Black Mask (Vol. 20, No. 8 — October 1937)

My Dough Says Murder by H. H. Stinson

O’Hara twists a crime tornado.

On his entrance into the small and smartly-furnished living-room two minutes before, Ken O’Hara had taken one glance at the body on the rug. After that he didn’t look at it again but stood, spraddle-legged, warming himself in front of the gas log at one end of the room and letting his glum and overcast gaze coast around at the others in the place.

There was, for one, Inez Dana. She sat on an imitation-Spanish divan at one side of the imitation-Spanish room and held her body tightly in her arms, rocking and sobbing jerkily in the tail end of a fit of hysterics.

Tears had cut channels through the rouge on her cheeks but she was still beautiful in a damp tawny fashion with a slick black bob, wounded-fawn brown eyes and a smooth creamy skin.

Detective Lieutenant Otto Shuford sat on the divan beside her. He had the round decent face of a small boy under sandy, graying hair, a body like that of a bear, big ruddy hands that kept patting at her while he clucked comfortingly:

“Now, Inez, it ain’t your fault. Now, now!”

Through his words came the muted thump of melody from the Club Barcelona on the floor below where Joe Bullfinch’s Swing Boys and an assorted hundred or so of patrons went to town to the scream of brasses and the mutter of drums, unaware that death had also gone to town just above their heads.

The body lay by the highboy radio and the leg of the cabinet propped the head up at an awkward angle. The eyes were half-lidded and the man looked as though he were staring with mild reproof at his feet which touched the fringe of red velvet window draperies. Blood had seeped in half a dozen thin streams from a wound in the right temple and not far from the man’s hand a revolver, a .38 Police Positive, lay on the rug. In life the man had been small and he looked even more shrunken now. His face was sharp and high-boned, with a long nose that death had turned into a pallid wedge. Until a bullet had smashed through the thin bone of his temple he had been Johnny Lawton, café and amusement-beat reporter for the Pacific Tribune.

Well away from the body there stood two other men. One of them was a big jovial looking man with a long lock of gray hair combed back over a thin spot. That was City Councilman Homer E. Davenport, in whose district the Club Barcelona happened to be spotted.

The other was Johnny Kerr, owner of the Barcelona. A thin wiry man, with black spikes of mustache on a smooth dark face, he stared into space and whistled soundlessly and continuously.

Inspector Blane of the homicide squad was on his knees beside Lawton’s body. His oblong pockmarked face was professionally interested and, at the same time, a little shocked as he plodded methodically through the dead man’s pockets. He found a watch, keys, billfold, old letters, a thick wad of copy paper, and laid them all on the cool marble top of a coffee table. He straightened, glanced at the wad of copy paper, riffled through the old letters.

He cocked an eye at O’Hara, said with heavy humor, “Don’t you reporters ever pay bills? Lawton was carrying ’em for a year back.”

O’Hara shrugged wide shoulders under the faded trenchcoat he wore, shoved his shabby fedora back on a thatch of black hair. The sourness of his craggy Irish face deepened but he said nothing.

Inez Dana went into a fresh set of wails and Detective Lieutenant Shuford said, “Could you wind up with her quick, Inspector? She’s going nuts.”

Blane looked at the sleek head on Shuford’s shoulder without any particular concern. “Tell her to relax. As soon as we get pictures of this, I’ll take her downtown and get her written statement. Now where the hell would that photographer be?”

Nobody answered him so he swung his eyes around to O’Hara, said, “I suppose, Irish, you want to know what happened?”

“I figured,” O’Hara said, “you’d get around to telling me by the end of the week. As a matter of fact, some crackpot called the Tribune office and said Lawton had bumped himself. I thought it was hooey.”

“That crackpot,” Inspector Blane said, “happened to be me. The Trib once did me a favor and I thought they’d like to know one of their reporters had blown his brains out.”

“And you really mean Lawton did the Dutch act?”

“Am I in the habit of kidding about things like this?”

O’Hara shook his head, blew his breath out between puffed lips. He said, “I’ve known Johnny Lawton a long time and I’d have said he was as likely to commit suicide as I am, which means not at all.”

Blane lifted his shoulders, dropped them. “You never can tell who’ll commit suicide or why.”

“What was Johnny’s why?”

Blane jerked a blunt thumb at Inez Dana and Inez unleashed a half-strangled sob. O’Hara batted his eyes in her direction, said: “Is this on the level?”

“Certainly it’s on the level. And if you’ll skip your cracks I’ll tell you about it.”

O’Hara nodded. His eyes took in Inez Dana somberly from head to toe, switched back to Blane.

Blane plodded on. “Like this, now, I get it. Seems like Lawton met Miss Dana a little while ago through Detective Shuford and right away blows his top about her. Lawton promotes her a spot in the floor show here through his connections as reporter for your sheet and he’s out here every night to watch her do one of them ostrich-feather dances. She doesn’t go for him in a big way, she says, and it got tougher and tougher shrugging him off because he got nuttier and nuttier about her.”

O’Hara’s eyes were beginning to get skeptical. “This story, if you ask me, gets nuttier and nuttier, also.”

Shuford threw O’Hara a hard murky stare and Blane said, “You want to hear this or not?”

“Go ahead.”

“Tonight after the first show the girl comes up to her apartment here and Lawton follows her. He goes on the heavy make for her but she bats his ears down. Then he goes completely wing-ding and pulls his rod with the old hooey about if he couldn’t have her, nobody else could. So she makes a break for the door and he takes a wingshot and misses, the slug going through that picture over by the door, and she beats it downstairs for help. At the foot of the stairs she runs into the City Councilman, Davenport, and a party just leaving.” He broke off, looked at Davenport and said, “That right, Councilman?”

Davenport nodded. “Quite correct, Inspector.” The long lock of hair slid over his right ear and he brushed it back. “I was just getting my hat and coat from the check girl. We’d heard the shot faintly and when Miss Dana told us what it was, I immediately went back to Mr. Kerr’s office and asked him to summon police.”

The manager of the club, Kerr, took his shoe-button gaze out of space and looked at O’Hara. He said in a husky impersonal drawl, “ ’S right, O’Hara. I called the cops and I knew Shuford was in the house so I got him. The radio car got here about the time I found him, so we all came up here together.”

Blane sighed. “It can only be suicide, O’Hara. The radio boys and Shuford and the Councilman and Kerr were within ten feet of the hall door when they heard another shot inside and when they busted through the locked door, the apartment was empty except for Lawton’s body. Besides that, there’s powder bums around the wound, the rod there is the one Lawton had a permit to carry and there’s two shots been fired from it, accounting for the one at the girl and the one through his head. Of course, we’ll check the gun for his prints and check the bullets against the gun and use the Lund test on his hand to see if he’d fired a gun but I’m satisfied it’s suicide. You satisfied?”

“Yes,” O’Hara said slowly, “and no.”

“What’s on your mind?”

Inez Dana had her head up from Shuford’s shoulder. She dabbed at her nose with a wilted handkerchief, looked at O’Hara from drowning brown eyes.

He held her under a neutral, speculative stare for a little. He said finally. “This Casanova build-up for Johnny doesn’t sound on the up and up to me, for one thing.”

Shuford suddenly said in a loud voice, “Inez!”

Flying pink nails seared long gouges down O’Hara’s check. Inez Dana swung the nails again, panted, “I won’t sit here and be insulted!”

Both Blane and Shuford grabbed her. She collapsed against Shuford’s chest. His small-boy face was red and angry. He said, “Louse!” in a quiet voice.

Patting a handkerchief against the red trail of Inez Dana’s nails, O’Hara observed, “It occurs to me that for a guy who was supposed to have put on a real battle with the lady, Johnny Lawton doesn’t show many scars.”

“Come on, Inez,” Detective Shuford said.

He led her into a bedroom and came out alone, shut the door. He said, “You’ve got a gut, O’Hara, to talk like that to a sweet little kid after what she’s been through. For two cents I’d have a swing at your mug, myself.”

O’Hara ignored him. “This may or may not be suicide,” he said to Inspector Blane. “I grant you don’t miss on many, Inspector, but here’s a couple of angles you might stew over before you go back to your squadroom domino game. In the first place, contrary to popular superstition, newspaper men often stay decent. Johnny had a nice wife and a swell little kid and he was nuts about them. Why would he play around?”

“It happens in the best of families,” Blane said.

“Yes, but Johnny had covered the amusement beat for five years and if he wanted to go on the make he had chances at plenty of hotter and apparently more willing numbers than this girl. There was never a whisper of anything like that. Now we’re supposed to believe he not only turned into a Casanova but that he even blew his brains out over the girl.”

Shuford grabbed O’Hara’s arm, snarled, “You accusing Miss Dana of lying?”

O’Hara lifted the hand off his arm, said mildly, “Keep your pants on, Otto.”

“I want you to know I’ve known her since she was a baby and I’ll see she doesn’t get pushed around by more than one reporter at a time.”

“And Lawton,” O’Hara said, firmly but not nastily, “was a friend of mine and I’ll see to it he doesn’t go out to the tune of scallions.”

Blane got his bulk between them, said, “All right, Boy Scouts, do your good deeds later.” To O’Hara he said, “I know the motive sounds sort of weak but the only guy could have shot Lawton was Lawton, himself. I’ve got five witnesses that nobody left by the door after the last shot.”

“What about a window?”

The Inspector went to a window, pulled the drapery aside and shook an ornamental grillwork set into the stucco outside the window. “Every window but the bathroom has these and you couldn’t get a Singer’s midget out the bathroom window.”

“Any connecting doors to the other apartments?”

“None. There’s three other apartments, all rented to members of the floor show. The radio boys went through the other places right away and found nobody.” Blane was patient, had about him the attitude that he didn’t mind humoring O’Hara. “Anything else, Irish?”

City Councilman Davenport came across the room with ponderous dignity and put his hand sympathetically on O’Hara’s shoulder. “I know how you feel, my boy. I, too, had known Lawton a long time and liked him.”

O’Hara’s face had a crabbed, rebellious look but he shrugged, said nothing.

Tymes, the bureau photographer, came in. He was a small man in rumpled brown with a pod of stomach and he whistled “Little Old Lady,” as he put his bag down and got out tripod and camera. He interrupted his whistling to say, “I’ll get it from the doorway, Inspector.”

He began his whistle again and the men in the room stood back from the body. O’Hara lounged by the coffee table, let his glance wander down to the litter of Lawton’s possessions. He pawed through them with a finger. His back was to the others.

Detective Shuford, across the room, said sharply, “Hey, O’Hara!”

“You guys again?” Blane barked.

“Inspector, O’Hara just snitched something out of that junk of Lawton’s,” Shuford whined.

Blane came over heavily and O’Hara said, “As usual, Otto’s all wet.” His eyes were clear, candid.

Blane looked doubtful but he said, “Leave things alone or out you go on the curb with the rest of your newspaper tribe, O’Hara.”

The photographer came out from under his black hood, began to get his flash gun ready. He was still whistling.

“For Pete’s sake, Tymes,” Blane snapped, “cut out that whistling.”

Tymes said, “Aw, Inspector, I just do it to keep my spirits up.”

“Well, let ’em drop.”

O’Hara waited until the photographer had his second shot, said, “Where’s a phone around here, Kerr?”

“My office.”

“How’s about using it to make a call?”

“Go to it,” the manager of the club said in his pleasantly husky drawl.

O’Hara picked his way around the tripod at the doorway, went down thickly carpeted steps to a foyer that connected with the entrance to the Club Barcelona Three more steps took him past a thin red-headed check girl and into the dining-room which was long and wide with a dais at the far end for the Swing Boys. The ink-spot of dance floor was jammed, and if there were any vacant tables, O’Hara couldn’t spot them. He went along the wall, dodging waiters, and into a corridor that led to Johnny Kerr’s office.

Inside the office a stocky man with a pink face and fluffy blond hair lolled in a big, leather-padded chair with his heels hooked on the edge of a desk. He had a highball in one hand and a table-tennis bat in the other and he was making languid passes in the air at an imaginary ball. There was a half-eaten club sandwich on the desk. When the man saw O’Hara he threw the tennis-table bat on the desk with a clatter and stuck out his right hand.

“As I live and inhale and exhale,” he chortled, “if it isn’t my old pal, O’Hara. How are you, kid?”

O’Hara shook the outstretched hand. “Hello, Rock. How’s the press agent racket?”

Joe Rockley beamed. “Swell, Ken, swell. I nearly make a living out of it, what with handling the Barcelona, Station KGP, a couple of other spots and a convention now and then.” His pink face went serious. “Tough about Law-ton. I was sitting right here with Kerr when the uproar started and this Dana wench busted in, saying Johnny had taken a shot at her. I thought at first she was nuts. Well, I suppose the Barcelona gets plastered on the front pages tomorrow.”

“Not in the Tribune,” O’Hara said. He pulled the phone over, dialed and got the Tribune. He talked briefly to Brad-dock on the city desk, not much more lengthily to a rewrite man and cradled the phone.

Rockley was making sleepy passes with the bat again. He grinned, said, “My doc told me to take-up tennis for my figure so I’m making it table tennis because I can eat and practice at the same time. I’m getting a swell backhand.”

O’Hara said, “Rock, as space chiseler for this joint you probably saw a bit of Lawton.”

“Yeah,” Rockley said, “he was here a lot, especially since Kerr put the Dana girl in the show.”

“Would you say Johnny was carrying the torch for her?”

“I don’t know if you’d call it that. He was seeing plenty of her, though.”

“Ever hear him pull any suicide talk?”

“Not that I remember,” Rockley said.

O’Hara nodded, scowling faintly. “Well, I’ve got a sweet assignment now. I’ve got to go out and see Mrs. Lawton and tell her Johnny doesn’t live there any more. That’s bad enough but when she learns it was over another woman — wow!”

“I’m glad it’s your job and not mine.”

“Incidentally,” O’Hara said, picking up the phone again, “who is Dana? Where’s she from? What do you know about her?”

“I might say not much,” Rockley shrugged. “In fact, I will say not much. Kerr gave her a tryout at Lawton’s request and she clicked. But I’ll be glad to find out all I can for you about her.”

O’Hara dialed a number, waited and then said, “I get you out of bed, Tony?”

Tony Ames yawned along miles of wire. “Yes, if you really want to know.” Tony was very fond of O’Hara. She worked on the Tribune, too, and they saw a lot of each other.

“I don’t but I thought it’d be polite to ask. Listen, duchess, I’ve got a nice lousy job for you.”

“That’s the sort you usually shove over onto me.”

“I’m serious. Johnny Lawton killed himself tonight.”

Her tone one of shocked unbelief, Tony Ames said, “Johnny Lawton did what?”

“Killed himself. And I’ve got to go out and break the news to his wife. Will you meet me there? I never did know what to do about weeping women.”

“Of course I’ll meet you.”

“It’s 1533 South Norton, block below Pico.”

“In twenty minutes. Poor Johnny! Of all people, I never thought he—”

“Neither did I. Twenty minutes it is.”

O’Hara stood up and Rockley said, “How about a little drinkie, Ken?”

“Thanks. I’m not in the mood tonight.”

“Drop in whenever you’re out this way. The Barcelona can always scrape up a filet mignon or at least a sardine for a practicing newspaper man.”

He flipped an indolent salute at O’Hara as O’Hara went out the door and then went back to his highball, his club sandwich.

The Club Barcelona was on Palms Boulevard, far to the south of the city proper but still within the city limits. O’Hara looked up at it as he came out of the building. It was a long two-story affair of white stucco that had originally been built as an automobile showroom with apartments above. Three years before, O’Hara knew, Johnny Kerr had come to the coast with the hint of a Chicago background about him and had taken over the building, turning it into a night club. It had done well; in fact, if this particular night’s crowd was a normal sample, Kerr was doing better than well.

Along one side of the building was a graveled parking space and O’Hara trudged around there, gravel clicking from his toes. From above him, as he climbed into his shabby coupé, came the rumble of Inspector Blane’s voice, asking questions, and a contralto that was Inez Dana’s voice, answering them.

O’Hara grimaced, muttered, “And all for that little tramp! Johnny, it’s hard to swallow.”

Heading for town, O’Hara drove fast, expertly, along the broad boulevard that wound through rolling hills, past darkened exclusive-looking estates, on toward the greater compactness of the city proper.

After a time he saw headlights in his rear vision mirror, noticed they were creeping up on him but gave them no particular thought. He eased to a halt at the red blinker of a boulevard stop, slipped into a lower gear, began to pick up speed again. The car behind, a light-tan sedan, didn’t make the boulevard stop.

Beyond the intersection it slid up alongside him and suddenly began to cut him skilfully into the curb, O’Hara braked and while the two cars were still rolling, the right-hand door of the sedan was whipped open and a man swung from it to the running-board of O’Hara’s coupé.

The man was young, looked scarcely in his twenties, but he had a pinched white face, eyes that were dark smudges in his pallor. His jaws moved rhythmically while he clung to the car with one hand and with the other held a gun that poked O’Hara’s left ear.

“Stick up, brother,” he intoned around a wad of gum. “Set her down.”

O’Hara stopped and the white-faced youth stood down in the road, said, “Light, brother.”

O’Hara got out. He would have made two of the slim young gunman but the gun was held steadily on him, a blue glimmer in the faint light back of the headlamps, and the man’s jaws worked at the gum as steadily and calmly as though all this were an old and boring routine with him.

So O’Hara didn’t move but he said sourly, “Joke’s on you. Payday’s tomorrow and I’ve got six bits.”

The gum-gnasher said nothing. He got behind O’Hara and began to go through his pockets. The man behind the wheel of the tan sedan leaned through the open door and watched the proceedings nonchalantly. He was big and thick-shouldered with a face that was flattened down almost to a single plane as though a horse had stepped on it.

He didn’t speak until the lights of another car popped into sight over the crest of a long hill. The lights came rushing down toward them and the man in the car said in a confidential voice, “Better make it snappy, Vince.”

Vince still said nothing but he straightened up. O’Hara sensed what was coming and tried to dodge but the gun barrel slammed him above the temple. He groaned, tried to pivot, but the gun barrel clipped him again, beating him down into blackness.

When he came put of it he was in a ditch beside the road. His hat was gone and his head felt like a free balloon except that there were quick knives of pain slicing through it. After a little he climbed out of the ditch. His car, lights out, was parked a short distance away. He got to it, sat on the running-board for a while and began to feel better.

He went through his pockets and found them empty of everything, even the half-dozen pencils he always carried. But his keys were still in the ignition lock so he climbed under the wheel and got going toward the city again.

It was five minutes of two when he located an all-night drugstore. He bought gauze, tape and iodine from a curious clerk.

“What’s the other guy look like?” the clerk grinned.

“Too good to suit me,” O’Hara told him and shut himself into a phone booth where he looked up the number of Johnny Lawton’s home and then dialed it.

When her voice answered, he said, “Tony?”

“And what happened to you, my good man?”

“I’ve been out getting an idea knocked into my head. How’d you make out with Mrs. Lawton?”

“When you didn’t show up, I called the city desk and got the lowdown. Nancy — that’s Johnny’s wife — is taking it like a brick. I gave her a triple bromide and she’s dozed off. Of course, at first she did a couple of ground loops because she simply couldn’t understand Johnny committing suicide.”

“My understander doesn’t get it, either.”

“And, incidentally, I’m pretty sore at you for not showing up. It was pretty tough for a while.”

“Sorry, gadget. I was held up a bit, if that’s an excuse.” O’Hara grinned to himself, didn’t enlarge on the subject. “I’ll come out there now if there’s any reason to.”

“No. I’ll stay with her the rest of the night.”

“Then I’ll go home,” O’Hara said, “gargle three fast slugs of rye and hit the innersprings. I can use a lot of it.”

Tony’s voice sounded faintly worried. She said, “Ken, your voice sounds funny. Are you affright?”

“I’m O.K. Give you a buzz in the morning.”

Wolfheim’s fish grotto, across from the City Hall, was a cheerful place to dine provided you didn’t mind seeing your prospective meal ogling you from the huge glass fish tank in the window. O’Hara made for the mellow lights of the place through a steady drumming downpour that now and then whipped itself into a miniature cloudburst.

He had had a good sleep, talked with Tony Ames briefly on the phone the following morning and now he expected to meet her here for dinner. She was in a booth at the rear and he had shed his hat, his sodden trenchcoat, spiking them on the rack beside her trim, translucent raincoat.

She was small and neat in a dark, tailored suit. She cocked her oval, pointed face and nice hazel eyes upward at him and paused in her spearing of a morsel from the seafood cocktail before her when she saw the X of adhesive tape above O’Hara’s temple, the congested bruise that spread out from it.

She said as he sat down, “So, fighting with those big rough boys from across the tracks again.”

“O.K., precious,” O’Hara muttered. “Laugh.”

A waiter came, took his order for a double old-fashioned, oyster cocktail, filet of sea bass, shrimp salad, lemon chiffonade pie, coffee.

“At least,” Tony said, “it doesn’t sound as though you were dying.”

“You’re too, too sympathetic.”

“And you’re very, very mysterious. You haven’t told me yet why you think Johnny didn’t commit suicide or what happened to you last night.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. Did you find out anything on Inez Dana like I asked you to this morning?”

“Not much.” She finished the cocktail morsel, rested her elbows on the table, her smoothly pointed chin on locked hands. “Joe Rockley, the press agent out at the Barcelona, helped me get most of it — we’ll have to give him a break in a story some time. She’s twenty-four, white, female. Raised in the same town in Nebraska that gave Detective Lieutenant Otto Shuford to a waiting world. Studied dancing in New York and did a copy of the Sally Rand thing at a South Wabash café in Chicago until recently. Came out here a couple of months ago, looked up Shuford and Shuford promoted her the job at the Barcelona through Johnny Lawton. Shuford has been giving her the rush act and Lawton had been seeing a lot of her, too.”

“How about the Barcelona’s manager, Kerr?”

“I understand Kerr has his own headache, a poisonous blonde, named Betty. Betty at the moment is supposed to be back in Chicago. And now about you. Who patted you on the head with the well-known blunt instrument?”

“A guy I’d like very much to see again.” The waiter brought the double old-fashioned, went away again. O’Hara sketched out very briefly the hold-up. He said, “Hell, they even took an envelope I’d outlined an idea for a play on.”

“That saves you the trouble of writing it.”

“I got just that much sympathy from the cops. A reporter held up. Ha-ha-ha — joke. Inspector Blane cracked a rib laughing. As for it maybe tying in with Johnny Lawton — hooey. Blane came back at me with the news that only Johnny’s prints were ‘on the gun and both slugs came from that gun. Furthermore the paraffin test on Johnny’s hand showed he had fired a gun. So it’s suicide to Blane and, ‘Will you quit bothering me,’ says he, ‘about trifles like reporters doing the Dutch act?’ ”

“But,” Tony said, “it does look like suicide, doesn’t it? You haven’t let me in yet on the massive ideas in your massive brain; but your own story, the one you sent in last night, said there were witnesses that heard the shot when Johnny was in the apartment alone.”

“Yeah,” O’Hara agreed heavily, “it does look like suicide — pat. And when a thing looks so much like something, I begin wondering if maybe it isn’t something else. Anyway, I’m poking around.” The oyster cocktail had arrived and he went into it, talked through a mouthful. “Rurt ow see ris—”

“Manners, old thing, manners.”

O’Hara swallowed, said, “I went out to see Mrs. Lawton today to find if she knew whether Johnny had been working on anything hot. Incidentally, she didn’t. It seems she doesn’t know much about the newspaper racket and Johnny didn’t bother to talk shop at home. And say, that kid of theirs is swell. If I ever give in and marry you, I hope we have fourteen just like him.”

“In that case, I’m calling our deal off.”

“Sissy.” O’Hara grinned. “Anyway, my visit out there confirmed my notions along one line. Johnny wasn’t a chaser by nature and he was happy at home. His wife was twice as good-looking as Inez and they were in love. So he’d have had no sane reason to make a play for la Dana. Therefore her story, at least part of it, is a phony and when part of something is baloney you’re apt to find it’s all sausage. Then there’s the fake stick-up.”

“Where does that come in?”

“Somebody thought I had something I shouldn’t have.”

“As for instance?”

“I don’t know but I can use my imagination. Last night while I was fiddling around in Dana’s apartment, Shuford got the idea I’d snitched something out of Lawton’s papers and made a big blab about it. I hadn’t touched them and, as a matter of fact, when I went over them with Blane today there wasn’t anything interesting in them. But somebody might have thought there was and thought that I’d picked it up. He, or she, wasn’t taking any chances so a couple of hooligans were sent after me.”

“It must have been somebody who was there at that moment, then.”

“You catch on quick.” He ticked off names on his fingers. “There were Manager Kerr, Detective Shuford, Inspector Blane, a uniformed cop, Councilman Davenport, and a photographer. And I’m not forgetting Inez Dana. She was in a bedroom with the door closed but Shuford made enough uproar so she could have heard him. I think we can eliminate Blane and the uniformed man and the photo guy. Can you stand listening while I play with possibilities?”

“I can stand anything as long as I’m being fed. Go ahead.”

“First, could it be murder? If anybody wants to bet, my dough says murder — in spite of the fact that Johnny’s gun was the rod used, that his prints were on it and that the paraffin test showed he’d fired a gun. Suppose somebody first killed Johnny with Johnny’s own gun. Then, to build up Inez Dana’s story of Johnny going berserk, another shot is fired into the wall by the door. The sound of the shots would have been pretty well covered by the swing band downstairs. After that, the gun is wiped clean and Johnny’s prints planted on it. Then Dana lams downstairs, raising cain, and comes back with a lot of witnesses to hear a final shot inside her place.”

Tony squinted a hazel gaze into space thoughtfully. “That’s just it, that shot.”

“I’ve got a couple of supposes for that. Everything that sounds like a shot isn’t necessarily a shot. Suppose there was some kind of gadget in the partment, all primed to go off at the right moment and make a noise like a shot? If that seems too gaga, how about supposing the shot hadn’t been fired in the dame’s apartment but in one next to it? The apartments are small, the walls are thin and, with everybody expecting to hear a shot inside Dana’s apartment, they would have been easily fooled.”

“Maybe,” Tony said, “but, as my civics prof used to say in discussing honesty in politics, there we get into the realm of pure speculation.”

O’Hara grunted, “You sound like Blane. I told him all this and he said the same thing, except he didn’t know the long words you use.”

“I understood the police searched all the other apartments right away.”

“That’s what they said. My guess is that everybody crowded into Dana’s place for the first few minutes. During that time somebody could have slipped down the stairs without being seen. Anyway, let’s humor me and say it was murder. Then we get onto why. What’s the most logical reason for bumping off a newspaper man? Because he knows something about somebody and he’s going to print it. That would take care of the motive angle for everybody involved. Davenport’s in politics, Kerr has a night-life background and there’s always a flavor of underworld about that, Shuford’s a copper and some cops turn the wrong corner. Or Dana might have managed it all alone although it doesn’t seem likely because, granting it was a frame, it required plenty of brains and some split-second cooperation to make it come out right.”

“But if somebody did fire an alibi shot, wouldn’t that eliminate everybody you’ve named except Dana?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t forget those punks that held me up could be in on it. I don’t think they could be the brains behind it, though, because they acted like garden-variety punks to me.”

“Go on from there.”

“Personally,” O’Hara said, “I lean toward Kerr. I’ve known Otto Shuford for years and I don’t think he has either the brains or the inclination to be crooked. Councilman Davenport looks clean as a whistle, too, and I’ve checked him today from antipasto to nuts. Realtor, director in the Security National, came into politics two years ago on the reform slate. His Council record is A-l and he has a nice wife and a couple of grown sons that are going places themselves. No whispers about him any place. My guess is Kerr.”

He stopped, his eyes glumly intent, and put the finishing touches to the sea bass.

After a little he said, “Anyway, Miss Ames, my nose thinks it detects a very sour smell about the whole thing. And I’m going to keep sticking the nose into it, hoping it — not the nose — won’t blow up in my face.”

Tony said nothing in a concerned reflective way and O’Hara finally grinned. “Besides, I don’t like reporters being killed and nothing done about it. It might give people ideas.”

“Like me,” Tony said cheerfully. “When do we start?”

“We?”

“We. After all, Johnny was a friend of mine as well as yours and I think a lot of his wife and the youngster, too. So my nose gets stuck out right alongside yours.”

“I’ll think it over,” O’Hara growled.

“Don’t waste brain cells. It’s Fate. Kismet. Or maybe just a feminine whimsy. But you may as well regard it as a fact, just the same.”

O’Hara was on his pie when the front door of the Grotto opened violently, letting in the steady swish of rain on the sidewalk outside. Detective Otto Shuford stepped in, planked heavy feet down the aisle between booths. Rain drops glistened on his big black slicker, a left-over from the days of pounding a beat. He jerked his head, looking into one booth after another, and the jerks sent little sprays of water from the brim of his hat at the annoyed occupants of the booths.

His face was red and furious. He paid no attention to the discomfort he was causing.

Stopping beside O’Hara, he planted himself solidly, said in a half-choked voice, “So, you lousy ape—”

O’Hara was quiet, unwounded. “Unbend, Otto, unbend. You’ll have a stroke.”

Shuford’s voice wasn’t loud but it was bitter, came between his teeth. “Miss Dana just called me and said you, or somebody from your dirty sheet, was around trying to dig up dirt on her today. Now I’m telling you to lay off. You get it? Layoff! She’s taken enough from you news-hawks already.”

O’Hara said patiently, “Just because you think she’s a swell number—”

Shuford’s face flushed a deeper crimson. “I don’t have to be nuts about the girl to see she gets a decent deal. She’s one sweet kid and she’s not going to be pushed around by the likes of you. This is suicide, as plain as the nose on your face.”

O’Hara grinned. “I’ve been told my nose isn’t so bad.”

“Skip the comedy. You’ve had it in for Miss Dana ever since you hit the place last night.” Shuford banged his fist on the table, got his outslung jaw within six inches of O’Hara’s face. “If you’re smart, O’Hara, you’ll leave her alone, you’ll forget the whole thing. That’s a warning.”

For a little they looked at each other, Shuford breathing hard and his face like that of a small boy about to break into tears, but the kind of a small boy who fights harder the harder he cries.

O’Hara smiled and said, “Otto, you’re a sucker but you’re a nice guy. And ain’t love grand?”

For a moment it seemed that Shuford would either choke on his rage or swing at O’Hara. Then he spun, pounded down the aisle and slammed out the door.

Tony said, “Well!” And then, “Do you think he’s in it?”

“Maybe,” O’Hara said. “But my real hunch is that Otto’s just a big dumb kid who doesn’t know anything because nobody ever told him anything. Even his partners don’t tell him what the score is until the ninth inning. I’d still say he’s a good decent guy who’s going to town for this Dana wench because she’s the first hot number that ever gave him a tumble.”

“Nevertheless I’d watch out for him.”

“Somebody should.” O’Hara drained his coffee cup, reached for his coat. “How’s your nose feel?”

“Long and sharp. Where do we start?”

“Dana’s our best bet to start with. If it was murder, we know she had something to do with it. So we start with her and work onward and upward — I hope.”

Despite the rain and a moderate amount of publicity on the violent death of Johnny Law-ton, the Club Barcelona was doing its usual quota of business. The parking lot beside the long white building was jammed with cars and more were arriving.

O’Hara wedged his coupé into a meagre space at the curb across the street from the arched entrance to the club. The rain made a transparent shifting curtain between the car and the lights.

O’Hara’s wrist-watch read seven-twenty. To Tony Ames beside him he said, “The first floor show starts at seven-thirty and lasts nearly an hour. Dana’s in the opening number and closes the bill with her feather dance. That leaves plenty of time to prowl her place.”

“I hope we know what we’re doing,” Tony said. “After all, there is such a thing as burglary.”

“And I’ve heard murder’s illegal, too.”

“Inspector Blane’s pretty white. Maybe we could get him to go along with us on this.”

“And maybe,” O’Hara said, “you think I didn’t hint around for just that and got the cold fishy eye for my pains. Suicide and case closed, said he. So we’ll just have to depend on the well known freedom of the press.”

“And hope nobody abridges it for us,” Tony murmured. “All right, let’s go.”

“I’m going and you’re staying.”

“As usual, you want to hog all the trouble.”

O’Hara shook his head, grinned down at her. He said cheerfully. “Always misunderstood. Personally, I couldn’t ask for a nicer cellmate than you. But if one of us gets jammed up the other had better be on the outside to do something about it. Catch on?”

He got out, pulled his coat collar up, his hat-brim down. There was a group of three women, four men, arriving and he walked through the archway with them, let them turn to the right toward the dining-room and obscure him from the view of the hat-check girl. He went up the stairs quietly.

In the hall upstairs the Club Barcelona orchestra was muted to a rhythmic thump, a vague suggestion of melody.

He knocked on the door of Inez Dana’s apartment, waited for a little. There was no answer, no sound within the apartment. In a pawnshop on South Main Street a long time before O’Hara had picked up a keyring, fitted with a number of things that were handy if not entirely legal. He tried four keys on the lock before he found one that worked.

Inside the apartment he paused, closed the door softly behind him. The darkness was close, heavy with the scent of an expensive perfume and there was no noise save the quick faraway beat of the orchestra. After a little he went to a window that gave on the parking lot. The window was open and just underneath a man was talking as he helped a small, well curved blonde out of a car.

The man said, “If you wanta crash the fillums, baby, I can do plenty for you, provided you make me feel like it.”

The blonde giggled a little. O’Hara chuckled softly and put his hand on the window to close it. Then he let the window stay open, said, “Idea!” in a low, thoughtful voice.

Nobody could have left the room via the window the night before. The ornamental grille outside made that certain. But if the window had been open, nothing would have prevented someone from sticking a gun through the bars and into the room and firing a blank just at the right moment. He parted the draperies a little more and looked out.

After a bit he said, “No idea,” in a disgruntled fashion.

Nobody could put a hand through a window that couldn’t be reached and obviously it would have been impossible for anyone to reach the window without a ladder. The roofs of the cars backed against the wall were a dozen feet below. Moreover, the parking lot was brightly flood-lighted, there were three attendants and nobody could have climbed to the window without being detected against the white wall, as readily as a black hat in a snowbank.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of a gun attached to a long pole, thrust up from the ground or down from the roof. Then he put that aside, too. It would have been nearly as conspicuous in the glare of the flood-lights as a ladder. Besides that, it was clumsy and uncertain. And clumsiness had no part in the picture he had been piecing together for the last twenty-four hours.

Finally he shut the window, drew the heavy draperies. Noises from the traffic on Palms Boulevard drifted through the wall of red velvet very faintly.

He turned on a floor lamp and went to work, quickly but methodically. He didn’t know what he was looking for, in particular, so he scrutinized carefully everything he came across. He went through a desk in the living-room, through an antiqued cabinet, the radio highboy, looked behind pictures, under the rug, behind the cushions of the overstuffed set. He found toothing interesting; went on to the single bedroom.

In a cardboard suit-box on the top shelf in the dressing room just off the bedroom, O’Hara finally struck the litter of personal papers he had been sure would be around some place. There were newspaper clippings, theatrical and night-club programs from New York and Chicago, letters, half a dozen glossy press photographs of Inez Dana with and without her fan.

He poked through the mess, taking his time. Virtually all the clippings were night-club publicity in which Inez Dana had been mentioned. He read a letter here and there, some from a sister in Cottlesville, Nebraska, and others from males on the make. There was nothing promising until he dug out a large envelope that was crammed with glossy eight-by-ten prints.

He pulled out the top print and looked pleased. It was the photograph of an addressed envelope. The envelope bore in a corner the engraved name of a Chicago florist and writing on it said with a flourish, “Miss Inez Dana.” The next picture was of a plain white card which said warm things about having enjoyed “your performance.” Underneath the warm things was a large signature, a signature that said, “Homer A. Davenport,” in dashing, ornate script.

O’Hara grinned, said under his breath, “The old goat.”

But as he pulled out more prints, saw that they were all pictures of written pages and that the signatures progressed from “Homer A. Davenport,” to “Homer,” and finally, in the last few, to “Your adoring Daddy,” his grin turned a bit pinched, faintly embarrassed. All the letters had been written from a Chicago hotel during the previous summer and the contents painted a masterpiece of a solid citizen on the loose. It was a little nauseating to see what a sap a decent guy like Davenport could become when he started carrying the torch for a tramp.

O’Hara slid the prints back into the envelope, stuck the envelope under his belt at the front of his hard, flat belly, pulled his vest down. The packet made no noticeable bulge.

His wrist-watch told him he still had twenty minutes before the end of Inez Dana’s last number, so he spent ten of them shaking down a tiny kitchenette, found nothing that seemed to mean anything.

At eighty-twenty he put out the lights, stood in the darkness a moment, patting the packet over his stomach and thinking. He knew he had something but how it might tie in with the death of Johnny Lawton he didn’t know. At least the letters could be used as a lever to make Davenport do some talking; they had that much value.

He padded across to the door, opened it quietly and stepped without any attempt at concealment into the mellow light of the hallway.

A hand went around his arm. The hand belonged to Detective Shuford and Shuford jerked O’Hara around to face him. His round pink face had an expression half-way between glee and anger. He crowed, “Thanks for walking out into my mitts, O’Hara. I was just coming in for you.”

Councilman Davenport, with a stray end of his long lock lopping out at the side of his fedora, stood beside Shuford and the manager, Kerr, stood just behind the Councilman. Kerr’s face wore its usual mask of impersonal amusement but Davenport looked uneasily at O’Hara, at Shuford, and opened and closed his hands nervously. O’Hara said nothing.

“I had a hunch,” Shuford gurgled, “you still had ideas about pushing Miss Dana around. So when I get here a few minutes ago, I ask the check girl if she’s seen anybody looks like you. So she says a guy that looked like you sneaked up the stairs here a while back. So it’s burglary and will I get a kick out of sticking you away!”

Davenport shook his head. “This is very serious, O’Hara. I could scarcely believe Lieutenant Shuford was in earnest when he came to my table, told me his suspicions and asked me to be a witness. I must confess I’m shocked.”

O’Hara shrugged. He had his poise back after a very disquieting jolt. He said, “Don’t let it get you down, Councilman. Of course, Otto’s disappointed in me, too, but he’ll get over it.”

Shuford tightened his grip on O’Hara’s arm, clipped, “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t get one to ten out of it.”

Kerr drawled, “You’ve got yourself in a sweet mess, Irish. If you wanted to clown around why didn’t you come to me? You could have had the keys for the joint. After all, I’ve got the whole place under lease and I’d have let you prowl around as much as you wanted.”

“I’ll bet,” O’Hara said.

“I’m not kidding,” Kerr said gravely. “You seem to have it in your nut that there was something sour about what happened to Lawton last night. That attitude isn’t apt to do my business any good and if I can help you get over the idea, I’ll do it.”

Shuford growled, began to manhandle O’Hara toward the stairs and O’Hara flexed his arm, twisting Shuford’s grip off slowly and without too much visible effort.

He said, “Grow up, Otto. If you insist, we’ll go down and see Inspector Blane.”

“Blane, your eye!” Shuford’s neck bulged with anger but he didn’t put his hand on O’Hara’s arm again. “Your first stop is a cell over at the Westwood station. You newspaper guys get away with a lot but I’ll prosecute this case clear to the grand jury if I have to. Get going!”

O’Hara said nothing, walked down the stairs between Shuford and Davenport. At the foot he leaned over, said under his breath into the Councilman’s ear. “Maybe you’d use your influence to get me out of this, daddy. Or maybe I ought to say, adoring daddy.”

The Councilman jumped as though O’Hara had rammed a pin into the seat of his pants. He fixed O’Hara with the shocked, wounded gaze of an animal in pain.

Shuford said, “What? Hey, what’d you say, O’Hara?”

He glared at Davenport, at O’Hara suspiciously, and O’Hara grinned and said, “You’re too young to know, Otto. Let’s go.”

Davenport tried to keep the flutiness out of his voice but didn’t quite succeed. “Yes, I... I’ll see what can be done for you, O’Hara.”

“Now, Councilman,” Shuford said plaintively, “you know I got the goods on this guy and it ain’t right to—”

Kerr’s face was amused, impersonal but he said, “Let’s talk this over in my office. After all, Lieutenant, there’s no big rush to throw O’Hara into jail. I understand they keep the jails here open all night.”

Davenport put his hand persuasively on Shuford’s arm. He said, “Yes... yes, I’d suggest you — we all talk this thing over.”

Shuford said doggedly, “It ain’t going to do no good to talk it over. I caught this guy burglarizing Miss Dana’s apartment and I know she’ll sign a complaint. That’s all there is to it.”

“You’d better find out if she’ll sign a complaint, hadn’t you?” Kerr said smoothly. “Wait in my office and I’ll call her.”

Shuford grumbled, hesitated, but finally herded O’Hara after Kerr and the Councilman. They went through the dining-room, down the corridor that led to Kerr’s office.

Inside the office, Joe Rockley, the press agent, was sitting with his heels hooked on Kerr’s desk and a highball and a sandwich in his hands. This time the sandwich was ham and cheese but otherwise Rockley looked as though he hadn’t moved since O’Hara had left him there the night before.

He raised fluffy eyebrows, said languidly, “Hey, hey, gentlemen. What ho?”

Nobody answered him for a moment and he said, “Anything wrong, O’Hara? You don’t look happy and if you can’t be happy at the Barcelona, you can’t be happy anywhere. Our slogan.”

O’Hara grinned. “Nothing the matter with me. It’s our Detective Lieutenant — he’s having delusions, among them the delusions that I’m a burglar and that he’s going to slam me in jail.”

“No!” Rockley said. “Lieutenant, didn’t you ever hear that you can’t arrest newspaper men?”

Shuford swung, poked a stiff forefinger at Rockley. He said between his teeth, “Get outa here, funny guy. Scram!”

Rockley’s face lost its grin. He got up. Going toward the door, still clutching his sandwich and highball, he said to O’Hara, “I thought you were kidding. It seems you weren’t. Anything I can do or anybody I can call for you?”

Shuford snarled, “I said scram!” and aimed a foot at the seat of Rockley’s pants.

Rockley avoided the kick. Going out the door, he sighed, “Tsk, tsk, such a disposition.”

Kerr got out a box of cigars, opened them on his desk. But nobody took any and Kerr said, “Maybe I’m going out of my way to mess in this but, after all, it’s my spot and my success depends a lot on the kind of publicity I get. Pinching O’Hara out here, Lieutenant, won’t help my relations with the newspapers.”

“To hell with the newspapers,” Shuford growled. “Get Miss Dana and when she says she’ll sign a complaint, I’ll take the responsibility off your shoulders.”

Kerr lifted his eyebrows, went to the door. At the door he turned, said, “Maybe a drink might oil things up. What’ll you have, Lieutenant?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be like that. What’ll it be?”

“Well... hell, make it sherry and bitters.”

“O’Hara?”

“You can make mine an old-fashioned.”

“Nothing for me, please,” Davenport said.

Kerr went out. O’Hara slumped in the big, leather chair by the desk. Shuford watched him sulkily. After a moment Davenport took the detective’s arm, moved him off to a corner of the office. The Councilman talked in a low voice, with movements of his eyebrows, his hands. Shuford said only a little and that little very stubbornly.

He was still looking stubborn when Kerr came back, carrying a tall, curved glass of buttermilk. Inez Dana, wrapped in a huge shawl and nothing else, came in after him.

Kerr said, “I’ve explained things to Miss Dana, Lieutenant. She, like me, believes it would be foolish to sign a complant.”

Inez Dana looked frightened. She batted her brown eyes at Shuford who had become a photograph of indignation.

He growled, “She can talk, can’t she? Where do you get off telling her what to say?”

Kerr shrugged, stood out of the way.

Shuford said, “Do your own talking, Inez. You’re going to sign a burglary complaint against this guy, aren’t you?”

Inez Dana paled, shook her head very slowly.

“Listen, baby,” Shuford said, almost pleadingly, “I caught this guy prowling your place. You gotta sign a complaint against him — it’s burglary.”

The girl didn’t look at O’Hara, at any of the others. She moved close to the bulky lieutenant, said, “Please, Otto. If I do what you ask, I’ll have all the papers down on me. I — we don’t want that, do we? Think of my career, please!”

A waiter came in with a tray that held sherry and bitters, an old-fashioned. He saw Shuford’s red, raging countenance, put the tray down on the desk in a hurry and got out.

Shuford suddenly banged his fist on the desk. He said in a choked voice, “All right, Inez, I get it. You think you’ll lose your job if you press charges against this guy. So run along, you’re out of it. Go on, run along.”

Still looking scared, Inez Dana turned, went out the door, trailing a corner of the voluminous shawl after her.

“Maybe I’m dumb,” Shuford said viciously toward Kerr, with a sidewise flick of his eyes to include O’Hara. “I can’t figure why you guys are so anxious to front for this punk of a news-hound and I’m not going to bother to guess. But dumb or not, I’m a copper and I don’t scare. I’ve got plenty of evidence to back up a burglary charge against O’Hara and I’ll sign the complaint myself. How do you like that, O’Hara?”

“Not much,” O’Hara admitted. He reached over, got the old-fashioned from the tray. He put half of it down his throat, didn’t like the taste of it a great deal and set the glass back on the tray.

“And you won’t like it a lot more when you’re standing in front of a judge,” Shuford clipped.

He looked as though the prospect had put him in a better humor. He picked up the glass of sherry and bitters, drained it at a gulp, snapped to O’Hara, “Come on, then. I’m taking you in — complaint or no complaint.”

A shiny new sedan with a police sneak license on it was in the parking lot. Shuford wedged under the wheel, motioned to the seat beside him. He scowled at O’Hara.

“And no capers, Irish.”

The detective and O’Hara rolled out of the parking lot, rolled past O’Hara’s coupé. He caught a glimpse of Tony Ames in the dark interior and then they were on their way.

Shuford’s driving was cautious even when it wasn’t raining. He sirened his way, always, even on routine errands, and sometimes when he was in a particular hurry he got up to forty. But at forty he made more siren noise than most police drivers made at seventy. He pulled the siren cord as he turned into Palms Boulevard and kept its eery scream going as he ambled along through the rain at thirty-five.

O’Hara hummed a tune that was no tune, wondered how long it would take him to pull wires that would change Shuford’s mind on the pinch, wondered also what to do with the prints meanwhile. If Shuford insisted on booking him at the Westwood station, he’d be searched in the desk sergeant’s office and he didn’t want to let Shuford or even Blane know about them until he’d had a chance to use them as pressure on Davenport.

After a while, under cover of his floppy trenchcoat, he managed to slip them from beneath his vest. He rammed them down behind the seat cushion. He was still humming. The portion of the old-fashioned he had swallowed was throbbing along in his veins. He began to feel soothed and comfortable and unworried.

Shuford yawned, said, “Will you skip the music? What have you got to sing about?”

“I don’t know,” O’Hara said. He yawned, also. “I just feel like singing, that’s all. Say, Otto, are you really nuts about this Dana girl?”

Shuford yawned tremendously. “What’s it to you?”

“I’m a friend of yours, you poor mugg.”

“You can’t gab your way outa this.”

“Let it go,” O’Hara shrugged. He slid down in the seat, drowsily comfortable.

The police car veered to the left, cut across the white center line of the boulevard. Shuford’s hand came off the siren cord. He swore dully, hauled the car back to the right. The car began to slide off toward the right. This time Shuford didn’t pull it back. His foot slid off the accelerator.

The car kept going off to the right. One front wheel mounted the curb, seeming to take a very long time to do it. O’Hara groped for the steering wheel but his hand didn’t seem part of him and, anyway, he couldn’t find the wheel. The car went on across the sidewalk. There was a telephone pole directly in front of the radiator and the car finally plowed into the pole in what seemed to O’Hara a very leisurely fashion.

He saw Shuford pitch over the wheel, smack the shatterproof windshield with his forehead and then slide back into the seat. The shock tumbled O’Hara downward and forward, wedged him against the instrument board without apparently hurting him.

He yawned, said to himself, “Funny, very funny.”

Then a part of his brain, but only a part of it, came alive and he knew it wasn’t funny. He crawled up to the seat, managed to open the door and get out into the cold lash of the rain. The wetness on his face revived him a little and he weaved around, fighting drowsiness and trying to get a hand into his pocket. He got the hand in finally, pulled out cigarettes. He got one lit after a struggle against the rain, against the lethargy that was overpowering him.

When he had a hard, red coal glowing at the end of it, he stiffened himself, suddenly jammed the coal against the back of his left hand.

Fine wires of pain shot up his arm, kept on traveling to his brain, cleared mist out of it. The tide of drowsiness receded and he began to swear vividly and with feeling. The rubber went out of his knees and cold, damp air, flooding into his lungs, felt refreshing, delicious.

He started to walk away from the police car and then turned on his heel and went back. Poking his head in, he saw Shuford. The detectives head lolled back against the seat and rasping snores came from his gaping mouth. O’Hara grinned sleepily. He found the packet of prints back of the seat, put them under his belt again and went away.

He walked toward the city, toward a spot three blocks away where lights blazed against the rainy darkness. When he was a block from the wrecked car, he heard the squeal of brakes behind him. Looking back, he saw a light-colored car had stopped by the police car. He still had his head turned over his shoulder when a man got out of the halted machine, walked in front of the lights. The man was big and thick-shouldered and even at that distance O’Hara could see that his profile against the car lights was almost flat, exactly like the gorilla who had held O’Hara up.

O’Hara whipped up the tempo of his stride, lengthened it. When he got to the cluster of lights, they proved to be a drive-in-market, a liquor store, a drugstore. He went into the drugstore, put both hands on the marble counter of the fountain to hold himself up.

He said hoarsely to the pimply-faced soda jerker, “Coffee.”

“Coffee?”

“Black and hot.”

He drank three cups of bitter, scalding fluid. Sweat popped out on his forehead. His head began to clear, the fuzzy feeling left his muscles. He bought a tube of salve to smear the cigarette burn on his hand, tossed change on the counter, went toward the front door.

When he got within five feet of the door he stopped. A light tan sedan that he had seen before was swinging into the space in front of the drive-in market. O’Hara spun, went back past the soda fountain fast.

Passing it, he said, “Back door?”

The pimply-faced soda jerker pointed dumbly toward a door marked: Prescription Department. O’Hara went through that door, past a startled man in a white coat and out a rear door. He skirted the long, dark wall of the building, crossed a vacant lot and came out on the boulevard a block west.

He walked for three blocks, keeping an eye over his shoulder. He didn’t see the tan sedan. A cab came swishing through the wet toward town and O’Hara angled into the street, waved an arm, yelled. The cab slowed, made a U-turn and came back.

Climbing in, O’Hara said, “Club Barcelona.”

Rain was coming down in a fine drizzle that dewed O’Hara’s face as he plodded, heavy-footed, down the block on the opposite side from the club. From under the brim of his hat, he checked parked cars the length of the block and didn’t find his coupé and Tony Ames.

He checked again to make sure and then stood for five minutes in front of a darkened real estate office, his hands sunk deep in his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched. His face was sour, uneasy. He wasn’t too much worried. She’d probably seen Shuford carting him away and, herself, had gone to see what could be done about unjamming him. But he wasn’t entirely unworried. Peculiar things had been happening around the Barcelona and he’d have felt better if he’d known just where she was. Once he moved as though to cross the street to the Barcelona and then changed his mind. He looked perplexed, was perplexed.

He didn’t want to barge in half cocked; wanted to go straight to the man who’d drugged him.

He thought he was shaping up a fairly clear picture of things. Those letters of Davenport’s spelled blackmail and Johnny Lawton had stumbled onto the plot, been blasted out of its road for his pains. It hadn’t been obvious at first who, besides Inez Dana, was involved but the loaded drinks looked like the tip off on that. Kerr had suggested the drinks, undoubtedly had needled them when he left his office to summon Inez Dana.

The one thing that messed up the picture was the shot that been fired in Inez Dana’s apartment while Johnny Lawton was in there alone. Even that might be cleared up if he could get somebody to talking. The letters ought to start Homer A. Davenport talking in a hurry. However, he’d have to corner Davenport alone, not in the Barcelona.

At ten minutes after nine Inez Dana came out of the Barcelona. She stood for a moment under the arched sign, looking up and down the street. Then she set off, away from the boulevard, nice legs setting silk folds of her raincoat swaying, a small bag in her right hand swinging with her stride. O’Hara chewed his upper lip a moment, watching her speculatively. Then he turned, began to follow her, keeping well back and across the street from her.

She walked steadily, swiftly, looked around only once. At the first corner she turned to her right, went east along a lonesome, gloomy side street. There was a car line three blocks away in that direction. O’Hara increased his pace, got well ahead of her in the darkness. When he was a block ahead, he crossed the street and turned back.

There was a lonely blob of street light on a tall pole at the car stop. It pointed vague fingers through the darkness, and one of them touched the figure of Inez Dana coming toward him.

O’Hara bore down on her, saw her slow and hesitate. He walked faster. She stopped and turned and O’Hara made the last ten feet fast.

He got a hand on her arm, said, “Wait a minute, Miss Dana.”

She was frightened, trembling. She breathed, “You!”

“Me, your old pal.”

Even in the dim light, her face was beautiful, appealing with its wide panic-stricken brown eyes, the round O of moist lips. He could see the sleek curve of her bosom palpitating under her raincoat. It left him cold, untouched; but a small corner of his mind wondered if perhaps he hadn’t been all wrong from the start, if perhaps Johnny Lawton hadn’t gone overboard about this ensemble of curves and eyes.

They stood there a moment. Her voice was stronger when she said, “What do you want?”

“Answers to some questions. The right answers.”

She was silent but she seemed less frightened than she had been. O’Hara reached down with his free hand, took the grip from her. She clung to it for a moment, let it go under his stronger tug. He said, “Why not let me carry it? Always a gent, Miss Dana, no matter who it hurts.”

He started her back toward the boulevard firmly, not roughly.

“Where are you taking me?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Give me time.” He smiled down at her without humor. “But it’ll be some place where we can talk. And where you’ll have to postpone your notion to lam, to get out from under. That’s the idea you had, isn’t it?”

Inez Dana snapped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And what makes you think I’ll go with you?”

O’Hara made his voice velvety. “Just one thing — because I’ll smack the daylights out of you if you don’t. I’ve never tried that on a woman before but I’ve seen a lot of movies lately and the way the heroes smack the ladies around has given me ideas.”

She tried to wrench her arm away and O’Hara bit down with his fingers.

Her voice shook a little when she said, “You’re hurting me!”

“That, you female tornado,” O’Hara said, “was for nothing at all. So be nice.”

Privately, he wondered what he would do if she got difficult; but for half a block she trotted along beside him.

Then she said, “I can’t walk so fast. Please!”

He slowed down a little and she said in a ghost of a voice, “If I were to tell you something, would you—”

“Would I what?”

“I’m frightened, terribly frightened. You d-don’t know the terrible danger I’m in. There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell ever since that horrible moment but if I do—” She shuddered walked closer to him, lifted her face piteously. “No, no, I can’t. I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die.”

O’Hara said earnestly, “Forget it, Miss Dana. If you’ve got the sort of information I think you have, you can spill it and nobody will so much as make faces at you. Blane’s a pig headed, hard-to-convince copper but a swell guy to have on your side. And the Tribune, too, will take plenty care of you. Now tell me, Johnny Lawton didn’t commit suicide, did he?”

They stopped, facing each other. She looked up at him, breathed, “You’re sure you’ll protect me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I’ll show you something.” She began to fumble at the buttons that held the silk raincoat snug across her breasts and O’Hara let go his hold on her arm. “I was running away from that h-horrible place with its—”

She got the coat open and one hand went into the bosom of her dress. The hand came out and it held a nickeled gun, a small gun. The barrel glittered, picking up gleams from the faraway street light. She backed away from O’Hara several steps.

O’Hara said sourly, “It was a swell act.” He moved his feet a little.

Inez Dana said with sharpness in her voice, “Don’t try it.” She held the gun firmly, easily, in front of her stomach. “If you make me do it, I will.”

“I believe you would.”

“You know I would.” All the helpless femininity of her voice was gone, leaving it hard, slightly husky and mocking. “You don’t think I’d let some scummy reporter push me around, did you? After all, I’ve played with some really hot numbers in my day. Now put that bag down on the ground and beat it toward the boulevard.”

O’Hara dropped the bag. It thudded on the sidewalk and Inez Dana cursed him expertly. She said, “If you’ve broken my perfume at fifty dollars an ounce—”

“I wish I’d broken your neck.”

She jeered at him. “You should have thought of it sooner.”

“Next time I will.”

“It’ll be a long time before you locate my neck again.” The distant rumble of a street car came faintly, then grew louder second by second. She moved the gun a little. “Now, if you please, small change, I’m in a hurry. Get going and make it fast. If you don’t I’m going to take a shot at you and, if I say it myself, I’m not a bad shot.”

O’Hara turned, started. He went a hundred feet, looked over his shoulder. Inez Dana had the bag in her hand but she was still watching him and the gun, a glimmer of light in her hand, still covered him. He lagged another hundred feet, looked back again. The girl was running toward the car stop. She had a three hundred foot lead on him but he turned, got under way after her.

The car, a row of flying yellow oblongs in the darkness, slowed for the crossing. The motorman caught sight of her signaling arm, slammed air on. O’Hara saw her reach for the rail of the rear platform, saw a husky conductor grab her arm, haul her aboard while the brakes were still chattering. O’Hara was still a hundred feet away in the darkness when he heard the air cut off with a swoosh and the car churned into motion again.

O’Hara took four minutes to run the four blocks back to the Club Barcelona. His heels hit the pavement solidly, his mouth had a chagrined thinness, his eyes were hard. He was sore, mainly at himself for falling for a gag as moss grown as the one the girl had pulled on him; and, being sore, he’d decided he was through with finesse, through with playing around on the fringes of this thing and making guesses.

When he got to the club entrance, he right-wheeled and went into the foyer, past the hat-check girl like a gust of ill wind on the way to do nobody any good.

As he passed through the dining-room, he didn’t see Davenport nor did he see Kerr. He got to the door of Kerr’s office and went in.

Kerr wasn’t there but Joe Rockley was. He had a drink in his hand but this time no sandwich. He looked surprised at first; then his pink face creased into a grin.

He said, “Either it’s that last drink I had or else I need another. I could swear it’s O’Hara but I know O’Hara is in the can.”

“Where’s Kerr?”

“Around some place. What’s the idea, Irish? Shuford change his mind about tossing you in the clink?”

“Somebody changed it for him,” O’Hara said. “Listen, Rock, you’ve been making a big play about helping me if I needed it.”

“Sure. And, oddly enough, I meant it. What can I do?”

“Get Kerr in here quietly for me without letting him know I’m here. And if Councilman Davenport is still around, get him to come in also.”

“Davenport went home just after you and Shuford left.” Rockley put his drink down on the desk, stood up from the leather-padded chair. “You sound like bad news for somebody.” Rockley hesitated. “After all, Ken, I work for the guy, among my other odd jobs. He’s bread and butter to me.”

“If you know which side of the slice to spread the butter on,” O’Hara said, “you’ll play ball with me and the Tribune. Do you get him?”

“If you put it that way.”

Rockley went toward the door, running one hand through the fluffy blond hair. When he was almost to the door, O’Hara said, “Wait, Rock. You got a gun?”

“Woh-oh,” Rockley said. “Now it’s guns.”

“Have you got a gun? If you have, lend it to me.”

“I haven’t,” Rockley said. But after studying O’Hara’s hard-angled face for a moment he came back to Kerr’s desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a snub-barreled .32, handed it over. He said, “Kerr’s rod. I hope you know what you’re doing, Ken.”

“If I don’t,” O’Hara said, “I’m on the way to learning. Now make it snappy.”

O’Hara slipped the gun into his trenchcoat pocket, moved so that he was out of sight from the doorway. Three minutes went by and Kerr came into the office. Rockley followed him only as far as the threshold.

When he saw O’Hara, Kerr looked as surprised as had Rockley. He said after a little pause, “Shuford got some sense, eh? Glad to know that.”

“Sit down, Kerr,” O’Hara said.

Rockley was looking pained and uneasy. He murmured, “Be seeing you guys,” and moved back out of the doorway, vanished.

Kerr sat down slowly, his eyes on O’Hara and his smooth dark face wary but not particularly alarmed. He said, “What’s on your mind, Irish?”

“Murder,” O’Hara said.

“Still got notions Lawton was murdered, eh?”

“And about ready,” O’Hara said, “to have a showdown on my notions.”

“Go ahead. It should be interesting. How can it be murder and who did it?”

“I’m not so sure about the how. But about the who... well, I probably wouldn’t have to move over six feet to smack that guy in the puss.”

Kerr’s lips parted under the spiky mustache. He looked blandly amused. “And what makes you think I murdered him, if he was murdered?”

O’Hara said, “I should spend a lot of time horsing around with you. When I get you and Davenport and Blane together, I’ll toss my cards on the table.”

He put his hand out for the phone and Kerr said, “Wait a minute, O’Hara. You’ve pointed a nasty finger at me, but I still think you’re regular enough to tell me why, to give me a chance to defend myself before you go messing me up with the law.”

He smiled faintly and O’Hara said, “O. K., I will. Lawton was murdered because he’d stumbled onto a plot to blackmail Councilman Davenport over some hotcha letters Davenport had written your strip dancer, Inez Dana. Somebody was working with Dana on the thing and that somebody has to be you.”

Kerr’s eyes were shining, curious. He said, “Why does it have to be me?”

“If it hadn’t been you, you wouldn’t have slipped bedtime drops in the drinks you set up for Shuford and me just before we left here a while ago.”

Kerr sat up with a jerk. He clipped “Drinks? You mean those drinks were loaded?”

“Don’t trot out the dramatics for me,” O’Hara said. “You knew I’d found evidence in Dana’s apartment of the plot against Davenport. You didn’t want that evidence to get into Shuford’s hands and you knew it would if I was booked. So you drugged our liquor, put out a hurry call for your hoodlums and sent them after us, figuring we’d pass out before we got to the Westwood station. Luckily I didn’t like the taste of my drink so I got only half as much as Shuford and I snapped out of it when Shuford went to sleep and let the car bounce into a pole.”

“I swear,” Kerr said slowly, “you’re wrong, O’Hara. I’ve got no hoodlums on my payroll and if those drinks were drugged, I don’t know anything about it. Let me call in the bartender that mixed them and see what we can find out.”

He stretched his hand toward the phone and then didn’t complete the gesture. He said dully, “Hell, Fred took my order and he’s gone off shift.”

“Conveniently,” O’Hara sneered. “So we’ll get hold of Inspector Blane and then we’ll go out to see Davenport.”

Picking up the phone, keeping a sharp eye on Kerr as he dialed, O’Hara got the police department, asked for the homicide squad. Somebody at the homicide squad told him Blane was out eating and they didn’t know where but he’d be back before long.

O’Hara said, “Thanks, I’ll call him later,” and broke the connection but didn’t put the phone down. He said, “I’ve stuck to this Lawton thing, Kerr, because Johnny was a fellow news-hound and I felt sorry for him and his family to have him go out tabbed as a woman-crazy suicide. If I can fix it so you’ll hang for that, swell and we’ll call it quits. But there’s something else. A young lady pal that came out here with me earlier is very peculiarly missing. If there’s something sour about that and you’re tangled up with it, that’s personal and they’ll have to nurse you back to health in order to hang you.”

Kerr said blankly, “I tell you, O’Hara, you’re on the wrong foot all the way through.”

“We’ll see.”

O’Hara dialed the Tribune, got the operator. He said, “This is O’Hara, Miss Cuddebach. Any calls for me?”

“Just a minute, Mr. O’Hara.” When she came back on the line, she said, “A Mr. Daffelbaum called. He wants to know if you’ll fix a traffic tag for him.”

“The next time he calls, say that I won’t. Anything else?”

“Miss Ames has called twice, wanting to know if you’d called.”

O’Hara’s face lost some of its grimness. He said, “Tell her I have.”

“If she calls again, where shall I tell her you are?”

“Tell her I’m going to call on a guy named Davenport. And thanks, Miss Cuddebach.”

He hung up, said to Kerr, “The girl friend’s O.K. and that makes you lucky. Climb under your bonnet and let’s go.” Kerr, shrugging, stood up and got his hat from a rack in the corner. O’Hara slipped the snub-barreled .32 out of his pocket, showed it briefly.

He said, “You’ll drive us in your car. And don’t try any fast ones. I won’t hesitate to shoot your knees out from under you.”

Kerr looked at the gun, got a little of his impersonal amusement back. He said, “My gun? Oke, O’Hara, I’ll try no fast ones.”

Kerr turned the streamlined nose of his big car down a winding, tree-bordered drive in the Brentwood Hills district. He said, “I’m not sure. I think it’s somewhere down here our councilman lives.”

“It is,” O’Hara said. “Fourth house on the right.”

The house, of Georgian architecture, wasn’t large as houses in that neighborhood went but it was elegant and spic and span in back of a white picket fence. There were lights on behind drawn shades, a porch light that shone amber in a decorative hanging lantern. When Kerr eased the car to the curb, O’Hara stepped out, stood beside the door with his hand against the butt of the gun in his pocket until Kerr climbed out. Kerr hadn’t argued, had hardly spoken since they’d left the Barcelona.

They went through a white gate, up a brick walk to the porch. O’Hara dug his left thumb into the bell-push. He rang three times and after the third ring footsteps inside came toward the door.

O’Hara had expected to see the face of a maid, perhaps of a butler. The house was staffed with servants, he knew; instead, when the door eased back, he found himself looking at the ruddy countenance of Councilman Davenport. Only now it was not quite so ruddy, not so jovial or friendly.

Davenport looked surprised and shaken but he managed to say, “Well, well, O’Hara.”

“You only think it’s well, Councilman,” O’Hara said. “I’ve just finished talking with Kerr and now I’d like to come in and go on from there with you.”

Davenport still blocked the doorway. He began to stammer, “No, O’Hara, n-not now. Later, if you d-don’t mind.”

While Davenport was choking on words, O’Hara motioned Kerr in ahead, stepped in on his heels. The hallway was square, big, furnished in softly polished maple.

There was a phone in a niche and O’Hara said, “I’ll use your phone first, thanks.”

He got the .32 out, backed to the phone and kept an eye on both Kerr and Davenport while he lifted the phone from its cradle with his left hand, used the index finger of his left hand to pick out the letters and numerals of the police department number on the dial.

Kerr leaned, dark and unsmiling, against the wall and Davenport shambled down the hall, didn’t bother to close the door.

He quavered, “What is this, O’Hara? What are you doing? How dare you break into my home in this manner?”

“I’m calling Inspector Blane at the moment,” O’Hara said. “If, when he gets out here, you still think you’ve got a case of trespass against me, he’ll know what to do about it.”

He dialed the last number and Inez Dana’s voice said from behind curtains at an archway, “Put that phone down, O’Hara! And your gun!”

O’Hara couldn’t see her. He could see the shiny muzzle of a revolver poking rigidly from a gap in the curtains but he couldn’t tell whether she’d be to the right or the left of the muzzle.

His left hand slowly dropped the phone back into its cradle and his right hand lowered, let the gun fall out of his fingers. It bounced off a throw rug onto wide, waxed boards and made an ugly scratch on the polished surface.

Inez Dana stepped out from behind the curtains. Her eyes were wicked, almost jet black. Her gun swung so that she could cover the three men in a general way.

“You just wouldn’t stay out of it, O’Hara,” she said nastily. “Now get in here, all three of you.”

She backed out into the hall so that she could command the doorway and the three men and motioned at them with the gun.

O’Hara said jeeringly to Kerr, “Does it or doesn’t it look as though little Inez meant to double-cross you and go south with the Davenport dough?”

“You’re wrong, O’Hara, but I’d still like to get my hands on her,” Kerr said softly.

“Get in that room,” Inez Dana said through her teeth.

Davenport and Kerr moved, went past the curtains. O’Hara went in after them with Inez Dana’s gun in the middle of his back.

The room, a long living-room, was mellowly lit by floor lamps. In a chair under one floor lamp Joe Rockley sat, his pink face smiling and his fluffy hair golden in the radiance of the lamp. A table beside his chair held a whiskey bottle, a siphon. Rockley was building himself a highball and he interrupted his task to nod genially at O’Hara.

“I didn’t get here much ahead of you, at that,” he said. “Just soon enough to have my wildcat friend here all primed to greet you. Ain’t she a honey with a gun? I wish I could handle one like she does but they give me the jitters. I do better with my brain.”

O’Hara swore back of his teeth, said, “Rock, you’re a louse. I wouldn’t have guessed you in this.”

Rockley stayed cheerful. “You guessed plenty, Ken. So much that we’ve got to get our dough and shake the dust of this City of the Angels off our hoofs in a hurry. Councilman, we’ve mentioned fifty grand and it was supposed to be ready tonight. Suppose you turn it over and we’ll be on our way.”

Davenport rocked uncertainly from one foot to another, said, “I... it’s in the safe in my study upstairs. I’ll have to get it.”

“Then get it,” Inez Dana said with ice in her voice.

With the look of a beaten dog about him, Davenport turned and went out of the room. For two minutes O’Hara stood, looking at nobody, his eyes turned inward, his face abstracted and sour. Finally he said, “Rock, I repeat that you’re a louse but you’re a clever louse. How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Murder Johnny Lawton and make it look like suicide?”

Rockley chuckled, sipped his highball. “If I told you, it’d spoil all the fun you’ll have guessing, I’m admitting nothing. You know I was in Kerr’s office when it all happened.”

O’Hara said, “Maybe I can guess, at that.”

Inez Dana spat out, “Will you shut your big yaps, you two? What the hell is keeping Davenport? If he tries a runout—”

She was nervous, getting more nervous by the moment. But her gun didn’t waver.

“Don’t worry about him, baby,” Rockley said. “He knows better than to run out. And there’s nobody in the house to touch off an alarm. He’s sent the servants and the family out for the night. As for O’Hara, let him talk. He’s a friend of mine and I’ve got a lot of things to thank him for. As for you, baby, slipping over here ahead of me... You didn’t have a double-cross in mind, did you, my sweet?”

The girl looked sullen but she didn’t say anything.

O’Hara said slowly, almost absent-mindedly, “It was all there for me if I’d used my head, wasn’t it, Rock? The fact that as publicity man for Station KGP, you might know something about radio. And that leather-padded chair in Kerr’s office and the table-tennis bat you were fooling with when I dropped in there.”

Rockley lost his grin a bit. Kerr looked puzzled, said, “This is all over my head, O’Hara.”

“Do you happen to know, Kerr,” O’Hara asked, “how they produce the effect of a gunshot on the radio?”

“No.”

“I do. They can’t use a gun, it’d blow out the tubes, so they smack a leather cushion with a flat stick. I think when we get around to checking up, Rock, we’ll find you borrowed a mike hook-up from KGP on some pretext.”

Rockley, sweetening his highball, interrupted to say, “If I were admitting anything, Ken, I might admit you were getting warm.”

“You had the mike hidden in Kerr’s office. Where, Rock?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rockley said, languidly amused. “However, if there had been anything like that around, a good spot for it would have been under the leather chair where a nimble guy could reach for it in a hurry if he needed something like that.”

“Yeah,” O’Hara said, “that would have been as good a place as any. With that point cleared up, Rock, the rest of it isn’t hard to figure. Johnny Lawton had tumbled to your extortion plot against Davenport, perhaps not enough to print but enough to make it dangerous for you if he kept on digging. So you had to shut him up. By last night you had the mike hook-up wired to the radio in Dana’s apartment. That wouldn’t have been hard to arrange. You had the run of the club, the place is practically deserted until late afternoon, and these days nobody gets curious about wires tacked up here and there. So it was all set. Dana got Johnny up to the apartment, used some gag to get his gun from him and shot him through the head, the sound of the shot being covered by the swing band downstairs.”

Rockley grinned over the rim of his highball glass. “What kind of cigars do you like, Ken?”

“Why?”

“I’ll send you a box — from some far-distant place — if you can guess the rest of it. I understand the cops found by the paraffin test that Lawton had fired a gun and his prints were found on his rod. How d’you get around that?”

Inez Dana’s bright brown eyes had been shifting venomously from O’Hara to Rockley, back to O’Hara again. She snapped, “Rock, you’re a fool to keep blabbing like this.”

Rockley chuckled. “Baby, with what O’Hara has already figured out, we’re as good as hung if they ever catch us. And I like to watch O’Hara’s mind work. He’s one of the few really bright guys I’ve found in this town, outside of myself. Go ahead, Ken.”

“Either Dana here knew,” O’Hara said, “or else you’d told her that the cops might try the paraffin test on Lawton’s hand to see if he’d shot a gun. So to cover that angle, she wiped her prints from the gun, got his dead hand around the butt and managed to pull the trigger while the gun was in that position. That shot went into the picture by the door. It would account for the positive reaction of Johnny’s hand to the paraffin test, for his prints on the gun and for the bullet the cops found in the wall, the one that Johnny was supposed to have fired at Dana. Meanwhile you had everything set downstairs. When Dana ran down, you got ready for action. You timed it and when you were certain the witnesses were just outside the door of the apartment, you smacked the leather chair with the table-tennis bat. The mike picked up the sound. Dana’s radio was probably turned on full and it came through the loud speaker with all the effect of a shot. Then you disconnected things at your end and sat back with everybody resting pretty except poor Johnny Law-ton.”

“I ought to be sore at you, Ken,” Rockley said, still cheerfully. “If you didn’t have such a nice set of brains, I wouldn’t have to be powdering out of this fair burg. Ah, well, as some philosopher observed, life is very often like that.”

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” O’Hara said. “What made you send those two punks after me last night?”

“Not guilty. That was our girl friend here. She heard the fuss Shuford made about you taking some of Lawton’s papers. She made an excuse to go down to her dressing-room when you went downstairs and put them on your tail. However, I’d like to have credit for tonight’s fast thinking. Luckily I’m somewhat of an insomniac and I’d just had a prescription filled and with me and I got a double dose into your drinks after the bartender put them out to be picked up by the waiter.”

“Who were these punks?”

“That’d be telling,” Rockley grinned. “They’ll feel bad enough without being pinched when they find out I’ve gone places without them.”

Dana said impatiently, “For God’s sake, you love to talk, Rock. Go see what’s holding up Davenport. I can watch these guys. We’ve got to get away from here.”

Rockley took a big swallow of the highball and got out of his chair. He was less than half-way across to the door when the floor in the hall creaked to the tread of heavy feet in a hurry. Inez Dana swung her head a little and Rockley halted.

The curtains were swept aside by a big paw and Detective Shuford stepped between them. His face was red and his eyes were bloodshot and staring. If he saw anyone in the room except O’Hara he gave no sign of it. He had a long, blue-barreled revolver in his big hand and he bawled at O’Hara, “So I got you now, by Gawd. I’ll learn you to slug me!”

O’Hara said, “Watch yourself!”

“You slugged me and knocked me out in the car. By Gawd, I’ll learn you to pull that on me.”

O’Hara saw Inez Dana’s set, white face, the glitter of her dark eyes, the tightening of her trigger finger as she swung the gun around toward Shuford. He yelled at Shuford but the booming crash of her gun rode over his words.

Shuford staggered, caught at the curtain with his left hand. He seemed to see the girl for the first time and his voice didn’t believe what he saw. He said, “Inez... you—”

He swayed toward her and she shot again, deliberately and with a vicious jerk of her mouth. Shuford pulled the curtain down on top of him, began to fall forward. He groaned thickly and his hands pawed blindly at the air, at the girl.

He still hung onto his gun and, pawing with it, he brought it down heavily on Inez Dana’s chest. It sent her weaving back against the wall, stumbling and off balance.

Rockley cursed in a high, panic-stricken voice and started for the door. As he passed, O’Hara swung, connected with the pink jaw and Rockley did a cartwheel across Shuford’s body out into the hall. O’Hara spun, threw himself toward Inez Dana who was pushing herself away from the wall, straightening up.

He got her by an arm, hauled at her and she went sliding across the room. Kerr had taken three steps toward Rockley who was scrambling to his feet in the doorway. The girl whirled into Kerr and both of them went down in a heap. Her gun jolted out of her hand, landed on Shuford’s writhing figure and bounced out into the hall.

O’Hara went for it and Rockley went for it at the same moment. Their bodies tangled and O’Hara’s foot struck the gun, kicked it a dozen feet way. Rockley wheeled out of O’Hara’s arms, went to one knee, slid after the gun.

O’Hara let him. He’d seen the .32 he had dropped a few minutes before. It was almost at his feet and he bent, scooped it up.

He said, “Hold it, Rock.”

Rockley had the other gun by that time and he began getting to his feet, grinning. He panted, “No good, Ken. Has a broken firing pin. Knew it when I gave it to you. Now get back in that room and we’ll wind this up in a more friendly way. Go on.”

O’Hara pulled the trigger, got only a click, and Rockley lifted his gun, said sadly, “If you insist, Ken.”

From no more than a block away a siren bit into the night, wrapped its scream around them, went higher and higher. It jolted Rockley, confused him for a bare second and O’Hara swung his arm, let the useless gun slide from his hand. It spun end over end at Rockley, caught him between the eyes, put him out on his feet. Plunging at him with the same motion, O’Hara got a hand on Rockley’s gun. Rockley hung onto the gun and O’Hara put his arm, his shoulder and his back into a punch that lifted the pink-faced man off his feet, jolted him into the corner of a long divan, put him out completely.

Behind O’Hara, Inez Dana cursed and choked and he swung around, saw her writhing and spitting and clawing in Kerr’s arms.

Kerr said, “You’re asking for it, babe,” and back-handed her across the face hard.

She stopped struggling. Kerr half-carried her, half-shoved her across the floor and flung her down beside Rockley. She crouched there, sobbing wildly and suddenly wilted and cowed. O’Hara found handcuffs at Shuford’s belt and tossed them at Kerr and Kerr cuffed Rockley and Inez Dana together.

Then he stood back, said in his impersonally amused fashion, “Some fun, O’Hara, some fun. Satisfied now that I’m pure?”

“As the driven snow,” O’Hara said. “Sorry.”

“Think nothing of it.”

Davenport came down the stairs, step by step and slowly, a pale and very frightened man. His long lock lopped over his eyes but he was too terrified to think of patting it back in place. He tried to find words, managed to say, “I... I heard everything. O’Hara, I swear to you I didn’t know Lawton’s death was murder. I was... was—”

“The fall guy,” O’Hara supplied. “Never mind that now, Councilman. Get on the phone, get cops, get an ambulance.”

Davenport wavered toward the phone and over all of it the siren kept on screaming, not getting any closer, not letting up.

O’Hara pulled back Shuford’s coat, his shirt. There was a blood-oozing crease across the man’s belly muscles, a round bluish hole through the flesh just above the right hip. Shuford groaned and moved and O’Hara said, “Take it easy, Otto. You’re not so bad off. Just take it easy.”

He was still on his knees beside shuford when Tony Ames ran into the hallway from the porch. She said, “Ken, are you all right? What happened? What about that shooting?”

“You?” O’Hara said.

“Me.”

O’Hara grinned. “I might have known it’d be you when I heard all that siren noise. You can turn it off now.”

“First I want to have some hysterics. I’ve been staving them off ever since I heard that first shot.”

“Where were you?”

“Just outside. When Shuford rode you off from the Barcelona I tried to follow in your car but the plugs must have been wet — I couldn’t get it started for a while. I supposed he’d take you to the Westwood station so I took a short cut over there and you hadn’t arrived. Finally an ambulance brought Shuford in unconscious and I went half frantic phoning around to see if I could locate you. They were working over Shuford and he’d just come to when I called the paper and the operator told me you’d said you were coming here. Shuford heard my end of the conversation and piled me into a police car and raced over here, all steamed up because you’d slugged him.”

“I didn’t, but let it go.”

“Anyway, when we got here he told me to stay put in the police car. Naturally I didn’t and I was almost up to the porch when that shot sounded. I didn’t know just what to do, I didn’t have a gun, so I ran back to the car, started the motor and tied the siren cord to the handbrake and let it rip.”

“Good head,” O’Hara said. “It saved the O’Hara epidermis, if you’re interested.”

“Don’t mention it. I’ve always wanted to play with a siren anyway.” Her eyes took in Rockley and Inez Dana, cuffed together. She said, aghast, “Ken, you don’t mean that Joe Rockley—”

“Yeah,” O’Hara said. “He and Dana thought up the whole caper. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Shuford stirred, opened his eyes briefly. He said incredulously, “Inez! She shot me!”

“Take it easy, Otto.”

Shuford said, “But Inez! Why did she—” He stopped, shook his head as though he couldn’t figure things out. His fat, florid face was almost comical with its expression of bewilderment and hurt. He said, “Why, I’d have given my life to help her.”

Tony Ames sniffled suddenly. She said softly, “The poor guy, Ken, the poor guy. Ain’t love hell?”

O’Hara looked up at her, smiling. The hard planes of his angular brown face weren’t quite so hard.

“Sometime when I’m in the mood, my siren,” he said, “I’ll give you an argument on that.”