Black Mask (Vol. 18, No. 11 — January 1936)

She called herself a tramp; Ted Malvern calls her angel and faces guns at Cyrano’s to find out which is right.

1

Ted Malvern liked the rain; liked the feel of it, the ^ sound of it, the smell of-it out of his LaSalle coupe and stood for a while by the side entrance to the Carondelet, the high collar of his blue suede ulster tickling his ears, his hands in his pockets and a limp cigarette sputtering between his lips. Then he went in past the barber shop and the drug-store and the perfume shop with its rows of delicately lighted bottles, ranged like the ensemble in the finale of a Broadway musical.

He rounded a gold-veined pillar and got into an elevator with a cushioned floor.

“ ’Lo, Albert. A swell rain. Nine.”

The slim tired looking kid in pale blue and silver held a white gloved hand against the closing doors, said:

“Jeeze, you think I don’t know your floor, Mister Malvern?”

He shot the car up to nine without looking at his signal light, whooshed the doors open, then leaned suddenly against the cage and closed his eyes.

Malvern stopped on his way out, flicked a sharp glance from bright brown eyes. “What’s the matter, Albert? Sick?”

The boy worked a pale smile on his face. “I’m workin’ double shift. Corky’s sick. He’s got boils. I guess maybe I didn’t eat enough.”

The tall, brown-eyed man fished a crumpled five-spot out of his pocket, snapped it under the boy’s nose. The boy’s eyes bulged. He heaved upright.

“Jeeze, Mister Malvern. I didn’t mean—”

“Skip it, Albert. What’s a fin between pals? Eat some extra meals on me.”

He got out of the car and started along the corridor. Softly, under his breath, he said:

“Sucker...”

The running man almost knocked him off his feet. He rounded the turn fast, lurched past Malvern’s shoulder, ran for the elevator.

“Down!” He slammed through the dosing doors.

Malvern saw a white set face under a pulled-down hat that was wet with rain; two empty black eyes set very close. Eyes in which there was a peculiar stare he had seen before. A load of dope.

The car dropped like lead. Malvern looked at the place where it had been for a long moment, then he went on down the corridor and around the turn.

He saw the girl lying half in and half out of the open door of 914.

She lay on her side, in a sheen of steel gray lounging pajamas, her cheek pressed into the nap of the hall carpet, her head a mass of thick corn-blond hair, waved with glassy precision. Not a hair looked out of place. She was young, very pretty, and she didn’t look dead.

Malvern slid down beside her, touched her cheek. It was warm. He lifted the hair softly away from her head and saw the bruise.

“Sapped.” His lips pressed back against his teeth.

He picked her up in his arms, carried her through a short hallway to the living-room of a suite, put her down on a big velour davenport in front of some gas logs.

She lay motionless, her eyes shut, her face bluish behind the makeup. He shut the outer door and looked through the apartment, then went back to the hallway and picked up something that gleamed white against the baseboard. It was a bone-handled .22 automatic, seven-shot. He sniffed it, dropped it into his pocket and went back to the girl.

He took a big hammered silver flask out of his inside breast pocket and unscrewed the top, opened her mouth with his fingers and poured whiskey against her small white teeth. She gagged and her head jerked out of his hand. Her eyes opened. They were deep blue, with a tint of purple. Light came into them and the light was brittle.

He lit a cigarette and stood looking down at her. She moved a little more. After a while she whispered:

“I like your whiskey. Could I have a little more?”

He got a glass from the bathroom, poured whiskey into it. She sat up very slowly, touched her head, groaned. Then she took the glass out of his hand and put the liquor down with a practised flip of the wrist.

“I still like it,” she said. “Who are you?”

She had a deep soft voice. He liked the sound of it. He said:

“Ted Malvern. I live down the hall in 937.”

“I... I got a dizzy spell, I guess.”

“Uh-huh. You got sapped, angel.” His bright eyes looked at her probingly. There was a smile tucked to the corners of his lips.

Her eyes got wider. A glaze came over them, the glaze of a protective enamel.

He said: “I saw the guy. He was snowed to the hairline. And here’s your gun.”

He took it out of his pocket, held it on the flat of his hand.

“I suppose that makes me think up a bedtime story,” the girl said slowly.

“Not for me. If you’re in a jam, I might help you. It all depends.”

“Depends on what?” Her voice was colder, sharper.

“On what the racket is,” he said softly. He broke the magazine from the small gun, glanced at the top cartridge. “Copper-nickel, eh? You know your ammunition, angel.”

“Do you have to call me angel?”

“I don’t know your name.”

He grinned at her, then walked over to a desk in front of the windows, put the gun down on it. There was a leather photo frame on the desk, with two photos side by side. He looked at them casually at first, then his gaze tightened. A handsome dark woman and a thin blondish cold-eyed man whose high stiff collar, large knotted tie and narrow lapels dated the photo back many years. He stared at the man.

The girl was talking behind him. “I’m Jean Adrian. I do a number at Cyrano’s, in the floor show.”

Malvern still stared at the photo. “I know Benny Cyrano pretty well,” he said absently. “These your parents?”

He turned and looked at her. She lifted her head slowly. Something that might have been fear showed in her deep blue eyes.

“Yes. They’ve been dead for years,” she said dully. “Next question?”

He went quickly back to the davenport and stood in front of her. “Okey,” he said thinly. “I’m nosey. So what? This is my town. My dad used to run it. Old Marcus Malvern, the People’s Friend. This is my hotel. I own a piece of it. That snowed-up hoodlum looked like a life-taker to me. Why wouldn’t I want to help out?”

The blond girl stared at him lazily. “I still like your whiskey,” she said. “Could I—”

“Take it from the neck, angel. You get it down faster,” he grunted.

She stood up suddenly and her face got a little white. “You talk to me as if I was a crook,” she snapped. “Here it is, if you have to know. A boy friend of mine has been getting threats. He’s a fighter, and they want him to drop a fight. Now they’re trying to get at him through me. Does that satisfy you a little?”

Malvern picked his hat off a chair, took the cigarette end out of his mouth and rubbed it out in a tray. He nodded quietly, said in a changed voice:

“I beg your pardon.” He started towards the door.

The giggle came when he was halfway there. The girl said behind him softly:

“You have a nasty temper. And you’ve forgotten your flask.”

He went back and picked the flask up. Then he bent suddenly, put a hand under the girl’s chin and kissed her on the lips.

“To hell with you, angel. I like you,” he said softly.

He went back to the hallway and out. The girl touched her lips with one finger, rubbed it slowly back and forth. There was a shy smile on her face.

2

Tony Acosta, the bell captain, was slim and dark and slight as a girl, with small delicate hands and velvety eyes and a hard little mouth. He stood in the doorway and said:

“Seventh row was the best I could get, Mister Malvern. This Deacon Werra ain’t bad and Duke Targo’s the next light heavy champ.”

Malvern said: “Come in and have a drink, Tony.” He went over to the window, stood looking out at the rain. “If they buy it for him,” he added over his shoulder.

“Well — just a short one, Mister Malvern.”

The dark boy mixed a highball carefully at a tray on an imitation Sheraton desk. He held the bottle against the light and gauged his drink carefully, tinkled ice gently with a long spoon, sipped, smiled, showing small white teeth.

“Targo’s a lu, Mister Malvern. He’s fast, clever, got a sock in both mitts, plenty guts, don’t ever take a step back.”

“He has to hold up the bums they feed him,” Malvern drawled.

“Well, they ain’t fed him no lion meat yet,” Tony said.

The rain beat against the glass. The thick drops flattened out and washed down the pane in tiny waves.

Malvern said: “He’s a bum. A bum with color and looks, but still a bum.”

Tony sighed deeply. “I wisht I was goin’. It’s my night off, too.”

Malvern turned slowly and went over to the desk, mixed a drink. Two dusky spots showed in his cheeks and his voice was tired, drawling.

“So that’s it. What’s stopping you?”

“I got a headache.”

“You’re broke again,” Malvern almost snarled.

The dark boy looked sidewise under his long lashes, said nothing.

Malvern clenched his left hand, unclenched it slowly. His eyes were sullen.

“Just ask Ted,” he sighed. “Good old Ted. He leaks dough. He’s soft. Just ask Ted. Okey, Tony, take the ducat back and get a pair together.”

He reached into his pocket, held a bill out. The dark boy looked hurt.

“Jeeze, Mister Malvern, I wouldn’t have you think—”

“Skip it! What’s a fight ticket between pals? Get a couple and take your girl. To hell with this Targo.”

Tony Acosta took the bill. He watched the older man carefully for a moment. Then his voice was very soft, saying:

“I’d rather go with you, Mister Malvern. Targo knocks them over, and not only in the ring. He’s got a peachy blonde right on this floor. Miss Adrian, in 914.”

Malvern stiffened. He put his glass down slowly, turned it on the top of the desk. His voice got a little hoarse.

“He’s still a bum, Tony. Okey, I’ll meet you for dinner, in front of your hotel at seven.”

“Jeeze, that’s swell, Mister Malvern.”

Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.

Malvern stood by the desk, his finger tips stroking the top of it, his eyes on the floor. He stood like that for a long time.

“Ted Malvern, the All-American sucker,” he said grimly, out loud. “A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads. Yeah.”

He finished his drink, looked at his wrist-watch, put on his hat and the blue suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of 914 he stopped, lifted his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.

He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.

The Tribune office was at Fourth and Spring. Malvern parked around the corner, went in at the employees’ entrance and rode to the fourth floor in a rickety elevator operated by an old man with a dead cigar in his mouth and a rolled magazine which he held six inches from his nose while he ran the elevator.

On the fourth floor big double doors were lettered City Room. Another old man sat outside them at a small desk with a call box.

Malvern tapped on the desk, said: “Adams. Ted Malvern calling.”

The old man made noises into the box, released a key, pointed with his chin.

Malvern went through the doors, past a horseshoe copy desk, then past a row of small desks at which typewriters were being banged. At the far end a lanky red-haired man was doing nothing, with his feet on a pulled out drawer, the back of his neck on the back of a dangerously tilted swivel chair and a big pipe in his mouth pointed straight at the ceiling.

When Malvern stood beside him he moved his eyes down without moving any other part of his body and said around the pipe:

“Greetings, Teddy. How’s the idle rich?”

Malvern said: “How’s to glance at your clips on a guy named Courtway? State Senator John Myerson Courtway, to be precise.”

Adams put his feet on the floor. He raised himself erect by pulling on the edge of his desk. He brought his pipe down level, took it out of his mouth and spit into a waste basket. He said:

“That old icicle? When was he ever news? Sure.” He stood up wearily, added: “Come along, Uncle,” and started along the end of the room.

They went along another row of desks, past a fat girl in smudged makeup who was typing and laughing at what she was writing.

They went through a door into a big room that was mostly six-foot tiers of filing cases with an occasional alcove in which there was a small table and a chair.

Adams prowled the filing cases, jerked one out and set a folder on a table.

“Park yourself. What’s the graft?”

Malvern leaned on the table on an elbow, scuffed through a thick wad of cuttings. They were monotonous, political in nature, not front page. Senator Courtway said this and that on this and that matter of public interest, addresses this and that meeting, went to or returned from this and that place. It all seemed very dull.

He looked at a few half-tone cuts of a thin, white-haired man with a blank, composed face, deep set dark eyes in which there was no light or warmth. After a while he said:

“Got a print I could sneeze? A real one, I mean.”

Adams sighed, stretched himself, disappeared down the line of file walls. He came back with a shiny narrow black and white photograph, tossed it down on the table.

“You can keep it,” he said. “We got dozens. The guy lives forever. Shall I have it autographed for you?”

Malvern looked at the photo with narrow eyes, for a long time. “It’s right,” he said slowly. “Was Courtway ever married?”

“Not since I left off my diapers,” Adams growled. “Probably not ever. Say, what’n hell’s the mystery?”

Malvern smiled slowly at him. He reached his flask out, set it on the table beside the folder. Adams’ face brightened swiftly and his long arm reached.

“Then he never had a kid,” Malvern said.

Adams leered over the flask. “Well — not for publication, I guess. If I’m any judge of a mug, not at all.” He drank deeply, wiped his lips, drank again.

“And that,” Malvern said, “Is very funny indeed. Have three more drinks — and forget you ever saw me.”

3

The fat man put his face close to Malvern’s face. He said with a wheeze:

“You think it’s fixed, neighbor?”

“Yeah. For Werra.”

“How much says so?”

“Count your poke.”

“I got five yards that want to grow.”

“Take it,” Malvern said tonelessly, and kept on looking at the back of a corn-blond head in a ringside seat. A white wrap with white fur was below the glassily waved hair. He couldn’t see the face. He didn’t have to.

The fat man blinked his eyes and got a thick wallet carefully out of a pocket inside his vest. He held it on the edge of his knee, counted out ten fifty-dollar bills, rolled them up, edged the wallet back against his ribs.

“You’re on, sucker,” he wheezed. “Let’s see your dough.”

Malvern brought his eyes back, reached out a flat pack of new hundreds, riffled them. He slipped five from under the printed band, held them out.

“Boy, this is from home,” the fat man said. He put his face close to Malvern’s face again. “I’m Skeets O’Neal. No little powders, huh?”

Malvern smiled very slowly and pushed his money into the fat man’s hand. “You hold it, Skeets. I’m Ted Malvern. Old Marcus Malvern’s son. I can shoot faster than you can run — and fix it afterwards.”

The fat man took a long hard breath and leaned back in his seat. Tony Acosta stared soft-eyed at the money in the fat man’s pudgy tight hand. He licked his lips and turned a small embarrassed smile on Malvern.

“Gee, that’s lost dough, Mister Malvern,” he whispered. “Unless... unless you got something inside.”

“Enough to be worth a five-yard plunge,” Malvern growled.

The buzzer sounded for the sixth.

The first five had been anybody’s fight. The big blond boy, Duke Targo, wasn’t trying. The dark one, Deacon Werra, a powerful, loose-limbed Polack with bad teeth and only two cauliflower ears, had the physique but didn’t know anything but rough clinching and a giant swing that started in the basement and never connected. He had been good enough to hold Targo off so far. The fans razzed Targo a good deal.

When the stool swung back out of the ring Targo hitched at his black and silver trunks, smiled with a small tight smile at the girl in the white wrap. He was very good-looking, without a mark on him. There was blood on his left shoulder from Werra’s nose.

The bell rang and Werra charged across the ring, slid off Targo’s shoulder, got a left hook in. Targo got more of the hook than was in it. He piled back into the ropes, bounced out, clinched.

Malvern smiled quietly in the darkness.

The referee broke them easily. Targo broke clean. Werra tried for an uppercut and missed. They sparred for a minute. There was waltz music from the gallery. Then Werra started a swing from his shoetops. Targo seemed to wait for it, to wait for it to hit him. There was a queer strained smile on his face. The girl in the white wrap stood up suddenly.

Werra’s swing grazed Targo’s jaw. It barely staggered him. Targo lashed a long right that caught Werra over the eye. A left hook smashed into Werra’s jaw, then a right cross almost to the same spot.

The dark boy went down on his hands and knees, slipped slowly all the way to the floor, lay with both his gloves under him. There were catcalls as he was counted out.

The fat man struggled to his feet, grinning hugely. He said:

“How you like it, pal? Still think it was a set piece?”

“It came unstuck,” Malvern said in a voice as toneless as a police radio.

The fat man said: “So long, pal. Come around lots.” He kicked Malvern’s ankle climbing over him.

Malvern sat motionless, watched the auditorium empty. The fighters and their handlers had gone down the stairs under the ring. The girl in the white wrap had disappeared in the crowd. The lights went out and the barnlike structure looked cheap, sordid.

Tony Acosta fidgeted, watching a man in striped overalls picking up papers between the seats.

Malvern stood up suddenly, said: “I’m going to talk to that bum, Tony. Wait outside in the car for me.”

He went swiftly up the slope to the lobby, through the remnants of the gallery crowd to a gray door marked: “No Admittance.” He went through that and down a ramp to another door marked the same way. A special cop in faded and unbuttoned khaki stood in front of it, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a hamburger in the other.

Malvern flashed a police card and the cop lurched out of the way without looking at the card. He hiccoughed peacefully as Malvern went through the door, then along a narrow passage with numbered doors lining it. There was noise behind the doors. The fourth door on the left had a scribbled card with the name “Duke Targo” fastened to the panel by a thumbtack.

Malvern opened it into the heavy sound of a shower going, out of sight.

In a narrow and utterly bare room a man in a white sweater was sitting on the end of a rubbing table that had clothes scattered on it. Malvern recognized him as Targo’s chief second.

He said: “Where’s the Duke?”

The sweatered man jerked a thumb towards the shower noise. Then a man came around the door and lurched very close to Malvern. He was tall and had curly brown hair with hard gray color in it. He had a big drink in his hand. His face had the flat glitter of extreme drunkenness. His hair was damp, his eyes bloodshot. His lips curled and uncurled in rapid smiles without meaning. He said thickly: “Scramola, umpchay.”

Malvern shut the door calmly and leaned against it and started to get his cigarette case from his vest pocket, inside his open blue raincoat. He didn’t look at the curly haired man at all.

The curly haired man lunged his free right hand up suddenly, snapped it under his coat, out again. A blue steel gun shone dully against his light suit. The glass in his left hand slopped liquor.

“None of that!” he snarled.

Malvern brought the cigarette case out very slowly, showed it in his hand, opened it and put a cigarette between his lips. The blue gun was very close to him, not very steady. The hand holding the glass shook in a sort of jerky rhythm.

Malvern said loosely: “Yeah. You ought to be looking for trouble.”

The sweatered man got off the rubbing table. Then he stood very still and looked at the gun. The curly haired man said:

“We like trouble. Frisk him, Mike.”

The sweatered man said: “I don’t want any part of it, Shenvair. For Pete’s sake, take it easy. You’re lit like a ferry boat.”

Malvern said: “It’s okey to frisk me. I’m not rodded.”

“Nix,” the sweatered man said. “This guy is the Duke’s bodyguard. Deal me out.”

The curly haired man said: “Sure, I’m drunk,” and giggled.

“You’r’a. friend of the Duke?” the sweatered man asked.

“I’ve got some information for him,” Malvern said.

“About what?”

Malvern didn’t say anything. “Okey,” the sweatered man said. He shrugged bitterly.

“Know what, Mike?” the curly haired man said suddenly and violently. “I think this — wants my job. Hell, yes.

He looks like a bum. You ain’t a shamus, are you, mister?” He punched Malvern with the muzzle of the gun.

“Yeah,” Malvern said. “And keep your iron next your own belly.”

The curly haired man turned his head a little and grinned back over his shoulder.

“What d’you know about that, Mike? He’s a shamus. Sure he wants my job. Sure he does.”

“Put the heater up, you fool,” the sweatered man said disgustedly.

The curly haired man turned a little more. “I’m his protection, ain’t I?” he complained.

Malvern knocked the gun aside almost casually, with the hand that held his cigarette case. The curly haired man snapped his head around again. Malvern slid close to him, sank a stiff punch in his stomach, holding the gun away with his forearm. The curly haired man gagged, sprayed liquor down the front of Malvern’s raincoat. His glass shattered on the floor. The blue gun left his hand and went over in a corner. The sweatered man went after it.

The noise of the shower had stopped unnoticed and the blond fighter came out toweling himself vigorously. He stared open-mouthed at the tableau.

Malvern said: “I don’t need this any more.”

He heaved the curly haired man away from him and laced his jaw with a hard right as he went back. The curly haired man staggered across the room, hit the wall, slid down it and sat on the floor.

The sweatered man snatched the gun up and stood rigid, watching Malvern.

Malvern got out a handkerchief and wiped the front of his coat, while Targo shut his large well-shaped mouth slowly and began to move the towel back and forth across his chest. After a moment he said:

“Just who the hell may you be?”

Malvern said: “I used to be a private dick. Malvern’s the name. I think you need help.”

Targo’s face got a little redder than the shower had left it. “Why?”

“I heard you were supposed to throw it, and I think you tried to. But Werra was too lousy. You couldn’t help yourself. That means you’re in a jam.”

Targo said very slowly: “People get their teeth kicked in for saying things like that.”

The room was very still for a moment. The drunk sat up on the floor and blinked, tried to get his feet under him, and gave it up.

Malvern added quietly: “Benny Cyrano is a friend of mine. He’s your backer, isn’t he?”

The sweatered man laughed harshly. Then he broke the gun and slid the shells out of it, dropped the gun on the floor. He went to the door, went out, slammed the door shut.

Targo looked at the shut door, looked back at Malvern. He said very slowly:

“What did you hear?”

“Your friend Jean Adrian lives in my hotel, on my floor. She got sapped by a hood this afternoon. I happened by and saw the hood running away, picked her up. She told me a little of what it was all about.”

Targo had put on his underwear and socks and shoes. He reached into a locker for a black satin shirt, put that on. He said:

“She didn’t tell me.”

“She wouldn’t — before the fight.”

Targo nodded slightly. Then he said: “If you know Benny, you may be all right. I’ve been getting threats. Maybe it’s a lot of birdseed and maybe it’s some Spring Street punter’s idea of how to make himself a little easy dough. I fought my fight the way I wanted to. Now you can take the air, mister.”

He put on high-waisted black trousers and knotted a white tie on his black shirt. He got a white serge coat trimmed with black braid out of the locker, put that on. A black and white handkerchief flared from the pocket in three points.

Malvern stared at the clothes, moved a little towards the door and looked down at the drunk.

“Okey,” he said. “I see you’ve got a bodyguard. It was just an idea I had. Excuse it, please.”

He went out, closed the door gently, and went back up the ramp to the lobby, out to the street. He walked through the rain around the corner of the building to a big graveled parking lot.

The lights of a car blinked at him and his coupé slid along the wet gravel and pulled up. Tony Acosta was at the wheel.

Malvern got in at the right side and said: “Let’s go out to Cyrmo’s, and have a drink, Tony.”

“Jeeze, that’s swell. Miss Adrian’s in the floor show there. You know, the blonde I told you about.”

Malvern said: “Yeah. I saw Targo. I kind of liked him — but I didn’t like his clothes.”

4

Gus Neishacker was a two hundred pound fashion plate with very red cheeks and thin, exquisitely penciled eyebrows — eyebrows from a Chinese vase. There was a red carnation in the lapel of his wide-shouldered dinner jacket and he kept sniffing at it while he watched the headwaiter seat a party of guests. When Malvern and Tony Acosta came through the foyer arch he flashed a sudden smile and went to them with his hand out.

“How’s a boy, Ted? Party?”

Malvern said: “Just the two of us. Meet Mister Acosta. Gus Neishacker, Cyrano’s floor manager.”

Gus Neishacker shook hands with Tony without looking at him. He said: “Let’s see, the last time you dropped in—”

“She left town,” Malvern said. “We’ll sit near the ring but not too near. We don’t dance together.”

Gus Neishacker jerked a menu from under the headwaiter’s arm and led the way down five crimson steps, along the tables that skirted the oval dance floor.

They sat down. Malvern ordered rye highballs and Denver sandwiches. Neishacker gave the order to a waiter, pulled a chair out and sat down at the table. He took a pencil out and made triangles on the inside of a match cover.

“See the fights?” he asked carelessly.

“Was that what they were?”

Gus Neishacker smiled indulgently. “Benny talked to the Duke. He says you’re wise.” He looked suddenly at Tony Acosta.

“Tony’s all right,” Malvern said.

“Yeah. Well do us a favor, will you? See it stops right here. Benny likes this boy. He wouldn’t let him get hurt. He’d put protection all around him — real protection — if he thought that threat stuff was anything but some pool-hall bum’s idea of a very funny joke. Benny never backs but one boxfighter at a time, and he picks them damn’ careful.”

Malvern lit a cigarette, blew smoke from a corner of his mouth, said quietly: “It’s none of my business, but I’m telling you it’s screwy. I have a nose for that sort of thing.”

Gus Neishacker stared at him a minute, then shrugged. He said: “I hope you’re right,” stood up quickly and walked away among the tables. He bent to smile here and there, and speak to a customer.

Tony Acosta’s velvet eyes shone. He said: “Jeeze, Mister Malvern, you think it’s rough stuff?”

Malvern nodded, didn’t say anything. The waiter put their drinks and sandwiches on the table, went away. The band on the stage at the end of the oval floor blared out a long chord and a slick, grinning M.C. slid out on the stage and put his lips to a small open mike.

The floor show began. A line of half naked girls ran out under a rain of colored lights. They coiled and uncoiled in a long sinuous line, their bare legs flashing, their navels little dimples of darkness in soft white, very nude flesh.

A hard-boiled red-head sang a hard-boiled song in a voice that could have been used to split firewood. The girls came back in black tights and silk hats, did the same dance with a slightly different exposure.

The music softened and a tall high yaller torch singer drooped under an amber light and sang of something very far away and unhappy, in a voice like old ivory.

Malvern sipped his drink, poked at his sandwich in the dim light. Tony Acosta’s hard young face was a small tense blur beside him.

The torch singer went away and there was a little pause and then suddenly all the lights in the place went out except the lights over the music racks of the band and little pale amber lights at the entrances to the radiating aisles of booths beyond the tables.

There were squeals in the thick darkness. A single white spot winked on, high up under the roof, settled on a runway beside the stage. Faces were chalk white in the reflected glare. There was the red glow of a cigarette tip here and there. Four tall black men moved in the light, carrying a white mummy case on their shoulders. They came slowly, in rhythm, down the runway. They wore white Egyptian headdresses and loincloths of white leather and white sandals laced to the knees. The black smoothness of their limbs was like black marble in the moonlight.

They reached the middle of the dance-floor and slowly upended the mummy case until the cover tipped forward and fell and was caught. Then slowly, very slowly, a swathed white figure tipped forward and fell — slowly, like the last leaf from a dead tree. It tipped in the air, seemed to hover, then plunged towards the floor under a shattering roll of drums.

The light went off, went on. The swathed figure was upright on the floor, spinning, and one of the blacks was spinning the opposite way, winding the white shroud around his body. Then the shroud fell away and a girl was all tinsel and smooth white limbs under the hard light and her body shot through the air glittering and was caught and passed around swiftly among the four black men, like a baseball handled by a fast infield.

Then the music changed to a waltz and she danced among the black men slowly and gracefully, as though among four ebony pillars, very dose to them but never touching them.

The act ended. The applause rose and fell in thick waves. The light went out and it was dark again, and then all the lights went up and the girl and the four black men were gone.

“Keeno,” Tony Acosta breathed. “Oh, keeno. That was Miss Adrian, wasn’t it?”

Malvern said slowly: “Yeah. A little daring.” He lit another cigarette, looked around. “There’s another black and white number, Tony. The Duke himself, in person.”

Duke Targo stood applauding violently at the entrance to one of the radiating booth aisles. There was a loose grin on his face. He looked as if he might have had a few drinks.

An arm came down over Malvern’s shoulder. A hand planted itself in the ashtray at his elbow. He smelled Scotch in heavy gusts. He turned his head slowly, looked up at the liquor-shiny face of Shenvair, Duke Targo’s drunken bodyguard.

“Smokes and a white gal,” Shenvair said thickly. “Lousy. Crummy. Godawful crummy.”

Malvern smiled slowly, moved his chair a little. Tony Acosta stared at Shenvair round-eyed, his little mouth a thin line.

“Blackface, Mister Shenvair. Not real smokes. I liked it.”

“And who the hell cares what you like?” Shenvair wanted to know.

Malvern smiled delicately, laid his cigarette down on the edge of a plate. He turned his chair a little more.

“Still think I want your job, Shenvair?”

“Yeah. I owe you a smack in the puss too.” He took his hand out of the ashtray, wiped it off on the tablecloth. He doubled it into a fist. “Like it now?”

A waiter caught him by the arm, spun him around.

“You lost your table, sir? This way.”

Shenvair patted the waiter on the shoulder, tried to put an arm around his neck. “Swell, let’s go nibble a drink. I don’t like these people.”

They went away, disappeared among the tables.

Malvern said: “To hell with this place, Tony,” and stared moodily towards the band stage. Then his eyes became intent.

A girl with corn-blond hair, in a white wrap with a white fur collar, appeared at the edge of the shell, went behind it, reappeared nearer. She came along the edge of the booths to the place where Targo had been standing. She slipped in between the booths there, disappeared.

Malvern said: “Yeah. To hell with this place. Let’s go, Tony,” in a low angry voice. Then very softly, in a tensed tone: “No — wait a minute. I see another guy I don’t like.”

The man was on the far side of the dance-floor, which was empty at the moment. He was following its curve around, past the tables that fringed it. He looked a little different without his hat. But he had the same flat white expressionless face, the same close-set eyes. He was youngish, not more than thirty, but already having trouble with his bald spot. The slight bulge of a gun under his left arm was barely noticeable. He was the man who had run away from Jean Adrian’s apartment in the Carondelet.

He reached the aisle into which Targo had gone, into which a moment before Jean Adrian had gone. He went into it.

Malvern said sharply: “Wait here, Tony.” He kicked his chair back and stood up.

Somebody rabbit-punched him from behind. He swiveled, close to Shenvair’s grinning sweaty face.

“Back again, pal,” the curly haired man chortled, and hit him on the jaw.

It was a short jab, well placed for a drunk. It caught Malvern off balance, staggered him. Tony Acosta came to his feet snarling, catlike. Malvern was still rocking when Shenvair let go with the other fist. That was too slow, too wide. Malvern slid inside it, uppercut the curly haired man’s nose savagely, got a handful of blood before he could get his hand away. He put most of it back on Shenvair’s face.

Shenvair wobbled, staggered back a step and sat down on the floor, hard. He clapped a hand to his nose.

“Keep an eye on this bird, Tony,” Malvern growled swiftly.

Shenvair took hold of the nearest tablecloth and yanked it. It came off the table. Silver and glasses and china followed it to the floor. A man swore and a woman squealed. A waiter ran towards them with a livid, furious face.

Malvern almost didn’t hear the two shots.

They were small and flat, close together, a small caliber gun. The rushing waiter stopped dead, and a deeply etched white line appeared around his mouth as instantly as though the lash of a whip had cut it there.

A dark woman with a sharp nose opened her mouth to yell and no sound came from her. There was that instant when nobody makes a sound, when it almost seems as if there will never again be any sound — after the sound of a gun. Then Malvern was running.

He bumped into people who stood up and craned their necks. He reached the entrance to the aisle into which the white-faced man had gone. The booths had high walls and swing doors not so high. Heads stuck out over the doors, but no one was in the aisle yet. Malvern charged up a shallow carpeted slope, at the far end of which booth doors stood wide open.

Legs in dark cloth showed past the doors, slack on the floor, the knees sagged. The toes of black shoes were pointed into the booth.

Malvern shook an arm off, reached the place.

The man lay across the end of a table, his stomach and one side of his face on the white cloth, his left hand dropped between the table and the padded seat. His right hand on top of the table didn’t quite hold a big black gun, a .45 with a cut barrel. The bald spot on his head glistened under the light, and the oily metal of the gun glistened beside it.

Blood leaked from under his chest, vivid scarlet on the white cloth, seeping into it as into blotting paper.

Duke Targo was standing up, deep in the booth. His left arm in the white serge coat was braced on the end of the table. Jean Adrian was sitting down at his side. Targo looked at Malvern blankly, as if he had never seen him before. He pushed his big right hand forward.

A small white-handled automatic lay on his palm.

“I shot him,” he said thickly. “He pulled a gun on us and I shot him.”

Jean Adrian was scrubbing her hands together on a scrap of handkerchief. Her face was strained, cold, not scared. Her eyes were dark.

“I shot him,” Targo said. He threw the small gun down on the cloth. It bounced, almost hit the fallen man’s head. “Let’s... let’s get out of here.”

Malvern put a hand against the side of the sprawled man’s neck, held it there a second or two, took it away.

“He’s dead,” he said. “When a citizen drops a redhot — that’s news.”

Jean Adrian was staring at him stiff-eyed. He flashed a smile at her, put a hand against Targo’s chest, pushed him back.

“Sit down, Targo. You’re not going any place.”

Targo said: “Well — okey. I shot him, see.”

“That’s all right,” Malvern said. “Just relax.”

People were close behind him now, crowding him. He leaned back against the press of bodies and kept on smiling at the girl’s white face.

5

Benny Cyrano was shaped like two eggs, a little one that was his head on top of a big one that was his body. His small dapper legs and feet in patent leather shoes were pushed into the kneehole of a dark sheenless desk. He held a corner of a handkerchief tightly between his teeth and pulled against it with his left hand and held his right hand out pudgily in front of him, pushing against the air. He was saying in a voice muffled by the handkerchief:

“Now wait a minute, boys. Now wait a minute.”

There was a striped built-in sofa in one corner of the office, and Duke Targo sat in the middle of it, between two Headquarters dicks. He had a dark bruise over cheekbone, his thick blond hair was tousled and his black satin shirt looked as if somebody had tried to swing him by it.

One of the dicks, the gray-haired one, had a split lip. The young one with hair as blond as Targo’s had a black eye. They both looked mad, but the blond one looked madder.

Malvern straddled a chair against the wall and looked sleepily at Jean Adrian, near him in a leather rocker. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands, rubbing her palms with it. She had been doing this for a long time, as if she had forgotten she was doing it. Her small firm mouth was angry.

Gus Neishacker leaned against the closed door smoking.

“Now wait a minute, boys,” Cyrano said. “If you didn’t get tough with him, he didn’t fight back. He’s a good boy — the best I ever had. Give him a break.”

Blood dribbled from one corner of Targo’s mouth, in a fine thread down to his jutting chin. It gathered there and glistened. His face was empty, expressionless.

Malvern said coldly: “You wouldn’t want the boys to stop playing blackjack pinochle, would you, Benny?”

The blond dick snarled: “You still got that private dick license, Malvern?”

“It’s lying around somewhere, I guess,” Malvern said.

“Maybe we could take it away from you,” the blond dick snarled.

“Maybe you could do a fan dance, copper. You might be all kinds of a smart guy for all I’d know.”

The blond dick started to get up. The older, one said: “Leave him be. Give him six feet. If he steps over that, we’ll take the screws out of him.”

Malvern and Gus Neishacker grinned at each other. Cyrano made helpless gestures in the air. The girl looked at Malvern under her lashes. Targo opened his mouth and spat blood straight before him on the blue carpet.

Something pushed against the door and Neishacker stepped to one side, opened it a crack, then opened it wide. McChesney came in.

McChesney was a lieutenant of detectives, tall, sandy haired, fortyish, with pale eyes and a narrow suspicious face. He shut the door and turned the key in it, went slowly over and stood in front of Targo.

“Plenty dead,” he said. “One under the heart, one in it. Nice snap shooting. In any league.”

“When you’ve got to deliver you’ve got to deliver,” Targo said dully.

“Make him?” the gray-haired dick asked his partner, moving away along the sofa.

McChesney nodded. “Torchy Plant. A gun for hire. I haven’t seen him round for all of two years. Tough as an ingrowing toenail with his right load. A bindle punk.”

“He’d have to be that to throw his party in here,” the gray-haired dick said.

McChesney’s long face was serious, not hard. “Got a permit for the gun, Targo?”

Targo said: “Yes. Benny got me one two weeks ago. I been getting a lot of threats.”

“Listen, Lieutenant,” Cyrano chirped, “some gamblers try to scare him into a dive, see? He wins nine straight fights by knockouts so they get a swell price. I told him he should take one at that maybe.”

“I almost did,” Targo said sullenly.

“So they sent the redhot to him,” Cyrano said.

McChesney said: “I wouldn’t say no. How’d you beat his draw, Targo? Where was your gun?”

“On my hip.”

“Show me.”

Targo put his hand back into his right hip pocket and jerked a handkerchief out quickly, stuck his finger through it like a gun barrel.

“That handkerchief in the pocket?” McChesney asked. “With the gun?” Targo’s big reddish face clouded a little. He nodded.

McChesney leaned forward casually and twitched the handkerchief from his hand. He sniffed at it, unwrapped it, sniffed at it again, folded it and put it away in his own pocket. His face said nothing.

“What did he say, Targo?”

“He said: ‘I got a message for you, punk, and this is it.’ Then he went for the gat and it stuck a little in the clip. I got mine out first.”

McChesney smiled faintly and leaned far back, teetering on his heels. His faint smile seemed to slide off the end of his long nose. He looked Targo up and down.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’d call it damn’ nice shooting with a .22. But you’re fast for a big guy... Who got these threats?”

“I did,” Targo said. “Over the phone.”

“Know the voice?”

“It might have been this same guy. I’m not just positive.”

McChesney walked stiff-legged to the other end of the office, stood a moment looking at a hand-tinted sporting print. He came back slowly, drifted over to the door.

“A guy like that don’t mean a lot,” he said quietly, “but we got to do our job. The two of you will have to come downtown and make statements. Let’s go.”

He went out. The two dicks stood up, with Duke Targo between them. The gray-haired one snapped:

“You goin’ to act nice, bo?”

Targo sneered: “If I get to wash my face.”

They went out. The blond dick waited for Jean Adrian to pass in front of him. He swung the door, snarled back at Malvern:

“As for you — nuts!”

Malvern said softly: “I like them. It’s the squirrel in me, copper.”

Gus Neishacker laughed, then shut the door and went to the desk.

“I’m shaking like Benny’s third chin,” he said. “Let’s all have a shot of cognac.”

He poured three glasses a third full, took one over to the striped sofa and spread his long legs out on it, leaned his head back and sipped the brandy.

Malvern stood up and downed his drink. He got a cigarette out and rolled it around in his fingers, staring at Cyrano’s smooth white face with an up-from-under look.

“How much would you say changed hands on that fight tonight?” he asked softly. “Bets.”

Cyrano blinked, massaged his lips with a fat hand. “A few grand. It was just a regular weekly show. It don’t listen, does it?”

Malvern put the cigarette in his mouth and leaned over the desk to strike a match. He said:

“If it does, murder’s getting awfully cheap in this town.”

Cyrano didn’t say anything. Gus Neishacker sipped the last of his brandy and carefully put the empty glass down on a round cork table beside the sofa. He stared at the ceiling, silently.

After a moment Malvern nodded at the two men, crossed the room and went out, closed the door behind him. He went along a corridor off which dressing-rooms opened, dark now. A curtained archway let him out at the back of the stage.

In the foyer the headwaiter was standing at the glass doors, looking out at the rain and the back of a uniformed policeman. Malvern went into the empty cloak room, found his hat and coat, put them on, came out to stand beside the headwaiter.

He said: “I guess you didn’t notice what happened to the kid I was with?” The headwaiter shook his head and reached forward to unlock the door.

“There was four hundred people here — and three hundred scrammed before the Law checked in. I’m sorry.”

Malvern nodded and went out into the rain. The uniformed man glanced at him casually. He went along the street to where the car had been left. It wasn’t there. He looked up and down the street, stood for a few moments in the rain, then walked towards Melrose.

After a little while he found a taxi.

6

The ramp of the Carondelet garage curved down into semi-darkness and chilled air. The dark bulks of stalled cars looked ominous against the white washed walls, and the single droplight in the small office had the relentless glitter of the death house.

A big negro in stained coveralls came out rubbing his eyes, then his face split in an enormous grin.

“Hello, there, Mistuh Malvu’n. You kinda restless tonight?”

Malvern said: “I get a little wild when it rains. I bet my heap isn’t here.”

“No, it ain’t, Mistuh Malvu’n. I been all around wipin’ off and yours ain’t here aytall.”

Malvern said woodenly: “I lent it to a pal. He probably wrecked it...”

He flicked a half-dollar through the air and went back up the ramp to the side street. He turned towards the back of the hotel, came to an alley-like street one side of which was the rear wall of the Carondelet. The other side had two frame houses and a four-story brick building. Hotel Blaine was lettered on a round milky globe over the door.

Malvern went up three cement steps and tried the door. It was locked. He looked through the glass panel into a small dim empty lobby. He got out two passkeys; the second one moved the lock a little. He pulled the door hard towards him, tried the first one again. That snicked the bolt back far enough for the loosely fitted door to open.

He went in and looked at an empty counter with a sign: “Manager” beside a plunger bell. There was an oblong of empty numbered pigeon holes on the wall. Malvern went around behind the counter and fished a leather register out of a space under the top. He read names back three pages, found the boyish scrawl: “Tony Acosta,” and a room number in another writing.

He put the register away and went past the automatic elevator and upstairs to the fourth floor.

The hallway was very silent. There was weak light from a ceiling fixture. The last door but one on the left-hand side had a crack of light showing around its transom. That was the door — 411. He put his hand out to knock, then withdrew it without touching the door.

The door-knob was heavily smeared with something that looked like blood.

Malvern’s eyes looked down and saw what was almost a pool of blood on the stained wood before the door, beyond the edge of the runner.

His hand suddenly felt clammy inside his glove. He took the glove off, held his hand stiff, clawlike for a moment, then shook it slowly. His eyes had a sharp strained light in them.

He got a handkerchief out, grasped the door-knob inside it, turned it slowly. The door was unlocked. He went in.

He looked across the room and said very softly: “Tony... oh, Tony.”

Then he shut the door behind him and turned a key in it, still with the handkerchief.

There was light from the bowl that hung on three brass chains from the middle of the ceiling. It shone on a made-up bed, some painted, light-colored furniture, a dull green carpet, a square writing desk of eucalyptus wood.

Tony Acosta sat at the desk. His head was slumped forward on his left arm. Under the chair on which he sat, between the legs of the chair and his, feet, there was a glistening brownish pool.

Malvern walked across the room so rigidly that his ankles ached after the second step. He reached the desk, touched Tony Acosta’s shoulder.

“Tony,” he said thickly, in a low, meaningless voice. “My God, Tony!”

Tony didn’t move. Malvern went around to his side. A blood-soaked bath towel glared against the boy’s stomach, across his pressed-together thighs. His right hand was crouched against the front edge of the desk, as if he was trying to push himself up. Almost under his face there was a scrawled envelope.

Malvern pulled the envelope towards him slowly, lifted it like a thing of weight, read the wandering scrawl of words.

“Tailed him... woptown... 28 Court Street... over garage... shot me... think I got... him... your car...”

The line trailed over the edge of the paper, became a blot there. The pen was on the floor. There was a bloody thumb print on the envelope.

Malvern folded it meticulously to protect the print, put the envelope in his wallet. He lifted Tony’s head, turned it a little towards him. The neck was still warm; it was beginning to stiffen. Tony’s soft dark eyes were open and they held the quiet brightness of a cat’s eyes. They had that effect the eyes of the new dead have of almost, but not quite, looking at you.

Malvern lowered the head gently on the outstretched left arm. He stood laxly, his head on one side, his eyes almost sleepy. Then his head jerked straight and his eyes hardened.

He stripped off his raincoat and the suitcoat underneath, rolled his sleeves up, wet a face towel in the basin in the corner of the room and went to the door. He wiped the knobs off, bent down and wiped up the smeared blood from the floor outside.

He rinsed the towel and hung it up to dry, wiped his hands carefully, put his coats on again. He used his handkerchief to open the transom, to reverse the key and lock the door from the outside. He threw the key in over the top of the transom, heard it tinkle inside.

He went downstairs and out of the Hotel Blaine. It still rained. He walked to the corner, looked along a tree-shaded block. His car was a dozen yards from the intersection, parked carefully, the lights off, the keys in the ignition. He drew them out, felt the seat under the wheel. It was wet, sticky. Malvern wiped his hand off, ran the windows up and locked the car. He left it where it was.

Going back to the Carondelet he didn’t meet anybody. The hard slanting rain still pounded down into the empty streets.

7

There was a thin thread of light under the door of 914. Malvern knocked lightly, looking up and down the hall, moved his gloved fingers softly on the panel while he waited. He waited a long time. Then a voice spoke wearily behind the wood of the door.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Ted Malvern, angel. I have to see you. It’s strictly business.”

The door clicked, opened. He looked at a tired white face, dark eyes that were slatelike, not violet-blue. There were smudges under them as though mascara had been rubbed into the skin. The girl’s strong little hand twitched on the edge of the door.

“You,” she said wearily. “It would be you. Yes... Well, I’ve simply got to have a shower. I smell of policemen.”

“Fifteen minutes?” Malvern asked casually, but his eyes were very sharp on her face.

She shrugged slowly, then nodded. The closing door seemed to jump at him. He went along to his own rooms, threw off his hat and coat, poured whiskey into a glass and went into the bathroom to get ice water from the small tap over the basin.

He drank slowly, looking out of the windows at the dark breadth of the boulevard. A car slid by now and then, two beams of white light attached to nothing, emanating from nowhere.

He finished the drink, stripped to the skin, went under a shower. He dressed in fresh clothes, refilled his big flask and put it in his inner pocket, took a snubnosed automatic out of a suit-case and held it in his hand for a minute staring at it. Then he put it back in the suit-case, lit a cigarette and smoked it through.

He got a dry hat and a tweed coat and went back to 914.

The door was almost insidiously ajar. He slipped in with a light knock, shut the door, went on into the living-room and looked at Jean Adrian.

She was sitting on the davenport, with a freshly scrubbed look, in loose plum-colored pajamas and a Chinese coat. A tendril of damp hair drooped over one temple. Her small even features had the cameo-like clearness that tiredness gives to the very young.

Malvern said: “Drink?”

She gestured emptily. “I suppose so.”

He got glasses, mixed whiskey and ice water, went to the davenport with them.

“Are they keeping Targo on ice?”

She moved her chin an eighth of an inch, staring into her glass.

“He cut loose again, knocked two cops halfway through the wall. They love that boy.”

Malvern said: “He has a lot to learn about cops. In the morning the cameras will be all set for him. I can think of some nice headlines, such as: ‘Well-known Fighter too Fast for Gunman. Duke Targo Puts Crimp in Underworld Hot Rod’.”

The girl sipped her drink. “I’m tired,” she said. “And my foot itches. Let’s talk about what makes this your business.”

“Sure.” He flipped his cigarette case open, held it under her chin. Her hand fumbled at it and while it still fumbled he said: “When you light that tell me why you shot him.”

Jean Adrian put the cigarette between her lips, bent her head to the match, inhaled and threw her head back. Color awakened slowly in her eyes and a small smile curved the line of her pressed lips. She didn’t answer.

Malvern watched her for a minute, turning his glass in his hands. Then he stared at the floor, said:

“It was your gun — the gun I picked up here in the afternoon. Targo said he drew it from his hip pocket, the slowest draw in the world. Yet he’s supposed to have shot twice, accurately enough to kill a man, while the man wasn’t even getting his gun loose from a shoulder-holster. That’s hooey. But you, with the gun in a bag in your lap, and knowing the hood, might just have managed it. He would have been watching Targo.”

The girl said emptily: “You’re a private dick, I hear. You’re the son of a boss politician. They talked about you downtown. They act a little afraid of you, of people you might know. Who sicked you on to me?”

Malvern said: “They’re not afraid of me, angel. They just talked like that to see how you’d react, if I was involved, so on. They don’t know what it’s all about.”

“They were told plainly enough what it was all about.”

Malvern shook his head. “A cop never believes what he gets without a struggle. He’s too used to cooked-up stories. I think McChesney’s wise you did the shooting. He knows by now if that handkerchief of Targo’s had been in a pocket with a gun.”

Her limp fingers discarded her cigarette half-smoked. A curtain eddied at the window and loose flakes of ash crawled around in the ashtray. She said slowly:

“All right. I shot him. Do you think I’d hesitate after this afternoon?”

Malvern rubbed the lobe of his ear. “I’m playing this too light,” he said softly. “You don’t know what’s in my heart. Something has happened, something nasty. Do you think the hood meant to kill Targo?”

“I thought so — or I wouldn’t have shot a man.”

“I think maybe it was just a scare, angel. Like the other one. After all a night-club is a poor place for a getaway.”

She said sharply: “They don’t do many low tackles on forty-fives. He’d have got away all right. Of course he meant to kill somebody. And of course I didn’t mean Duke to front for me. He just grabbed the gun out of my hand and slammed into his act. What did it matter? I knew it would all come out in the end.”

She poked absently at the still burning cigarette in the tray, kept her eyes down. After a moment she said, almost in a whisper: “Is that all you wanted to know?”

Malvern let his eyes crawl sidewise, without moving his head, until he could just see the firm curve of her cheek, the strong line of her throat. He said thickly:

“Shenvair was in on it. The fellow I was with at Cyrano’s followed Shenvair to a hideout. Shenvair shot him. He’s dead. He’s dead, angel — just a young kid that worked here in the hotel. Tony, the bell captain. The cops don’t know that yet.”

The muffled clang of elevator doors was heavy through the silence. A horn tooted dismally out in the rain on the boulevard. The girl sagged forward suddenly, then sidewise, fell across Malvern’s knees. Her body was half-turned and she lay almost on her back across his thighs, her eyelids flickering. The small blue veins in them stood out rigid in the soft skin.

He put his arms around her slowly, loosely, then they tightened, lifted her. He brought her face close to his own face. He kissed her on the side of the mouth.

Her eyes opened, stared blankly, unfocused. He kissed her again, tightly, then pushed her upright on the davenport.

He said quietly: “That wasn’t just an act, was it?”

She leaped to her feet, spun around. Her voice was low and tense and angry.

“There’s something horrible about you! Something — satanic. You come here and tell me another man has been killed — and then you kiss me. It isn’t real.”

Malvern said dully: “There’s something horrible about any man that goes suddenly gaga over another man’s woman.”

“I’m not his woman!” she snapped. “I don’t even like him — and I don’t like you.”

Malvern shrugged. They stared at each other with bleak hostile eyes. The girl clicked her teeth shut, then said almost violently:

“Get out! I can’t talk to you any more. I can’t stand you around. Will you get out?”

Malvern said: “Why not?” He stood up, went over and got his hat and coat.

The girl sobbed once sharply, then she went in light quick strides across the room to the windows, became motionless with her back to him.

Malvern looked at her back, went over near her and stood looking at the soft hair low down on her neck. He said:

“Why the hell don’t you let me help? I know there’s something wrong. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

The girl spoke to the curtain in front of her face, savagely.

“Get out! I don’t want your help. Go away and stay away. I won’t be seeing you — ever.”

Malvern said slowly: “I think you’ve got to have help. Whether you like it or not. That man in the photo frame on the desk there — I think I know who he is. And I don’t think he’s dead.”

The girl turned. Her face now was as white as paper. Her eyes strained at his eyes. She breathed thickly, harshly. After what seemed a long time she said:

“I’m caught. Caught. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Malvern lifted a hand and drew his fingers slowly down her cheek, down the angle of her tight jaw. His eyes held a hard brown glitter, his lips a smile. It was cunning, almost a dishonest smile.

He said: “I’m wrong, angel. I don’t know him at all. Good night.”

He went back across the room, through the little hallway, opened the door. When the door opened the girl clutched at the curtain and rubbed her face against it slowly.

Malvern didn’t shut the door. He stood quite still halfway through it, looking at two men who stood there with guns.

They stood close to the door, as if they had been about to knock. One was thick, dark, saturnine. The other one was an albino with sharp red eyes, a narrow head that showed shining snow-white hair under a rain-spattered dark hat. He had the thin sharp teeth and the drawn-back grin of a rat.

Malvern started to close the door behind him. The albino said: “Hold it, rube. The door, I mean. We’re goin’ in.”

The other man slid forward and pressed his left hand up and down Malvern’s body carefully. He stepped away, said:

“No gat, but a swell flask under his arm.”

The albino gestured with his gun. “Back up, rube. We want the broad, too.”

Malvern said tonelessly: “It doesn’t take a gun, Critz. I know you and I know your boss. If he wants to see me, I’ll be glad to talk to him.”

He turned and went back into the room with the two gunmen behind him.

Jean Adrian hadn’t moved. She stood by the window still, the curtain against her cheek, her eyes closed, as if she hadn’t heard the voices at the door at all.

Then she heard them come in and her eyes snapped open. She turned slowly, stared past Malvern at the two gunmen. The albino walked to the middle of the room, looked around it without speaking, went on into the bedroom and bathroom. Doors opened and shut. He came back on quiet catlike feet, pulled his overcoat open and pushed his hat back on his head.

“Get dressed, sister. We have to go for a ride in the rain. Okey?”

The girl stared at Malvern now. He shrugged, smiled a little, spread his hands.

“That’s how it is, angel. Might as well fall in line.”

The lines of her face got thin and contemptuous. She said slowly: “You... you—” Her voice trailed off into a sibilant, meaningless mutter. She went across the room stiffly and out of it into the bedroom.

The albino slipped a cigarette between his sharp lips, chuckled with a wet, gurgling sound, as if his mouth was full of saliva.

“She don’t seem to like you, rube.”

Malvern frowned. He walked slowly to the writing desk, leaned his hips against it, stared at the floor.

“She thinks I sold her out,” he said dully.

“Maybe you did, rube,” the albino drawled.

Malvern said: “Better watch her. She’s neat with a gun.”

His hands, reaching casually behind him on the desk, tapped the top of it lightly, then without apparent change of movement folded the leather photo frame down on its side and edged it under the blotter.

8

There was a padded arm rest in the middle of the rear seat of the car, and Malvern leaned an elbow on it, cupped his chin in his hand, stared through the half-misted windows at the rain. It was thick white spray in the headlights, and the noise of it on the top of the car was like drum-fire very far off.

Jean Adrian sat on the other side of the arm rest, in the corner. She wore a black hat and a gray coat with tufts of silky hair on it, longer than caracul and not so curly. She didn’t look at Malvern or speak to him.

The albino sat on the right of the thick dark man, who drove. They went through silent streets, past blurred houses, blurred trees, the blurred shine of street lights. There were Neon signs behind thick curtains of mist. There was no sky.

Then they climbed and a feeble arc light strung over an intersection threw light on a sign post, and Malvern read the name “Court Street.”

He said softly: “This is woptown, Critz. The big guy can’t be so dough-heavy as he used to be.”

Light flickered from the albino’s eyes as he glanced back. “You should know, rube.”

The car slowed in front of a big frame house with a trellised porch, walls finished in round shingles, blind, lightless windows. Across the street a stencil sign on a brick building built sheer to the sidewalk said: “Paolo Perrugini Funeral Parlors.”

The car swung out to make a wide turned into a gravel driveway. Lights splashed into an open garage. They wait in, slid to a stop beside a big shiny undertaker’s ambulance.

The albino snapped: “All out!”

Malvern said: “I see our next trip is all arranged for.”

“Funny guy,” the albino snarled. “A wise monkey.”

“Uh-huh. I just have nice scaffold manners,” Malvern drawled.

The dark man cut the motor and snapped on a big flash, then cut the lights, got out of the car. He shot the beam of the flash up a narrow flight of wooden steps in the corner. The albino said:

“Up you go, rube. Push the girl ahead of you. I’m behind with my rod.”

Jean Adrian got out of the car past Malvern, without looking at him. She went up the steps stiffly, and the three men made a procession behind her.

There was a door at the top. The girl opened it and hard white light came out at them. They went into a bare attic with exposed studding, a square window in front and rear, shut tight, the glass painted black. A bright bulb hung on a drop cord over a kitchen table and a big man sat at the table with a saucer of cigarette butts at his elbow. Two of them still smoked.

A thin loose-lipped man sat on a bed with a Luger beside his left hand. There was a worn carpet on the floor, a few sticks of furniture, a half-open clapboard door in the corner through which a toilet seat showed, and one end of a big old-fashioned bathtub standing up from the floor on iron legs.

The man at the kitchen table was large but not handsome. He had carroty hair and eyebrows a shade darker, a square aggressive face, a strong jaw. His thick lips held his cigarette brutally. His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in.

He glanced carelessly at Jean Adrian, said around the cigarette:

“Park the body, sister. Hi, Malvern. Gimme that rod, Lefty, and you boys drop down below again.”

The girl went quietly across the attic and sat down in a straight wooden chair. The man on the bed stood up, put the Luger at the big man’s elbow on the kitchen table. The three gunmen went down the stairs, leaving the door open.

The big man touched the Luger, stared at Malvern, said sarcastically:

“I’m Doll Conant. Maybe you remember me.”

Malvern stood loosely by the kitchen table, with his legs spread wide, his hands in his overcoat pockets, his head tilted back. His half-closed eyes were sleepy, very cold.

He said: “Yeah. I helped my dad hang the only rap on you that ever stuck.”

“It didn’t stick, mugg. Not with the Court of Appeals.”

“Maybe this one will,” Malvern said carelessly. “Kidnaping is apt to be a sticky rap in this State.”

Conant grinned without opening his lips. His expression was grimly good-humored. He said:

“Let’s not barber. We got business to do and you know better than that last crack. Sit down — or rather take a look at Exhibit One first. In the bathtub, behind you. Yeah, take a look at that. Then we can get down to tacks.”

Malvern turned, went across to the clapboard door, pushed through it. There was a bulb sticking out of the wall, with a keyswitch. He snapped it on, bent over the tub.

For a moment his body was quite rigid and his breath was held rigidly. Then he let it out very slowly, and reached his left hand back and pushed the door almost shut. He bent farther over the big iron tub.

It was long enough for a man to stretch out in, and a man was stretched out in it, on his back. He was fully dressed even to a hat, although his hat didn’t look as if he had put it on himself. He had thick gray-brown curly hair. There was blood on his face and there was a gouged, red-rimmed hole at the inner corner of his left eye.

He was Shenvair and he was long since dead.

Malvern sucked in his breath and straightened slowly, then suddenly bent forward still further until he could see into the space between the tub and the wall. Something blue and metallic glistened down there in the dust. A blue steel gun. A gun like Shenvair’s gun.

Malvern glanced back quickly. The not quite shut door showed him a part of the attic, the top of the stairs, one of Doll Conant’s feet square and placid on the carpet, under the kitchen table. He reached his arm out slowly down behind the tub, gathered the gun up. The four exposed chambers had steel-jacketed bullets in them.

Malvern opened his coat, slipped the gun down inside the waistband of his trousers, tightened his belt, and buttoned his coat again. He went out of the bathroom, shut the clapboard door carefully.

Doll Conant gestured at a chair across the table from him: “Sit down.”

Malvern glanced at Jean Adrian. She was staring at him with a kind of rigid curiosity, her eyes dark and colorless in a stone white face under the black hat.

He gestured at her, smiled faintly. “It’s Mister Shenvair, angel. He met with an accident. He’s — dead.”

The girl stared at him without any expression at all. Then she shuddered once, violently. She stared at him again, made no sound of any kind.

Malvern sat down in the chair across the table from Conant.

Conant eyed him, added a smoking stub to the collection in the white saucer, lit a fresh cigarette, streaking the match the whole length of the kitchen table.

He puffed, said casually: “Yeah, he’s dead. You shot him.”

Malvern shook his head very slightly, smiled. “No.”

“Skip the baby eyes, feller. You shot him. Perrugini, the wop undertaker across the street, owns this place, rents it out now and then to a right boy for a quick dust. Incidentally he’s a friend of mine, does me a lot of good among the other wops. He rented it to Shenvair. Didn’t know him, but Shenvair got a right ticket into him. He heard shooting over here tonight, took a look out of his window, saw a guy make it to a car. He saw the license number on the car. Your car.”

Malvern shook his head again. “But I didn’t shoot him, Conant.”

“Try and prove it... The wop ran over and found Shenvair halfway up the stairs, dead. He dragged him up and stuck him in the bathtub. Some crazy idea about the blood, I suppose. Then he went through him, found a police card, a private dick license, and that scared him. He got me on the phone and when I got the name I came steaming.”

Conant stopped talking, eyed Malvern steadily. Malvern said very softly:

“You hear about the shooting at Cyrano’s tonight?”

Conant nodded.

Malvern went on:

“I was there, with a kid friend of mine from the hotel. Just before the shooting this Shenvair threw a punch at me. The kid followed Shenvair here and they shot at each other. Shenvair was drunk and scared and I’ll bet he shot first. I didn’t even know the kid had a gun. Shenvair shot him through the stomach. He got home, died there. He left me a note. I have the note.”

After a moment Conant said: “You killed Shenvair, or hired that boy to do it. Here’s why. He tried to copper his bet on your blackmail racket. He sold out to Courtway.”

Malvern looked startled. He snapped his head around to look at Jean Adrian. She was leaning forward, staring at him with color in her cheeks, a shine in her eyes. She said very softly:

“I’m sorry — angel. I had you wrong.”

Malvern smiled a little, turned back to Conant. He said:

“She thought I was the one that sold out. Who’s Courtway? Your bird dog, the State Senator?”

Conant’s face turned a little white. He laid his cigarette down very carefully in the saucer, leaned across the table and hit Malvern in the mouth with his fist. Malvern went over backwards in the rickety chair. His head struck the floor.

Jean Adrian stood up quickly and her teeth made a sharp clicking sound. Then she didn’t move.

Malvern rolled over on his side and got up and set the chair upright. He got a handkerchief out, patted his mouth, looked at the handkerchief.

Steps clattered on the stairs and the albino poked his narrow head into the room, poked a gun still farther in.

“Need any help, Boss?”

Without looking at him Conant said: “Get out — and shut that door — and stay out!”

The door was shut. The albino’s steps died down the stairs. Malvern put his left hand on the back of the chair and moved it slowly back and forth. His right hand still held the handkerchief. His lips were getting puffed and darkish. His eyes looked at the Luger by Conant’s elbow.

Conant picked up his cigarette and put it in his mouth. He said:

“Maybe you think I’m going to neck this blackmail racket. I’m not, brother. I’m going to kill it — so it’ll stay killed. You’re going to spill your guts. I have three boys downstairs who need exercise. Get busy and talk.”

Malvern said: “Yeah — but your three boys are downstairs.” He slipped the handkerchief inside his coat. His hand came out with the blued gun in it. He said: “Take that Luger by the barrel and push it across the table so I can reach it.”

Conant didn’t move. His eyes narrowed to slits. His hard mouth jerked the cigarette in it once. He didn’t touch the Luger. After a moment he said:

“I guess you know what will happen to you now.”

Malvern shook his head slightly. He said: “Maybe I’m not particular about that. If it does happen, I promise you you won’t know anything about it.”

Conant stared at him, didn’t move. He stared at him for quite a long time, stared at the blue gun. “Where did you get it? Didn’t the heels frisk you?”

Malvern said: “They did. This is Shenvair’s gun. Your wop friend must have kicked it behind the bathtub. Careless.”

Conant reached two thick fingers forward and turned the Luger around and pushed it to the far edge of the table. He nodded and said tonelessly:

“I lose this hand. I ought to have thought of that. That makes me do the talking.”

Jean Adrian came quickly across the room and stood at the end of the table. Malvern reached forward across the chair and took the Luger in his left hand and slipped it down into his overcoat pocket, kept his hand on it. He rested the hand holding the blue gun on the top of the chair.

Jean Adrian said: “Who is this man?”

“Doll Conant, a local bigtimer. Senator John Myerson Courtway is his pipe line into the State Senate. And Senator Courtway, angel, is the man in your photo frame on your desk. The man you said was your father, that you said was dead.”

The girl said very quietly: “He is my father. I knew he wasn’t dead. I’m blackmailing him — for a hundred grand. Shenvair and Targo and I. He never married my mother, so I’m illegitimate. But I’m still his child. I have rights and he won’t recognize them. He treated my mother abominably, left her without a nickel. He had detectives watch me for years. Shenvair was one of them. He recognized my photos when I came here and met Targo. He remembered. He went up to San Francisco and got a copy of my birth certificate. I have it here.”

She fumbled at her bag, felt around in it, opened a small zipper pocket in the lining. Her hand came on with a folded paper. She tossed it on the table.

Conant stared at her, reached a hand for the paper, spread it out and studied it. He said slowly:

“This doesn’t prove anything.”

Malvern took his left hand out of his pocket and reached for the paper. Conant pushed it towards him.

It was a certified copy of a birth certificate, dated originally in 1912. It recorded the birth of a girl child, Adriana Gianni Myerson, to John and Antonina Gianni Myerson. Malvern dropped the paper again.

He said: “Adriana Gianni — Jean Adrian. Was that the tip-off, Conant?”

Conant shook his head. “Shenvair got cold feet. He tipped Courtway. He was scared. That’s why he had this hideout lined up. I thought that was why he got killed. Targo couldn’t have done it, because Targo’s still in the can. Maybe I had you wrong, Malvern.”

Malvern stared at him woodenly, didn’t say anything. Jean Adrian said:

“It’s my fault. I’m the one that’s to blame. It was pretty rotten. I see that now. I want to see him and tell him I’m sorry and that he’ll never hear from me again. I want to make him promise he won’t do anything to Duke Targo. May I?”

Malvern said: “You can do anything you want to, angel. I have two guns that say so. But why did you wait so long? And why didn’t you go at him through the courts? You’re in show business. The publicity would have made you — even if he beat you out.”

The girl bit her lip, said in a low voice: “My mother never really knew who he was, never knew his last name even. He was John Myerson to her. I didn’t know until I came here and happened to see a picture in the local paper. He had changed, but I knew the face. And of course the first part of his name—”

Conant said sneeringly: “You didn’t go at him openly because you knew damn well you weren’t his kid. That your mother just wished you on to him like any cheap broad who sees herself out of a swell meal ticket. Court way says he can prove it, and that he’s going to prove it and put you where you belong. And believe me, sister, he’s just the stiff-necked kind of sap who would kill himself in public life raking up a twenty-year-old scandal to do that little thing.”

The big man spit his cigarette stub out viciously, added: “It cost me money to put him where he is and I aim to keep him there. That’s why I’m in it. No dice, sister. I’m putting the pressure on. You’re going to take a lot of air and keep on taking it. As for your two-gun friend — maybe he didn’t know, but he knows now and that ties him up in the same package.”

Conant banged on the table top, leaned back, looking calmly at the blue gun in Malvern’s hand.

Malvern stared into the big man’s eyes, said very softly: “That hood at Cyrano’s tonight — he wasn’t your idea of putting on the pressure by any chance, Conant, was he?”

Conant grinned harshly, shook his head. The door at the top of the stairs opened a little, silently. Malvern didn’t see it. He was staring at Conant. Jean Adrian saw it.

Her eyes widened and she stepped back with a startled exclamation that jerked Malvern’s eyes to her.

The albino stepped softly through the door with a gun leveled.

His red eyes glistened, his mouth was drawn wide in a snarling grin. He said:

“The door’s kind of thin, Boss. I listened. Okey?... Shed the heater, rube, or I blow you both in half.”

Malvern turned slightly and opened his right hand and let the blue gun bounce on the thin carpet. He shrugged, spread his hands out wide, didn’t look at Jean Adrian.

The albino stepped clear of the door, came slowly forward and put his gun against Malvern’s back.

Conant stood up, came around the table, took the Luger out of Malvern’s coat pocket and hefted it. Without a word or a change of expression he slammed it against the side of Malvern’s jaw.

Malvern sagged drunkenly, then went down on the floor on his side.

Jean Adrian screamed, clawed at Conant. He threw her off, changed the gun to his left hand and slapped the side of her face with a hard palm.

“Pipe down, sister. You’ve had all your fun.”

The albino went to the head of the stairs and called down it. The two other gunmen came up into the room, stood grinning.

Malvern didn’t move on the floor. After a little while Conant lit another cigarette and rattled a knuckle on the table top beside the birth certificate. He said gruffly:

“She wants to see the old man. Okey, she can see him. We’ll all go see him. There’s still something in this that stinks.” He raised his eyes, looked at the stocky man. “You and Lefty go downtown and spring Targo, get him out to the Senator’s place as soon as you can. Step on it.”

The two hoods went back down the stairs.

Conant looked down at Malvern, kicked him in the ribs lightly, kept on kicking them until Malvern opened his eyes and stirred.

9

The car waited at the top of a hill, before a pair of tall wrought iron gates, inside which there was a lodge. A door of the stood open and yellow light framed a big man in an overcoat and a pulled down hat. He came forward slowly into the rain, his hands down in his pockets.

The rain slithered about his feet and the albino leaned against the uprights of the gate, clicking his teeth. The big man said:

“What yuh want? I can see yuh.”

“Shake it up, rube. Mister Conant wants to call on your boss.”

The man inside spat into the wet darkness. “So what? Know what time it is?”

Conant opened the car door suddenly and went over to the gates. The rain made noise between the car and the voices.

Malvern turned his head slowly and patted Jean Adrian’s hand. She pushed his hand away from her quickly.

Her voice said softly: “You fool... oh, you fool!”

Malvern sighed. “I’m having a swell time, angel. A swell time.”

The man inside the gates took out keys on a long chain, unlocked the gates and pushed them back until they clicked on the chocks. Conant and the albino came back to the car.

Conant stood in the rain with a heel hooked on the running-board.

Malvern took his big flask out of his pocket, felt it over to see if it was dented, then unscrewed the top. He held it out towards the girl, said:

“Have a little bottle courage.”

She didn’t answer him, didn’t move. He drank from the flask, put it away, looked past Conant’s broad back at acres of dripping trees, a cluster of lighted windows that seemed to hang in the sky.

A car came up the hill stabbing the wet dark with its headlights, pulled behind the sedan and stopped. Conant went over to it, put his head into it and said something. The car backed, turned into the driveway, and its lights splashed on retaining walls, disappeared, reappeared at the top of the drive as a hard while oval against a stone porte-cochère.

Conant got into the sedan and the albino swung it into the driveway after the other car. At the top, in a cement parking circle ringed with cypresses, they all got out.

At the top of steps a big door was open and a man in a bathrobe stood in it. Targo, between two men who leaned hard against him, was halfway up the steps. He was bareheaded and without an overcoat. His big body in the white coat looked enormous between the two gunmen.

The rest of the party went up the steps and into the house and followed the bathrobed butler down a hall lined with portraits of somebody’s ancestors, through a stiff oval foyer to another hall and into a paneled study with soft lights and heavy drapes and deep leather chairs.

A man stood behind a big dark desk that was set in an alcove made by low, outjutting bookcases. He was enormously tall and thin. His white hair was so thick and fine that no single hair was visible in it. He had a small straight bitter mouth, black eyes without depth in a whitelined face. He stooped a little and a blue corduroy bathrobe faced with satin was wrapped around his almost freakish thinness.

The butler shut the door and Conant opened it again and jerked his chin at the two men who had come in with Targo. They went out. The albino stepped behind Targo and pushed him down into a chair. Targo looked dazed, stupid. There was a smear of dirt on one side of his face and his eyes had a drugged look.

The girl went over to him quickly, said: “Oh, Duke — are you all right, Duke?”

Targo blinked at her, half-grinned. “So you had to rat, huh? Skip it. I’m fine.” His voice had an unnatural sound.

Jean Adrian went away from him and sat down and hunched herself together as if she was cold.

The tall man stared coldly at everyone in the room in turn, then said lifelessly: “Are these the blackmailers — and was it necessary to bring them here in the middle of the night?”

Conant shook himself out of his coat, threw it on the floor behind a lamp. He lit a fresh cigarette and stood spread-legged in the middle of the room, a big, rough, rugged man very sure of himself. He said:

“The girl wanted to see you and tell you she was sorry and wants to play ball. The guy in the ice cream coat is Targo, the fighter. He got himself in a shooting scrape at a night spot and acted so wild downtown they fed him sleep tablets to quiet him. The other guy is Ted Malvern, old Marcus Malvern’s boy. I don’t figure him yet.”

Malvern said dryly: “I’m a private detective, Senator. I’m here in the interests of my client, Miss Adrian.” He laughed.

The girl looked at him suddenly, then looked at the floor.

Conant said gruffly: “Shenvair, the one you know about, got himself bumped off. Not by us. That’s still to straighten out.”

The tall man nodded coldly. He sat down at his desk and picked up a white quill pen, tickled one ear with it.

“And what is your idea of the way to handle this matter, Conant?” he asked thinly.

Conant shrugged. “I’m a rough boy, but I’d handle this one legal. Talk to the D. A., toss them in a coop on suspicion of extortion. Cook up a story for the papers, then give it time to cool. Then dump these birds across the State line and tell them not to come back — or else.”

Senator Courtway moved the quill around to his other ear. “They could attack me again, from a distance,” he said icily. “I’m in favor of a showdown, put them where they belong.”

“You can’t try them, Courtway. It would kill you politically.”

“I’m tired of public life, Conant. I’ll be glad to retire.” The tall thin man curved his mouth into a faint smile.

“The hell you are,” Conant growled. He jerked his head around, snapped: “Come here, sister.”

Jean Adrian stood up, came slowly across the room, stood in front of the desk.

“Make her?” Conant snarled.

Courtway stared at the girl’s set face for a long time, without a trace of expression. He put his quill down on the desk, opened a drawer and took out a photograph. He looked from the photo to the girl, back to the photo, said tonelessly:

“This was taken a number of years ago, but there’s a very strong resemblance. I don’t think I’d hesitate to say it’s the same face.”

He put the photo down on the desk and with the same unhurried motion took an automatic out of the drawer and put it down on the desk beside the photo.

Conant stared at the gun. His mouth twisted. He said thickly: “You won’t need that, Senator. Listen, your showdown idea is all wrong. I’ll get detailed confessions from these people and we’ll hold them. If they ever act up again, it’ll be time enough then to crack down with the big one.”

Malvern smiled a little and walked across the carpet until he was near the end of the desk. He said: “I’d like to see that photograph” and leaned over suddenly and took it.

Courtway’s thin hand dropped to the gun, then relaxed. He leaned back in his chair and stared at Malvern.

Malvern stared at the photograph, lowered it, said softly to Jean Adrian: “Go sit down.”

She turned and went back to her chair, dropped into it wearily.

Malvern said: “I’d like your showdown idea, Senator. It’s clean and straightforward and a wholesome change in policy for Mister Conant. But it won’t work.” He snicked a fingernail at the photo. “This has a superficial resemblance, no more. I don’t think it’s the same girl at all myself. Her ears are differently shaped and lower on her head. Her eyes are closer together than Miss Adrian’s eyes, the line of her jaw is longer. Those things don’t change. So what have you got? An extortion letter? Maybe, but you can’t tie it to anyone or you’d have done it already. The girl’s name? Just coincidence. What else?”

Conant’s face was granite hard, his mouth bitter. His voice shook a little saying: “And how about that certificate the gal took out of her purse, wise guy?”

Malvern smiled faintly, rubbed the side of his jaw with his fingertips. “I thought you got that from Shenvair?” he said slyly. “And Shenvair is dead.”

Conant’s face was a mask of fury. He balled his fist, took a jerky step forward. “Why you — damn’ louse—”

Jean Adrian was leaning forward staring round-eyed at Malvern. Targo was staring at him, with a loose grin, pale hard eyes. Courtway was staring at him. There was no expression of any kind on Courtway’s face. He sat cold, relaxed, distant.

Conant laughed suddenly, snapped his fingers. “Okey, toot your horn,” he grunted.

Malvern said slowly: “I’ll tell you another reason why there’ll be no showdown. That shooting at Cyrano’s. Those threats to make Targo drop an unimportant fight. That hood that went to Miss Adrian’s hotel room and sapped her, left her lying on her doorway. Can’t you use your big noodle at all? Can’t you tie all that in, Conant. I can.”

Courtway leaned forward suddenly and placed his hand on his gun, folded it around the butt. His black eyes were holes in a white frozen face.

Conant didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Malvern went on: “Why did Targo get those threats, and after he didn’t drop the fight, why did a gun go to see him at Cyrano’s, a night-club, a very bad place for that kind of play? Because at Cyrano’s he was with the girl, and Cyrano was his backer, and if anything happened at Cyrano’s the law would get the threat story before they had time to think of anything else. That’s why. The threats were a build up for a killing. When the shooting came off Targo was to be with the girl, so the hood could get the girl and it would look as if Targo was the one he was after.

“He would have tried for Targo too, of course, but above all he would have got the girl. Because she was the dynamite behind this shakedown, without her it meant nothing, and with her it could always be made over into a legitimate paternity suit, if it didn’t work the other way. You know about her and about Targo, because Shenvair got cold feet and sold out. And Shenvair knew about the hood — because when the hood showed, and I saw him — and Shenvair knew I knew him, because he had heard me tell Targo about him — then Shenvair tried to pick a drunken fight with me and keep me from trying to interfere.”

Malvern stopped, rubbed the side of his head again, very slowly, very gently. He watched Conant with an up from under look.

Conant said slowly, very harshly: “I don’t play those games, buddy. Believe it or not — I don’t.”

Malvern said: “Listen. The hood could have killed the girl at the hotel with his sap. He didn’t, because Targo wasn’t there and the fight hadn’t been fought, and the build-up would have been all wasted. He went there to have a close look at her, without makeup. And she was scared about something, and had a gun with her. So he slapped her down and ran away. That visit was just a finger.”

Conant said again: “I don’t play those games, buddy.” Then he took the Luger out of his pocket and held it down at his side.

Malvern shrugged, turned his head to stare at Senator Courtway.

“No, but he does,” he said softly. “He had the motive, and the play wouldn’t look like him. He cooked it up with Shenvair — and if it went wrong, as it did, Shenvair would have breezed and if the law got wise, big tough Doll Conant is the boy whose nose would be in the mud.”

Courtway smiled a little and said in an utterly dead voice:

“The young man is very ingenious, but surely—”

Targo stood up. His face was a stiff mask. His lips moved slowly and he said:

“It sounds pretty good to me. I think I’ll twist your — damn’ neck, Mister Courtway.”

The albino snarled, “Sit down, punk,” and lifted his gun.

Targo turned slightly and slammed the albino on the jaw. He went over backwards, smashed his head against the wall. The gun sailed along the floor from his limp hand.

Targo started across the room.

Conant looked at him sidewise and didn’t move. Targo went past him, almost touching him. Conant didn’t move a muscle. His big face was blank, his eyes narrowed to a faint glitter between the heavy lids.

Nobody moved but Targo. Then Courtway lifted his gun and his finger whitened on the trigger and the gun roared.

Malvern moved across the room very swiftly and stood in front of Jean Adrian, between her and the rest of the room.

Targo looked down at his hands. His face twisted into a silly smile. He sat down on the floor and pressed both his hands against his chest.

Courtway lifted his gun again and then Conant moved. The Luger jerked up, flamed twice. Blood flowed down Courtway’s hand. His gun fell behind his desk. His long body seemed to swoop down after the gun. It jackknifed until only his shoulders showed humped above the line of the desk.

Conant said: “Stand up and take it, you — double-crossing swine!”

There was a shot behind the desk. Courtway’s shoulders went down out of sight.

After a moment Conant went around behind the desk, stooped, straightened.

“He ate one,” he said very calmly. “Through the mouth... And I lose me a nice clean senator.”

Targo took his hands from his chest and fell over sidewise on the floor and lay still.

The door of the room slammed open. The butler stood in it, tousle-headed, his mouth gaping. He tried to say something, saw the gun in Conant’s hand, saw Targo slumped on the floor. He didn’t say anything.

The albino was getting to his feet, rubbing his chin, feeling his teeth, shaking his head. He went slowly along the wall and gathered up his gun.

Conant snarled at him: “Swell gut you turned out to be. Get on the phone. Get Malloy, the night captain — and snap it up!”

Malvern turned, put his hand down and lifted Jean Adrian’s cold chin.

“It’s getting light, angel. And I think the rain has stopped,” he said slowly. He pulled his inevitable flask out. “Let’s take a drink — to Mister Targo.”

The girl shook her head, covered her face with her hands.

After a long time there were sirens.

10

The slim, tired-looking kid in the pale blue and silver the Carondelet held his white glove in front of the closing doors and said:

“Corky’s boils is better, but he didn’t come to work, Mister Malvern. Tony the bell captain ain’t showed this morning neither. Pretty soft for some guys.”

Malvern stood close to Jean Adrian in the corner of the car. They were alone in it. He said:

“That’s what you think.”

The boy turned red. Malvern moved over and patted his shoulder, said: “Don’t mind me, son. I’ve been up all night with a sick friend. Here, buy yourself a second breakfast.”

“Jeeze, Mister Malvern, I didn’t mean—”

The doors opened at nine and they went down the corridor to 914. Malvern took the key and opened the door, put the key on the inside, held the door, said:

“Get some sleep and wake up with your fist in your eye. Take my flask and get a mild toot on. Do you good.”

The girl went in through the door, said over her shoulder: “I don’t want liquor. Come in a minute. There’s something I want to tell you.”

He shut the door and followed her in. A bright bar of sunlight lay across the carpet all the way to the davenport. He lit a cigarette and stared at it.

Jean Adrian sat down and jerked her hat off and rumpled her hair. She was silent a moment, then she said slowly, carefully:

“It was swell of you to go to all that trouble for me. I don’t know why you should do it.”

Malvern said: “I can think of a couple of reasons, but they didn’t keep Targo from getting killed, and that was my fault in a way. Then in another way it wasn’t. I didn’t ask him to twist Senator Courtway’s neck.”

The girl said: “You think you’re hard-boiled but you’re just a big slob that argues himself into a jam for the first tramp he finds in trouble. Forget it. Forget Targo and forget me. Neither of us was worth any part of your time. I wanted to tell you that because I’ll be going away as soon as they let me, and I won’t be seeing you any more. This is good-by.”

Malvern nodded, stared at the sun on the carpet. The girl went on:

“It’s a little hard to tell. I’m not looking for sympathy when I say I’m a tramp. I’ve smothered in too many hall bedrooms, stripped in too many filthy dressing-rooms, missed too many meals, told too many lies to be anything else. That’s why I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with you, ever.”

Malvern said: “I like the way you tell it. Go on.”

She looked at him quickly, looked away again. “I’m not the Gianni girl. You guessed that. But I knew her. We did a cheap sister act together when they still did sister acts. Ada and Jean Adrian. We made up our names from hers. That flopped, and we went in a road show and that flopped too. In New Orleans. The going was a little too rough for her. She swallowed bichloride. I kept her photos because I knew her story. And looking at that thin cold guy and thinking what he could have done for her I got to hate him. She was his kid all right. Don’t ever think she wasn’t. I even wrote letters to him, asking for help for her, just a little help, signing her name. But they didn’t get any answer. I got to hate him so much I wanted to do something to him, after she took the bichloride. So I came out here when I got a stake.”

She stopped talking and laced her fingers together tightly, then pulled them apart violently, as if she wanted to hurt herself. She went on:

“I met Targo through Cyrano and Shenvair through him. Shenvair knew the photos. He’d worked once for an agency in Frisco that was hired to watch Ada. You know all the rest of it.”

Malvern said:

“It sounds pretty good. I wondered why the touch wasn’t made sooner. Do you want me to think you didn’t want his money?”

“No. I’d have taken his money all right. But that wasn’t what I wanted most. I said I was a tramp.”

Malvern smiled very faintly and said: “You don’t know a lot about tramps, angel. You made an illegitimate pass and you got caught. That’s that, but the money wouldn’t have done you any good. It would have been dirty money. I know.”

She looked up at him, stared at him. He touched the side of his face and winced and said: “I know because that’s the kind of money mine is. My dad made it out of crooked sewerage and paving contracts, out of gambling concessions, appointment pay-offs, even vice, I daresay. He made it every rotten way there is to make money in city politics. And when it was made and there was nothing left to do but sit and look at it, he died and left it to me. It hasn’t brought me any fun either. I always hope it’s going to, but it never does. Because I’m his pup, his blood, reared in the same gutter. I’m worse than a tramp, angel. I’m a guy that lives on crooked dough and doesn’t even do his own stealing.”

He stopped, flicked ash on the carpet, straightened his hat on his head.

“Think that over, and don’t run too far, because I have all the time in the world and it wouldn’t do you any good. It would be so much more fun to run away together.”

He went a little way towards the door, stood looking down at the sunlight on the carpet, looked back at her quickly and then went on out.

When the door shut she stood up and went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed just as she was, with her coat on. She stared at the ceiling. After a long time she smiled. In the middle of the smile she fell asleep.