Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1956

The little lawyer was suffering from humanity’s most dangerous ailment — he was bored. Chicago was lamentably law-abiding, not even a blonde promised action. But then he met Sam the Finder and bis brand new black eye, and before he could order another whiskey, Malone had bid farewell to...

I

“Thank you very kindly, sir, I am honored,” said John J. Malone, signaling the bartender. “Rye and a beer chaser, please.” He turned around to thank the source of the unexpected invitation.

The voice had been smooth, mellifluous, even cultured. It had sounded as though it belonged to a Harvard educated judge, a British motion picture star, perhaps the model of distinction for a talking whiskey ad. However, the dulcet syllables were the property of a smallish, nondescript-looking man, slightly bald, with a fringe of greyish-brownish hair, pale blue eyes behind rimless glasses, and a prominent, pinkish nose. The smallish man’s coat and pants didn’t quite match, instead of a vest he wore a dingy brown buttoned sweater, and a faded knit scarf concealed whatever collar or tie he might have been wearing — if any. The drink-buyer was further adorned by a truly splendid black eye.

Malone recognized him immediately as Sam “The Finder” Fliegle. The little lawyer held out a cordial hand in greeting. By way of conversation, he uttered a few routine pleasantries about the weather and the coming fights, and tactfully refrained from asking questions about the colorful optic. One of the many things he had learned, in long years of practicing criminal law in Chicago, was that a man’s black eye was his own private business — also, that questions or comments concerning such a shaded lamp seldom created a friendly or pleasant atmosphere.

But Sam the Finder was not in a reticent mood. “Charlie Binkley gave it to me,” he said, pointing to the royal purple orb. “He was trying to serve me with a paper.”

Malone’s eyebrows rose a half-inch. While Charlie Binkley was a most unpopular man, even for a process server, he had never been known as a belligerent one. Furthermore, whenever belligerence was involved, Charlie, like other members of his profession, was usually on the receiving end.

“So,” Sam the Finder said, “I’m going to need your services, Malone.” He added, “This time Charlie has gone too far.”

The little lawyer’s eyebrows rose another half-inch at that one. Lawsuits were hardly what he expected from Sam Fliegle, not in such a case. A thorough going-over in an alley with brass knuckles and saps, yes — a hair-combing with a baseball bat, perhaps. Sam had just the boys who could tend to such chores. But a lawsuit — never. Sam the Finder just was not the type.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Sam the Finder said, in that shockingly beautiful voice. “I’m not going to sue him. Charlie will be taken care of, never fear, but not in the courts of law. I want your services for something else.” He smiled, and Malone, for some reason, didn’t entirely like the smile. Sam the Finder added, “Tomorrow morning, at your office?”

Malone nodded. A client was a client, especially just then. Not only were the John J. Malone finances rapidly plunging toward what threatened to be an all-time low, but life had been entirely too quiet of late. Besides, he liked the little man — even littler than himself.

“Tomorrow morning will be fine,” he said.

Malone finished his drink and put the glass down on the bar. He was bored with the Blue Casino, had, in fact, been regretting the treachery of fate that had brought him there in the first placed when Sam the Finder had appeared. He had come with a party of five, a party that included a tender-eyed, slender-thighed blonde from a new show in town. His head had buzzed with plans, and his spirit soared with expectations for turning it into a party of two as the evening went along.

Fate in the shape of one of his companions — male — had tricked him, and things hadn’t worked out that way. Hence, a party of one and very tired of it, he had been making up his mind to abandon the Blue Casino for Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar, where at least he could be bored and lonely on the cuff.

Therefore, Malone said goodnight to his new client and moved toward the door. Sam the Finder trailed along, saying, in his impeccable accents, “I’m leaving myself, Malone. Delighted to drop you wherever you’re going.”

Malone, too, was delighted. Outside, it was a dreary, dismal night. Indeed, even in good weather, he preferred to confine his pedestrian activities to crossing sidewalks.

In spite of Sam the Finder’s Skid Row apparel, the car that was brought around to the door by a uniformed chauffeur was a satisfactorily splendid black Cadillac limousine. Malone eyed it approvingly. This was the way he preferred to see his clients transported. He remembered, also with approval, that Sam the Finder was known to be anything but a miser. Certainly, Sam was not a poor man. His choice of clothing was therefore a matter of either preference or indifference. Malone considered it his client’s own business, like the black eye, which almost matched the paint job on the Cadillac.

However, the eye became again the topic of conversation as the big car slid noiselessly away from the curb. “Charlie poked it with the papers he was trying to serve,” Sam the Finder said. For the third time, Malone looked at him with mild surprise.

“He’d been chasing after me for two days, trying to serve me,” Sam continued. “Finally, he decided to do it the easy way and came out to the house and rang the doorbell. I opened the peephole to see who was at the door. He got very smart indeed, rolled up the papers quick and shoved them through the peephole — right in my eye!”

“Legal service,” Malone said. “The papers must touch the person of the party being served.”

Sam the Finder flashed him a quick glance, then said, “The law also states that the party serving the papers has to be able to depone, or testify, that they reached the right person. Which Charlie cannot do. I could see him, but he couldn’t see me.”

Malone thought that over, decided Sam the Finder was right. “What are you planning to do about it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Sam the Finder said. “That’s the whole point. When the hearing comes up tomorrow, to decide whether or not Harry Brown got a bad deal when Mike Medinica sold him the All-Northwest Chicago Boxing and Wrestling Club, I’m not going to be present.”

“Legally—” Malone began.

“Legally, Harry Brown can’t ’ prove a thing,” Sam the Finder said. “I’d be out of Chicago right now, except that I’ve got a little business to tend to first.” The big car slid to a stop in front of Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar. “I’ll be in your office in the morning, and then I’m leaving on a business trip — a long business trip.”

The shabby little man opened the Cadillac door and smiled amiably at Malone. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a simple little matter, easily handled. I just want to leave certain things in the hands of a lawyer when I go on that business trip.”

Sam the Finder might at least have made it “good lawyer,” Malone reflected wistfully. But he managed to smile an equally amiable goodnight as his new client drove away. This was no time to argue with a client, new or otherwise. Besides, Sam the Finder was not a person to argue with at anytime anyway.

Joe the Angel noted the size and splendor of the car that delivered Malone. He, too, smiled amiably and said nothing about the size of the bar bill.

“Sam the Finder,” Malone said, saving Joe the Angel the trouble of a question. “Wants me to handle a little matter for him. I’ll take rye.”

“A big man,” Joe the Angel said with a certain reverence.

Malone nodded gloomily, and sighed deeply over his whiskey. He was worse than bored, he was bored with being bored. The recent quietness of life, with its consequent, concomitant lack of clients and equally concomitant lack of funds, was getting on his nerves. Not so much the lack of funds — he was used to that problem and would inevitably find a way to meet it.

There was, for instance, a poker game tomorrow night at Judge Touralchuk’s duplex apartment that ought to help materially. It was the very quietness itself that bothered him. Malone to be happy, needed a certain amount of action around him.

He thought about Sam the Finder. A strange little man, and Malone remarked as much to Joe the Angel. Joe the Angel went on polishing glasses and said, “My cousin Louie says Sam the Finder learned to talk so good from his father, a college teacher.”

“Your cousin Louie should go soak his head,” Malone said amiably.

It made, he thought, a pleasant story, that Sam the Finder’s father had been a professor of English who discovered, during Prohibition, that bootlegging to his students offered far greater profits than guiding them through the intricacies of Henry James’ subordinate clauses. Actually, Sam the Finder had been born back of the yards, just like John J. Malone.

He hated to disillusion Joe the Angel, but truth was truth — outside of a courtroom. He said, “Sam got hold of a correspondence course in better English on a bad debt, and didn’t want to waste it. So he studied it himself, including the phonograph records.”

Not, he reflected again happily, that the little man was a miser. Sam the Finder had a large, luxurious suburban home, as well as a huge country place in Wisconsin. His lovely young red-haired wife wore diamonds as good, and at least as large, as any lady in town. It was a known fact that there was not merely the one, but several Cadillacs. Sam dressed the way he did because he always had, and because his apparel had come to carry, at least in the wearer’s eye, a certain mark of distinction on a level trademarked by Brooks Brothers suits and Countess Mara ties.

Malone was still meditating on Sam the Finder’s personal life, habits and fortune, with a certain emphasis on the amount of the retainer he would probably get in the morning, when the telephone rang. The call was for Malone. The caller von Flanagan — a decidedly anquished Captain von Flanagan.

“Malone,” he said in tones of pure desperation, “I’m in Harry Brown’s apartment. Get over here right away. There’s trouble.”

Malone asked what kind of trouble.

“I can’t tell you over the phone,” von Flanagan replied curtly. Then, in a lower voice, “There’s been a murder.”

“Call the cops,” Malone said with a certain irony.

Von Flanagan didn’t appear to notice the thrust. He said earnestly, “I’m going to, soon as I hang up. Malone, I need you — now!”

Malone hung up, reflecting that things had come to a pretty pass when the head of the Homicide Bureau summoned a lawyer to the scene of a murder before he called the police. He inspected his wallet, borrowed an extra five from Joe the Angel for mad money, hailed a taxi and was on his way.

II

A police car screamed up the street behind him as he crossed the sidewalk toward the unpretentious brick apartment building, but Malone beat the cops to the self-service elevator.

On a sudden thought, as he stepped out of the lift on the sixth floor, he left the door carefully disconnected. He didn’t know what was going on, but it occurred to him that von Flanagan just might want a few minutes of privacy before the law — the rest of the law, Malone corrected himself — arrived on the scene.

The door to Harry Brown’s luxurious apartment stood open. Charlie Binkley, the process server, lay dead on the floor, his head in a pool of blood and a bullet hole through his right eye.

Harry Brown sat in an easy chair, slumped down and looking dazed. Captain Daniel von Flanagan stood in the center of the room, looking frantic and rolling of eye.

“Malone!” von Flanagan gasped. “How is this going to look? I was here! When it happened! How is it going to look in the papers? What am I going to do?”

“What happened?” Malone asked.

“That’s just it,” said the Homicide chief desperately. “I don’t know. Malone—”

“Shut up,” the little lawyer said, but pleasantly. “There isn’t any time to talk.” Or, it occurred to him, for thought either — though it didn’t take much thinking to comprehend the uncomfortable nature of the spot the big police official was in. He asked, “Was your being here a factor in—”

“My being here had nothing to do with this,” von Flanagan interrupted hastily. “Or with him.” He pointed to the body.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. “Don’t say anything,” Malone advised, fast and in a low voice. “You just got here in one hell of a hurry that’s all. Any questions that come up right now — just tell them that I called you. We’ll work the rest out later.”

The look in von Flanagan’s eyes went far beyond mere gratitude. It promised infinite favors for Malone, favors in times to come.

The heavy footsteps reached the door. A loud and angry voice wanted to know just who the hell had left the elevator door ajar and jammed the cage. For the moment it appeared, — this was of greater import than Charlie Binkley’s body on the floor.

No one admitted knowing anything about the elevator door, and the subject was dropped for the moment. The two policemen nodded respectfully to von Flanagan. They told him they’d gotten to the scene as quickly as they could, that the technical boys were on the way. They appeared to assume that von Flanagan had been summoned independently after the killing, that he had promptly called headquarters, that Malone’s presence was a matter for the captain’s discretion.

For the time being, Harry Brown was the focus of attention. The dapper little man in the pinstriped suit sat nervously tapping a cigarette with his long, slender fingers, occasionally passing a hand over shiny black hair which Malone had always suspected was dyed. Harry appeared to be having difficulty finding the right words.

He finally got his story out. Charlie Binkley, he explained, had come to see him on a matter of private business. Under pressure, Harry admitted, that the “business” had to do with the hearing to be conducted on the morrow. He was anxious to learn whether or not certain papers had been served on one Samuel J. Fliegle. What sort of papers? A summons. What sort of hearing on the morrow? The hearing over the fraudulent sale of the All-Northwest Chicago Boxing and Wrestling Club. And what did that have to do with murder? Harry Brown grew a little irritable on that point.

“You stand here nagging,” Harry Brown said, “and the guy who cut Charlie down may still be in the building. We—” with a quick look at the embarrassed von Flanagan— “that is, I chased after him, but he got away down the stairs. Could be he’s still around.”

What did this vanished he look like? Well, it had all happened pretty fast. But he had worn a tan overcoat and a dark hat. And he was tallish. Harry added, “I didn’t see his face.”

One of the policemen left to search the building, looking weary, doubtful and generally morose at his assignment. The other stayed on for the questioning, continuing to take notes while von Flanagan sat and occasionally wiped his brow.

“We’d finished talking,” Harry Brown said. “I was over by the TV set and he was just about to go home. Somebody buzzed the buzzer. I said, ‘See who it is, Charlie,’ and he looked through the peeper. Wham! Somebody shot him right through the eye.”

He dropped his unlighted cigarette, started to pick it up, took out another instead, continued with, “I ran across the room and opened the door. It took a few seconds to get it open, because I had to shove Charlie out of the way. I was just in time to see this character in the brown coat go down the stairs. I chased after him, but he had too big a lead. I tried to get the elevator but it was on another floor. By the time I got it, it was too late.” He added, half-apologetically, “I guess I got excited.”

The police officer muttered something unkind about self-service elevators.

Did Harry Brown have a gun? He did. He produced it without protest to be taken for examination.

That was his whole story. Malone breathed a little easier and observed with wry amusement that von Flanagan did likewise. All the same, von Flanagan was on a hook. And, for that matter, come to think of it, so was John J. Malone.

It would be a simple matter to explain his session with Sam the Finder, who didn’t want to appear at the hearing and had no desire for Charlie Binkley to swear — even without legal proof — that the papers had been served. It would be a simple matter for Malone to tell the story of the black eye, which was all too obviously direct inspiration for the method of Charlie Binkley’s murder. This story, Malone was sure, Sam the Finder had hardly, under the circumstances, confided to anyone else. With these facts educed, and a pick-up order sent out for Sam the Finder, people were not going to ask embarrassing questions as to von Flanagan’s presence on the scene of the crime.

Despite innumerable differences of opinion, von Flanagan had been Malone’s friend since the homicide captain had been a rookie cop, and the famed criminal lawyer working his way through night school by driving a cab. Now, von Flanagan was on a spot.

On the other hand, Sam the Finder was a client.

It was an ethical problem that could hardly be settled in the limited time at his immediate disposal. So Malone compromised.

He signaled von Flanagan with an eyebrow and managed to have a private word with him. “You can tell the press,” he said, both confidingly and confidently, “that you know the identity of the murderer, and that you’ll have him in custody by noon tomorrow.”

Von Flanagan’s grey eyes lighted with hope. “You wouldn’t fool me, Malone?” His voice was a plea.

“I’ll deliver him myself,” Malone said firmly. It was a promise, and they both knew it. Moreover, both men knew Malone made a habit of keeping his word. He added, “That’s all I can tell you right now.”

Not much — but it was enough. Von Flanagan breathed his relief. “Believe me, Malone, my being here didn’t have anything to do with this,” he said earnestly. “It was — well, a personal matter. I wanted to find out something.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Malone told him.

Von Flanagan ploughed ahead. “It don’t matter — now. It’s about this hearing deal. One of my in-laws has some dough tied up with Mike Medinica and he got worried. He knew I knew Harry Brown, and he thought maybe I could ask a few questions — innocently — and find out if he stood to lose it.”

Malone nodded sympathetically. Trust von Flanagan’s in-laws to have money involved in a shady deal. He thought over what he knew of the All-Northwest Chicago Boxing and Wrestling Club — ANCBAWC for short — and its sale. Sam the Finder had set up the sale, from Mike Medinica to Harry Brown. Now, Harry Brown was howling that he’d been robbed, to the extent of a cool hundred grand in hard money, because certain stipulated concessions had not been delivered.

The concessions were supposed to represent various respectable and legal contracts. However, the private bark around town was that a considerable amount of fight fixing and protection was the real issue, promised by Mike Medinica through Sam the Finder, whose highly profitable profession consisted of setting up shady deals. These “concessions,” the bark had it, had failed to materialize once the sale was completed.

Shooting little Charlie Binkley over the comparatively minor matter of Sam the Finder’s appearance at the hearing seemed to Malone rather a drastic method of settling things. However, Sam the Finder had been known to take drastic steps when sufficiently annoyed. The black eye caused by Charlie’s novel delivery methods might be deemed sufficient annoyance, especially since Sam the Finder was also a proud man.

There was comparative calm in the apartment, a calm that Malone knew was unlikely to endure long. He took advantage of it to ask von Flanagan for further details of the events leading up to the shooting.

“Harry and I were talking,” von Flanagan said. “I was just trying to find out if my cousin-in-law’s dough was safe, Malone. Then this guy, Charlie Binkley, knocked. Harry Brown said it was a private matter, and would I mind waiting elsewhere. I said I wouldn’t, and I was very happy to scram into the bedroom. I wouldn’t want it to get around, Malone, that I was up here seeing Harry Brown. It wouldn’t look too good. You know what I mean...”

The little lawyer nodded in perfect understanding.

“So I went into the bedroom. I was looking at a copy of an old Confidential when I heard the shot. Naturally, Malone, I put down the Confidential and looked out. I didn’t exactly rush out, Malone, until I saw what was going on — I mean, what had been going on.”

Malone said, “What did you see?”

“I see this guy, Charlie Binkley, dead, just like now. Harry Brown is running down the hall after some other guy, so I go along to help. But the other character, the one in the tan overcoat, gets away. So I come back and begin to worry about what to do. I tell Harry Brown to shut his trap about me being here, and think a little more. Then, I start calling you and got you at Joe the Angel’s on the second try.”

“A very wise move,” Malone told him. He started to add, automatically, “Keep calm, and I’ll do the talking.” Then he remembered, just in time, who von Flanagan was. He substituted a hearty, “Don’t worry, chum.”

“Malone!” von Flanagan said anxiously, “You’re sure — I mean, absolutely sure — you can deliver the killer by tomorrow noon?”

“I never felt so sure of anything in my entire life,” Malone said. Curiously enough, he meant it.

The calm vanished, as Malone had expected, and confusion again took over with the arrival of more officialdom and the press. Malone stood silent on the sidelines, chewing on an unlighted cigar, while Harry Brown, still nervous, reenacted what had happened.

The little lawyer tagged along, half disinterestedly, while the police again searched the apartment building. Something was bothering him. Moreover, he couldn’t put a mental finger on it, which made it bother him the more. Perhaps, he told himself, it was the sense of responsibility toward an old friend that made the whole affair seem important out of all proportion to reality, and that was the only thing wrong. However, this line of reasoning didn’t relieve his anxiety in the least.

III

Finally, the excitement was over. Harry Brown was taken to headquarters to sign his statement. The late Charlie Binkley was removed to the morgue. No one remained on the premises but a policeman assigned to guard the apartment overnight and Malone.

The little lawyer had declined von Flanagan’s invitation to come along, along with offers of a ride downtown made by various friendly reporters. Nothing impelled him to stay save that vague sense of something wrong, plus an even more vague impulse to search the building on his own, an impulse he tried unsuccessfully to talk himself out of. Then there was an unpleasant prescience of impending trouble.

Eventually, Malone gave up the struggle and, beginning at the top of the building, worked his way down. The seven floors were exactly alike, composed of two apartments with a long, gloomy hall between, a flight of stairs, a trash drop and a mail drop.

Malone paused at Harry Brown’s apartment on the sixth floor to pass a pleasant word or two with Sergeant Zubich, the officer on duty, followed by a brief prowl around the murder premises which told him nothing except that Harry Brown lived exceedingly well, up to and including an assortment of girl friends with expensive tastes in what could best be termed leisure wear.

The basement was a gloomy hole, and by that time Malone was tired, thirsty, and thoroughly sick of the whole business. However, having progressed this far, he decided to take a final look around.

It was in the trash bin that at last he struck oil, in the form of a recently fired.32, almost completely concealed by the waste papers it had slipped through when it landed at the bottom of the trash chute. Malone picked it up gingerly with his handkerchief, looked at it thoughtfully, finally slipped it into his overcoat pocket.

Obviously, proper procedure was to take it straight down to von Flanagan’s office. On the other hand, by this time, von Flanagan might very probably have closed up shop and gone home. However, the gun was highly important evidence and ought to be in the hands of the police.

But it was late — well after midnight — and Malone’s sense of civic duty could be stretched only so far. Nor was it going to do any harm to delay announcement of his discovery until after his conference in the morning with Sam the Finder.

Malone sighed, buttoned his conscience and overcoat tightly and walked up the basement stairs, pondering the matter of how the gun had gotten into the trash bin. Obviously, the fleeing man in the tan overcoat, hearing Harry Brown racing after him — Harry Brown, and then von Flanagan — had been moved to dispose of the gun in case he should be overtaken.

Malone decided that it was his own subconscious half-notice of the trash-chute drops in the hall that had caused his undefinable sense of worry. Or was it? Something else, something equally indefinable, still eluded and disturbed his usually imperturbable sense of well-being.

Oh well, he decided pragmatically, this too would come to him in time. Malone stood for a moment, shivering on the sidewalk in the damp, chill mist, wondering which direction along the dimly-lighted street would take him most rapidly to a telephone and a taxicab. He began to regret the proffered rides he had spurned.

Then, miraculously, it appeared that he was going to get a ride after all. A big dark car slid up to the curb, and its door opened silently. Mike Medinica’s voice said, “Get in, Malone.”

Malone complied gratefully. Not only was he glad to get out of the damp chill, but a few words with big Mike Medinica seemed entirely in order. He stole a glance at the handsome blonde giant who sat relaxed behind the wheel. Mike was a free and easy spender, who dressed on the sharp and snappy side and was reported to be ardently pursued by whole regiments of females between the ages of six and sixty. His occupation? Malone supposed the word promoter would do as well as any.

The little lawyer sighed nostalgically. Things were different from back in the twenties. The big boys were getting refined. He preffered big shots who wore their true colors outside as well as in. But this, alas, was no longer the way of the world — or the underworld.

He leaned back, lit a fresh cigar, glanced out the window and exclaimed, “Hey! You’re going the wrong way, Mike.”

“No, I’m not,” Mike Medinica said serenely.

“But I’m going downtown,” said Malone.

“No, you’re not,” Mike Medinica told him. “You’re going out to Sam the Finder’s farm.”

Malone thought that over and made no comment. There seemed none to make.

“Just to spend the day,” Mike Medinica added persuasively.

The little lawyer protested mildly. “That’s — kidnapping,” he said.

“Call a cop,” Mike suggested. He sounded amused.

Malone thought that one over, too. There didn’t seem to be any truly practical way of getting out of the car, either.

“Nothing personal,” Mike Medinica said a mile or so further north.

“Now look here...” Malone began, a little feebly. He paused to consider, added, more feebly still, “You can’t do this.”

This time Mike Medinica chuckled. He said, “Sue me.”

Malone was silent for another mile. “Understand,” he said at last, “it’s a lovely night for a drive, and all that. But, Mike, I’ve got an appointment with Sam the Finder himself, tomorrow morning at my office.”

“Changed,” said Mike Medinica, laconic as ever. “Sam’s out at the farm now. Waiting for you.”

“But...” Malone stopped. He had almost added that he also had an appointment with von Flanagan in the morning, to say nothing of his promise to produce Charlie Binkley’s killer by noon — a promise that involved Sam the Finder. Mike Medinica seemed hardly the person to discuss this highly delicate matter with.

However, Sam the Finder was a reasonable man. Malone decided to wait and talks things over with him, get everything straightened out — omitting all mention of the murder, of course — and then get back to town. As for transportation, he’d have to worry about that when the time came. Sam the Finder’s farm was out near Libertyville. Malone hoped he had train fare on him. He wondered if Mike Medinica knew about the murder. He wondered, too, just how he was going to find this out in what had to be apparently casual conversation.

Finally, Malone decided that this was no time for small or other talk, and settled down to being merely miserable. The thin drizzle was still coming down, and Mike Medinica drove his big car carelessly over the slippery roads, without apparent concern for curves or traffic. Malone was tired, he was cross, and he was worried.

All in all, he was heartily relieved when Mike turned in through the ornate gateway that led to Sam the Finder’s simple little twenty-two room country cottage. He felt even better when he was ushered into the cheerful warmth and light of the big living room by Olive Fliegle, Sam the Finder’s highly ornamental red-haired wife.

Sam the Finder sat by a comfortably glowing fire, wearing an old-fashioned blanket bathrobe and a pair of carpet slippers. He didn’t look downright grim, Malone reflected, merely a shade less genial than usual. But he rose to greet Malone with a fine warmth of cordiality, bade him to let Olive hang up his hat and overcoat and showed him to the comfortable chair.

“Now listen, Sam,” Malone began. He paused to rearrange his thoughts once more and reached in his pocket for a cigar.

Sam shoved a handsome humidor across the coffee table. “Be my guest,” he said generously.

In more ways than one, Malone thought bitterly. He tried it again. “Sam, much as I’d enjoy staying overnight, I have a number of things to attend to in town, come morning.”

Sam the Finder shrugged his shoulders and waved a careless hand. “Take care of them by telephone,” he suggested. “Make all the calls you want. Long distance if you want to. Be my guest.”

“But, Sam...” Malone managed, by the thinnest of margins to keep sheer desperation out of his voice.

“Make yourself at home. My house is yours.” Sam the Finder remained inexorably expansive.

Olive smiled at Malone winsomely from her chair and, for a fleeting and tingling moment, Malone wondered exactly how far Sam intended his hospitality to go. Then he reminded himself that this was enforced hospitality, although the ugly fact had not actually been brought into the open — yet.

It was Mike Medinica who finally brought it to the surface, after a long and awkward silence. “We trust you, Malone,” he said, by way of reassurance. “Hell, everybody trusts you. But right now, we don’t want to take no chances. Sammy never should have told you how he got that black eye.”

“A client’s confidences are always sacred,” Malone intoned stiffly, “no matter what their nature.” That, he realized, went for the murder of Charlie Binkley, too, if the conversation touched that highly explosive matter. “So there’s no real necessity for this...” He had been about to say, “outrage,” but hastily changed it to, “invitation.”

“Malone,” said Mike Medinica, “this is positively no reflection on your character in any way, and we do not want you to take it as such. But there is entirely too much money involved to take any chances that some damn fool thing might go wrong.”

The little lawyer was, in a way, relieved that Mike had confined the reason for his genteel snatch to mere money.

“Besides which,” the big promoter added, “there is the very likely possibility that if Sam the Finder should take the stand, certain little incidental items might be mentioned in the questioning, irregardless of the fact that Sam the Finder would naturally keep his trap shut. Certain of the finer points of the deal might be brought to the public attention, points we consider are none of the public’s damn business.” Mike drew a long breath and smiled at Malone with revolting amiability.

Little incidental items, Malone thought, certain of the finer points of the deal — such as protection for fixed fights and vicious gambling activities. He wondered if Mike Medinica even knew what had happened to Charlie Binkley. In any event, John J. Malone wasn’t going to be the one to bring up the subject.

“So,” Sam the Finder put in, “tomorrow night, we will drive you back to town. In the meantime, enjoy yourself, Malone. Have yourself a ball.”

It was no time for argument, Malone decided. Somehow he was going to have to get back to town by morning, but surely something would turn up. Something was going to have to. This was one time he couldn’t afford to let down von Flanagan.

“It’s not that we don’t completely trust you,” said Mike Medinica. “It’s just that we wouldn’t want to have anything happen to you. So we know you don’t mind if one of us shares a room with you.”

“Not at all.” Malone lied valiantly, still hoping something would turn up. He decided to drop the subject and ride with the punches for the time being. He glanced idly around the room. “Is that the peephole where you got the black eye, Sam?” he asked casually, looking at the heavy door.

Mike Medinica shook his blonde head. “It was in town, at Sam the Finder’s penthouse apartment.” He added, “Same type of peephole, though.”

Mike might be the eleventh best-dressed man in America, Malone observed to himself, but he still carefully put the word “penthouse” in front of the word “apartment,” underlining it ever so little. Ah, vanity...

Malone inspected the peephole. It was a standard type, of a sort installed on a great many doors, a tiny affair that could be slid open to permit a resident to peer out and see who was ringing the doorbell, without being seen by the ringer outside. A roll of papers, though, would slip through very easily. Poke through, he corrected himself — as, of course, would a bullet. And this peephole was a facsimile of the one installed in the door of Harry Brown’s apartment.

Suddenly he knew he had to get back to town, and as soon as possible. Study of the peephole had caused him to remember what had been eluding him at the scene of Charlie Binkley’s murder.

He strolled to the fireside as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He sat down. His hosts, he noticed with satisfaction, appeared to be pleased, even a little relaxed, at his easy acceptance of enforced confinement.

Olive broke the silence by suggesting a drink. Malone agreed that a drink would be both refreshing and timely. An idea had occurred to him. It might not work, and it was going to take almost incredible stamina to make it work but, at the moment, it was the only idea he had.

Mike Medinica flashed a white-toothed grin, chuckled and said, “And you don’t need to worry, Malone, that Charlie Binkley will up in court and swear that he served the summons on Sam the Finder. He’s already been taken care of.”

Malone opened his mouth to speak and closed it again, a gesture that made him feel like a goldfish. The subject was not one he cared to pursue — at least, not just then.

Drinks were poured, and the conversation again lagged. At last, Olive rose, yawned and stretched sinuously, and announced that she was going to bed. One drink later, Sam the Finder solicitously asked Malone if he weren’t getting tired. Malone smiled cheerfully and said that the hour was far too early for him, that he had never felt more wide awake in his life.

Conversation dipped to zero. Finally, Mike Medinica yawned and suggested a little game to pass the time. Malone allowed himself to brighten slightly. However, Sam the Finder, it seemed, didn’t play cards. Parchesi, now...

Malone decided he could learn parchesi. He regretted that he hadn’t brought much money with him, but...

Sam the Finder, waved objections away. He said, “Your credit’s good here, Malone, and we’ll play for very small stakes.”

Malone said that that would be fine, and how about putting the bottle on the table, so they could all reach it.

IV

The sky was growing perceptibly lighter when the little lawyer leaned back in his chair and reflected ruefully that he’d had no idea there were so many intricacies to the parlor game of parchesi, or that it was possible to lose quite so much money at a child’s game in the space of four hours.

However, he had accomplished his purpose. Mike Medinica sprawled on the davenport, one shoeless foot dragging on the floor, his mouth open and snores emerging from it at regular intervals. Sam the Finder had lasted half an hour longer, but now, at last, he was slumped forward on the table, his head, on its final nod, having just missed the overflowing ashtray at the table’s edge.

Putting both men in slumberland had required four hours and a little over three bottles — but neither of them was going to stir much for a while. Malone grinned happily. As for himself — well, he’d know better when he stood up, but at least his head was reasonably clear.

He scribbled an IOU for his $439 losses of the night’s play and propped it up on the table. The money didn’t worry him much. After all, Sam the Finder was a client, and there was going to be an implausably large fee involved, under the circumstances.

He rose and tiptoed — quite unnecessarily — to the closet. There, he retrieved his hat and overcoat, put them on and realized, for the first time since he entered Mike Medinica’s big sedan, that he had had a gun in his pocket all along.

Oh well, he thought, things were better this way. It was hardly considered gentlemanly for an attorney to point a gun at a client. No, not even if the client kidnapped said attorney. Things were much better this way — much better. And it had all been a lot of good, more or less clean, fun, too.

He opened the door quietly and slipped out into the chill, early morning air. His first breath sent his fumed head reeling, and he grasped the doorpost for support. It was just, he told himself firmly, that he wasn’t used to so much fresh air so early in the morning. It had nothing to do with his having had to keep abreast of his hosts throughout the night.

Somehow, he managed to make his way down the driveway, through the soft, wet slush underfoot, weaving only slightly from side to side. At the gatepost, he paused and looked back. The big neo-Colonial house looked and sounded reassuringly peaceful.

It was going to be several hours before anyone woke up and came downstairs. Still, the occasion called for haste, not loitering. Malone wondered what time it was. His watch had stopped hours earlier, and the grey sky told him nothing.

“It gets early very dark out these days,” he remarked aloud. He began slogging bravely along the highway.

It was cold and dreary and damp, and the going was heavy underfoot. Malone’s head felt strangely weighted, but he was happy as the proverbial lark. Indeed, once he was safely out of earshoot of Sam the Finder’s house, he burst into occasional snatches of song. Even a stumble, which toppled him into the ditch, failed to dismay the little lawyer.

There was a total of nine dollars and some loose change in his pocket, but he was cheerfully confidant this was enough to take him back to Chicago. Cabs, he knew, were seldom available here in the country, but he’d manage somehow.

A soft-focus sun was revealing itself through the murk, orange-yellow and discouraged-looking. But Malone saluted it joyously and burst again into song. He was on his way to the city, all was well, and would be even better once he reached the end of this infernal quagmire of a country road.

A perfidious patch of hidden ice toppled him into the ditch again. For a few minutes, he lay there, reasoning that this was as good a place as any to catch a quick forty winks. Finally, however, his better judgment returned a negative verdict, and he climbed out again. If he went to sleep now, Malone well knew, he’d probably sleep until sometime next summer. He recalled gruesome stories of people who had fallen asleep in blizzards and never waked up at all. True, this wasn’t a blizzard — it was merely an ordinary little old Illinois drizzle. But sleeping in a ditch was undignified. Besides, he had promised von Flanagan.

As of the moment, just what he was going to tell von Flanagan wasn’t entirely clear in his mind. Last night when he examined the peephole in Sam the Finder’s door, in a sudden flash of what he still recognized as brilliant reasoning, he had known everything he needed to know, with enough left over for a sizable tip. Now, the thought had fled his wits as completely as though it had never existed at all. But it would come back, he told himself, it would come back.

The sound of a car in the distance brightened him with prospects of a lift at least partway back to civilization. Then another thought smote him — there was a possibility that Olive Fliegle might have awakened early. She didn’t look like the type of redhead who would awaken early, but you never could tell. If she did, if she came downstairs, she just might have set out after him, to bring him back. That would never do, Malone told himself. It would never, never do.

He looked around hopelessly for a place to hide. There was a slender fence running along the roadside, and one very small tree, the latter a considerable distance away. This left nothing but concealment offered by the ditch, and Malone was damned if he’d get back into that again. He decided to take his chances like a man. Besides, Olive looked reasonably frail. Frailly reasonable, too, which was even more comforting to think about. He giggled at the word switch.

The car, however, turned out to be no Olive vehicle, but a small pick-up truck, its rear covered by a dingy tarpaulin. It slowed down. The driver surveyed Malone and finally stopped for him.

Suddenly, Malone realized that he was in no condition, in appearance or otherwise, to meet the public. Especially not after his last tumble into the ditch. Most particularly, this was no time to encounter small town cops, or civic-minded citizens. But it was too late to do anything about such mischances now.

The truck driver, a thin, weatherworn man, leaned forward. “Had an accident?” He opened the car door encouragingly.

“You might call it that,” Malone said manfully. He didn’t need much encouragement to climb aboard and slam the door before the driver could take a closer look at him and, if he were sensible, change his mind about offering a lift.

“Going far?” the man asked.

Malone opened his mouth to say, “Chicago,” and then merely nodded. Finally, he said, “To the nearest cabstand.” Then remembering where he was, he decided the remark must have been the wrong thing.

His benefactor drove in silence for a while. Then he said, “You must have come from that Mr. Fliegle’s place.”

This time, Malone confined himself to nodding.

They turned into what appeared to be a main highway, and Malone felt a little better. He only hoped the truck was headed toward Chicago and not for some alien distance downstate. After a while, he reached into his pocket for cigars.

“Don’t smoke,” the truck driver said, shaking his head at the proffered perfecto.

Malone put his cigar away. They were quite damp and a little bent anyway.

Thereafter, the drive continued in silence that seemed, to Malone, to bear a mildly unfriendly overtone. Occasionally the truck driver glanced at his passenger out of the corner of an eye.

The little lawyer wondered just what his driver thought of Sam the Finder and his friends, then decided he’d probably be happier in the long run if he didn’t inquire.

V

Suddenly, a crossroads loomed ahead, complete with filling station and a roadside diner. The truck swerved into the filling station and braked to a stop beside a gas pump. The driver got out silently and went inside.

The little lawyer thought fast. He doubted that the pick-up truck was in need of gas this early in the day. He doubted, too, that the driver had stopped merely to pass the time of day with the gas-station attendant. Then instinct took over, and he slipped quickly out of the truck and looked around for a place to hide.

Malone realized almost at once that there was no cover except for the truck itself. Filling station and diner stood on a bare patch of ground, and there was nothing else, not even a tree in sight. He trotted hastily around the truck, keeping it between himself and the two men in the filling station. Then he climbed into the rear and under the tarpaulin. He was, he discovered, nesting among a sack of potatoes.

A few moments later, he heard voices, and lay very still.

“He’s beat it,” the truck driver said.

There was mild speculation as to Malone’s whereabouts, but not much excitement. For this, the little lawyer was grateful. Finally, the truck driver said, “Well, ’tain’t none of my business anyway. The cops have his description now, and I’ve done my duty. Guess he was just another bum.”

Malone valiantly resisted an impulse to leap out and beat the pair of them to a pulp. Only his promise to von Flanagan held him back. This was no time for delays of such frivolous nature, even though his honor was involved.

He settled down as comfortably as he could among the potatoes, and worried. Where was he? He had not the foggiest notion. More important, where was he being driven? He peered out from under the tarpaulin, but saw nothing save dreary looking fields and dirty, melting snow. He wondered what time it was. He sighed and wished he dared to smoke a cigar — also that he had one, dry and unbent. He longed for a number of things, putting a hot bath, a shave and a clean white bed close to the top of the list.

Breakfast, too, would be a joyous fulfillment at the moment. He envisioned, without trying, fluffy scrambled eggs, fried eggs with yolks like golden moons, rosy-pink ham, a mound of lavishly buttered toast — but, he made up his mind firmly, no potatoes. Not this morning — perhaps he would never like them again. His waistline would appreciate such an allergy.

Malone never did know just how long the journey lasted. Afterward, he was to proclaim the journey a matter of hours, and long hours at that. There came a time when the truck slowed down, and there were the sounds of traffic around him. Malone peeked out again, saw crowded cars and began to hope for the best.

Finally, the truck stopped altogether. Malone waited. He heard the door in front open and slam shut. He waited a discreet while longer, then lifted the tarpaulin a little. He was, he discovered, on some sort of business street. There were a few pedestrians strolling by, and he spotted a lunchroom, a drugstore, a shoe-repair shop and a dime store. No one noticed him.

I can see them, but they can’t see me, he thought. The concept seemed important, perhaps the most important idea he had ever had in his life. The only trouble was that he wasn’t entirely sure as to its application. However, it spurred him to immediate action. He slipped out from under the tarpaulin, jumped down from the truck and sped across the sidewalk to the security of the lunchroom. He perched, breathlessly, on the stool furthest from the front and ordered four cups of coffee and two cigars, fast.

The first cigar of the day, plus the coffee, improved not only his physical wellbeing but his wits. He pushed the thought of breakfast into the back of his mind, as something to be attended to later.

He walked back into the washroom and regarded himself thoughtfully in the mirror. True, his hair was hopelessly tangled, he was woefully unshaven, there was a slight bruise on one cheek, his swollen eyes were red-rimmed and his clothes were spotted with mud. Yet it was quite plain to see that John J. Malone was still a fine, upstanding figure of a man. Call him a bum, would they! It was too bad he didn’t have time to look up the truck driver and attend to settlement of his honor just then.

There were, however, more important matters to be attended to, and there was not time to waste on pure pleasure. He dug out a handful of coins, located a telephone and called von Flanagan.

The police officer’s voice had a thank heaven! quality, at sound of Malone. The little lawyer said, “I’m keeping my promise, chum. You might get hold of Sam the Finder and Mike Medinica, out at Sam the Finder’s country place, and have them waked up and brought into town. And meet me at...” he paused, added, “at Harry Brown’s apartment. Never mind where I am.” For that matter, he thought, where am I? Not, he hoped, in Milwaukee. Or somewhere in the Indiana flatlands.

It developed, when he examined the cover of the phone book, that he was merely in Evanston, and he breathed a sigh of relief. From the borderline between Evanston and Chicago to Harry Brown’s apartment was a reasonably fast taxi ride. He looked out cautiously for signs of the pick-up truck, saw that it had gone and went in search of a taxi.

The cab driver, when he found one, looked at him sourly and with suspicion. “That’s a fairly long trip.”

Malone indignantly waved his remaining nine dollars under the driver’s nose and seriously considered taking a poke at it. No cab driver in Chicago proper would be so lamentably lacking in manners. But on this of all mornings, he had no time for lessons in etiquette, either. He brooded about it all the way into town, to the point of seriously considering giving the driver a ten cent tip. Instead, he handed him the entire bankroll and regretted it immediately.

There was no sign of von Flanagan outside Harry Brown’s apartment and, for a moment, Malone considered waiting. There was just one question he wished he had remembered to ask the Homicide captain over the telephone. But that didn’t matter now. He knew what the answer would be, because he knew what it had to be. The peephole in Sam the Finder’s front door — the tarpaulin on the potato truck — You can see them, but they can’t see you — It was as simple as that.

He took the elevator to Harry Brown’s apartment and rang the bell. It was several moments before he heard the peephole being opened, another before the door was opened.

“It’s you,” Harry Brown said joylessly. He looked tired and haggard. “Well, come in. Come in!” He slammed the door after Malone, added, “Nice of you to come all by yourself.”

Malone suddenly began to wish he hadn’t come sans escort.

“I suppose you figured it all out,” said Harry Brown, regarding the little lawyer sourly.

“I found the gun...” Malone began — and knew immediately that he had made a mistake. He tried to move fast, but Harry moved faster, chopping down Malone’s arm with one quick hand and plucking the gun from Malone’s pocket with the other.

“Nice of you to bring this along with you,” Brown said. A smile appeared on his thin mouth, but it didn’t make him look any more pleasant to his guest.

Malone began thinking frantically and hopelessly of ways to stall for time. Von Flanagan was bound to arrive momentarily. He said, “I suppose Charlie Binkley told you he’d sold out...”

“I got no time for talk,” Harry Brown said. “March, Malone.” Malone marched, still desperately trying to think of a way out. He felt numb.

“We’re going to ride up in the elevator,” Harry Brown said, almost gently. “I’m going to leave you there and walk down. I’m going to leave the lift door open, so the elevator is going to stay up there, with you in it. It will be the same gun that shot Charlie Binkley, only this time there won’t be any Malone to find it. By the time anyone gets up, I’m going to be gone a long way away from here, and it’s going to turn out that I haven’t even been near here this morning.”

He closed the elevator door. Malone wasn’t even trying to think anymore. The numbness had crept into his mind. Harry Brown extended a thumb toward the Up button.

At that instant, the elevator started down with a sudden jerk. For a split second, Harry Brown was thrown off balance and, in that split second, Malone dived for him, his numbness forgotten. The gun went off, and Malone didn’t care just then whether he had been hit or not — for Harry Brown had miraculously become the truck driver, the filling station attendant and the cab driver, all rolled into one. The little lawyer fought them all, savagely and joyously.

With a sudden bump, the elevator stopped. Malone’s head struck the floor just as he heard the door flung open, and he almost blacked out.

“He’s killed Malone!” von Flanagan yelled.

Malone sat up. “Not entirely,” he said in an indignant whisper. Then he lapsed into dignified unconsciousness...

VI

“Stop fussing,” Malone said crossly. “There’s nothing the matter with me — nothing that a bath, breakfast and a drink won’t fix right up.” He glared savagely at the physician von Flanagan had hastily summoned.

“Shock and exposure,” the doctor murmured. “A number of contusions and a nasty crack on the head.”

Malone gave him a furious look, told him to go to hell and demanded to know if there was any rye in Harry Brown’s kitchenette.

There was, and the alcohol made him feel rapidly better. He soon was able to sit up on Harry Brown’s sofa and ignore the doctor. An anxious von Flanagan murmured something about a hospital. Then something about Malone’s lying down again. Malone ignored him, too.

Sam the Finder and Mike Medinica sat across the room, and Malone was pleased to see that they looked considerably worse than he felt. Von Flanagan had done a neat, swift job of getting them to Harry Brown’s apartment. It was not that their presence was absolutely necessary to Malone any longer, but they were still on his client list. Besides, the little lawyer liked an audience at such times.

Von Flanagan finally sent the doctor away. He gave Sam the Finder and Mike Medinica an uncomfortable look. “Harry Brown won’t...” he began. Then, “I mean, nothing must come out, but—”

“Stop worrying,” Malone said, cutting him off. “My pals here won’t say a word about your being here when Charlie Binkley was shot. In return for which, I’ll never tell you, or anyone else, how Sam the Finder got his black eye.” He observed the wan, unhappy grin on Sam the Finder’s face.

Malone looked at von Flanagan. “I had everything figured wrong. First, I figured you’d seen the shooting. Then I realized you’d only heard it. You picked up the description of a tallish man in a tan overcoat from Harry Brown.” There was a faint pink on von Flanagan’s face and Malone added hastily, “Just like witnesses always do.”

He lit his second cigar of the day and puffed on it happily, then resumed with, “I didn’t know what I was hunting for when I searched the building — I just had a feeling something was wrong. Then I found the gun. I still figured Sam the Finder had killed Charlie Binkley — in spite of the tall man in the tan overcoat, which certainly wasn’t Sam, and in spite of the fact Sam wouldn’t have ditched the gun.”

Sam said, in a tone of injured innocence, “I never carry a gun anyway, Malone. You know that.”

“You’re among friends,” Malone said. “Besides, Sam, the point is you didn’t carry this gun.” He paused to puff again happily on the cigar. “I finally spotted the flaw in the whole setup. If someone had shot through the peephole, he wouldn’t have known who he was shooting, because he couldn’t see in.”

He paused again, this time for dramatic effect, added, “Get it?” Then, “That meant someone could have been after Harry Brown as well as Charlie. And any number of people might have wanted to shoot Harry, including Sam the Finder and Mike Medinica.”

He waved down their protests, went on with, “But the point is, if the shot was fired through the peephole, whoever fired it wouldn’t have known who he was shooting. And it didn’t seem likely that anyone would shoot indiscriminately through a peephole in the hopes of hitting Charlie Binkley, or Harry Brown, or whoever happened to look out the door.”

Von Flanagan said, “But when I came out in the living room...” his voice trailed off as comprehension dawned in a rosy flush of embarrasment.

“You saw Charlie Binkley on the floor,” said Malone, “lying in front of the doorway. The door was open, and Harry was halfway down the hall — past the trash chute, by that time — supposedly chasing a murderer. Which was just what Harry Brown wanted you to see.”

Von Flanagan growled, “It could have happened to anybody.”

“Happens all the time,” Malone told him cheerfully. He drew a long breath. “Charlie Binkley had been bird-dogging for Harry Brown for a long time, in addition to his being a process server. But this time, he decided to sell out to the other side.” At this point, Malone remembered the question he had wanted to ask von Flanagan earlier. He said, “Did Charlie Binkley have any money on him when your boys went through his pockets last night?”

“More than two grand,” von Flanagan replied promptly.

Malone nodded. “That was what Mike Medinica meant when he told me Charlie Binkley had been taken care of and wasn’t going to testify that he’d served the papers. I should have known it all the time.”

Mike Medinica cleared his throat and said, “Of course, this is just between friends.”

“Of course,” von Flanagan echoed. He added, “The hearing doesn’t come under my department anyway.”

“So Harry Brown,” Malone resumed, “having several reasons for wanting to get rid of his ex-bird dog, saw a heaven-sent opportunity. Charlie Binkley had told him how Sam the Finder got his shiner. That was another point. His murderer had to be somebody who knew about Sam the Finder’s black eye, and that narrowed the field. Von Flanagan was in the next room, and setting things up was easy for Harry Brown.” Malone sighed happily, picked up his glass and said, “Just like finding out what happened was easy for me.”

There was a brief silence. Malone thought of the breakfast he was going to have, and the sleep. And there was the pleasant little matter of money...

Sam the Finder spoke up as though he’d been reading Malone’s thoughts. He said, “You’ll have a handsome fee for this, Malone. You not only accomplished what I had in mind, but you disposed of the hearing once and for all.” He smiled. “Though I must admit — you certainly did it the hard way.”

Malone yawned, stretched and smiled back. “Oh well,” he said. “Things were getting so dull...”