into Edwards’ face. The blow came so suddenly, so sharply and sounded so loudly in the room that Edwards went completely to jelly in Blake’s grip. He covered his face with both his hands, sobbing. He cringed away, trying to break loose from the grip on his shoulder.

“It’s up to you,” Blake said again. There was no hint of mercy in his voice.

“What do you want to know?” Edwards whispered.

“My wife was killed,” Blake said. “Who did Arrenhower send over there? Who did it? Tell me, Edwards, or I’m going to beat you until you do.”

“Nobody,” Edwards whispered in terror. “I swear it. He never ordered your wife killed. I’d know it, Blake. I swear I would. Mr. Arrenhower trusts me. I know everything that goes on. He’s had to trust me. He spent a great part of the past two years in Lowering’s private hospital. I ran things. He — he just found out about you. He ordered you taken care of, that’s all.”

“But I got out of the plant in time and he had to come looking for me?” Blake said. He tightened his grip on Edwards’ shoulder. The secretary cried out in agony. At that moment, there was the sound of heavy fists on the front door. “Mr. Edwards! Edwards!”

Blake reached out to clamp his fist over the little man’s mouth. But the secretary jerked free of his hand and leaped away, screaming.

“He’s here! He’s in here!”

Thick shoulders were already battering at the door. Blake drove his fist into Edwards’ face. The little man sprawled out backwards, half the length of the hall and lay still on the runner. Blake leaped across him and went out the back door of the house as the front door splintered under the powerful shoulders of Arrenhower’s police.

• • •

Thirty minutes later, Blake started up the sidewalk to Manley Reeder’s ugly old house in Hyde Park. It seemed a hundred years ago since he’d walked up and down here, waiting for a taxi.

The heavy odor of the honeysuckle attacked his nostrils. He went quickly across the old-fashioned front porch with its swing and wicker rockers. The screen door was closed, but the inner door was ajar. The house was silent. Blake rang the doorbell, stood listening to it echo in the deep old rooms.

He tried the screen door. It was locked. He jerked on the handle and felt the single catch give. The second time he tried it, the screw ripped free of the panel and the door opened.

This was a good place to wait. And he had to talk to Manley. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Stella’s death had nothing to do with the Arrenhower trouble. If it didn’t, the answer lay with Reeder or at least with someone Reeder knew. And Reeder was going to talk this time, because Blake knew he was a man with nothing to lose. Funny, what a difference that made. You no longer cared about things that might have mattered once.

He went directly into the library. There was a divan. Blake flopped on it and lay on his back with his feet propped on the arm rest. He stared at the ceiling and thought.

He began to hear the steady click of the hall clock. He snapped on a table lamp and looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. The silent house gave him the creeps. Even the servants were gone. There was no sign that Manley had been here all afternoon.

He got up and wandered out into the hall. He snapped on the light to relieve some of the oppressive darkness of the old house. The yellow glow slid a long shaft through the dining room door, reaching all the way across the dining table.

And there was Manley.

He was sitting alone at the head of the table. Woodenly, Blake entered the dining room, snapped on the lights. He saw the blood then. It was all over everything. He saw that Manley had put a pistol barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It had been Manley’s last wish to die neatly.

And even in that he had failed.

Blake stood at the side of the table. He stared down at Manley’s handsome pale face. Manley wanted to die, Blake thought. For him there was nothing to live for. There was a gray fountain pen and a sheet of letter paper before Reeders chair. Reeder had written a note in his neat, precise handwriting. The paper was splattered and streaked with his blood.

Slowly, Blake read it:

I HAVE TAKEN MY OWN LIFE. I HAVE NO WISH TO LIVE AND I HAVE CHOSEN THIS WAY. I HAVE DISMISSED BOTH MY SERVANTS FOR THE DAY. THEY HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF MY PLANS. NO ONE ELSE IS TO BLAME IN ANY WAY. THIS IS MY FINAL CHOICE.

MANLEY REEDER

Blake turned away, moving stiffly. As he went through the hall, the telephone began to wail. It rang persistently. Blake didn’t even glance toward it. The sound of it trailed him out across the honeysuckle-pervaded porch and along the dark walk.

12

AT EIGHT-THIRTY, Blake caught the Gulf City bus on Grand Central. He sat alone at a window, staring through it. But he was unaware of the flat country sliding past. As far as he was concerned, Manley Reeder’s suicide proved Stella’s ex-husband knew nothing about her death. Manley had hated her. But Manley had told the truth. He hadn’t wanted her hurt.

Thirty minutes later, Blake got off the bus at Twenty-Second Avenue North and Fourth Street. He walked swiftly east in the early night toward the Gale Island bridge. Dickerson had already told him that neither he nor his company would lift a hand to aid him. They had put him on the spot. But how he got off it was his affair.

Blake’s steps quickened. That was yesterday. That was before Arrenhower set his hounds baying at Blake’s heels. Blake had made up his mind to only one thing. He was through talking, asking. Dickerson was going to help him stay free long enough to track down Stella’s killer.

He saw the bright orange fan against the sky as he crossed the bridge. Orange with plumes of red and threads of hot gray through it. His steps slowed, lagged. He almost stopped. But he kept walking. There might be some mistake. But he knew better. Cars began to race past him. As he came nearer, he could hear the roar of the fire company pumps, the shout of the fighters and then the crackling of the flames as they chewed Dickerson’s fine home down to the core.

As the cars continued to pile in, choking all the side streets leading to the place where the big red engines were futilely battling the flames, Blake stood on a curb half a block away.

“How did it start?” he said to a man beside him.

The man shook his head. “Accident,” he said. “Stove blew up in the kitchen. They say it’s funny, too. The cook had been through in there for more than an hour when the blaze started. Well, that’s how accidents are. Crazy.”

“Yeah,” Blake said. And “yeah,” Blake thought. That’s the way accidents are. Crazy. He knew this accident began in Arrenhower’s front room. He had blabbed his heart out under Lowering’s drugs. He wondered if Dickerson had gotten out alive.

“Were there any deaths?” he asked the man.

“I don’t think so. At least, they haven’t found any bodies yet.” The man shivered. “Geez, what a hell of a way to die. I’d sure hate to be caught in there.”

“Yeah,” Blake said again. He turned and began to walk away from the flames, walking against a rushing current of curious people. That’s me, Blake told himself, always alone, walking against everyone else.

Arrenhower moves swiftly, Blake thought, his horrors to perform. Wherever Dickerson was, he must know by now that his game was up. And what about your own game, Blake asked himself bitterly. How long do you think you can go on fighting Arrenhower, his money and his influence and his uniformed goons?

His fists clenched, fingernails cutting into the palms of his hands. There was only one answer to that. He was going on until Arrenhower’s men cut him down permanently or until he got the throat of Stella’s killer in his hands.

What hell it was, he thought, walking through the darkness. The hell of separation, of Stella’s being lost to him. To know he was never going to see her again. Not going to see the way her eyes went all warm and soft when she looked at him. She was gone. She was dead. And he couldn’t just let her go. There was only one thing he could do for her. He was a private snitch and that was all he was now. Yesterday, last week, Stella had been his and he had been part of her. Only one thing stood between them — he was a private snitch and she hated it. And now he had to go on being the one thing she hated in order to find out who killed her….

• • •

It was just after ten o’clock when Blake walked into the Palm Club. The lavender and green room was crowded. The people over here didn’t know about the fire on Gale Island. It was too far away. They didn’t care. They cared about the drinks in their fists and the woman reflected in the hot mirrors of their eyes. They’re alive, Blake thought bitterly. They’re the living.

As he went through the doorway, Blake saw the dark haired waitress, Sammy Anderson. She was moving swiftly, expertly, between the tables. She glanced toward the door, her brown eyes widening as she recognized Blake. Something happened to her face. She looked suddenly pale, suddenly frightened. She made a quick, negative gesture with her head. Blake nodded at her, intentionally misunderstanding and made his way to the bar.

The thick shouldered bartender was grim and hurried. Blake ordered whiskey. The man served him without slowing down.

“So you’re still in town,” someone said at Blake’s shoulder. Blake turned slowly. His eyes met the patient blue ones of Police Lt. Ross Connell.

“Should I have run?” Blake said.

“I think I would have,” Connell replied, “if I were in your place.”

“You can never tell about people,” Blake said. Connell sat on the stool at his side. “You give ’em credit for sense and then you happen into a bar and there they are.”

The detective grunted. “Your time is limited, son. Very limited. So have fun. And be careful, I can haul you in at any moment. As you might suspect, I’m pretty well aware of where you are all the time. I try to protect the taxpayers whether they want me to or not. They find loopholes in the law so murderers like you can run around free. Then they yell like hell when trouble strikes twice.”

“You sound bitter, Lieutenant,” Blake said. “You’d better have a drink.”

“I am bitter,” Connell replied, “and I don’t drink.”

“Then what are you doing in here?”

Connell regarded him. “I’m looking for a murderer,” he replied.

Blake met his gaze levelly. “Then go somewhere else and look,” he said. “I’m looking for a murderer, too. You cramp my style.”

Connell slid off the stool. He shrugged. “Okay, Blake. See you in jail.”

Connell went away. As far as the nearest table. Blake glared angrily at his empty glass. There was nothing he could do with Connell at arm’s length. What did he expect to accomplish here? Maybe Stella had been in here alone. Maybe she had been in here — with another man. I know, Stella, I’m the private snitch now, he thought miserably. Anyhow, they might have seen her with the man. They might remember. But not with Connell poised like a hawk on Blake’s shoulder. He lifted his gaze listlessly to the bar mirror. For an instant his green eyes collided with the brown ones of Sammy Anderson.

Blake felt his spirits lift slightly. He slid off the stool and strolled past Connell.

“Where you headed?” Connell inquired negligently.

“Bar stools make me dizzy,” Blake said. “I prefer a booth.”

He found the last empty booth. Sammy Anderson was standing beside it at almost the moment he reached it.

“You look lovely,” Blake said quietly. “I never saw more beautiful eyes. I hate to rush it like this, but where can we go when this place closes?”

“We close at midnight,” she answered promptly, “and I never cared for people who procrastinate. I know a place we can go. I’ll meet you outside ten minutes after we close.”

“It’ll seem like hours,” Blake said. “I may not be alone. That man over there thinks I’m pretty.” He nodded toward Connell. “He’s following me.”

“I’ll call a cab,” Sammy said. “If he follows us, at least he’ll have to use another car.”

Blake nodded, thanking her. As Sammy walked away, he looked up. He met Nort Donaldson’s tired eyes. “Hello, Blake,” Donaldson said uncertainly.

“Hi, Nort.”

“Could you come over to our table, Steve? Paula sent me.”

“I’m on the front pages,” Blake said. “I’m the alleged murderer.”

“I know,” Nort said sickly. “We want to talk to you.”

Blake nodded and followed Nort Donaldson to the booth where Paula, a faded-eyed blonde, awaited them. She looked up and put out her hand. “I want to tell you, Steve, Nort and I don’t think you did it,” Paula said.

“Thanks.” Blake slid into the booth beside Nort. “Did you call the police, Nort? I mean the night they found her body?”

Nort Donaldson shook his head. “So help me God, Blake, we didn’t. We wouldn’t have done such a thing. It was only after we heard about it on the radio. Paula was distracted. Paula insisted we tell them how you acted in here. But both of us insisted we were sure it was shock.”

“I told the police I never saw two people more in love,” Paula said.

“Okay,” Blake said. “You did what you had to. Both of you. That’s all anybody can do.”

“God knows, I’m glad you understand,” Nort said. “We’ve been sick. Both of us.”

“If there’s anything we can do,” Paula said.

Blake looked at her. “There is something you can do, if you will. I’m not prying into Stella’s life. It’s too late for that. And you were her friends, not mine. I know that. But it would help if you could tell me — did you ever see Stella in here — with any man?”

Blake saw them look at each other, briefly. “No,” Nort said quickly. Too quickly. “No. I never did, Blake.”

“The police have already asked us that,” Paula added. Blake looked at her. She was remembering that Stella had been her friend — in the days when she had been Mrs. Manley Reeder. In that long ago time when she’d been a respectable young Hyde Park matron and not a picture of a dead woman on the front pages of the newspapers. “Don’t let yourself get like Manley,” Paula said suddenly. “He suspected Stella of infidelity. It wasn’t true. And Manley drove her to drinking. He wouldn’t let friends come to the house. He wouldn’t let her go out. He mistrusted everybody. He didn’t even want her to have other women as friends. He was sick, Steve. We — Nort and I were glad — when Stella finally found someone like you. Don’t let whatever you think or what you hear change what you and Stella had. Please.”

“I want to find the man who killed her,” Blake answered.

“Of course you do. If there was only something I could tell you that would help. The only way she could have met anyone, Steve, would have been while she was taking the cure in that Lowering’s private hospital. I guess you meet all kinds of queer ducks in private hospitals. Maybe somebody — ”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Maybe.”

“Stella was miserable with Manley,” Nort said. “She began to drink alone. She was like a new person, different, after she married you.”

“It’s so terrible,” Paula whispered. “Just when she was beginning to be happy. But no matter what else, Steve, remember this. Stella wasn’t doing anything wrong. She loved you too much. I know. She wasn’t doing anything wrong — ”

Blake felt that aching need for tears again. No, Stella wasn’t doing anything wrong. She’d been heating soup and rolling up a shirtwaist to iron. Oh, God, he thought. Let me have his throat in my hands.

He couldn’t stay there any more. He got up and told them goodnight. The bartender called. “Sorry, folks. It’s time to order up your last round. We’re closing in fifteen minutes.” People were drifting toward the exits. There was a sudden burst of laughter across the room. Blake returned to his booth.

The place was almost deserted when Blake went through the front doors and stood in the middle of the sidewalk. The neon signs discolored the ground at his feet and the night around him. The lights were switched off and he was left in darkness. Sammy called to him from the front door. At that moment their taxi pulled up to the curb and as they got in, Sammy loudly directed the driver to take them to the Beach Club. “Where to, really?” Blake said when the cab moved away.

Sammy smiled at him. She leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “The Regal Hotel.”

The driver laughed. “Wow, what a difference.”

“Never mind the laughter,” Sammy said. “We’ve got our own phonograph.”

“Beach Club headwaiters make me self-conscious,” Blake said.

The driver nodded. “I’m glad you’re not going way over to the beach anyway. It’s a long, lonesome drive back.” He watched the mirror for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder. “You want I should lose that car that’s tailing us before I take you to the Regal?”

• • •

Sammy Anderson’s room at the Regal Hotel was a strange, cluttered place. To Blake, it appeared to be the temporary lodgings of a migrant with too much to carry, no place to keep it and yet, without the heart to part with any of it.

Sammy held the door open and said, “Come in, Steve.” She looked faintly embarrassed. She locked the door behind them and shed her coat, hanging it in the crowded closet.

He sat on the edge of the bed, because there were some of her belongings on all the chairs.

She ran her hands through her hair, loosening it about her well-shaped head. “I’ll get us a drink,” she said. She went into the bathroom and came out with two glasses and a fifth of blended whiskey.

She poured a big drink for herself.

She drank down her whiskey in a long, gulping swallow. When she moved the glass, her face was flushed and her eyes were wet.

She set the glass down on a littered table. She smiled at him, still holding his liquor untouched. “Drink,” she said. “Tomorrow the atom bomb.” She snapped on the radio and then, before the music came in, she snapped it off. “Only for you, the atom bomb was yesterday.” She sat on the edge of the bed beside him. “And for me it was a year ago.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why? Everybody gets it sooner or later. You want to hear about my atom bomb, Steve? Sure you do. It — it blasted the — the hell out of my world. But I — I managed to save something. See, it wasn’t a total loss. Look around you, Blake, and see what I saved. A radio, a set of silver that I got on my second anniversary. I — I’ve got my baby’s c-clothes in there — in the closet. What a fool thing to lug around. And yet, I can’t let ’em go. You — hang on. Even — even when there’s nothing to hang on to, you go on hanging on.”

“What happened?” Steve said.

“Oh, what always happens? I — I was visiting at my mother’s. She was ill. There wasn’t anybody. And I had to go. I had been up there a week and Bob and the baby were coming for me. They were supposed to be there at — I don’t know — about eight or nine at night at the latest. Only it got to be midnight and three and at five they came and told me.

“We had an old car. I don’t even know how old it was. Bob was driving and the baby — was sleeping with — with its head in his lap. They — they were still like that when they got ’em out of the wrecked car. Some fellow came careening down the highway. He must have been going seventy. His tire must have blown out. He came right into my poor Bob’s car. A car that wouldn’t even go thirty miles an hour. He — he was driving to — to get me. With our — baby sleeping in his lap — and — and — and — ”

Her voice was choked in her throat and she couldn’t go on talking. But she sat there beside him on the bed, her slender shoulders straight, her jaw squared defiantly.

“If I could cry,” she whispered. “If I could cry and forget it.”

Blake stared at her. The need to cry! The wish for impossible, life-saving tears.

He set the drink down, untouched. “You’ve got to cry,” he said roughly. “You’ve got to! A year, that’s too long to live with it.”

“Is it?” she said. “How long do you think it will be before you forget?”

“It’s different with me,” he answered. “I’ve got something to hate — ”

“So have I,” she said. “I hate the nights. Every night, all night, I wait for them to come and tell me that Bob and my baby are dead. If I go to sleep, I wake up quickly, sitting up in bed and listening, waiting for them to come. Then after five o’clock, I can dress and go out and eat. When I come back, I’m all right and I can sleep. I hope you have better luck.”

He wasn’t aware until then that their hands were locked between them on the bed. Their eyes met.

“I won’t have any luck,” he said. “I won’t need it. I’ve been elected to die for Stella’s murder — and I will, unless I find out who did it.”

“You must find out,” she said. “You must.”

“Maybe you can help me.”

“I want to. I don’t want anybody ever to go through what I have.”

“Did you ever see Stella — did you ever see my wife at the Palm Club — without me?”

She looked at him. Nodded.

“Was she alone?” Why did the questions hurt so terribly?

“She — she came in alone,” Sammy answered. “Believe me, she did. Always. You don’t have to worry. She loved you. Oh, I know. I saw you together. I saw the way she looked at you.”

“Thanks. I guess you know how bad I need that.”

“Yes. I know.”

“And who met her there, Sammy? Who?”

“I don’t think he met her there, Steve. I’m not trying to spare you,” she added hastily. “It’s true. There was something unwholesome about this man. I don’t know. He was good looking. He was young. He looked like a movie actor — ”

“Glintner,” Blake whispered.

“I think so,” Sammy agreed. “Bix. I think that’s what she called him.”

Blake’s thudding heart was slugging the breath through his aching throat. He started up off the bed, but she caught his arm. He relaxed.

“At least hear the rest of it,” she said. “You owe that to — her. She laughed at him, Steve. Really she did. He was after her all the time. There was something wrong about it. I’m not smart enough to say what it is — only I felt it. He gave me the creeps. Maybe because he was too pretty. Maybe because he wouldn’t let her alone.”

“And that’s all?” His voice was hoarse. “There was nobody else?”

“I never saw anyone else, Steve. He was the only one.”

He stood up, glanced at his watch.

“Are you going to find him?” she whispered.

“You know I’ve got to.”

She nodded. “Be careful,” she said. “They’ll get you for any reason at all — even if he were to call them. You’ve got to be careful — or you won’t even be able to help yourself.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

13

HE REACHED for the drink on the table, but stopped his hand just before he touched it. It wouldn’t hurt him and yet somehow he didn’t want it. He looked at Sammy. She was smiling at him. She leaned forward, reaching beyond his hand for the drink. She gulped it down.

“One or a dozen,” she said. “They won’t hurt me. I’m dead inside.”

“No,” he answered. “No, you’re not. You’re going to be all right.”

She looked up at him, her brown eyes unconvinced. He pulled her up from the bed. He slipped his arms about her. But when he kissed her, her lips were cold and passive under his mouth.

He tried to smile at her. “I’m getting old,” he said. “I’m losing my touch.” He released her and she stepped back, looking at him.

“Be careful,” she said again.

“Well, at least you care what happens to me,” he said.

Her gaze didn’t waver under his. “I care,” she replied. She smiled wanly up at him. There was a knock on the door. For a moment they stared at each other without moving, without breathing.

Finally, Sammy disengaged her fingers from Blake’s and started toward the door. The knock was repeated, insistently.

“All right,” she said. Her voice was calm, unruffled. “I’m coming.”

She reached out to unlock the door. She looked at Blake. He shook his head warningly.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Open it up, sister. This is Ross Connell. I ain’t got time for games.”

Sammy moved away from the door. She placed her face close against Blake’s. She whispered in his ear, so softly that he could barely hear her. “Undress. Get under the covers. I’ll stall.”

He ripped off his clothes as she moved away from him. He tossed shirt and trousers over a chair. He pushed off his shoes without touching them with his hands. Sammy had turned back the cover and he slid under it.

“Open it, sister,” Connell said.

“Just a minute,” Sammy said. She found a bathrobe and tied it about her waist. “I was sleeping.”

“This ain’t no beauty contest, baby,” Connell said. “I just want to talk to you.”

Sammy fumbled with the lock. She tossed Blake a wry, twisted little smile and opened the door.

Connell brushed past her into the room. He looked at Blake on the bed. His eyes betrayed nothing. “All right, close the door,” Connell said over his shoulder to Sammy. He looked at Blake again. “You’d better get up and get dressed all over again, sonny.”

“Why?” Sammy said.

Connell didn’t turn. He answered her, but continued to look at Blake. “Now you’ve been setting fires. You hated a man named Dickerson and so you set fire to his Gale Island home.”

“Who told you that fairy story?” Blake inquired.

“Dickerson himself,” Connell replied. “He and a man named Terravasi asked for police protection out of this town. They got it. In exchange, Dickerson told us plenty about you. That he had hired you and then, when he fired you, you got even by burning him out.”

“Use your head,” Blake snarled, sitting up in bed. “You want me for murder, remember? Why would Dickerson run to escape me? If I had wanted to get him, I’d have gotten him on Gale Island, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t have burned his house. That’s against the law. I’d have killed him.”

Connell regarded him patiently. “Where have you been since you got out of jail?”

“He was here,” Sammy answered. “He didn’t leave this room until he came to the Palm Club. And you were there.”

“So were you, sister, so you wouldn’t know.” He looked at Blake. “Already in bed with another one, eh, Blake? Come on. Get up, get dressed.”

“He was here,” Sammy said sharply, “whether you approve of it or not.”

Connell just looked at her. “He was seen on Gale Island, baby. Forget it.”

“And I say he wasn’t there. I may be lying, but then, whoever said he saw Steve on Gale Island might be lying, too. Why would I lie? I never saw Steve Blake before.”

“Then why did you bring him home with you tonight?”

“That’s my affair. At least, I have no reason to hate him. The men who have reported him do.”

Blake laughed coldly. “She’s right there, Connell. Someone even called you and told you my wife was in a locked apartment, dead. That would sound like a frame-up to me. But I suppose it sounds all right to you.”

Connell smiled. “As a matter of fact, Blake, it did. We got a call from Tampa. From a Mr. Manley Reeder. He said that you had just left him. He said that you told him your wife was dead. He insisted we investigate. We’d have gotten you on the bus, Blake, but my harnessmen and sergeant thought we were trying to catch you running and not coming in.”

He stepped back, looking at both of them. “It may interest you two to know I investigated everybody. Even the people who might have been mixed up with you in that apartment house. Even Reeder. We found out he was in town the day Blake’s wife was killed. But he was at home in Tampa — with friends for dinner — when she was murdered. We questioned old Ada Grueter who lived across the hall. We questioned the garage attendant, just because he was good looking. He swears he was only casually acquainted with Stella Blake. Grueter backed him up on that. Glintner was up in the apartment sometime, the old maid said. But even Grueter didn’t suspect an affair — and that’s something!”

“You have the word of bystanders on Reeder and Glintner,” Sammy said softly. “You have my word on Steve. I may be lying. But then, maybe all those other people you have been talking to lied, too.”

“I like you,” Connell said smoothly, “and because I do, I’m not going to take Blake along with me. I’m going to give you two a little more rope. I’d like nothing better than to see you two hang yourselves a mile high.”

“And that means?” Blake said.

“Just this. I now find that you had a sweetie. No wonder you wanted your wife out of the way.”

“Six months married and I wanted her out of the way!” Blake sneered.

“Stranger things have happened.”

“I think you’d better go,” Sammy said. “I’m getting a cold standing here.”

“That would never do.” Connell backed to the door and opened it. “I hope you won’t think though that I won’t have someone watching you two every time you leave this room.”

He stepped out into the hall. He closed the door quietly after him. Sammy bolted it. Blake got up and dressed slowly. Sammy sat down on the edge of the bed. Blake looked down at her. She looked young, very young. Looking at her, Blake forgot the horror of her sleepless nights. And he forgot, too, that he hadn’t given her age a thought before this minute. What a hell of a trick fate had played on her — a kid, that’s all she was — and sick with bitterness.

She poured herself a drink of whiskey and Blake watched her gulp it down.

He said, “Thanks, Sammy. For all you’ve done for me. I’d kiss you again, Sammy, but those cold lips kill my boyish enthusiasm.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

He’d started for the door. He turned and looked at her. “Why, Sammy? Why for me?”

She smiled wryly and stood up, looking at him. “Let’s say that if I were alive inside, Steve, I’d be alive for you. Only you of all the men I’ve seen in this last year. This isn’t new. I’ve seen you in the Palm Club. For months. With her. When you didn’t even know I existed. It isn’t important, Steve, and it doesn’t matter. It’s just that you would be it. I want to help you. Will that do it?”

He looked at her, without answering. She followed him out into the corridor. “There’ll be a cop in the lobby,” she warned him. “There’s a fire escape at the end of the hall.”

“There’s probably a cop waiting at the bottom of it, too,” Steve said.

“Nothing is ever easy,” she answered. “You may believe mama on that one.” Her hand on his arm hurried him. At the window, she said again, “Take care of yourself.”

“Find yourself a nice guy, Sammy,” he said gently. “You’ve helped me. You’ve got to get out of this and help yourself now.”

She caught his arms in her hands. Her eyes were distracted.

“Don’t talk like that, Steve. It sounds so — so final.”

“It is final.”

Her slender hands on his arms shook him. “Steve, don’t,” she whispered tensely. He looked down at her. Her brown eyes were filled with tears. They welled up and spilled down her cheeks. “Look,” she begged. “I’m crying for you. You must know what it means for me to cry. I’m begging you. Take care of yourself. Come back to me.”

“I won’t be back,” he said gruffly. “You’re out of it. Count yourself lucky.”

“I can’t get out of it now,” Sammy said, “until you do. You’re all I have now, Steve. If you’ll let me, I can live for you. Just as I cried for you. I cried, Steve. I cared enough for someone to weep for him. Do you know what that means?”

“It means you’d better find someone worth crying for,” Blake told her roughly. “Don’t count on me. I have no tears. I have nothing, Sammy. I’m as dead inside as you ever were. I’m living just to finish this business and that’s all.”

She looked up at him through her tears. “And then what?”

“And then nothing,” Blake said. “What do you care?”

“I care because you’re what I want.”

“How do you know I am. You know nothing about me. For all you know, I may have killed my wife.”

“I know, Steve. Don’t ask me how. How do two people ever know about each other?”

“God knows. It’s been too long ago for me.”

“Please, Steve. Come back to me.”

He looked out at the dark alleyway below him. His jaw tightened. What chance did he have ever to come back here? He forced his voice to remain light. “Sure. Sure, I’ll come to you, as soon as it is over.”

“Promise, Steve. I’ll make you care again. I’ll spend my life making you care again.”

He drew away from her. “Sammy, don’t count on it. I cannot live, I cannot think about living until I find the man who killed Stella. There’s nothing beyond that moment. I died when Stella died and that’s the way it is.”

Sammy covered her face with her trembling hands. He could hear her soft sobbing.

“Sammy.”

“Don’t mind me,” she said bitterly. “Some people just weren’t meant to have what they want.”

He took out his wallet and pressed some bills in her hand. “Buy yourself a new hat, Sammy,” he said. “Men make fun of women’s hats, but they look at ’em.”

“I don’t want men to look at me. I want you to look at me.”

“Don’t be a fool, Sammy.”

“Shut up, damn you! I’ll be a fool if I want to. You have nothing to say about it.” She turned and started back across the musty corridor.

He caught her by the arm and pulled her back. Her body was warm, pulsating in his hands. He pressed her to him, feeling tremors course through her. He pressed his lips over her full mouth.

Savagely, she fought her way close against him, pulled herself in so that her tear-wet cheeks were flattened against his face. Her arms dug into his shoulders with fire and intensity. She began to shake with the fierceness of her need for him. Her mouth was fiery hot, parted, under his.

At last, the shaking subsided and she drew away from him.

For now, it was Steve’s mouth that was cool, passive.

“I tried. Honest to God, I tried,” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes hating him. “Sure you tried,” she said.

“If I could love anyone, Sammy, it would be you.”

“You. You couldn’t love anyone.” She stepped away from him. “Goodbye,” she said with finality.

“I’ll come back, Sammy. If I can.”

“I won’t be here.”

He stepped out on the fire escape. The wind was rising. The street below him was chilled and silent. She wasn’t at the window when he started down the rusty ladder. When he reached the alley, he swung down to the pavement. He looked up. She was up there in the lighted window. He waved. But she didn’t answer.

• • •

He could feel the man behind in the darkness. He tried to turn. A gun barrel bit into the small of his back. “Turn around,” the man said. “Turn around real slow.”

14

HE TURNED around in the alley. Turned slowly, the way the man said. There was only one way to do a thing when a man with a gun ordered it. Follow instructions to the letter. You lived longer that way. That is if you cared about living any more. Only Blake didn’t care about living. It was just that he had to. There wasn’t any choice. Not now. Not since Sammy Anderson had told him who was meeting Stella in the Palm Club bar. This wasn’t living. It was just staying alive until he could get his fingers about that man’s throat.

Whatever the reason, he obeyed the command. He turned slowly all the way around.

His eyes bugged. He stared! The man behind that gun was Bruce Bricker. Bricker the sneak. The dirty rat. The partner who had sold him out for ten grand. Bruce Bricker who had tried to set Blake up so that Arrenhower’s goons could kill him the way they’d killed Roberts ahead of him.

The funny thing was that Blake had never expected to see Bricker again. He never thought Bricker would have the guts to show his face. And maybe he wouldn’t have, even now, except for the gun in his hand.

“What you want, Bricker?” he said.

“I got a job for you, Blake.”

“A job. Real friendly, huh? Then why the gun?”

“I didn’t think you’d be glad to see me.”

“You knew damned well I wouldn’t be. I don’t care what your job is, Bricker, I’m not interested. Get out of my way.”

Bricker hefted the automatic. “I’m not asking you, Blake. I’m telling you. I got a job. You’re in on it. It’s going to pay me ten grand.”

“Another ten grand?”

“One more ten grand. Only this time I’m cutting you in, Steve. I’m giving you half of it.”

“When a son-of-a-bitch wants to give you half of something, Bricker, you can bet you’re getting half of hell.”

“I told you, Steve. I’m not asking. I’m telling you. I don’t have to give you half of what I’m getting. I just want to. I’ve made some mistakes. I’m just making it up to you.”

“The words are all right,” Blake said. “But they don’t sound right coming out of your mouth, Bricker.” He frowned. “How did you find me?”

“You’re not the only detective in the world, old son. I used to be pretty good myself.”

“You were never good, Bruce. I just want you to keep that straight. Part of detection is sneaking. That part of it fitted you. Not any of the rest of it.”

“Suppose we start down the alley,” Bricker said. “My car is parked down there at the corner.”

They walked a few paces in silence. The silence of the alley. The silence of the night. The way Blake hated this man he’d worked with for four years. He glanced over his shoulder. He wondered if Sammy was still watching at that window up there. He wondered if Sammy had seen what happened.

They walked into the glow of the street light. The glow increased, became brighter as they moved to the littered mouth of the alley.

“I’m putting the gun in my pocket, Steve,” Bricker said. “In case somebody is watching. But don’t get any ideas. It’s still fixed on you.”

“Look, Bricker, I don’t like being afraid of you. I don’t like you thinking I’m afraid of you. I know you’d pull that trigger. You’d rig it up to look like you had to. You’d smile and you’d whine and stand over my dead body and beat the rap. So I’m afraid. I’m afraid of you, Bricker. Does that make you feel better?”

“Just do as I say. I want you alive. I’m not interested in shooting you, unless I have to.”

Steve Blake’s mouth pulled wide in a wolfish grin.

“Don’t you want to hear why I’m afraid, Bruce? Don’t you want to hear the best part?”

“No.”

“Because you’re a sneak. I’m afraid of you because you’re a sneak. Not because you’re a man. If you tried to act like a man, I’d take that little gun away from you and beat your teeth out with it. But you’re not a man. You’re a sneak. A man with a gun is one thing. But a sneak with a gun is a hell of another thing.”

Bricker nodded toward the dark sedan parked at the curb. It was a new model car. It looked as if it hadn’t been out of the showroom a week. Bright. Shining. New. You could buy things like this if you were willing to sell out your friends. Sometimes you could buy them with money from honest labor. But not so many. Not so quickly. And Blake knew that Bruce Bricker preferred the quick way every time.

“Just stand there,” Bricker told Steve. Bricker went warily around the front of the car, his hand on the gun in his pocket lifted high, his harried eyes never leaving Steve’s face.

Bricker slid into the car, under the wheel. The gun was in his hand now. Glinting in the street light. “Get in,” he said.

Blake opened the door, got in and slammed it after him.

Bricker tried to smile. “I’ve got to drive, Blake. So don’t try anything. This gun is ready. Like I told you. I don’t want to use it. I’m trying to do you a favor.”

“I know. That’s what scares the hell out of me.”

“Stop hating me, Steve. I’m trying to make it up. I know I made a mistake.”

“No. Your old lady did. She should have drowned you before you learned to bark.”

“You’ll thank me for this, Steve. I’m giving you a chance to make five grand.”

He had shifted gears and the car moved out into the deserted streets. He drove intently, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the automatic in his lap. Steve glanced over. He could see that the safety was shoved off. There was a bullet primed in that chamber, he thought. With a name on it. Steve Blake’s name.

His voice grated in the silent, smooth running car.

“Look, Bricker. Stop with the sermon about what you’re doing for me. What in the hell do you think I want with five grand? Money. Christ, that’s for people who’ve got something to spend it on. I haven’t got anything to spend money on. I’m dead. I’ve been dead since Stella was killed. Stop offering me money. If you want to do something for me, take me to the man that killed Stella. Help me get my hands on him.”

“I wish I could, Steve. I wish to God I could.”

They went up Second Avenue and passed the Seaboard Station. Steve glanced out the window. The place was dark, closed. He thought of the Saturday afternoon he’d come back home. A hundred years ago? A thousand? He couldn’t say. It had been raining. That much he remembered. He had been happy. He had been a guy on the way to the girl he loved.

What was he now? A corpse-maker. A dead man walking around. A man without reason to live. An executioner fixing a noose for a killer’s neck.

“Where the hell are you going?” he growled. Bricker had driven the car across Ninth Street and had turned down a narrow alley that led deep into Negro town.

“It’s down here,” Bricker said. His voice was hollow. “This is where the job is.”

“Christ. You’ve sunk pretty low, haven’t you, Bricker?”

“They’re hiding down here.”

“Who’s hiding down here?”

“Both of them. Terravasi. Dickerson.”

“You’re crazy. You’re lying.”

“I’m not crazy. I’m not lying. That’s our job, Steve. Ten grand. And they’ve got it. I know. I saw it.”

“Listen to me. Ross Connell was in the Regal Hotel. He told me that Dickerson and Terravasi had asked for police protection out of town. And he told me that they got it. I’ve seen cleaner citizens than Ross Connell. But I’d a hell of a lot rather believe him than you, Bricker.”

Bricker didn’t answer. Blake looked at him. The military brush hair. The sweated face. The dishonest eyes. God, who could ever trust Bricker? Maybe Prue Quincy, who had what he wanted. Maybe somebody who didn’t know him.

Bricker cut the engine and let the car roll to a stop before the rear of a battered brick building. The night was black down here. There were no street lights to crack it open. It was the black night. The close, hot black night. Unbroken.

“Get out ahead of me,” Bricker said. “And stand still. Just don’t make any noise, Steve. There’s no use making this tougher than it has to be.”

Blake got out. He stood in the hot, thick night. The evil smelling night. Bricker slid out of the car behind him and inched the car door closed so that there was not a sound.

There were wooden stairs leading up the rear of the brick building. Bricker nodded toward them with his closecropped head.

Blake started up the steps. They protested, squeaking every time he moved. He could hear Bricker just behind him. The sound of Bricker’s breathing. The squeaking of the steps.

A door opened above them. A Negro stood in the light, looking down at them. He was wearing trousers buttoned at his navel and no belt, no shirt and no shoes.

“Lawdy, boss,” he said to Bricker. “Am I glad to see you. Them gem’mums is getting’ mighty sick and mighty nervous in there.”

“Okay, Sam,” Bricker said. “We’re here now. We’ll take over.”

“Yassuh.” He looked at the gun in Bricker’s hand. He turned then and his dark eyes went over Steve Blake’s face.

“My Lawd, Mistuh Steve. What sort of business is this? What sort of bad business is this? You need any help?”

Blake just grinned at him. Bricker said sharply, “Never mind, Sam. You’re getting paid just to keep your mouth shut. So you better start earning your money right now.”

Sam’s mouth pulled together. “Yassuh,” he said. But his eyes remained on Steve’s face, remained worried. “It don’t seem right,” he said. “A fine man like you, Mistuh Steve. A man what’s already got all the grief in the world on his shoulders.”

“I told you to shut up!” Bricker blazed. “Steve Blake will make five grand out of this. What the hell else is there?”

“A man with Mr. Steve’s troubles, money won’t help him. It ain’t money he needs. It’s a man like you leavin’ him alone that he needs, so’s he can get to the work that’s left to him. Avengin’ the death of his woman.”

Steve stopped just inside the door. He looked at the big man. “It’s all right, Sam,” he said. “You understand. People like you understand. Thanks.”

“My God!” Bricker ejaculated. “What’s there to understand? Five grand is five grand. I’m doing you a favor.”

Steve looked at him. He said nothing. He walked into the room where Terravasi and Dickerson awaited him.

He had to look twice at Dickerson to know him. Dickerson had been arrogant, immaculately dressed. Now he looked like the back alleys of hell. His clothes hung, sweated and rumpled. He hadn’t shaved in two days. His hair was wild on his head and his eyes were harried.

Terravasi was sitting at a bare table. He had stood up under it better than his boss. Or else he looked so much like a tramp anyway that the hell he’d been through since the fire on Gale Island didn’t alter him outwardly.

Terravasi was drinking steadily. His eyes were hot and hazy.

Dickerson mumbled, “Thank God, Blake. We had about given up. We thought you’d never get here.”

“I’m here,” Steve said. “What do you want with me? I’m the guy that was no more good to you. I’m the guy you weren’t going to take a chance with the police on. I’m the guy you gave an hour to get out of the world.”

Dickerson ran his trembling hand through his graying hair. “My God, Steve, forgive me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know then.”

“No. You were on top of the world. You didn’t know.”

“Don’t hate me, Steve. I — ”

“I don’t hate you. I just don’t give a damn.”

Dickerson prowled the room. “You’ve got to give a damn!” he said. “You’re the only man in this town who can help me. I thought Bricker could. But he can’t. He says you’re the only one.”

Blake looked at him without compassion. “What do you want?” he said.

“I want to get out of this town!” The way Dickerson croaked it, it was a wail, a plea for help. A drowning man’s hopeless cry the third time down.

“I thought you were out once.”

Dickerson stared at him. “Out once? How? When? Arrenhower’s company men are watching this town. Terravasi and I couldn’t even walk down Central Avenue and hope to stay alive!”

“I thought you told me Arrenhower wouldn’t stoop to a thing like that.”

“Steve, for God’s sake. The man who talked to you that way Sunday morning is dead. He’s gone. The things he believed and the arrogance he felt are all gone. I’m a helpless old man, Blake. I never knew how helpless until I began to try to find some way to get out of this town alive.”

“What about your family? I might help them.”

“Help them! My God, man. It’s me who needs help! They let my family go. They went out on the Silver Meteor. They’re all right. They’re out of Florida by now. But they’re after me. And they’re after Terravasi. Thick shouldered goons with guns at their hips. Hired by a man who knows no law except his own. Arrenhower laughs at the government when they try to tell him what to do. His company police are after me. I can’t stand it. I’ve got to get away. And Bricker says you’re the only man who can help me.”

Blake shook his head. “Ross Connell told me that you and Terravasi had put the finger on me as the man who had set fire to your house. You said I was trying to kill you.”

Tears welled in Dickerson’s eyes. He looked as though he were going to fall on his knees before Blake.

“I was trying to fool Arrenhower. Don’t you see? I still thought that if Arrenhower believed I wasn’t after him, he might call off his wolves! It didn’t work! God forgive me, I said the only thing I could think to save my hide.”

“Yoah hide?” Sam said from the corner of the room. “What about the hide of Mistuh Steve? Put on by little men like you. Little men who come whining after him in the night when they get into trouble. You didn’t mind adding to a man’s woes when his heart was already breakin’. And now you beg him for help. God help me, I hope I never sink so low.”

Dickerson stared at the big man. His teeth chattered and tears brimmed over his eyes. “I don’t ask forgiveness. I only ask for help. It’s not for me, Blake. What becomes of my family if I die?”

“My Lawd,” Sam said. “Prob’ly they throws a party and has real pork chops, do that happen.”

Dickerson was visibly shaking now. “I asked for police protection, Steve. Out of town. They gave it to me. You know where they took us? Out Fourth Street, to Gandy Bridge, to the Gulf City city limits! And there they left us — right at Arrenhower’s front door!

“Terravasi and I ran through the mangroves to a fishing camp. They had a public telephone. I called Bricker. He came out and got us.” His lips curled. “But he said he wouldn’t have come if he had known that Arrenhower had sent his men over here to pick us up!”

“All right,” Blake said. “So Bricker brings you here to Sam’s place and agrees to find me for ten grand. That’s where you made it worse, Dickerson. I might have helped you. I might have helped Terravasi. But I’m not going to do anything that’ll help Bricker collect ten grand.”

Bricker spoke then. “Blake talks tough, Dickerson,” he said. “But I hold the gun.”

“Do you want I should take it away from him, Mistuh Steve?” Sam said.

Bricker’s face went white. “Keep away from me, Sam. So help me God!”

Blake smiled. “No, Sam. I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to help these two guys get out of town. I’ve decided to do it. The only thing is, Bricker is going along. Just for the ride.”

“No!” The word broke across Bricker’s mouth.

He took a backward step toward the wall. The gun came up in his hand.

Terravasi spoke then. He got up from the table and stumbled over to the door. He leaned against it. “You’re going, Bricker,” he said. “You can’t get us all. So you better put that thing away. If it means me gettin’ away from Arrenhower, you’re going with us.”

15

LET’S GET GOING!” Dickerson said. “For God’s sake, let’s get going!”

“No,” Blake said. “Not so fast. There’s going to be a delay, Dickerson. You might as well make up your mind to that.”

“A delay?” Dickerson’s voice shook. “How long?”

Blake thought a moment. “We can’t leave here for two hours.”

“Two hours?” Dickerson’s voice rose into a wail. “Every minute counts. Do you think they’re not looking for us right now?”

“I can’t help it. You want me to get you out of Gulf City and on the way out of Florida. Bight? Then you’re going to have to do it my way. Relax, Dickerson. Sam won’t let Arrenhower get you, will you, Sam?”

Sam grinned widely. “Who this Arrenhower?” he said.

“Use your phone, Sam?” Blake said.

“Sure, Mistuh Steve. Help yourself.”

“It’s long distance,” Blake said, dialing the operator. “Better give Sam ten dollars, Dickerson.” When the gray-headed man hesitated, Blake’s voice went hard. “Your money is not going to do you any good if you’re caught, Dickerson. You’d better be nice to Sam.”

He smiled grimly as he watched Dickerson hand Sam a ten dollar bill. He told the operator the telephone number he wanted in Jacksonville. There was a two minute wait. Then, with the men in the room watching him, Blake said, “Hello, Dave? This is Steve Blake. Yeah. I’m ready for my car. What did you think when you didn’t hear from me? Thought I was on a binge, eh? No. I just didn’t work over there this week. Listen carefully, Dave. I want you to drive across State in my car to Route 19. Have one of your men drive a Caddy or a Buick anyway, to follow you and take you back. Yeah. You’re going to have company on the ride back. We’ll meet you at the Empty Plate on 19. Watch for it and wait for us there. Don’t come any nearer. How long you think it’ll take you? Route 19 is wide open. No towns. You ought to be able to hold at sixty-five — legal is fifty-five at night. So that’s what 1 figured. Three hours. We’ll be there, Dave.”

“There ain’t no way in God’s world you can force me to go along!” Bricker said. “That wasn’t our agreement, Dickerson. You were to pay me five grand when I brought Steve up here and he agreed to help you. You were to pay Steve the other half when he got you out of town.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Blake said. “So that’s how we were to get the money. Five for you the easy way. And five for me — if we get past Arrenhower’s goons. Brother Bricker, this is one trip I wouldn’t make without you!”

“I’m not going!” Bricker cried.

“Why don’t you try to get out of here?” Terravasi said. “I’m telling you, you’re going.”

A car stopped out in the street. Dickerson fought back a sob. “It’s them!” he whimpered. “It’s Arrenhower’s police. They’ve found us!”

Sam shambled over to the window and looked down into the dark street. “Just a taxicab, Mr. Dickerson,” he said.

Dickerson sat at the table. “Why do we have to wait? Why can’t we start?”

“Take my word for it,” Blake said. “We can’t. We’ve got to make exact connections. We’ve got to pray we make ’em!” He looked at Sam. “How about it, Sam? Would you like a game of two-handed Canasta while we wait?”

They sat at the table. They played cards quietly, without interest and yet without any desire to stop playing. Time inched away. Each separate minute ran its full sixty seconds. Dickerson tried to write a letter. His hand shook so badly that he smeared the paper and balled it up in his fist. Terravasi remained standing at the door. Blake looked at him. Terravasi had been one of Arrenhower’s company police. Standing for hours was no chore for the big man.

At last, Blake stood up and stretched. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Bricker was sweated down. He leveled the gun at Terravasi. “For the last time,” he said. “Let me out of here. I’m not asking for my money. I’m just telling you. I’m not going. I’ll kill you, Terravasi.”

Terravasi took a step forward.

“Stay where you are!” Bricker shouted.

Terravasi didn’t hesitate. The gun went up. Sam stood hunched over the table, his mouth open, his eyes wide as he waited for the sound of gunfire.

Bricker took a backward step. Terravasi pounced. He wrenched the gun from Bricker’s hand with a snarling laugh. He looked at it with contempt rutting his face. He shoved the safety on and pushed the gun into his coat pocket.

They went down the steps single file. Big Sam went first. He reached the alley and opened the doors of Bricker’s new car. “We can’t use that,” Bricker protested. “They may know that I used this car to pick up Dickerson at Gandy Bridge.”

Blake only prodded him in the back with his fist and told him to keep moving. Terravasi and Dickerson got in the back seat. Bricker got in front and Blake slid under the wheel. He backed the car out and moved slowly down the alley. “You and Terravasi will be safer if you sit on the floor,” Blake said.

“I got to see if they’re coming,” Dickerson protested. “I got to see where we’re going.”

“All right,” Blake said. “Arrenhower’s boys would like nothing better than to put a neat little bullet hole in your head. Sit up back there and you’re asking for it.”

The next time he looked in the rear vision mirror, he saw that the two men had moved off the seat. He smiled.

He swung out into Ninth Street and headed across the city. The car purred smoothly under its shiny new hood. He held it at thirty through the deserted streets. No one spoke. Bricker was watching every side street. Terravasi and Dickerson were silent on the floor in back. Blake shook his head. Why was he here? Why was he again letting some of Arrenhower’s unfinished business drag him away from what he knew he had to do? What if Bix Glintner decided to run? Blake’s mouth tightened. He hoped not. For Glintner’s sake, he hoped the pretty garage attendant would not try to run. I’ll be back, Glintner, he said. I’ll be back to see you.

He was headed northwest on Himes Road when he saw the lights behind him. Steady, unshakeable lights. He stepped down on the accelerator. The speedometer needle inched over and wavered nervously at seventy. The lights behind them didn’t waver, but grew larger.

Bricker half turned on the seat, staring through the rear window. “There they are. They’re back there. They’re following us.”

Steve took the curves in the narrow road with wide swings. He didn’t slow down. The lights behind him inched forward. “Souped up engine,” he remarked to Bricker.

He heard Bricker’s quickened breathing.

He looked at the speedometer needle. It was no good. The car behind them had too much power. They weren’t going to make it. He wondered if the men in the back seat could feel that yet.

There was nothing to do but keep it rolling. He snapped off the headlights. The whole world was plunged into darkness. It was as if they had run off the brink into eternity. Bricker yelled. Blake turned the wheels sharply, listening to the scream of the tires, the rush of the gravel.

He felt the breath tight in his chest. Then the car wheels struck the shallow ruts of the sand road and he exhaled slowly. Behind him the big car roared past into Gulf Park on Himes Road.

The road was rough. He could hear Terravasi swear as they struck the chug holes. Bricker was braced, his short legs thrust against the floorboards.

The miles crawled by them on the sand road. They crossed a railroad track. There was a narrow, asphalt road. Blake turned the car into it. As he reached over to snap on the lights, he saw headlights bounce into the sand road way back at the highway. He didn’t turn on the lights.

He stepped down on the gas again and they picked up speed.

As they wheeled back onto Himes Road, Blake snapped on the lights. The highway was almost deserted at this hour. The black ribbon of the roadway stretched taut and straight north now.

The speedometer needle wavered around seventy again.

They didn’t slow for the intersections. As they started up the slight incline to the Tampa-Clearwater crossing, a tan car whirled into the highway from the Tampa road.

“Radio!” Blake breathed. “They radioed ahead!”

He spun hard on the wheel, pulling into the right turn lane at the very last minute. The tan car just grazed the left front fender. He could hear the squealing of the brakes.

With the gas pedal on the floor, Blake headed the car across the highway and into a side road.

Dickerson was sitting on the edge of the back seat now.

The brakes squealed as Blake turned the car left and headed back to Route 19.

They slid out on the highway. There were no headlights showing in either direction. But they had been on the road only two minutes when Blake saw that the two cars were behind them. They’d been waiting in the darkness.

They could feel the first of the cars inching up on them. It gave you a helpless feeling, Blake thought, to feel that car dragging you back to them, no matter how hard you gave your car the gas.

The headlamps of the souped up car lighted the inside of Bricker’s new automobile. “Terravasi,” Blake ordered. “Get at the left window with Bricker’s gun ready. When they get close enough to try to sideswipe us, you got to get a front tire. God help us if you don’t.”

“I’ll get it,” Terravasi said. “Mr. Arrenhower’s money taught me how to shoot a gun so I never miss.”

A gun cracked behind them. It sounded thin and harmless in the rushing wind. But Blake knew. It wasn’t harmless. Terravasi wasn’t the only goon who’d been taught to use a gun by Arrenhower’s money.

The big car pulled alongside, swerved out and started to cut sharply back in. The idea was to drive Blake off the highway, make his wheels hit the soft shoulders. That was all. That would be it. Blake hung on to the wheel, waiting to hear the gun speak from Terravasi’s fist.

It came suddenly. The gun was loud in the car. But the explosion of the tire at the side sounded like the blast of doom. Blake kept moving. In the rear vision mirror, he saw the car swerve crazily, dancing back and forth on the highway before it went across the shoulders and into the darkness of a ditch.

He saw the tan car skid to a halt.

“They’re going to see if they can save anybody,” Terravasi said. “If they get a chance at us now, we ain’t going to get out of this.”

16

THE TAN CAR was moving again. It had eyes like a deadly beetle in the darkness behind them.

Again Blake cut the lights of his car. It was a dangerous thing to do along this unlighted roadway. If a state patrolman came along, he was going to stop them. Blake smiled grimly. What was wrong with having an armed patrolman with you when the tan car overtook you?

The red and green neon lights of the Empty Plate shone in the darkness at the left side of the road a couple of miles ahead.

Blake said, “All right, Dickerson, pay off. Five grand to Bricker over there. He can stuff it in his mouth. It’ll keep his teeth from chattering. I’ll take the five grand, too. I don’t care about the money. But why should I let you keep it?”

He heard Dickerson stirring on the back seat. Bricker took the money that Dickerson handed him, nervously counted it, stuffed it in his wallet.

Dickerson’s hand touched Blake’s shoulder. Blake reached back, took the flat fold of bills, pushed them in his trouser pocket.

“Here’s the Empty Plate,” Blake said. “Here’s what you do. I’m going to pull around the side. My car is a 1946 Plymouth coupe. Keep away from it. The other car will be Dave’s. Dave will be sitting in it. I’ll tell you which one. You get in Dave’s car and tell him I said to get back to Jacksonville. They’re not going to be looking for you in Dave’s car. If you move fast enough, you’ll make it. They’ll still be looking for this car.”

Terravasi laughed with satisfaction. “Thank God I ain’t going to be in this car when them Arrenhower boys catch up with it. If any of those boys in that other car were killed — ” He let that go unfinished, sat there shaking his head.

Blake braked the car suddenly. It spun off the road and across the gravel approach to the highway drive-in, The Empty Plate. At the side of the building he could see his Plymouth. He had driven it to Jacksonville Friday and had taken the Silver Meteor back to Gulf City. Trying to fool a man who couldn’t be fooled. Trying to play it smart. Delaying, while someone killed the woman he loved. He could feel the anguish burn in his dry throat. It won’t be long, Stella. It won’t be long.

He slid into the parking place beside the blue Buick. Dave and his driver waved at him. “Get that engine started,” Blake said. “Get ready to get out of here. You got two hot passengers for Jacksonville.”

Dickerson and Terravasi Were already scrambling out of Bricker’s car. Dave had the engine started. He was reversing out of the parking place as the two men leaped into the rear seat. He made a sharp turn and headed north on Route 19.

Blake started to slide out from under the wheel.

Bricker’s voice was a scream. “Where you going?”

“This is a hot car,” Blake replied. “I’m getting out of here. I’m heading back to Gulf City in my Plymouth. I don’t think they’ll be looking for it either. You see they’re pretty upset about the car that was wrecked back there. Whatever goons are in that tan car are going to have just one thing in mind — finding this car of yours, Bricker, and getting revenge on the people in it.”

Bricker yelled. “Yeah. But what about me? What am I going to do?”

Blake stood there. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I think you’d better run. Get that new car of yours moving, Bricker. You might outrun ’em. You might. Anyway, looks to me like that’s the only chance you got left. Run, Bricker! Run for your life!”

• • •

It seemed a long way back to Gulf City. The road was dark. There were desolate stretches where there was no sign of life. Slash pines stood tall and thin against the starless sky. The country was flat, unchanging, saw grass and palmettos and then a thicket of jack oaks.

More than anything else, Blake despised the loneliness inside the small car. He thought about Sammy. He wished for her. At least, if she were along, she could talk and he wouldn’t be prey to the thoughts that hounded him in the thick dark.

Bix Glintner, the face of him, the curly, carefully brushed hair. The way he walked. Bix Glintner moved out there in front of him. He didn’t want to think about Bix Glintner. It would be better to be completely dead, Blake told himself, then you wouldn’t think at all. You wouldn’t think about a snotty, muscled kid chasing after your wife every time she left her apartment. “She didn’t want him,” he could hear Sammy Anderson’s voice saying, “Stella didn’t want Bix. There was something wrong about it. Something unwholesome.”

Blake found that he had shoved the gas pedal to the floor.

And there in the darkness before him moved the lovely blonde face of Stella. Never had there been a woman so beautiful before. There was the goodness in her that kept her clean and shining looking. And then there was the sadness, the unhappiness, that had done something to her gray eyes. It had made them gentle and kindly and deep in a way that disturbed you. A way that you never forgot. “I’ll never forget you, Stella,” Blake said aloud in the car. “I’ll never get you out of my mind.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. The loneliness made him sick at his stomach. The need for her. The terrible knowledge that she was dead and gone from him. He could go on breathing and living. But he could never see her eyes again.

At the city limits, he slowed the car and drove at twenty-five miles an hour across town. He knew that he couldn’t drive all the way to the apartment house. He drove along Third Street and parked the car in an alley. He had to move quietly. He had to move in on Bix Glintner in silence. Now, at last, he had him where he wanted him. He wasn’t going to let anything frighten him away.

Be patient, Bix, he thought bitterly. Be patient. I’m on my way. The noose is ready, Bix. It won’t be very much longer now.

17

BLAKE WALKED up the alley to Third Street. A car passed. Blake stood in the shadows waiting. As he walked south along Third, he thought about Glintner. The handsome kid. The movie star type. He shook his head. He couldn’t see Stella falling for something like that. Now, maybe a starved old woman, like Grueter. He laughed grimly. Sure, that’s why Grueter didn’t suspect anything although she saw Glintner visit Stella.

He remembered that Glintner lived on the ground floor of the apartment house. It should have been easy for Glintner to get up to the fifth floor and Stella’s apartment unnoticed — unnoticed by anyone except nosey Miss Grueter, who could believe no wrong about the pretty boy, anyhow. And, his heart thudded, Glintner could have gone out that window, leaped to the fire escape. He was young enough. Agile enough. Maybe he’d been scared enough. Blake’s steps hurried.

At Fifth Avenue, he turned toward the apartment house. He saw that there was a police cruiser parked with its lights off, half a block away. He entered the foyer of the building and searched the mail boxes. He saw that his own name had been removed from the fifth floor apartment. God, how those apartment owners must have hated Stella for dying violently on their property! He found the letter box and apartment number he sought. Bixby Glintner, Garage Attendant, 18-A.

He went around the stairs. The corridor was dimly lighted. He moved slowly to the rear of the building. At the door of 18-A, Blake hesitated. There was no light under the door. He listened with his ear against the door facing. There was no sound from within. He tried the knob.

As he’d expected, Glintner’s door was securely bolted. He stood beside it a moment, listening. There was no sound in the corridor. He grasped the knob with both hands and pulled it toward him. He drove his knee against it just under the lock and thrust away sharply at the same time. The third time, he heard the lock snap and part of the wood splintered from the door panel.

He stepped in and closed the door after him. The door would no longer stay shut. He propped a chair against it.

The windows were tightly closed. This was a two room apartment. Either Glintner was out or he cared nothing for fresh air. Blake pulled the Venetian blinds tightly closed and snapped on the light. Without knowing what he was looking for, Blake began a systematic search of Glintner’s room.

He was rewarded almost at once.

In a top dresser drawer, there were dozens of pornographic pamphlets, the half-dollar, poorly printed stories about the Minister’s Wife, My Day in the Country and My City Cousin. Then there were more cheaply made comic booklets of famous comic strip characters in the nude. What a boy, Blake thought, what a wonderful, upstanding type!

In the next small drawer, Blake found a small packet of letters. These were tied together. When he opened them, Blake found that most of them were addressed to women. And when he read them, he found out why. Glintner had stolen them. Blake had been a private snitch long enough to know about blackmailers. They were from men and Blake supposed the women were all married.

One large envelope fell out. It bore a Tampa postmark, from Sunday. All thumbs, Blake opened the envelope. The note was brief and to the point. That scrawling handwriting, Blake thought. He had seen it somewhere before. But he was too excited at the moment to remember where.

He read the note:

I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SEEING YOU. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY. IF WHAT YOU HINT IS TRUE, YOU’D BETTER FORGET IT IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE.

It was unsigned!

Glintner was trying to blackmail some man. Who?

Blake began to sweat. The whole thing was right there in the forepart of his mind, all the answer and yet it needed one more piece to be complete. His belly was empty. His hands trembled. Still holding the letter, he turned around. And then he saw the leg protruding from the far side of the bed.

Woodenly, Blake walked over and looked down.

It was Bix Glintner. The blackmailer. And he was as dead as he was ever going to be. Somebody had battered the top of his head in.

Blake moved the bed and knelt beside Glintner. One of his arms was twisted up under him. Blake turned him slightly. There was something clutched tightly in Glintner’s hand. It was a small brown package, securely tied, as though ready for mailing.

Blake stood up. His hands shaking, he ripped the cord and brown wrapping paper away. He tore the cover off the box and there it was — Stella’s missing shoe!

He would have known it anywhere. He had sat beside her when he had found her dead and wondered what had happened to that shoe. And here it was! Glintner had been in that apartment. Blake remembered the smudge on the window sill. Glintner had gone out of that window!

But Glintner had not been the only one there. This shoe proved it. Just as that letter proved it. Glintner must have gotten into the apartment before the murderer came. It had to be that way. Glintner must have been hiding in the bedroom while Stella was being beaten to death in the living room. And Glintner had stolen the shoe, meaning to trade on it for blackmail, meaning to get rich, because he had seen the man who had killed Stella!

Blake looked down at the shoe twisted in his hand. Then he looked again at the scrawling handwriting. And then his laughter was almost a sob. It was as though the dead Glintner had spoken. He had given Blake the name he sought. The name of a killer.

18

BLAKE SAT down on a straight chair in the murderer’s darkened bedroom. His ripped hands were bleeding. The pain was nothing beside the agony that ate at his guts. He let the blood drip on the floor. Once he shoved his hand in his coat pocket, closing his fingers over Stella’s shoe.

It seemed hours that he sat there. He let his mind go back over all of it, chewing at it, looking for holes. And knowing there were none. He had his man this time. And he had him dead to rights. He heard movement in the hall and he stiffened on the chair.

He heard Arrenhower’s arrogant voice. “Goodnight, Al. It was a good show, wasn’t it?”

“I guess so, boss. I don’t go for them dame skin shows though, the way you do.”

Arrenhower laughed. “Still brooding over the one that got away, eh, Al. Well, when the boys find him, I’ll give him to you first. How’s that, Al?”

“Thanks, boss. Well, goodnight. Sorry you missed the first part of the show. The comedian was okay.”

“I don’t care for comedians, Al. I don’t like men. I like pretty women. I like the late shows. The strippers. Anyway, I had a little business early in the evening.”

The business of killing the blackmailer, Bix Glintner? Blake asked silently inside the darkened room.

He heard the door open. A shaft of light spilled in. For a moment Arrenhower stood there, framed in the light. You could kill him now, Blake thought, and maybe escape. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He was Arrenhower’s executioner. What happened to Blake afterward didn’t matter.

Arrenhower closed the bedroom door, snapped on the light. For a moment, he stared, awestruck, at Blake sitting across the room. He started to heel about, grabbing for the doorknob. Blake spoke evenly. “Don’t do it,” he said. “I’ll kill you before White can get in here to you anyway. Either way, Arrenhower, you’re going to get it. You’ve been boasting what a man you are, let’s see you take it like a man.”

Coldly, Arrenhower turned and faced him. “How did you get in here?”

Blake smiled icily. “I got out once, remember? Well, I got back in the same way. It’s easy if you know how, Arrenhower.” He held up his ribboned, bloody hands that he’d torn on the barbed wire. “And if you don’t care what happens to you. You see, Arrenhower, I don’t care. I haven’t cared about anything since you killed Stella.”

Arrenhower’s eyes wavered. “What crazy notion is this? I didn’t even know your wife.”

“You knew her, all right. You were in Lowering’s private hospital a year ago. You meet a lot of queer ducks in a private hospital. Somebody told me that. And now I know it’s true. Stella met you there, didn’t she? While she was taking the cure? Young and beautiful. You can’t resist ’em, can you, Arrenhower? And usually, they can’t resist you. Arrenhower has millions. Arrenhower’s an old pig with arthritis, but he’s got millions.”

“All right, I met your wife. At Lowering’s. What does that prove?”

“It proves you knew her. If you knew her and she resisted you, you’d pursue her, wouldn’t you? Just what you would want after all your easy conquests — the Ybor City babes and the ones you bought with diamond rings.”

Arrenhower looked at him. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to get out of here. I’m going to bed now.”

Blake stood up. He took a step toward him. “And you’re never going to get up, Arrenhower. Not all your money nor all your goons are going to save you. It’s just me and you now, Arrenhower. And my hands about your throat. If you want to tell me why you killed her, you’d better talk fast.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

Blake’s voice flared. “Don’t lie!” In one ripped and bleeding hand, he held out the scrawled letter he had found in Glintner’s apartment. “It’s the same handwriting that I saw in Bruce Bricker’s desk drawer. You had written ‘for value received’ when you paid him ten grand to sell me out.” He flung the blood-smattered letter at Arrenhower.

He drew out Stella’s twisted shoe. “Glintner wasn’t lying when he wrote to tell you he knew you had killed Stella. Glintner was hiding in the bedroom. He stole her shoe and went out the window. After you were gone. And he was going to blackmail you. Only he didn’t know he was dealing with a killer.”

Arrenhower stepped toward the door. “Now he knows,” he said quietly. “But you don’t, Blake. Why would I want your wife dead?”

“I even know that,” Blake said hoarsely. “I didn’t know why Stella was so insistent that I give up that job in your plant. Before, she had told me she wanted me to get another job. But after I went to work spying on you, she didn’t talk about anything else. I remember thinking she was distraught on the subject. She even drank to keep from thinking about it. She knew I was working against you. And she knew you. She knew how dangerous you were.”

“That may be true. But that’s still no reason for me to kill her.”

“All right. Here it is. You tried to buy me, remember? Ten grand to leave the country. You were over there Saturday. I had gotten away from the plant on Friday night to go to Jax so I could come in to Gulf City on the train. You tried to buy Stella, didn’t you? You offered her how much, Arrenhower? How much to betray me — to set me up for you and your goons? And Stella? She couldn’t be bought — any more than I could. She threatened to tell me, meant to tell me, didn’t she? And you knew you had to kill her!”

He took another forward step. “Only you didn’t know that Glintner was up there. Why? Because he had seen you coming there when I was away. Or maybe Grueter had told him about you. And about Manley. Manley was trying to force her to repay the cost of Lowering’s hospital. Only Stella wasn’t telling me any of that because she didn’t want to worry me with her past. And Glintner thought she was right for blackmail. Only when you killed her, he thought he really had a fine one for plucking.”

He moved forward again, his hands dripping blood. “That’s how you found out about me, isn’t it, Arrenhower? You were chasing Stella. She tried to keep you away without telling me. You wondered why her husband was so seldom home, didn’t you? And the next step was to find out that I was a private investigator. It must have been quite a shock to find out I was investigating you under the name of Robert Cole, employee.”

His face was hard. “And that’s it, Arrenhower. That’s my case against you. If you want to yell for help, now’s the time to do it. It’s not going to save you. But go ahead. Yell!”

It was painful for Arrenhower to move quickly. And that would explain why the room had been wrecked before he could kill Stella. But now the man jerked around and leaped for the door. His voice came from the top of his terrorized throat. “White! Al! For God’s sake! Al! Save me!”

Blake leaped after him, feeling his hands close on Arrenhower’s throat. He dragged him back from the door. Arrenhower’s voice croaked again in terror — “Al!”

From beyond the closed door there were the sounds of many cars, police sirens and then quick staccato gunfire. But it was all vague to Blake. His hands closed on Arrenhower’s neck. He felt Arrenhower sink to his knees, heard his rasping breath as he tried to speak, pleading for his life.

Then he saw the gun that Arrenhower had fought free from his pocket. Arrenhower’s purple face was murderous. He brought the gun upward. Blake growled at him. “Pull that trigger, damn you. You’re going to die anyway. Pull it!” As he talked, his fingers tightened. He could see that it was costing Arrenhower all his strength to lift that gun and there wasn’t enough left even to trip the hair trigger.

“You killed her!” Blake wept. “And now I’ve got you. Now I’ll kill you — and nothing in the world can save you!”

Arrenhower’s eyes seemed bursting from their sockets. He was still trying to lift the gun. But it slid from his fingers and banged on the floor. At that moment the door was flung open.

His fingers still digging into Arrenhower’s fat throat, Blake looked up, willing to die, expecting to die. But it wasn’t Al White. It was Connell, the detective, and beyond him the sharp-featured old maid, Ada Grueter.

“That’s him!” She wailed at Connell. She pointed an accusing finger at the strangling Arrenhower. “He used to come to see her all the time. And he’s the one who slipped into Bixby Glintner’s room and killed him. I know. I was standing hidden in the hall, waiting for Bixby to come out — I just wanted to look at him. Now I never will!”

Connell leaped forward and grasped Blake’s hands, ripping them away from Arrenhower’s throat.

“Let me alone!” Blake screamed. This was the man who laughed at senators and told congressmen when to breathe This was the man who believed he could buy anyone in the world he wanted; he only had to find the price. Here was Arrenhower who could have any woman in the world he wanted. But had wanted the only one he couldn’t have, couldn’t get and couldn’t buy. He wanted Stella until it became a mania. Until the mania drove him wild, until he couldn’t let her live, knowing she was laughing at him, knowing she couldn’t be bought. Knowing that she was good and that she belonged to a guy named Steve Blake. His voice broke and he sobbed. “I’m going to kill him.”

Connell wasn’t quiet any more. He wasn’t patient. His voice rasped. “You are going to kill him, Blake,” he said. He pulled Steve away from the gasping man on the floor. Arrenhower’s mouth was open. He was breathing like a fish out of water. “But you’re going to do it through the law, Blake. Arrenhower broke most all the laws and got away with them, but not this time. You don’t need to take the law into your hands. We’ve rounded up Arrenhower’s goons. And we’ve got a case against him. You’ve nothing more to worry about. A lot to forget, but that’s all. And you can do that if you’ll get out of here now and get back to that girl over there.”

Blake looked at him. Gradually his breathing subsided. He looked down at Arrenhower on the floor. His shoulders straightened. He nodded. He stepped over Arrenhower without even looking at him again and went out through the door, along the hall, down the stairs. His steps quickened. By the time he reached the gravel drive, Blake was running.

THE END.

Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, western, and romance genres.

If you enjoyed this Crime title from Prologue Books, check out other books by Harry Whittington at:

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Slay Ride for a Lady

The Brass Monkey

Call Me Killer

Drawn to Evil

The Naked Jungle

A Woman On the Place

One Deadly Dawn

Heat of Night

Don’t Speak to Strange Girls

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Copyright © 1952 by Harry Whittington, registration renewed 1980

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This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 10: 1-4405-4665-7

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4665-5

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4495-6

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4495-8