Black Mask (Vol. 21, No. 8 — November, 1938)

Fifty Grand Frail by Eric Howard

Irish shamus Tim Ryan tangles with killers for a pretty client.

The girl’s name was Sullivan, Peggy Sullivan, and if there were ever any prettier members of the Sullivan tribe they would have won all the beauty contests from Dublin to Shanghai. I was for her a hundred per cent even before she spoke, but when I heard her lilting voice, with just a musical hint of old Erin in it, I was lost. I would have bet that she could sing. And she was built for dancing. On top of such qualifications, she had a merry laugh and mischief in her eyes. I can no more resist that combination than I can turn down a thick steak, broiled rare.

If I had known that she was the frail who would lead me into trouble with the cops, get all my friends down on me, and run me into a jam that almost left me on a slab in the morgue, maybe I wouldn’t have fallen. Maybe. My guess is I would have fallen just the same.

She came into my office that crisp October morning like an autumn leaf, dressed in rust-brown that went with her hair.

I was all alone, trying to decide whether to pay another month’s rent and carry on or to save my few dollars for eats. I thought I had sewed up a big job as chief investigator for Western Jewelers’ Association, but their headman, Gates, had just phoned me the sad news. He was giving the job to an ex-dick named Rufus Sloan. Rufus and I were like a pair of strange bulldogs. Rufus beat me out because the cops gave him a stronger recommendation than they gave me. Rufus knew how to play ball, and on a couple of occasions the cops had taken a strange dislike to me.

I was washed up. The smart thing would be to close up the alleged office and leave town. There were two or three burgs where agencies would put me to work.

Then in walked Peggy. A girl to put new heart in a man.

“Hello. Is anybody here?” she asked.

I got up and ran my hand over my hair. I wished I had been wearing my other suit and that new polka-dot tie that had set me back three bucks.

“May I come in?” she said.

That’s when I caught the lilt in her voice. Before that, all I could do was look at her.

“You bet!” I said, when I recovered. Girls like her didn’t come into my office more than once in a lifetime. “Lady, you can not only come in, but I hope you’ll stay a long while.”

She opened her eyes wide — they were sort of gray-green — and I saw the mischief in them. Then she laughed, and when she laughed that was something.

She looked around the office. I got red in the face. This girl was smart. She knew a lot about me just from taking a look around. She knew I wasn’t making any dough, that the janitor of the building wasn’t taking good care of my place, that I was on the way out. She probably figured that I was an ambitious guy who thought he could go places with his own two-bit agency.

She saw the bottle on my desk and smiled.

I touched it tentatively. “Would you—” I began.

“Seeing it’s a good Irish brand, I would!” she said.

I got a clean glass, poured one for her, one for me.

“Here’s luck!” she said.

“Thanks. I need it. Down the hatch.”

Down it went and she didn’t even make a face.

“You’re Timothy Ryan, detective?” she asked.

“I am,” I said.

“Well, then, you’re the very man I want to see.”

“Just a moment, please. How did you happen to choose me?”

“Oh, I ran my finger down the list in the telephone book until I came to a name I liked. I’m Peggy Sullivan and I—”

She didn’t go on. Someone else had come in. She heard him, turned and gasped. He was a little guy, young, thin, wiry, with a face older than he should have had.

“Peggy, you fool!” he said. “I told you not to go to a dick! You’ll only get yourself in worse trouble.”

I got up and walked toward the door. “What do you want here, feller?” I asked. “Miss Sullivan and I—”

The guy pulled a gat and shoved it at me.

“Get back, shamus!” he snapped. “Come on, Peg. You’re coming with me.”

“Pete don’t! Please!”

The girl had jumped toward him, trying to step between us.

“Hit him, Kelly!” I yelled.

There was nobody named Kelly around, but the thin guy swung just the same. And it wasn’t Kelly who hit him; it was Timothy Ryan, in person. Right under the ear. He went down and stayed. No credit to me. When a hundred and ninety pounds of beef hits a hundred and ten pounds of skin and bones, something like that has to happen. I took his gun and left him on the floor. I locked the outer door.

“Now, Miss Sullivan,” I said, “we can continue our little talk.”

“I... I guess I’d better not,” she said, looking down at Pete. “No. It would just make more trouble. I shouldn’t have come here. He told me—”

“Never mind what he says or the likes of him,” I told her. “I’m in it now, trouble or no trouble. Whether you want me to help you or not, little Pete is going to try to get back at me in some dark alley some night. So—”

“Oh!” she said.

“Never mind that. I’m used to it. Just tell me.”

Well, she did. And if it hadn’t been Peggy Sullivan telling it, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. But with her saying it, it had to be true. First of all, Gus Markey had died a week ago in his suite at the Hotel Imperial. I knew that; everybody knew it; the papers had been full of it. Peggy worked at the cigar stand in the hotel; she had known Gus well.

Gus was a gambler and a lot of other things. He had a private mint. He’d lived in the hotel quite a while. A lot of people might have wanted Gus to die, but he fooled them and died a natural death — of pneumonia.

When he was sinking, Gus sent one of his boys down to Peggy and asked her to come up. She went. He wanted to see her alone. His doctor and nurse and body-guard went out.

“You’re a good kid, Peggy, and I like you,” Gus told her. “You’re all right. I’ve got something for you.” He fished into the mattress cover on his bed and pulled out a flat leather case. “There’s fifty grand in here, sis,” he said, “and I don’t want a lot of punks killing each other for it. You take it. Stick it in a bank. Do anything you want with it. Nobody will know you’ve got it and it’s all yours. If you don’t spend it all in one place, it’ll last a while. That’s all, babe. Dough never did me any good. Maybe you can get some fun out of it.”

Peggy had been afraid to take it. He insisted. Finally, she took the leather case and left him. At noon she went down to the big bank on the corner, rented a safe deposit box and put the case in it Yes, she had looked. The fifty grand was in it. Somebody must have seen her going into the bank. Gus had a lot of visitors that afternoon and he died that night.

Guys continued to go to his rooms, where his body-guard was staying until the lease expired, and they practically pulled the furniture apart, looking for something. It wasn’t there. Peggy had it.

Then this guy she called Pete stepped into the picture. She had known Pete Blinker almost all her life; they had lived in the same block as kids. She hadn’t seen him lately. She knew he had served a one-year term for snatching an old lady’s handbag and that he was generally no good; she had heard that he was working for a bookie. He told her he had been working for Gus.

Pete and his friends had it all figured out. Gus had passed the dough to Peggy — they had checked all other possibilities — and she had been spotted in the bank. More than that, they had seen the key to her safe deposit box. Pete’s suggestion — he told her he was just passing it on from the, boss — was that she should get the dough out of the box and hand it over. She could take a grand cut herself — one grand, no more. If she didn’t — well, a lot of things could happen. And would.

They had probably been surprised. Peggy Sullivan wouldn’t hand over the jack, not even for one grand and safety. She would keep it, as Gus had asked her to, or she would see that it was returned to its rightful owner, if Gus had got it by robbery or fraud. But she would not — and her eyes flashed when she told me — hand it over to a gang of thugs!

Then things had happened. A guy had talked rough to her, at the stand, and she had slapped his face. The manager of the hotel saw it and fired her. She had been living in the hotel and sticking close to her room when not on duty. She had to move.

She went into an apartment with a girl friend, and after that they were both subjected to all sorts of annoyances — even their clothes were doused with crude oil and ruined. Peggy couldn’t let her friend be treated that way — she was afraid they might do something to the other girl — and had moved into a furnished room.

The annoyances started all over again — telephone calls that awakened her landlady in the middle of the night, lies about Peggy, men coining around at all hours. The landlady had asked her to move. Peggy decided she had enough.

That’s when she had run her finger down the list of so-called detectives in the phone book and had picked me.

“The simplest thing to do,” I said, “would be to take out your grand and hand over the rest of it.”

She was on her feet right away. “I will not!” she said. “They’re not going to make me. And if that’s the best you can do—”

“Sh!” I said. “I didn’t say it was the best, just the simplest. These muggs mean business. They’re just playing, so far. When they really get rough, what then?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I came to you. I didn’t go to the police because — well, I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me and they might make a scandal of it and people would be asking what was I to Gus Markey and all that. Well, I was just the girl who sold him cigars with a smile. And besides, I thought the police might impound the money or whatever you call it.”

“Yeah,” I said, “they might. They might do worse than that. Well, I’ll throw little Pete out the window and then we can go somewhere. I know a place—”

Somebody was pounding on the door.

“—but I don’t think they’ll let us get there,” I finished. “You wait.”

I glanced at Pete. He was still out. I closed the door in the partition between my office and where my secretary would have been, if I had had one, and went to the hall door.

“What do you want?” I said.

“Open up, shamus,” a hard guy said. “I’m tired of waiting for Pete and the doll. I’ll settle this right now.”

“Is that a fact? Suppose I don’t open up, pal?”

“I’ll kick the door down — and don’t think I can’t.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t put you to all that trouble,” I drawled. “I’ll let you in.”

I snapped the lock and stepped back as he crashed in. I had my hand on my gun in my pocket, but it didn’t do any good. All I saw was a big guy, wearing a dark suit and a black hat, and something sailing through the air at me. I ducked and it went over my head. I heard Peggy scream as the partition split wide open. Ducking and slipping gave the big guy plenty of time. He swung his right hand, and I couldn’t get out of the way; and his gun caught me on the side of the head.

When I came out of it, I saw what the big guy had thrown at me — a mop-pail with a wringer attachment on it that the janitor must have left in the hall. Peggy was gone, but Pete was still there on the floor. Only there something funny about him.

When I looked at him again I saw what it was. Pete was dead, with a bullet hole in his head. The big guy had got tired of waiting, all right. Maybe Pete had told him he could bring Peggy around, for a split of the take. But the big guy was through fooling. He wanted fifty grand. Or maybe little Pete, seeing Peggy treated rough, had gone noble and had tried to stop his pal. Whatever it was, Pete was plenty dead.

And I had to report it to Inspector Joe X. Swayne, a guy who would be very happy to hang a rap on me.

No, I didn’t, either. Because while I was getting up and staggering around, I heard a siren and in a minute the cops were in.

Joe X., in person looking meaner than the last time I had seen him. Joe was tall and lean and white-haired; he had a nasty way of talking.

“So now you’ve killed a guy,” he said to me.

“Yeah,” I snarled back. “In my sleep. While I was unconscious, I dreamed I had a gun in my hand and I popped this fellow. Know him?”

“Why wouldn’t I know him? I’ve arrested him a dozen times. But just because he was a lousy little crook doesn’t give you the right to bump him.”

“Listen, stupid. I was in here talking to a client and—”

“He’s got a client, boys,” Joe said sarcastically.

“—and this guy came in. He started getting rough and I hit him. Knocked him over. Then I went on talking with my client. We were just going out, when another guy — a big one — crashed in. He threw the mop-pail at me and hit me over the head. Feel this bump! I was out for quite a while. When I came back, the little guy was dead, the big guy was gone — and so was my client.”

“And who was your client?” Joe asked.

“That’s none of your business,” I said. “And now I’m going out to see if I can find the big guy.”

“Suppose I take you downtown?”

“What good will that do you? Listen, Joe, be smart. You want the big guy for murder. I’ll help you get him. I want him because he’s getting tough with my client. I’ll play ball with you.”

“I know how you play,” he growled.

His men went over the place. They took a look at my gun, saw it hadn’t been fired. They felt the bump on my head, sized up the mop-pail destruction, and so on. Finally, Joe X. got the janitor in. He was the one who had called the cops. He said he had seen the big guy in the hall, near my door. He had heard the shot — he was down in the basement and had come up the back stairs — and when he opened the door, I was lying on the floor, out, and so was Pete. Joe X. shrugged.

“O.K.,” he said. “You can go. But don’t think we can’t pick you up. Now who’s your client?”

I was through the door. “You guess,” I said, and ducked.

Finding the big guy was not going to be a cinch. All I had to go on was that he had been close enough to Gus to have a claim on the fifty grand and he had known Pete. I hadn’t even got a look at him. All I knew was that he was big and dressed in dark clothes. I’d know his voice, though, if I caught up to him. Meanwhile, he had Peggy and he would try every way he knew to get her to give up the dough. I knew where I could pick up a few rats who had trailed along with Gus. I might learn something.

I headed for a poolroom, not far from the Imperial, where one of Gus’s boys made a book. The first guy I saw when I walked in was my old pal, Rufus Sloan, who had done me out of that job with the Western Jewelers’.

“Nice dumps you play around in, big shot,” I said.

Sloan was a big, red-headed guy with a freckled face and a temper to match.

“Get out of my way, louse,” he said. “I’m working.”

“This is my side of the street, big boy. I stay here. Go peddle your papers. And, speaking of lice, there’s one dirty member of that species that did me out of a swell job. Like the elephant, Tim Ryan remembers.”

Rufus swung at me — a wide one. I got under it and inside. I jolted one up to his jaw. While he was rocking on his heels, before he could get his thick arms around me, I jumped back.

My mistake. Something hard jabbed into me, and a tough-voiced lad said, “Take it easy. Walk out the side door. Move! Stay out of this, Sloan. This guy belongs to me.”

Sloan stepped back against the wall, his mouth open, rubbing his jaw. Then he began to laugh.

“Take him, Dutch. It’s jake with me. Take him for a long, one-way ride. I don’t like him in my scenery.”

“What you don’t like, don’t count see?” the guy said. “Keep your big trap shut or you’ll take a ride yourself.”

Sloan sobered quickly. “Okey, Dutch, okey. It ain’t my funeral.”

“It could be,” Dutch said, and there was plenty of meaning in it.

I was moving to the side door. There was no one in the way. Nobody was paying any attention to us. Dutch had his gun in his coat pocket, but he kept prodding me with it.

I had him now. He was Dutch Schiller, an out-of-town boy who was wanted lots of places. And if half of what they said about him was half true, he was bad. Not a guy to fool with.

We got outside. There was a car at the curb. The motor was purring smoothly. A man was at the wheel, another standing on the curb.

“Get in,” Dutch said.

The fellow on the curb went over me with big paws. He took my gun and shoved me into the back. Dutch got in, too.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We went a few blocks, circled one, drove into a driveway beside a big old house that had ‘Furnished Room’ signs in front. They told me to get out of the car and walk to the back door. I did. We all piled into a big, old-fashioned kitchen. There was a woman at the stove, a big blonde who had been a looker in her day, a long time ago.

“Well, well,” she said. “What am I running here, a boy’s dormitory?”

“Where’s Jack?” Dutch said.

The dame pointed with a long fork. “In there, eating as usual.”

Dutch pushed open a swinging door. At a table in the next room I saw a big guy, dressed in a dark suit, inhaling spaghetti and washing it down with red ink. It was the one who had busted into my office.

“My pal!” I said. “Hey, Jack, re-member me?”

He gave me a dirty look as the door swung shut. The two guys beside me told me to shut up. I ignored them and looked at the dame.

“Haven’t I met you somewhere, baby?” I asked her.

“Listen at the guy!” the dame said. “He’s on the make.”

“Bring the shamus in here,” the big guy said,

I winked at the dame and the two muggs pushed me through the door. Dutch was sitting at the table. The lg guy, Jack, had pushed his chair back.

“Sit down,” he said. “I want to talk to you, Ryan. Got a little proposition to Make.”

He was a horse-faced guy, with a dark skin, two gold teeth in the front of his mouth. He had off-color gray eyes and a long, thin nose. He waved the two tough babies out of the room.

I was trying to place him. He wasn’t a local boy; he wasn’t one of Gus’s pals. He had probably come here with Dutch; from the looks of things, Dutch was working for him, taking orders and liking it. Jack was the brains of the outfit.

He lit up a long, thin, black cigar.

“You going to listen to reason, Ryan?” he asked.

“Let’s hear the proposition,” I said.

“A smart guy hi-jacked fifty grand off a couple of my boys, right after they did a nice, sweet job taking it away from a bank messenger.”

“Oh,” I said, “so that’s where it came from. From the First National stick-up.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s where it came from. And it went to Gus. One of my boys got shot up trying to hang on to the dough. Gus got sick right away, and it’s lucky for him he died, because pneumonia bugs are painless compared to what we’d have given him. Gus passed the dough to a dame. You know her.”

“Sure. And she put it right back in the First National. Where it belongs.”

“It belongs here,” he said, and slapped his pocket. “We need it, brother. We’ve got to have it, quick. And you’re going to help us get it.”

I shook my head. Dutch growled something; Jack held up his hand for silence.

“We offered the dame a grand,” he said. “That’s a nice commission. That’s the best we’ll do. You can split the grand between you. And, besides, I can do something for you. You wanted a job with Gates of the Jewelers’ Association and you didn’t get it. Sloan got it. Well, I can give you some dope on Sloan and a jewelry racket that will make you ace-high with Gates. You better use your head and take what you can get.”

“There was a dead guy in my office,” I said. “Name of Pete Blinker. When the cops find dead guys, they get mean. If you hadn’t killed Pete—”

“I didn’t kill him,” Jack said. “You’re nuts. When I left there, he was out on the floor, but he was alive. Maybe I should have killed him; he was trying a double-cross, telling me he could bring Gus’s frail to time, telling Gus’s boys the same thing.”

“Don’t call Peggy his frail or I’ll knock your teeth out!”

I made a jump for him, but Dutch clipped me on the jaw.

“Sit down!” he said.

Jack grinned at me. “Pete called her his frail,” he said evenly. “And why do you think Gus passed her that dough?”

“Why fool around?” Dutch wanted to know. “We got to get out of here, Jack. The burg is hot. Let’s take the shamus up and work ’em both over.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Finish your proposition, Jack.”

“Okey. You talk sense to the twist. Get her to agree. You go to the bank with her, with a couple of my boys, and open the box. Take out a grand, hand the rest over. Give us some time. Play ball and I’ll give you the dope on Sloan — after we leave. It’s a nice deal, Ryan. Better take it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good business. But where do you get the idea I could convince Peggy? And do you know what the cops could do to me? Hook me as a party to the First National job.”

Jack shrugged. His off-color eyes went frosty. “It’s a proposition you’ve got to take up, pal. You don’t want to see the twist hurt; you don’t want to get hurt.”

I laughed at him. “A lot of good that would do you — with the dough locked up in the bank.”

“Take him up, Dutch,” Jack said, and his voice was like a steel file on rusty metal.

I was marched up the smelly old stairs, turned down the hall to a rear room and shoved into it. Peggy was there, lying on her side on a studio couch, ankles tied, hands tied, adhesive tape across her lips. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright with indignation. But when she saw me, moisture came into her them — tears of pity, I guessed. I tried to give her a smile, but it wasn’t much of a success.

“Talk to her,” Dutch said. “Tell her what we want — what you’ll both get if you don’t come across.”

I pulled a chair over beside her and sat down. I told her. Gave it to her just as Jack and Dutch wanted me to. Then, as her eyes were asking me for my advice and opinion, I added: “But as long as the dough’s in the bank and nobody can get it out but you, a lot of good it will do them to get tough.”

Her eyes smiled at me. She was for holding out. I thought she would be. I sighed. We were going to take some punishment.

The blond dame from the kitchen came in, with Jack. The dame began to take off Peggy’s shoes. Jack took out a packet of matches. I got the idea.

“Hey, wait!” I begged. “Don’t do that. Listen, you can’t burn her feet!”

“Why not?” Dutch snarled. “Why the hell can’t we? She glommed our dough, didn’t she? She’s holdin’ out, ain’t she? We got to get out of here! This burg’s hot! For fifty grand—”

“Shut up, Dutch,” Jack said. “I made you a proposition, shamus. It’s up to you and the twist. The dough is ours and we need it.”

“Burning her won’t get it!”

“Then we’ll try burning you. She’s your doll, isn’t she? She was just playing Gus for what she could get, but she’s your doll. When you begin to smell like a piece of charred steak, maybe—” He broke off and swung around to Peggy. “Listen, toots, I don’t want to hurt you. All I want is what belongs to me. You ready to talk business?”

I was hot all over. Peggy looked at me and I nodded. Her eyes told me she was ashamed of me and sorry for me, too.

But we’d both be better off out of this house, on the way to the bank or in the bank. I had my hands burned once and whenever I think of it I go to pieces. The idea of watching them burn Peggy had me jittery.

But Peggy, no matter what she thought of me, nodded her head, too. She was ready to talk business.

Jack bent over her, ripped off the adhesive tape. It hurt and Peggy made a little noise.

“Now don’t start yelling,” Jack said, “or you’ll be taped up again. You’re ready to go to the bank and turn over the dough? Talk fast, sister!”

“Better do it,” I said. “These two men are desperate. We can’t fight them. No use taking a lot of punishment for a cold-blooded bank — and the bank would get the money, sooner or later, if these guys didn’t. It’s money they stole from the bank and Gus got it by hijacking them.”

“Yes,” Peggy said. “I’ll go. I’ll give it to you.”

“Fine,” Jack said. “Now we’ll do it this way. We’ll hold Ryan here till the boys come back with the dough. If you don’t do your part, sister, your pal Ryan gets his. And if you make any funny passes, in the bank or on the way, it’ll be too bad for you — and Ryan, too. So think it over.”

“Hey!” I objected. “The proposition was I would go to the bank, too.”

“You didn’t take me up,” Jack said. “We’ll do it this way. Maybe the twist don’t care what happens to you. Maybe she does. I think she does. So with you here we’ll be sure she goes through in a nice way.”

“Why should she care what happens to me? She just met me today. You’re nuts. And the guy that croaked Pete Blinker — if you didn’t — is looking for you. Or else why would he shoot Pete?”

That was the first Peggy had heard of Pete’s death. She gasped and moaned a little. Not that she cared much about Pete, maybe, but she had known him a long time.

I was just stalling, hoping they’d let me go along. Outside, even at the bank, I might have a chance; in this house I didn’t have any.

Jack looked thoughtful, frowned, rubbed his chin.

“Who killed Pete if you didn’t?” I pushed him. “Joe X. Swayne will want to know. He’ll find out, too. You think you’re tough, fella; but Joe X. is a lot tougher. He’ll pin a murder rap on you. besides the First National job. You may get the fifty grand, but you won’t get out of town with it.”

Dutch took a swing at me. I ducked.

“Let’s get going,” Dutch said. “We got to get out of this burg.”

“Wait,” Jack told him. “There’s something in what the shamus says. Swayne is a tough cop. But he’s a Homicide guy. He ain’t interested in the First National haul. The cops have almost forgotten that anyway; we didn’t leave ’em anything to work on. But the bankers’ association dicks are on the job. So are Gus’s boys. Let me figure this out. Pete was crossing us, dealing with Gus’s pals. Maybe crossing them and dealing with others. The damned little stoolie!”

“Sure,” I said, “he was a stool for the cops — and for the association dicks, too.”

Jack gave me a long look. Back of the hard look in his eyes you could see he was nervous, worried. He had to get the dough for a clean getaway. He was hunted and worried. If he didn’t get away soon, with a stake to last him a long time in his hide-out, somebody would get him — Joe X., the association dicks, Gus’s pals. He was the fox and they were the hounds. They’d get him. He knew it, and that knowledge was burning him.

“I got it,” he said, and turned to the big blonde. “Mamie, they don’t know you here. You just run this house. Nobody’s looking for you. You’re going to the bank with the doll. Spink will drive you — they don’t know him, either. She passes you the dough, you come back here. Then we all take a powder, leaving the doll and. the shamus in here. Go ahead, Mamie, and take your thirty-eight.”

He swung around to Peggy. “You’ll get hurt, sister, if you don’t play nice. And this guy, Ryan, will get worse than that.”

Jack switched on a little radio, dialed through a lot of swing and got a news broadcast. Joe X., the louse, had given it out that Pete had been killed in my office, that I had disappeared and the police were looking for me. What a pal! The idea was that I had croaked Pete and taken a powder.

Joe X. didn’t care what he did to my rep. He’d giveout anything that he thought might help to turn up the guy he wanted.

I heard the car glide out of the driveway. Peggy and Mamie were on their way to the bank.

Jack beckoned to Dutch and whispered to him. I strained my ears, but all I could get was “...pick up — the dirty so-and-so.” Dutch went out.

“Who you having picked up?” I asked.

“The guy that killed Pete,” he said. “I’m going to make Joe X. a present — give him the guy all trussed up and ready to hang.”

“Who is he?”

He didn’t answer me.

“You think you’re going to get out of town?” I went on. “How? And where can you go? Man, there’s no hide-out in the whole country good enough to keep you safe from the cops, the association dicks and Gus’s boys. You’re sunk, Jack. You haven’t a chance in the world.”

That made him mad. He began cussing me. He moved toward me, with his gun in his mitt. He was swinging it like he intended to knock me cold. I didn’t want to be knocked cold again.

I pulled back, away from him. “Don’t, Jack,” I begged. “Take it easy.”

“Then keep your trap shut!” he snarled, and swung away.

I was waiting for that. The mugg thought I was scared. I jumped and put the bee on him — arm around his neck, my knee against his back, my other hand on his gun wrist. He was powerful and he was fighting hard, but I was cutting off his wind. I was bending him back. I had disarmed plenty of muggs this way. But Jack was stronger than any of the others.

He was trying to free his gun hand, twist it around on me. I hung on and put extra pressure on his Adam’s apple. The guy could take a lot, but not all I gave him. When he began to gurgle, I let go of his wrist, swung one to his jaw. He slipped and I let him hit the floor, grabbing his wrist with both hands, testing the gun out of his mitt.

A kick in the skull put him away.

I tied him with the rope they had taken off Peggy, slapped the used adhesive tape across his mouth.

I started down. Dutch must have heard the fall of Jack’s big hulk. He was waiting for me in a doorway. He started shooting. A slug cut into my left arm. I dropped behind the railing, angled a shot down at him. It cut a red gash across the top and side of his head. Then there wasn’t any more shooting.

I waited quite a while. No sounds. Nobody around. Nobody running out.

I started down, my left arm dragging and bleeding a lot. I poked into rooms. The house was empty.

There was a phone in the kitchen and I dialed a familiar number — headquarters. I got Joe X.

It seemed no time at all before the cops were in. They came in quietly, leaving their cars on a back street.

“You louse!” I told Joe X. “Making out I’m a killer and that I ran away from you cops!”

He grinned at me. “Just detective work, shamus, just detective work! Now tell me.”

“I do the detective work!” I said. “O.K.! They’re picking up the guy that shot Pete, bringing him here. They’ll be here soon. You guys duck down and nab ’em when they come.”

“Who is he?”

“How the hell do I know?” I growled. “But Jack knows. He sent for him. I got Jack all tied up, upstairs. He pulled the First National job, with Dutch Schiller. Dutch is in the hall — and he’ll never stick up another bank. Now duck and wait for these mobsters to toss a killer in your lap.”

We didn’t have to wait long. About ten minutes. The car that had brought me here swung into the drive, entered the garage. There were three cops in there and they covered the three men in the car from all sides. They brought them into the house, the two I had seen before carrying the third.

And the third, who had been knocked out. was none other than my old pal, Rufus Sloan!

“There’s your man,” I told Joe X. “Jack says he’s been running a jewelry racket. Pete must have known about it and tried to shake him down. Maybe Sloan was trying to cut in on this First National dough, too. Anyway, there’s no doubt he wanted to get rid of Pete, and finding him out in my office was too good an opportunity to pass up. So he bumped Pete in my place, hoping you’d be dumb enough to pin it on me. You can make Jack talk and Sloan, too, if you know how. And you cops recommended him to Gates!”

I drew a long breath and went on.

“Now listen! There’ll be another car coming here. They’re bringing fifty grand from the bank for Jack — the First National haul. There’ll be two women in it and a man driving. You mutts nab the man and the old dame — a washed-out blonde. But if you touch the young girl, I’ll shoot hell out of you! She’s my client!”

The other car, a coupe, slid into the drive a few minutes later. A slim, dapper little crook got out from behind the wheel. Mamie, hanging on to Peggy’s arm, got out and pulled the girl after her. Mamie had a leather case under her arm. They got to the back door and then Joe X.’s boys rammed guns in their backs. But not in Peggy’s. As she let out a cry and backed away, frightened, I caught her in my good arm.

Mamie put her hands up and the leather case, full of five hundred dollar bills, went up in the air, flow open — and the money sailed and floated around us.

Joe X. called one of the dicks.

“Take this crazy shamus to the hospital,” he said, “before his arm gets so bad they’ll have to cut it off. From the looks of it, he’s going to need both arms. Take the girl along if she wants to go.”

“You know what, Peg o’ my heart,” I said. “We ought to go somewhere and get acquainted. Not a bad idea, eh?”

“Not bad at all,” she agreed.

So, as it turned out, the First National gave us five grand for nabbing Jack and Dutch; and old Gates practically begged me to take the job he had given Sloan. On account Sloan was locked up for murder, and not much use to Gates. Just to oblige the old guy, I took the job, but held out for more dough than before. Because maybe two can live as cheap as one, but I don’t think so.