A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Dead on Her Feet

“And another thing I’ve got against these non-stop shindigs,” orated the chief to his slightly bored listeners, “is they let minors get in ’em and dance for days until they wind up in a hospital with the D.T.’s, when the whole thing’s been fixed ahead of time and they haven’t got a chance of copping the prize anyway. Here’s a Missus Mollie McGuire been calling up every hour on the half-hour all day long, and bawling the eardrums off me because her daughter Toodles ain’t been home in over a week and she wants this guy Pasternack arrested. So you go over there and tell Joe Pasternack I’ll give him until tomorrow morning to fold up his contest and send his entries home. And tell him for me he can shove all his big and little silver loving-cups—”

For the first time his audience looked interested, even expectant, as they waited to hear what it was Mr. P. could do with his loving-cups, hoping for the best.

“—back in their packing-cases,” concluded the chief chastely, if somewhat disappointingly. “He ain’t going to need ’em any more. He has promoted his last marathon in this neck of the woods.”

There was a pause while nobody stirred. “Well, what are you all standing there looking at me for?” demanded the chief testily. “You, Donnelly, you’re nearest the door. Get going.”

Donnelly gave him an injured look. “Me, Chief? Why, I’ve got a red-hot lead on that payroll thing you were so hipped about. If I don’t keep after it it’ll cool off on me.”

“All right, then you, Stevens!”

“Why, I’m due in Yonkers right now,” protested Stevens virtuously.

“Machine-gun Rosie has been seen around again and I want to have a little talk with her—”

“That leaves you, Doyle,” snapped the merciless chief.

“Gee, Chief,” whined Doyle plaintively, “gimme a break, can’t you? My wife is expecting—” Very much under his breath ho added: “—me home early tonight.”

“Congratulations,” scowled the chief, who had missed hearing the last part of it. He glowered at them. “I get it!” he roared. “It’s below your dignity, ain’t it! It’s too petty-larceny for you! Anything less than the St. Valentine’s Day massacre ain’t worth going out after, is that it? You figure it’s a detail for a bluecoat, don’t you?” His open palm hit the desk-top with a sound like a firecracker going off. Purple became the dominant color of his complexion. “I’ll put you all back where you started, watching pickpockets in the subway! I’ll take some of the high-falutinness out of you! I’ll— I’ll—” The only surprising thing about it was that foam did not appear at his mouth.

It may have been that the chiefs bark was worse than his bite. At any rate no great amount of apprehension was shown by the culprits before him. One of them cleared his throat inoffensively. “By the way, Chief, I understand that rookie, Smith, has been swiping bananas from Tony on the comer again, and getting the squad a bad name after you told him to pay for them.”

The chief took pause and considered this point.

The others seemed to get the idea at once. “They tell me he darned near wrecked a Chinese laundry because the Chinks tried to pass him somebody else’s shirts. You could hear the screeching for miles.” Doyle put the artistic finishing touch. “I overheard him say he wouldn’t be seen dead wearing the kind of socks you do. He was asking me did I think you had lost an election bet or just didn’t know any better.”

The chief had become dangerously quiet all at once. A faint drumming sound from somewhere on the desk told what he was doing with his fingers. “Oh, he did, did he?” he remarked, very slowly and very ominously.

At this most unfortunate of all possible moments the door blew open and in breezed the maligned one in person. He looked very tired and at the same time enthusiastic, if the combination can be imagined. Red rimmed his eyes, blue shadowed his jaws, but he had a triumphant look on his face, the look of a man who has done his job well and expects a kind word. “Well, Chief,” he burst out, “it’s over! I got both of’em. Just brought ’em in. They’re in the back room right now—”

An oppressive silence greeted him. Frost seemed to be in the air. He blinked and glanced at his three pals for enlightenment.

The silence didn’t last long, however. The chief cleared his throat. “Hrrrmph. Zat so?” he said with deceptive mildness. “Well now, Smitty, as long as your engine’s warm and you’re hitting on all six, just run over to Joe Pasternack’s marathon dance and put the skids under it. It’s been going on in that old armory on the west side—”

Smitty’s face had become a picture of despair. He glanced mutely at the clock on the wall. The clock said four — a.m., not p.m. The chief, not being a naturally hard-hearted man, took time off to glance down at his own socks, as if to steel himself for this bit of cruelty. It seemed to work beautifully. “An election bet!” he muttered cryptically to himself, and came up redder than ever.

“Gee, Chief,” pleaded the rookie, “I haven’t even had time to shave since yesterday morning.” In the background unseen nudgings and silent strangulation were rampant.

“You ain’t taking part in it, you’re putting the lid on it,” the chief reminded him morosely. “First you buy your way in just like anyone else and size it up good and plenty, see if there’s anything against it on moral grounds. Then you dig out one Toodles McGuire from under, and don’t let her stall you she’s of age either. Her old lady says she’s sixteen and she ought to know. Smack her and send her home. You seal everything up tight and tell Pasternack and whoever else is backing this thing with him it’s all off. And don’t go ’way. You stay with him and make sure he refunds any money that’s coming to anybody and shuts up shop good and proper. If he tries to squawk about there ain’t no ordinance against marathons, just lemme know. We can find an ordinance against anything if we go back far enough in the books—”

Smitty shifted his hat from northeast to southwest and started reluctantly toward the great outdoors once more. “Anything screwy like this that comes up, I’m always It,” he was heard to mutter rebelliously. “Nice job, shooing a dancing contest. I’ll probably get bombarded with powder-puffs—”

The chief reached suddenly for the heavy brass inkwell on his desk, whether to sign some report or to let Smitty have it, Smitty didn’t wait to find out. He ducked hurriedly out the door.

“Ah, me,” sighed the chief profoundly, “what a bunch of crumbs. Why didn’t I listen to me old man and join the fire department instead!”

Young Mr. Smith, muttering bad language all the way, had himself driven over to the unused armory where the peculiar enterprise was taking place. “Sixty cents,” said the taxi-driver.

Smitty took out a little pocket account-book and wrote down Taxi-fare — $1.20. “Send me out after nothing at four in the morning, will he!” he commented. After which he felt a lot better.

There was a box-office outside the entrance but now it was dark and untenanted. Smitty pushed through the unlocked doors and found a combination porter and doorman, a gentleman of color, seated on the inside, who gave him a stub of pink pasteboard in exchange for fifty-five cents, then promptly took the stub back again and tore it in half. “Boy,” he remarked affably, “you is either up pow’ful early or up awful late.”

“I just is plain up,” remarked Smitty, and looked around him.

It was an hour before daylight and there were a dozen people left in the armory, which was built to hold two thousand. Six of them were dancing, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at them. It had been going on nine days. There was no one watching them any more. The last of the paid admissions had gone home hours ago, even the drunks and the Park Avenue stay-outs. All the big snow-white arc lights hanging from the rafters had been put out, except one in the middle, to save expenses. Pasternack wasn’t in this for his health. The one remaining light, spitting and sizzling way up overhead, and sending down violet and white rays that you could see with the naked eye, made everything look ghostly, unreal. A phonograph fitted with an amplifier was grinding away at one end of the big hall, tearing a dance-tune to pieces, giving it the beating of its life. Each time the needle got to the end of the record it was swept back to the beginning by a sort of stencil fitted over the turn-table.

Six scarecrows, three men and three girls, clung ludicrously together in pairs out in the middle of the floor. They were not dancing and they were not walking, they were tottering by now, barely moving enough to keep from standing still. Each of the men bore a number on his back. 3, 8, and 14 the numbers were. They were the “lucky” couples who had outlasted all the others, the scores who had started with them at the bang of a gun a week and two days ago. There wasn’t even a coat or vest left among the three men — or a necktie. Two of them had replaced their shoes with carpet-slippers to ease their aching feet. The third had on a pair of canvas sneakers.

One of the girls had a wet handkerchief plastered across her forehead. Another had changed into a chorus-girl’s practice outfit — shorts and a blouse. The third was a slip of a thing, a mere child, her head hanging limply down over her partner’s shoulder, her eyes glazed with exhaustion.

Smitty watched her for a moment. There wasn’t a curve in her whole body. If there was anyone here under age, it was she. She must be Toodles McGuire, killing herself for a plated loving-cup, a line in the newspapers, a contract to dance in some cheap honky-tonk, and a thousand dollars that she wasn’t going to get anyway — according to the chief. He was probably right, reflected Smitty. There wasn’t a thousand dollars in the whole set-up, much less three prizes on a sliding scale. Pasternack would probably pocket whatever profits there were and blow, letting the fame-struck suckers whistle. Cor-ner-lizards and dance-hall belles like these couldn’t even scrape together enough to bring suit. Now was as good a time as any to stop the lousy racket.

Smitty sauntered over to the bleachers where four of the remaining six the armory housed just then were seated and sprawled in various attitudes. He looked them over. One was an aged crone who acted as matron to the female participants during the brief five-minute rest-periods that came every half-hour. She had come out of her retirement for the time being, a towel of dubious cleanliness slung over her arm, and was absorbed in the working-out of a crossword puzzle, mumbling to herself all the while. She had climbed halfway up the reviewing stand to secure privacy for her occupation.

Two or three rows below her lounged a greasy-looking counterman from some one-arm lunchroom, guarding a tray that held a covered tin pail of steaming coffee and a stack of wax-paper cups. One of the rest periods was evidently approaching and he was ready to cash in on it.

The third spectator was a girl in a dance dress, her face twisted with pain. Judging by her unkempt appearance and the scornful bitter look in her eyes as she watched the remaining dancers, she had only just recently disqualified herself. She had one stockingless foot up before her and was rubbing the swollen instep with alcohol and cursing softly under her breath.

The fourth and last of the onlookers (the fifth being the darky at the door) was too busy with his arithmetic even to look up when Smitty parked before him. He was in his shirt-sleeves and wore blue elastic armbands and a green celluloid eye-shade. A soggy-looking stogie protruded from his mouth. A watch, a megaphone, a whistle, and a blank-cartridge pistol lay beside him on the bench. He appeared to be computing the day’s receipts in a pocket notebook, making them up out of his head as he went along. “Get out of my light,” he remarked ungraciously as Smitty’s shadow fell athwart him.

“You Pasternack?” Smitty wanted to know, not moving an inch. “Naw, he’s in his office taking a nap.”

“Well, get him out here, I’ve got news for him.”

“He don’t wanna hear it,” said the pleasant party on the bench. Smitty turned over his lapel, then let it curl back again. “Oh, the lor,” commented the auditor, and two tens left the day’s receipts and were left high and dry in Smitty’s right hand. “Buy yourself a drop of schnapps,” he said without even looking up. “Stop in and ask for me tomorrow when there’s more in the kitty—”

Smitty plucked the nearest armband, stetched it out until it would have gone around a piano, then let it snap back again. The business manager let out a yip. Smitty’s palm with the two sawbucks came up flat against his face, clamped itself there by the chin and bridge of the nose, and executed a rotary motion, grinding them in. “Wrong guy,” he said and followed the financial wizard into the sanctum where Pasternack lay in repose, mouth fixed to catch flies.

“Joe,” said the humbled sidekick, spitting out pieces of ten-dollar-bill, “the lor.”

Pasternack got vertical as though he worked by a spring. “Where’s your warrant?” he said before his eyes were even open. “Quick, get me my mouth on the phone, Moe!”

“You go out there and blow your whistle,” said Smitty, “and call the bally off — or do I have to throw this place out in the street?” He turned suddenly, tripped over something unseen, and went staggering halfway across the room.The telephone went flying out of Moe’s hand at one end and the sound-box came ripping off the baseboard of the wall at the other. “Tch, tch, excuse it please,” apologized Smitty insincerely. “Just when you needed it most, too!”

He turned back to the one called Moe and sent him headlong out into the auditorium with a hearty shove at the back of the neck. “Now do like I told you,” he said, “while we’re waiting for the telephone repairman to get here. And when their dogs have cooled, send them all in here to me. That goes for the cannibal and the washroom dame, too.” He motioned toward the desk. “Get out your little tin box, Pasternack. How much you got on hand to pay these people?”

It wasn’t in a tin box but in a briefcase. “Close the door,” said Pasternack in an insinuating voice. “There’s plenty here, and plenty more will be coming in. How big a cut will square you? Write your own ticket.”

Smitty sighed wearily. “Do I have to knock your front teeth down the back of your throat before I can convince you I’m one of these old-fashioned guys that likes to work for my money?”

Outside a gun boomed hollowly and the squawking of the phonograph stopped. Moe could be heard making an announcement through the megaphone. “You can’t get away with this!” stormed Pasternack. “Where’s your warrant?”

“Where’s your license,” countered Smitty, “if you’re going to get technical? C’mon, don’t waste any more time, you’re keeping me up! Get the dough ready for the pay-off.” He stepped to the door and called out into the auditorium: “Everybody in here. Get your things and line up.” Two of the three couples separated slowly like sleepwalkers and began to trudge painfully over toward him, walking zig-zag as though their metabolism was all shot.

The third pair, Number 14, still clung together out on the floor, the man facing toward Smitty. They didn’t seem to realize it was over. They seemed to be holding each other up. They were in the shape of a human tent, their feet about three feet apart on the floor, their faces and shoulders pressed closely together. The girl was that clothes-pin, that stringbean of a kid he had already figured for Toodles McGuire. So she was going to be stubborn about it, was she? He went over to the pair bellicosely. “C’mon, you heard me, break it up!”

The man gave him a frightened look over her shoulder. “Will you take her off me, please, Mac? She’s passed out or something, and if I let her go she’ll crack her conk on the floor.” He blew out his breath. “I can’t hold her up much longer!”

Smitty hooked an arm about her middle. She didn’t weigh any more than a discarded topcoat. The poor devil who had been bearing her weight, more or less, for nine days and nights on end, let go and folded up into a squatting position at her feet like a shriveled Buddha. “Just lemme stay like this,” he moaned, “it feels so good.” The girl, meanwhile, had begun to bend slowly double over Smitty’s supporting arm, closing up like a jackknife. But she did it with a jerkiness, a deliberateness, that was almost grisly, slipping stiffly down a notch at a time, until her upside-down head had met her knees. She was like a walking doll whose spring has run down.

Smitty turned and barked over one shoulder at the washroom hag. “Hey you! C’mere and gimme a hand with this girl! Can’t you see she needs attention? Take her in there with you and see what you can do for her—”

The old crone edged fearfully nearer, but when Smitty tried to pass the inanimate form to her she drew hurriedly back. “I— I ain’t got the stren’th to lift her,” she mumbled stubbornly. “You’re strong, you carry her in and set her down—”

“I can’t go in there,” he snarled disgustedly. “That’s no place for me! What’re you here for if you can’t—”

The girl who had been sitting on the sidelines suddenly got up and came limping over on one stockingless foot. “Give her to me,” she said. “I’ll take her in for you.” She gave the old woman a long hard look before which the latter quailed and dropped her eyes. “Take hold of her feet,” she ordered in a low voice. The hag hurriedly stooped to obey. They sidled off with her between them, and disappeared around the side of the orchestra-stand, toward the washroom. Their burden sagged low, until it almost touched the floor.

“Hang onto her,” Smitty thought he heard the younger woman say. “She won’t bite you!” The washroom door banged closed on the weird little procession. Smitty turned and hoisted the deflated Number 14 to his feet. “C’mon,” he said. “In you go, with the rest!”

They were all lined up against the wall in Pasternack’s “office,” so played-out that if the wall had suddenly been taken away they would have all toppled flat like a pack of cards. Pasternack and his shill had gone into a huddle in the opposite corner, buzzing like a hive of bees.

“Would you two like to be alone?” Smitty wanted to know, parking Number 14 with the rest of the droops.

Pasternack evidently believed in the old adage, “He who fights and runs away lives to fight, etc.” The game, he seemed to think, was no longer worth the candle. He unlatched the briefcase he had been guarding under his arm, walked back to the desk with it, and prepared to ease his conscience. “Well, folks,” he remarked genially, “on the advice of this gentleman here” (big pally smile for Smitty) “my partner and I are calling off the contest. While we are under no legal obligation to any of you” (business of clearing his throat and hitching up his necktie) “we have decided to do the square thing, just so there won’t be any trouble, and split the prize money among all the remaining entries. Deducting the rental for the armory, the light bill, and the cost of printing tickets and handbills, that would leave—”

“No, you don’t!” said Smitty. “That comes out of your first nine days profits. What’s on hand now gets divvied without any deductions. Do it your way and they’d all be owing you money!” He turned to the doorman. “You been paid, sunburnt?”

“Nossuh! I’se got five dolluhs a night coming at me—”

“Forty-five for you,” said Smitty.

Pasternack suddenly blew up and advanced menacingly upon his partner. “That’s what I get for listening to you, know-it-all! So New York was a sucker town, was it? So there was easy pickings here, was there? Yah!”

“Boys, boys,” remonstrated Smitty, elbowing them apart.

“Throw them a piece of cheese, the rats,” remarked the girl in shorts. There was a scuffling sound in the doorway and Smitty turned in time to see the lamed girl and the washroom matron each trying to get in ahead of the other.

“You don’t leave me in there!”

“Well, I’m not staying in there alone with her. It ain’t my job! I resign!”

The one with the limp got to him first. “Listen, mister, you better go in there yourself,” she panted. “We can’t do anything with her. I think she’s dead.”

“She’s cold as ice and all stiff-like,” corroborated the old woman.

“Oh my God, I’ve killed her!” someone groaned. Number 14 sagged to his knees and went out like a light. Those on either side of him eased him down to the floor by his arms, too weak themselves to support him.

“Hold everything!” barked Smitty. He gripped the pop-eyed doorman by the shoulder. “Scram out front and get a cop. Tell him to put in a call for an ambulance, and then have him report in here to me. And if you try lighting out, you lose your forty-five bucks and get the electric chair.”

“I’se pracktilly back inside again,” sobbed the terrified darky as he fled.

“The rest of you stay right where you are. I’ll hold you responsible, Pasternack, if anybody ducks.”

“As though we could move an inch on these howling dogs,” muttered the girl in shorts.

Smitty pushed the girl with one shoe ahead of him. “You come and show me,” he grunted. He was what might be termed a moral coward at the moment; he was going where he’d never gone before.

“Straight ahead of you,” she scowled, halting outside the door. “Do you need a road-map?”

“C’mon, I’m not going in there alone,” he said, and gave her a shove through the forbidden portal.

She was stretched out on the floor where they’d left her, a bottle of rubbing alcohol that hadn’t worked uncorked beside her. His face was flaming as he squatted down and examined her. She was gone all right. She was as cold as they’d said and getting more rigid by the minute. “Overtaxed her heart most likely,” he growled. “That guy Pasternack ought to be hauled up for this. He’s morally responsible.” The cop, less well-brought-up than Smitty, stuck his head in the door without compunction.

“Stay by the entrance,” Smitty instructed him. “Nobody leaves.” Then, “This was the McGuire kid, wasn’t it?” he asked his feminine companion.

“Can’t prove it by me,” she said sulkily. “Pasternack kept calling her Rose Lamont all through the contest. Why don’tcha ask the guy that was dancing with her? Maybe they got around to swapping names after nine days. Personally,” she said as she moved toward the door, “I don’t know who she was and I don’t give a damn!”

“You’ll make a swell mother for some guy’s children,” commented Smitty following her out. “In there,” he said to the ambulance doctor who had just arrived, “but it’s the morgue now, and not first-aid. Take a look.”

Number 14, when he got back to where they all were, was taking it hard and self-accusing. “I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to!” he kept moaning.

“Shut up, you sap, you’re making it tough for yourself,” someone hissed.

“Lemme see a list of your entries,” Smitty told Pasternack.

The impresario fished a ledger out of the desk drawer and held it out to him. “All I got out of this enterprise was kicks in the pants! Why didn’t I stick to the sticks where they don’t drop dead from a little dancing? Ask me, why didn’t I?”

“Fourteen,” read Smitty. “Rose Lamont and Gene Monahan. That your real name, guy? Back it up.” 14 jerked off the coat that someone had slipped around his shoulders and turned the inner pocket inside out. The name was inked onto the label. The address checked too. “What about her, was that her real tag?”

“McGuire was her real name,” admitted Monahan, “Toodles

McGuire. She was going to change it anyway, pretty soon, if we’dda won that thousand” — he hung his head — “so it didn’t matter.”

“Why’d you say you did it? Why do you keep saying you didn’t mean to?”

“Because I could feel there was something the matter with her in my arms. I knew she oughtta quit, and I wouldn’t let her. I kept begging her to stick it out a little longer, even when she didn’t answer me. I went crazy, I guess, thinking of that thousand dollars. We needed it to get married on. I kept expecting the others to drop out any minute, there were only two other couples left, and no one was watching us any more. When the rest-periods came, I carried her in my arms to the washroom door, so no one would notice she couldn’t make it herself, and turned her over to the old lady in there. She couldn’t do anything with her either, but I begged her not to let on, and each time the whistle blew I picked her up and started out from there with her—”

“Well, you’ve danced her into her grave,” said Smitty bitterly. “If I was you I’d go out and stick both my feet under the first trolley-car that came along and hold them there until it went by. It might make a man of you!”

He went out and found the ambulance doctor in the act of leaving. “What was it, her heart?”

The A.D. favored him with a peculiar look, starting at the floor and ending at the top of his head. “Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody’s heart keeps going with a seven- or eight-inch metal pencil jammed into it.” He unfolded a handkerchief to reveal a slim coppery cylinder, tapering to needle-like sharpness at the writing end, where the case was pointed over the lead to protect it. It was aluminum — encrusted blood was what gave it its copper sheen. Smitty nearly dropped it in consternation — not because of what it had done but because he had missed seeing it.

“And another thing,” went on the A.D. “You’re new to this sort of thing, aren’t you? Well, just a friendly tip. No offense, but you don’t call an ambulance that long after they’ve gone, our time is too val—”

“I don’t getcha,” said Smitty impatiently. “She needed help; who am I supposed to ring in, potter’s field, and have her buried before she’s quit breathing?”

This time the look he got was withering. “She was past help hours ago.” The doctor scanned his wrist. “It’s five now. She’s been dead since three, easily. I can’t tell you when exactly, but your friend the medical examiner’ll tell you whether I’m right or not. I’ve seen too many of ’em in my time. She’s been gone two hours anyhow.”

Smitty had taken a step back, as though he were afraid of the guy. “I came in here at four thirty,” he stammered excitedly, “and she was dancing on that floor there — I saw her with my own eyes — fifteen, twenty minutes ago!” His face was slightly sallow.

“I don’t care whether you saw her dancin’ or saw her doin’ double-hand-springs on her left ear, she was dead!” roared the ambulance man testily. “She was celebrating her own wake then, if you insist!” He took a look at Smitty’s horrified face, quieted down, spit emphatically out of one comer of his mouth, and remarked: “Somebody was dancing with her dead body, that’s all. Pleasant dreams, kid!” Smitty started to bum slowly. “Somebody was,” he agreed, gritting his teeth. “I know who Somebody is, too. His number was Fourteen until a little while ago; well, it’s Thirteen from now on!”

He went in to look at her again, the doctor whose time was so valuable trailing along. “From the back, eh? That’s how I missed it. She was lying on it the first time I came in and looked.”

“I nearly missed it myself,” the intern told him. “I thought it was a boil at first. See this little pad of gauze? It had been soaked in alcohol and laid over it. There was absolutely no external flow of blood, and the pencil didn’t protrude, it was in up to the hilt. In fact I had to use forceps to get it out. You can see for yourself, the clip that fastens to the wearer’s pocket, which would have stopped it halfway, is missing. Probably broken off long before.”

“I can’t figure it,” said Smitty. “If it went in up to the hilt, what room was there left for the grip that sent it home?”

“Must have just gone in an inch or two at first and stayed there,” suggested the intern. “She probably killed herself on it by keeling over backwards and hittin the floor or the wall, driving it the rest of the way in.” He got to his feet. “Well, the pleasure’s all yours.” He flipped a careless salute and left.

“Send the old crow in that had charge in here,” Smitty told the cop.

The old woman came in fumbling with her hands, as though she had the seven-day itch.

“What’s your name?”

“Josephine Falvey — Mrs. Josephine Falvey.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off what lay on the floor.

“It don’t matter after you’re forty,” Smitty assured her drily. “What’d you bandage that wound up for? D’you know that makes you an accessory to a crime?”

“I didn’t do no such a—” she started to deny whitely.

He suddenly thrust the postage-stamp of folded gauze, rusty on one side, under her nose. She cawed and jumped back. He followed her retreat. “You didn’t stick this on? C’mon, answer me!”

“Yeah, I did!” she cackled, almost jumping up and down. “I did, I did — but I didn’t mean no harm. Honest, mister, I—”

“When’d you do it?”

“The last time, when you made me and the girl bring her in here. Up to then I kept rubbing her face with alcohol each time he brought her back to the door, but it didn’t seem to help her any. I knew I should of gone out and reported it to Pasternack, but he — that feller you know — begged me not to. He begged me to give them a break and not get them ruled out. He said it didn’t matter if she acted all limp that way, that she was just dazed. And anyway, there wasn’t so much difference between her and the rest any more, they were all acting dopy like that. Then after you told me to bring her in the last time, I stuck my hand down the back of her dress and I felt something hard and round, like a carbuncle or berl, so I put a little gauze application over it. And then me and her decided, as long as the contest was over anyway, we better go out and tell you—”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “and I s’pose if I hadn’t shown up she’d still be dancing around out there, until the place needed disinfecting! When was the first time you noticed anything the matter with her?”

She babbled: “About two thirty, three o’clock. They were all in here — the place was still crowded — and someone knocked on the door. He was standing out there with her in his arms and he passed her to me and whispered, ‘Look after her, will you?’ That’s when he begged me not to tell anyone. He said he’d—” She stopped.

“Go on!” snapped Smitty.

“He said he’d cut me in on the thousand if they won it. Then when the whistle blew and they all went out again, he was standing there waiting to take her back in his arms — and off he goes with her. They all had to be helped out by that time, anyway, so nobody noticed anything wrong. After that, the same thing happened each time — until you came. But I didn’t dream she was dead.” She crossed herself. “If I’da thought that, you couldn’t have got me to touch her for love nor money—”

“I’ve got my doubts,” Smitty told her, “about the money part of that, anyway. Outside — and consider yourself a material witness.” If the old crone was to be believed, it had happened outside on the dance floor under the bright arc lights, and not in here. He was pretty sure it had, at that. Monahan wouldn’t have dared try to force his way in here. The screaming of the other occupants would have blown the roof off. Secondly, the very fact that the floor had been more crowded at that time than later had helped cover it up. They’d probably quarreled when she tried to quit. He’d whipped out the pencil and struck her while she clung to him. She’d either fallen and killed herself on it, and he’d picked her up again immediately before anyone noticed, or else the Falvey woman had handled her carelessly in the washroom and the impaled pencil had reached her heart.

Smitty decided he wanted to know if any of the feminine entries had been seen to fall to the floor at any time during the evening. Pasternack had been in his office from ten on, first giving out publicity items and then taking a nap, so Smitty put him back on the shelf. Moe, however, came across beautifully.

“Did I see anyone fall?” he echoed shrilly. “Who didn’t? Such a commotion you never saw in your life. About half-past two. Right when we were on the air, too.”

“Go on, this is getting good. What’d he do, pick her right up again?”

“Pick her up! She wouldn’t get up. You couldn’t go near her! She just sat there swearing and screaming and throwing things. I thought we’d have to send for the police. Finally they sneaked up behind her and hauled her off on her fanny to the bleachers and disqualified her—”

“Wa-a-ait a minute,” gasped Smitty. “Who you talking about?” Moe looked surprised. “That Standish dame, who else? You saw her, the one with the bum pin. That was when she sprained it and couldn’t dance any more. She wouldn’t go home. She hung around saying she was framed and gypped and we couldn’t get rid of her—”

“Wrong number,” said Smitty disgustedly. “Back where you came from.” And to the cop: “Now we’ll get down to brass tacks. Let’s have a crack at Monahan—”

He was thumbing his notebook with studied absorption when the fellow was shoved in the door. “Be right with you,” he said offhandedly, tapping his pockets, “soon as I jot down— Lend me your pencil a minute, will you?”

“I–I had one, but I lost it,” said Monahan dully.

“How come?” asked Smitty quietly.

“Fell out of my pocket, I guess. The clip was broken.”

“This it?”

The fellow’s eyes grew big, while it almost touched their lashes, twirling from left to right and right to left. “Yeah, but what’s the matter with it, what’s it got on it?”

“You asking me that?” leered Smitty. “Come on, show me how you did it!”

Monahan cowered back against the wall, looked from the body on the floor to the pencil, and back again. “Oh no,” he moaned, “no. Is that what happened to her? I didn’t even know—”

“Guys as innocent as you rub me the wrong way,” said Smitty. He reached for him, hauled him out into the center of the room, and then sent him flying back again. His head bonged the door and the cop looked in inquiringly. “No, I didn’t knock,” said Smitty, “that was just his dome.” He sprayed a little of the alcohol into Monahan’s stunned face and hauled him forward again. “The first peep out of you was, ‘I killed her.’ Then you keeled over. Later on you kept saying, ‘I’m to blame, I’m to blame.’ Why try to back out now?”

“But I didn’t mean I did anything to her,” wailed Monahan. “I thought I killed her by dancing too much. She was all right when I helped her in here about two. Then when I came back for her, the old dame whispered she couldn’t wake her up. She said maybe the motion of dancing would bring her to. She said, ‘You want that thousand dollars, don’t you? Here, hold her up, no one’ll be any the wiser.’ And I listened to her like a fool and faked it from then on.”

Smitty sent him hurling again. “Oh, so now it’s supposed to have happened in here — with your pencil, no less! Quit trying to pass the buck!”

The cop, who didn’t seem to be very bright, again opened the door, and Monahan came sprawling out at his feet. “Geez, what a hard head he must have,” he remarked.

“Go over and start up that phonograph over there,” ordered Smitty. “We’re going to have a little demonstration — of how he did it. If banging his conk against the door won’t bring back his memory, maybe dancing with her will do it.” He hoisted Monahan upright by the scruff of the neck. “Which pocket was the pencil in?”

The man motioned toward his breast. Smitty dropped it in point first. The cop fitted the needle into the groove and threw the switch. A blare came from the amplifier. “Pick her up and hold her,” grated Smitty.

An animal-like moan was the only answer he got. The man tried to back away. The cop threw him forward again. “So you won’t dance, eh?”

“I won’t dance,” gasped Monahan.

When they helped him up from the floor, he would dance.

“You held her like that dead, for two solid hours,” Smitty reminded him. “Why mind an extra five minutes or so?”

The moving scarecrow crouched down beside the other inert scarecrow on the floor. Slowly his arms went around her. The two scarecrows rose to their feet, tottered drunkenly together, then moved out of the doorway into the open in time to the music. The cop began to perspire.

Smitty said: “Any time you’re willing to admit you done it, you can quit.”

“God forgive you for this!” said a tomb-like voice.

“Take out the pencil,” said Smitty, “without letting go of her — like you did the first time.”

“This is the first time,” said that hollow voice. “The time before — it dropped out.” His right hand slipped slowly away from the corpse’s back, dipped into his pocket.

The others had come out of Pasternack’s office, drawn by the sound of the macabre music, and stood huddled together, horror and unbelief written all over their weary faces. A corner of the bleachers hid both Smitty and the cop from them; all they could see was that grisly couple moving slowly out into the center of the big floor, alone under the funeral heliotrope arc light. Monahan’s hand suddenly went up, with something gleaming in it; stabbed down again and was hidden against his partner’s back. There was an unearthly howl and the girl with the turned ankle fell flat on her face amidst the onlookers.

Smitty signaled the cop; the music suddenly broke off. Monahan and his partner had come to a halt again and stood there like they had when the contest first ended, upright, tent-shaped, feet far apart, heads locked together. One pair of eyes was as glazed as the other now.

“All right, break, break!” said Smitty.

Monahan was clinging to her with a silent, terrible intensity as though he could no longer let go.

The Standish girl had sat up, but promptly covered her eyes with both hands and was shaking all over as if she had a chill.

“I want that girl in here,” said Smitty. “And you, Moe. And the old lady.”

He closed the door on the three of them. “Let’s see that book of entries again.”

Moe handed it over jumpily.

“Sylvia Standish, eh?” The girl nodded, still sucking in her breath from the fright she’d had.

“Toodles McGuire was Rose Lamont — now what’s your real name?” He thumbed at the old woman. “What are you two to each other?”

The girl looked away. “She’s my mother, if you gotta know,” she said.

“Might as well admit it, it’s easy enough to check up on,” he agreed. “I had a hunch there was a tie-up like that in it somewhere. You were too ready to help her carry the body in here the first time.” He turned to the cringing Moe. “I understood you to say she carried on like nobody’s never-mind when she was ruled out, had to be hauled off the floor by main force and wouldn’t go home. Was she just a bum loser, or what was her grievance?”

“She claimed it was done purposely,” said Moe. “Me, I got my doubts. It was like this. That girl the feller killed, she had on a string of glass beads, see? So the string broke and they rolled all over the floor under everybody’s feet. So this one, she slipped on ’em, fell and turned her ankle and couldn’t dance no more. Then she starts hollering blue murder.” He shrugged. “What should we do, call off the contest because she couldn’t dance no more?”

“She did it purposely,” broke in the girl hotly, “so she could hook the award herself! She knew I had a better chance than anyone else—”

“I suppose it was while you were sitting there on the floor you picked up the pencil Monahan had dropped,” Smitty said casually.

“I did like hell! It fell out in the bleachers when he came over to apolo—” She stopped abruptly. “I don’t know what pencil you’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry about a little slip-up like that,” Smitty told her. “You’re down for it anyway — and have been ever since you folded up out there just now. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already.”

“Anyone woulda keeled over; I thought I was seeing her ghost—”

“That ain’t what told me. It was seeing him pretend to do it that told me he never did it. It wasn’t done outside at all, in spite of what your old lady tried to hand me. Know why? The pencil didn’t go through her dress. There’s no hole in the back of her dress. Therefore she had her dress off and was cooling off when it happened. Therefore it was done here in the restroom. For Monahan to do it outside he would have had to hitch her whole dress up almost over her head in front of everybody — and maybe that wouldn’t have been noticed!

“He never came in here after her; your own mother would have been the first one to squawk for help. You did, though. She stayed a moment after the others. You came in the minute they cleared out and stuck her with it. She fell on it and killed herself. Then your old lady tried to cover you by putting a pad on the wound and giving Monahan the idea she was stupefied from fatigue. When he began to notice the coldness, if he did, he thought it was from the alcohol rubs she was getting every rest-period. I guess he isn’t very bright anyway — a guy like that, that dances for his coffee-and. He didn’t have any motive. He wouldn’t have done it even if she wanted to quit, he’d have let her. He was too penitent later on when he thought he’d tired her to death. But you had all the motive I need — those broken beads. Getting even for what you thought she did. Have I left anything out?”

“Yeah,” she said curtly, “look up my sleeve and tell me if my hat’s on straight!”

On the way out to the Black Maria that had backed up to the entrance, with the two Falvey women, Pasternack, Moe, and the other four dancers marching single file ahead of him, Smitty called to the cop: “Where’s Monahan? Bring him along!”

The cop came up mopping his brow. “I finally pried him loose,” he said, “when they came to take her away, but I can’t get him to stop laughing. He’s been laughing ever since. I think he’s lost his mind. Makes your blood run cold. Look at that!”

Monahan was standing there, propped against the wall, a lone figure under the arc light, his arms still extended in the half-embrace in which he had held his partner for nine days and nights, while peal after peal of macabre mirth came from him, shaking him from head to foot.