Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

It’s good business to keep extra stock on hand, and the gendarmes loved Martin Fowler because he kept them so well supplied with fresh corpses. However, when they found they couldn’t keep up with the influx of new business, they commenced to be annoyed — even suspicious!

Chapter One The Chivalrous Shamus

I stuck my head in the door and looked around. The scene was not unfamiliar to me, but it was always interesting. If there’d been a cover charge I would have felt right at home. Too many lights, of course, but the bar of justice is funny that way. They want to see the people. Why, I can’t imagine.

They all were pasteboard cut-outs to me, until they moved. Then they scurried like something under a log. Dim lights and a juke box would have helped this bar, too.

What was I doing there? An hour ago I had been sitting around my own apartment having a bull session with Iggy Friedberg, my attorney. His wife was out of town, and we’d had dinner and meant to spend a quiet evening lying to each other.

Then Iggy’s office found him and he had to go to work. A client of his had just gotten himself thrown in the Lincoln Heights cooler over a slight difference with the law. As Iggy told it to me on the way out to the Heights, his boy had slugged a cop.

While Iggy did his stuff, I wandered around and decided to take in this side-show. It beat standing up. But a little of what was going on in there went a long way. I was about to shove off, when the bailiff chirped a name that pasted me to my seat.

It buzzed the other “fans”, too. A year ago we’d have paid good dough to see Maxine Keyes in the flesh.

This was off the cuff, and the casting seemed cockeyed. She wasn’t exactly the lush type, although she must have been working on the part for a long time. Her famous blond hair looked as though it had been slept in. Her face was drawn, her eyes puffy, and her clothes were as immaculate as a bar towel.

She was charged with being drunk while drinking. She said she was guilty.

This was something His Honor could get his teeth in. Apparently he fancied himself something of a crusader against the vices of the West Coast Sodom. Miss Keyes was the horrible example. He gave her hell. He chewed out the whole movie crowd, and he finally wound up with the assessment — ninety days or ninety dollars.

Miss Keyes tugged at the handkerchief she had been shredding during the judge’s big scene, and whispered she would have to take the ninety days. She didn’t have ninety dollars.

His nibs blew up. I never knew it before, but I guess it’s a crime to be broke. Anyway, the judge thought so. He told the police matron to take her away. Some newspaper flacks got in their licks before she left the courtroom.

If the judge had skipped his chance to be a heel, I don’t think I would have done it But he’d touched me off. I paid the ninety bucks.

There was a ripple of applause when we left the court room. I took it for sarcasm. Miss Keyes took it on the lam. I trailed after her, caught her outside, and started her toward my car.

“I’ll take you home,” I said.

She stopped and looked at me. “What did you think you were buying?” Her eyes were hard.

She had me there. I’d been about to ask myself the same question. I took her arm and turned her so she could see her reflection in a darkened window.

“Not this, baby,” I told her. She let me put her in my car.

I left word for Iggy that he’d have to take a taxi home. She waited for me. Frankly, I was surprised.

She gave me her address, and we started back to Hollywood. She was silent for a few blocks. Then she bummed a cigarette. She smoked for a moment, then: “I haven’t thanked you.”

I kept my attention on the Los Angeles drivers. “Forget it.”

She took my advice and was silent again. Then she asked: “I don’t believe I know your name?”

I told her: “Martin Fowler.”

“What do you do,” she asked, “when you’re not rescuing ladies in distress?”

I smiled and told her I was a private investigator, and I was a little green at this Galahad role, this being my first offense.

She finished her cigarette. “I realize this is neither the time nor place, Mr. Fowler,” she said, “but I need a drink.”

I glanced at her. In the dim glow of the dashboard she got a better break than she had in court. There was a resemblance to Maxine Keyes — a little beat up, but there. I could also see she wasn’t kidding. Nobody was going to have to hold my nose to get a drink down me, either.

She borrowed my pocket comb and went to the tavern’s little girls’ room. It helped. So did a couple of drinks. Or maybe I was getting used to her. One thing to her credit, she didn’t attempt any bum alibis for what had happened. When she felt up to it, I drove her home.

She lived in the Outpost Section of Hollywood, in a shack which didn’t look like ninety bucks would make any difference to the owner. It didn’t. Maxine explained it now belonged to the Bank of America. She was getting the old heave-ho any day now. In the meantime, I was welcome.

What I could see of the inside looked blitzed and looted. No rugs, damn little furniture, and faded spots on the walls where she’d had pictures. The living room was just one size smaller than the Legion Stadium. A davenport and a cocktail table were camping out over by the fireplace.

Maxine looked at me and laughed. “Don’t run, Mr. Fowler. It’s not haunted. Kick some of the stuff off the davenport and sit down, while I get some glasses.”

I took her advice, but kept my coat on. In a minute she was back with glasses and a pitcher of water, which she somehow placed on the cocktail table. She borrowed a match and lighted the newspapers in the fireplace. It gave off one warm gasp and quit.

She sat down beside me and poured me a drink.

“No gas.” She explained the cold. “Next week no water, and, barring miracles, no Maxine.”

As the fifth I’d brought diminished, I tried to remember my manners and not pry into her affairs. I’m not much of a gentleman. Anyway, Maxine wasn’t touchy on the subject.

“After all,” she said, “you do rate something for your money. I just wish the story was more original.”

It was a little shopworn. Husband trouble and work trouble ganged up on her. She started drinking to keep going. When she had no husband and no work, she had more time to devote to it. Her money didn’t last forever. She’d put everything in hock. Now that was gone, too.

“I wish I could be cavalier about it,” she said, helping herself to another drink, “and say it had been fun and I had no regrets, but it stunk and I’m lousy with regrets.”

She killed her drink in one pass. She looked at me and smiled. “You’re having a hell of a time, aren’t you?” She patted the back of my hand. “Thanks anyway for not trying to save me with kind words.”

She excused herself and left the room. I marvelled at her control. I was beginning to feel slightly boiled, just keeping up with her the last couple of hours.

She was only gone a minute. When she dropped down beside me again, she tossed a leather-bound book in my lap. She was smiling. “Now you’ll know I’m drunk. I don’t know why I should want to inflict it on a decent guy like you, but that’s my diary. I want you to have it.”

I tried to give it back to her, but she insisted: “Please. Please keep it. I always wondered why I bothered to write all that stuff. Now I guess it was because I wanted somebody to understand me.”

She made a drink while I kicked it around. It whipped me. What was I supposed to say? I don’t think it mattered.

It might have been the cold, or maybe it was just the best thing I could think of right then. I took Maxine in my arms. I brushed her hair and cheek with my lips — her eyes. Then she looked up at me and kissed me like she meant it.

The next morning I wondered about it. I’m inclined to think of myself as an independent operator. In this business, ladies in distress are a dime a dozen, but I try to keep my interest in that type of woman strictly professional. And now I had this Maxine on the brain.

I’d heard about cures for the booze habit. But even if it worked, that wasn’t the whole answer to Maxine’s problem. I’d kept my nose out of her diary up to now. I didn’t need it to tell me she wasn’t on the lush just because she liked the taste of hooch. Maybe a psychiatrist was the answer. I meant to call Iggy and ask him what he thought. As I said, I was worried — about Martin Fowler.

The morning papers made quite a thing out of Maxine’s bout with the law. They published the scolding the judge had handed down almost verbatim, with a few dim-witted comments of their own. All around I had one hell of a morning.

Then about one o’clock, Maxine called me. For a wonder, she sounded sober: “Surprise,” she said, “they haven’t cut off my phone.”

I laughed. “How do you feel?”

“Wonderful,” she replied. “Are you sitting down?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, hold on, darling. This will be a shock.” She announced happily: “Maxine Keyes has a job — believe it or not!”

“On the level, that’s terrific!” I told her. “Tell me more.”

She was, she explained, getting the lead in a roadshow company. It wasn’t a lot of money, and she fully expected to have her creditors put the grab on most of it, but at least it was a start.

I congratulated her and told her we ought to have dinner and celebrate.

Could we make it the following night? She had to see some people about the play tonight. It was a date.

I wished her more luck and told her to be good. I felt a little better when I hung up.

By the following afternoon, I was as nervous as a madam at confession. I went rushing up there about four o’clock. I gave the doorbell a play to no returns.

That should have satisfied me Maxine was out. I wasn’t due there for at least a couple of hours. For some reason it didn’t.

I scrambled down the side of the hill to get around to Maxine’s back yard. The whole joint clung to the slope by its fingernails, so this yard wasn’t much more than a sodded patio built up behind a retaining wall. The grass, the trees, and the ragged ornamental shrubbery were burnt brown, the few pieces of garden furniture weatherbeaten to the same indefinite color.

On the table was an empty gin bottle, and across the back of the chair, Maxine’s coat. My first thought was that she had been out there having a drink, heard me ring, and had gone to the front door while I was coming around the house.

I went to the door to sing out and let her know I was there. It was locked.

I picked up her coat and fumbled through the pockets. I found a handkerchief soiled with lip rouge, and her keys. There was nothing else to do. I forced myself to look over the retaining wall.

Jackpot!

She was lying about sixty feet below me, crumpled against the yellow clay. Beyond the wall, I found a place where I could get down to her.

I could’ve spared myself the trouble. She was dead — her neck frozen at a crazy angle, her face scratched by the crumbled granite.

I climbed back to the house, let myself in and called the police. Then I lit a cigarette and started looking for myself. Ever since I met this dame I had been building up to this. Nobody had twisted my arm and said I had to answer for her. It hadn’t been love, either. Then what was I doing there, tangled in the mess that a neurotic, dipsomaniac ex-movie queen had made of her life?

That was where the doorbell caught me.

Sammy Hillman was the inspector in charge of the homicide detail. He and I had chewed over several bones together. For a cop, he wasn’t a bad guy. He came in smiling and looking around as though he thought I might have a drink waiting for him. “Hello, Fowler,” he said. “Can’t you let us drum up our own business?”

“You’d go broke in a week, Sammy, and you know it.”

Hillman took in what he could see of the house from where he was standing. “Nice creepy little cave this is,” he commented. “What’ve you got?”

I took him out back and showed him.

His gang spread out and went to work, while I told him what I knew. After I finished my recitation, we went down to view the remains. He didn’t say so, but I gathered he was satisfied it was just a case of too much grog and too little guts.

We were standing by the table in the back yard. I looked at the empty gin bottle Maxine had left behind. It hadn’t given anything to the fingerprint boys. It was just standing there like a tombstone.

Suddenly I wanted that bottle. “Look, Sammy,” I said, “don’t think I’ve gone completely nuts, but if it’s O.K. with you, I’d like to take this bottle — for a souvenir.”

He snorted. “Help yourself. One bottle more or less around this place can’t make any difference.”

I tucked the prize under my arm and said goodbye.

Sammy nodded. “This’ll last us a couple of weeks,” he said, “so take it easy.”

Chapter Two Husbands and Homicide

I’d forgotten about eating. I went home and gave Maxine’s bottle the place of honor in the center of my cocktail table while I hustled a drink for myself in the kitchen. I brought it back and toasted my final link with Maxine.

I had another drink and started to get poetic about Maxine, life, and empty bottles. You don’t have to be boiled to get the connection, but it helps.

I remembered Maxine’s diary, still in the pocket of the coat I was wearing the night I met her. I got it, and another drink.

I spent the next couple of hours getting stewed and wondering at the junk a woman will immortalize in her diary. I could follow the general outline of her life, but mostly it was devoted to personalities and sounded pretty shallow. It made a good companion-piece for the empty gin bottle.

I killed the fifth and made a pass at going to bed. I got one shoe off before I went under. The bed pitched a couple of times when I shut my eyes, and I felt I was being shot through space. It was broad daylight again before anything bothered me.

The little men woke me up. I sat up on the edge of my bed and wondered what would ever become of me. I managed to totter out to the kitchen and try some ice water. It felt good in my mouth, but raised hell in my stomach. I made some hangover soup with tomato juice, Worcestershire, and a shot of bitters. With that rumbling around in my guts, I went in and took a hot shower, brushed my teeth and got into some clean clothes. I decided against risking a shave right then.

While I was waiting for the coffee to run through the silex, I cleared away some of the debris from my contest with the demon rum, emptied the ash trays, threw out the dead fifth my hangover had come in, and picked up my heritage from Maxine.

In the cold light of morning, keeping that gin bottle lost some of its enchantment. Maybe some relatives would turn up for her diary. But I was certain that nobody, including me, had any use for that bottle.

I was in the act of tossing it in the trash can with the other dead one, when it happened. Nothing lethal, just an idea. I noticed for the first time that the bottle wasn’t just empty. There was a fine layer of dust in it!

I’ve had a lot of experience with emptying bottles. Nobody could sell me the story that this one had only been standing around some forty hours. The label was still fresh, which ruled coincidence out of its being at the scene of the suicide. But why would Maxine set the stage with a prop bottle?

Something smelled.

Until now I had taken it for granted that her bum publicity break in the papers put the fritz on her comeback chance, she got boozed up and jumped. This dead gin bottle said it didn’t happen that way.

I had my coffee and set out to prove he was a liar.

The Screen Actors’ Guild informed me that Maxine had been represented by an agent named Mitchell Kasch. He was in one of those colonial cheese-cakes that line the strip section of Sunset Boulevard. It was upstairs, a cute little joint The outer office was done in knotty pine and a nyloned secretary with a stagy accent and a peek-a-boo blouse that was more peek than boo.

Kasch turned out to be a stocky young guy with woolly black hair and a pipe. He acted a little nervous at the prospect of talking to a private detective. I promised to make it quick.

He held up his hand. “Please, Mr. Fowler,” he said, seriously, “take as long as you want.”

Then in the same gesture he picked up his phone and told dream boat to get him some casting director or other. He turned to me and smiled: “That’s the agency business, Mr. Fowler. Never a moment to myself. You were Saying, Mr. Fowler?”

It looked as if I should have brought Iggy along to talk to this character. However, I gave it to him fast. I wanted to know if there had been talk of cancelling Maxine’s contract.

The phone cut me off. Kasch excused himself and helloed into it. I gathered he was talking to some executive’s secretary, and was pitching her to let him talk to the boss. He finally broke her down. The boss came on the line. Kasch asked him one question and got a “No!” shouted at him I could hear across the room.

Kasch hung up, smiled sheepishly at me, buzzed his girl again and gave her another call. He turned to me. “A devil of a way to make a living, Mr. Fowler.”

I repeated my question about Maxine’s contract — apparently a tender spot with Kasch.

“Definitely not,” he assured me. “There wasn’t a whisper of breaking the contract.”

I asked him if it wasn’t a little unusual. It was my understanding that producers fought shy of people with a rep for boozing.

The telephone again, and Kasch lost another skirmish. This was obviously one of his bad days. He put in another call and came back to me. “Where was I, Mr. Fowler?”

I told him he was about to explain why the manager of this road company was willing to take a chance on Maxine.

“You’ve got me, Mr. Fowler,” he admitted. “To be honest with you, when the call came in, I was so glad to make a deal for her I didn’t hand them no argument. But they knew about her drinking, because they asked me if I thought she could pull herself together and do the part. I said I personally guaranteed she would.”

I asked him if he didn’t think he was taking a chance making such a guarantee.

He laughed. “Just a figure of speech, Mr. Fowler. Just a figure of speech.”

Between telephone conversations, I managed to satisfy myself that Kasch knew very little about his client’s personal life and even less about her past. He had, he explained, only been her agent for about six months.

“That’s this business,” Kasch remarked sadly as I stood up to leave. “They come to me when they’re flat. I get them a break, and look what happens!”

The telephone buzzed again and he reached for it with one hand, extending his other to me. He was deep in his line when he nodded goodbye.

I went out and sat in my car. This round would have to go to the gin bottle. I had kicked the props out from under my pat little assumption of Maxine’s motive for taking her life. So what? She probably had a dozen better reasons.

Besides, what was this getting me? Suppose this hunch was on the level and Maxine wasn’t a suicide, but a smart piece of murder. What business was it of mine? I wasn’t on the city payroll. I was working for a guy named Fowler, who could spend all the dough I could make for him.

I drove down to my office and started to put in a dishonest day’s work. I dictated about a dozen letters, read off a client who wanted me to suppress some dope he’d paid me to dig up on his wife, and in general gave everyone a bad time. I was feeling pretty rugged — a setup, to get bumped.

My girl announced there was a Mr. Clark to see me, and I told her to let him wait. She said yes sir, and broke the bad news.

The door to my office was closed, but I could tell it hadn’t gone over with Mr. Clark. He let out a roar, and I heard Miss Wheeler squeal: “Mr. Clark, please! I said he would...”

The door crashed open, and Clark thundered in with Miss Wheeler hanging on his coat. “Fowler,” he roared. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are...” He turned on the terrified girl, jerking at his coat. “Let go of me!”

I nodded and she retired, looking as if she were about to cry. I switched my attention to Clark, and wished for the ninety pounds I would have to spot him if I tried to heave him out. “Don’t you think you’re a little big to be pushing secretaries around?” I demanded.

He took off his coat deliberately, folded it, tossed his hat on top of it, then leaned on my desk with a pair of hairy fists. “Fowler, I didn’t come up here to trade wisecracks with you, or sit in your outer office while you play hard to get.”

I picked up his coat and hat and threw them at him. “I don’t know who you are, or what’s on your mind, but you’re wasting our time. Get out.”

He lateraled the coat and hat to a chair behind him. “Just like that, he tells me: ‘Get out.’ ” He cooed: “Aren’t we being a little hasty, chum?”

He grabbed me by the lapels and tossed me into my chair. “I said I wanted to talk to you. Now where’s your manners?”

I had a choice. I could swing on him, and get killed. He was a lot of man — not just big, but built. Good-looking, dark hair, heavy eyebrows, a Gable type without the cute mustache.

“All right, talk.”

“That’s better,” he said.

He relaxed and picked himself out a chair. He lit a cigarette. Clark was smiling. “I don’t suppose you’re in any mood to hear what I’ve got to say?”

“It better be good.”

“My name doesn’t mean anything to you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “I’m Maxine’s first husband. She told me about you, said you were O.K.”

I let him talk.

“Fowler, what’s your angle on what happened to Maxine?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“Do you believe it was suicide?”

I repeated I was not concerned with what it was. I was leaving it up to the proper authorities.

“How about your thinking, do you leave that to the proper authorities, too?”

“Look, Mr. Clark. You’re a big guy; you can muscle your way in here, and make me listen to you, but if I’ve got to think — it costs money.”

He curled his lip like he was going to spit. Out came his wallet and he dropped two one hundred dollar bills on my desk. “Think,” he said.

We blinked across the desk at each other. The big boy got impatient. “Well?” he demanded.

“I’m thinking,” I told him, and stretched it as far as it would go. “I’m thinking you’re the biggest jerk who ever sat in that chair.”

He didn’t like it. He spread himself over the top of my desk. “One more crack like that, Fowler, and I’m going to start bouncing you off the walls.”

“Sit down,” I said. “Let’s get this straight — just as if you’d walked in here like a normal person. I’d as soon take your money as the next guy’s, but I want to know what it’s supposed to be buying.”

He sat. Then he smiled. “I think we’re going to get along, chum.”

I let it pass.

“If I seem a little anti-social, skip it. I just wound up five years at Quentin.”

I nodded, and extended my hand. “Welcome, brother.” I told him about being sent up there for a year on the bum manslaughter rap in the de Spain case. We gabbed like a couple of old grads at. homecoming. We hated some of the same people.

Clark explained he’d been out a couple of months when he heard Maxine was on the rocks. He wanted to do something about it. He still had some dough and some connections. Things broke just right and he was able to get her a part in a road company by spending a little and putting a bit of pressure on the right people.

“I’m a gambler, Fowler,” he explained. “You’d be surprised at some of the people who are into me for different things. Everything was all set The night Maxine was supposed to have pulled the dutch act, I saw her, and we talked over the whole thing. That’s when she told me about you. She thought you were a pretty good egg. What I’m getting at, Fowler, is there was no reason for her to commit suicide. I’m willing to bet those two Cs and whatever more it takes to prove it wasn’t.”

I said O.K., I’d take him on. “Now how about cutting me in on all the details of Maxine’s past?”

He told me what he could. She had started in show business as a kid in New York, around the nightclubs. She was mostly a showgirl, occasionally stepping out of the line to do a specialty — nothing very startling.

During that period she met Clark, and it was love. They got married and Maxine put away her dancing shoes and became a housewife. Part of being wife to a gambler was providing a little sex appeal to all night poker sessions. Clark didn’t say so, but I gathered she was used for sucker bait.

Then one of their customers, Jake Reed, a Hollywood producer, took an interest in her and talked Clark into letting her sign a contract. They moved to California and Maxine surprised everyone by registering a hit in her first part.

It looked permanent, so they bought a home in Brentwood and settled down. From Clark’s point of view, it was a good deal. He found plenty of men around the picture colony who liked to gamble, and Maxine’s position in the industry gave him almost amateur standing, which didn’t hurt the take.

Everything was wonderful until the story started making the rounds that Jake Reed and Maxine were double-crossing him. Clark ignored the gossip until one night at a party he got too heavily loaded and put an end to the story by punctuating Mr. Reed with a .38 slug.

Clark was tried for second degree murder. Maxine stood by him all the way, but when he went north, the studio said get a divorce or get out of pictures. And that was that. She got the divorce.

The rest of Clark’s story was only things he had heard while at San Quentin. She had married again — an actor named Wally Burke. It hadn’t lasted. Then the fadeout on the picture career.

I asked him if Maxine had always been a heavy drinker. He was emphatic in stating that as long as he knew her, she had done very little drinking.

“There’s just one more thing, Clark,” I said. “I might want to talk to some of Maxine’s old friends to get their slant on her. Have you any ideas on who I might look up?”

About the only one he could think of was a girl who used to be her stand-in and secretary, a girl named Marion Trenton. He didn’t know where I’d find her.

I said thanks, I’d manage, and he’d hear from me.

Marion Trenton was in the phone book. Finding her was that easy. I called and found her at home. I explained I was a private investigator interested in the Keyes suicide. I’d like to talk to her about it.

She was most obliging and had a very pleasant voice. I might come right over.

She lived in an apartment just north of Hollywood Boulevard. It was a proper arrangement for a working gal — about fifty bucks a month, one room and kitchenette, in-a-door bed. She had it dressed up with lamps and books.

She went with it — vaguely resembling Maxine, I think mostly in build and coloring. She had something of the same kind of turned-up nose. Her eyes were almost as large, and her mouth had the same interesting pout. I was making the comparison with Maxine at her best. This kid didn’t have quite as much, but she’d taken care of it. She was a very modest, quiet girl and spoke with what I suppose was an interesting sort of whisper.

I qualified her right away. She had been Maxine’s closest friend all the way. Her death had been a shock, but not particularly a surprise to Miss Trenton.

“She kept on saying it was a waste of good liquor for her to go on living.”

“Tell me,” I said, trying to keep my eyes off her legs, “was she always a heavy drinker?”

“No. No, she always drank a little, but it didn’t get serious until a couple of years ago,” she replied, plucking at the hem of her skirt.

“About when would you say she began to lose control?” I concentrated on the cigarette in my hand.

Miss Trenton thought a minute. “Just before she and Mr. Burke were divorced.”

“Before?”

“Yes. I recall it was one of the things which broke up their home.”

“There were others?” I asked. “Such as...”

“I’d rather not...” she said, and I let it drop. She wouldn’t be any good to me hostile.

“Look, Miss Trenton,” I urged, “you probably knew Miss Keyes better than anyone else. Would you mind giving me a thumbnail sketch of her life, while you knew her?”

She was sweet about it. In general, Miss Trenton’s story up to the time of Maxine’s divorce from Johnny Clark was a rehash of what he had already told me.

Shortly after the divorce, she made a couple of pictures with a leading man named Wally Burke. The studio publicity department rigged up the usual phony romance, only this time it took. When her divorce was final, she married Burke. They bought a house in the Outpost, and for a time it was love in bloom.

There was, Marion recalled, some whispering at one time that Maxine was falling for her director, a Hungarian named Andre Zolta. But Marion discounted this. They were just good friends. Zolta’s manner might have appeared strange in America, but it was, she assured me, simply continental.

Then Zolta was killed in a hunting accident. He jumped up in Wally’s line of fire when a six point buck crashed out of the underbrush. It happens a hundred times every deer season. That didn’t make the Burkes feel any better about it.

Their marriage started to go to pieces. Maxine was drinking too much. Eventually there was a divorce, and Maxine blew up in the middle of a picture. That cooked her with the industry.

Marion had kept in touch, watched her drink herself destitute. It wasn’t pleasant, but as Marion told me: “Someone had to stand by her, and we had always been such close friends...”

Maxine’s situation had the same appeal to me. “There’s just one more thing.” I asked: “Did she have any enemies? I mean people who really hated her?”

Marion considered for a moment, then tossed me a joker. “There’s only one person I know of who might have felt that way about Maxine,” she replied in her even, husky whisper. “Johnny Clark was terribly bitter when she divorced him. When she remarried, I understand he wrote, threatening both her and Wally.”

Now how was I doing? I started out with a paying client and wound up with an ace suspect.

“Just a minute, Miss Trenton. Did you see that letter?”

“Why yes, I did.”

“When it was received — or recently?”

I was overplaying my interest a little. Miss Trenton’s frown tripped me off. It wasn’t a mean expression, just perplexed.

“When Maxine received it,” she replied, “but I can’t imagine what difference it can make now. She took her own life. It can’t matter what people thought of her.”

She’d figure it out for herself anyway, if she hadn’t already. So I took her into the firm. “Unless,” I suggested, “it wasn’t suicide.”

Her reaction was standard enough. “I didn’t know there was any question about it.”

“When a person dies violently,” I explained, “there’s always a question.” I stood up to leave. “Thanks a million, you’ve been very helpful.”

We said goodbye at her door. She said she would be glad to do whatever she could. I thanked her again and said I might take her up.

Chapter Three Corpses, Corpses, Pretty Little Corpses

I trotted out to my car, feeling I’d been had. What kind of routine was this? Only one thing was clear to me. I could see now why Clark wanted a murderer found — before his letter turned up. But why hadn’t he told me about it? I wondered what I would do, if it developed my client had killed his ex-wife.

It looked as though the best move I could make in Clark’s interest would be in the direction of finding the letter before the police did. So I drove to the Outpost and added housebreaking to a growing list of minor crimes I have committed in the line of duty. It was a good night for it.

Like most hillside homes, Maxine’s was built upside down, the bedrooms being below the main floor. I found a back window unlocked and eased into what must have been a guest room — it was unfurnished. I explored until my flashlight found a room with a bed in it. That had to be the one I was looking for.

If she’d kept the letter at all, I reasoned, it would probably be somewhere around her bedroom — a dressing table drawer, or a hat box, anything she could stuff old letters in.

I wasn’t being particularly cautious, which makes a sucker out of my intuition. It cost me a lump on the head. When I stepped into Maxine’s bedroom, someone took a swipe at my skull. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow, but just the same it knocked me across the room. I hit the bed and kept going. There was room for me under the bed, and that’s where I got. Like the other man in a boudoir comedy.

For several minutes, the only thing I heard was the numb throbbing of my head. Then my chum moved. He came over to the bed to see if there was anything left of me. A board creaked by my hand.

It was my turn to get cute. Lunging out, I got both of his feet and heaved. He came down fighting, but I was on top. I hated to see him quit — I can’t slug an unconscious man.

I tossed him across the bed and felt around the room for my flash. When I illuminated his face, I was ashamed of myself. I had made an awful mess of what must have been a simply dreamy profile. The Wally Burke fan club would boycott me.

I lit a cigarette and sat down beside him to wait. Smearing glamor-pants hadn’t stopped my head from throbbing, but it made it endurable. While he was out, I went through his clothes and satisfied myself that he was unarmed.

His flashlight was on the floor. My head had put a dent in it — just call me Iron Skull Fowler.

He came to with a classic: “Where am I?”

I grabbed his collar and jerked him to the edge of the bed. He was comically terrified.

“What’s the idea of slugging me when I came in here?” I demanded.

“I... I didn’t know it was you.”

“You’re a little nervous, aren’t you? Who were you expecting?”

“No one. That’s why I...”

“Skip it. You’re just lucky you haven’t got a murder to answer for. Or doesn’t that make any difference to you?”

I had my flashlight in his face. He wasn’t having anything to say about my last question, so I asked him another: “Suppose you tell me what you were doing here. What did you want?”

He clammed.

“Now it couldn’t be,” I said, “that you were after Maxine’s diary?”

He didn’t comment, but I felt him stiffen inside his coat. I shook him. “No, you wouldn’t want the truth of the Zolta affair aired — even after all this time. It wouldn’t do to let a diary brand you as a murderer.”

He tried to squirm out. “That’s a lie! There isn’t anything like that in Maxine’s diary.”

“That’s what you think, buddy. I know better.”

“But there couldn’t be. She wasn’t within a mile of the accident,”

“Right,” I acknowledged, “but she had binoculars, didn’t she? She saw the whole thing.”

I shook him once more for luck, then let him wilt back on the bed, moaning it wasn’t true. I got disgusted. We weren’t getting anywhere.

“All right, shut up!” I told him. “If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll admit I was lying about the diary. There isn’t a word in it about the Zolta accident. That’s what makes me think she saw you shoot him. She wouldn’t skip the whole thing unless she was protecting someone.”

I told him to relax, while I took a look around. We were leaving there together.

There wasn’t a word or a whimper out of him while I searched for Clark’s letter. If it was there, I satisfied myself, it would only be found by taking the house apart, plank at a time.

I took Burke out to his car, and handed him his flashlight. “Next time,” I advised, “pick a guy with a thin skull, and then start running like hell.”

My romp with “Kid” Burke had put an edge on my appetite. So I cleaned up at my apartment, then went down to Tip’s and put away a steak and some french fries.

Except for a headache, I was as good as new and ready to tackle Mr. Clark. I thought it Was time I heard about that letter from him, I called and got the office to come up.

Clark was sitting in a friendly little game of Red Dog — no deadly weapons showing on the table. I watched a couple of hands while he dropped about five hundred bucks and made back seven-fifty. He got out and took me in the bedroom.

“O.K., Fowler,” he said, sprawling across his bed, “what’s the scoop?”

I told him I had a hot lead, but didn’t know quite how to handle it.

He said: “Yeah? Let’s go after the guy.”

“I don’t think you’ll like it.”

He sat up. “Can the double-talk.”

“You really want to know who it is?”

“Don’t be a dope,” he snapped. “Sure I want to know.”

“All right, don’t get sore. It’s you.” I hope Miss Post will forgive me — I pointed.

He looked at me for a minute, his eyes narrowing. “Fowler, you’re nuts! D’ya think I laid out two hundred fish to have you tell me I killed Maxine? Hell, if I’d done it, don’t you think I’d know it?”

“But would you admit it?”

“I damned sure wouldn’t hire a shamus to prove I had!” he barked.

“Now that’s how I figure it,” I admitted, haively. “But what about the letter?”

“What letter?”

“A letter you wrote to Maxine when she married Burke. You said you’d get both of them.”

He leaned back against the head of the bed and smoked. “Fowler, you’ve been a con. You ought to know how it feels to be in lock-up and see your dame go for another guy. I was sore then, sure. I sneaked a letter out, and I guess I did say a lot of damn fool things. But it was strictly wind.”

“Good enough,” I conceded. “But what if the letter turns up in some of Maxine’s effects? Can you make the cops believe it was wind?”

Clark’s reaction was surly. “What is this — a shakedown?”

“What do you mean — shakedown?”

He sat up and snarled at me. “If you want to sell me the letter, why don’t you say so?”

I shook my head. “Clark, I think you’d better get yourself another boy. This is no dice.”

He grabbed my shirt front and rattled me around in the chair. “No dice!” he roared. “I’m the guy who’ll say when it’s no dice! Now get this, Fowler — you took on a job you’re damned well going to finish. You can write your own ticket for dough. All I want is the guy who killed her!”

“I’ll find your killer,” I told him, when he let go of me. “And I hope it turns out to be Joe Louis!”

He laughed and went back to his game.

I straightened my tie, picked my hat off the floor and went home. How I loved that man!

The next morning, Sammy Hillman dropped in on me. I knew his visit wasn’t purely social. He wasn’t in any hurry, so I pushed him a little. “By the way, what are you selling these days? The Annual Police Benefit doesn’t happen for months yet. What’s the pitch, Sammy?”

He smiled. “I’ve got another sideline. It isn’t much, but it takes up the slack between murders.”

“Vacuum cleaners, insurance?”

He shook his head. “Candid camera stuff. I’ve been experimenting with infra-red night photography. It’s amazing what you get. No light shows, the subject never knows a picture has been taken.”

I knew this was no good. He wasn’t passing the time of day. “Yeah,” I said, “I can see where that’d be quite a hobby.”

He smiled again and dug in his pocket for an envelope which he handed me. “Here’s a couple of shots I got last night with an automatic rig.”

There were three prints, to be exact. I recognized the setting at once — the guest room window of Maxine’s house. One picture showed Wally Burke climbing in, the other was me, ditto, and the final one was of Burke and me climbing out. The prints were stamped with the time the film was exposed.

I returned them to Sammy. “A very nice likeness.”

The envelope went back in his pocket. He continued to smile. He was enjoying this a lot more than I was.

“I don’t suppose you would object to telling me what you two gentlemen were after?” he asked.

“Not at all, Sammy. Just a second.” I pulled Maxine’s diary out of my writing desk drawer and handed it to him. “Here it is.”

His face fell a little. It was too easy. He scanned a couple pages of the diary. “What was there in it for you?” he asked.

“What difference does it make? You’ve got the book.”

He was very patient with me. “It makes a lot of difference, Marty. If I’ve got to catch a murderer, I’d just as soon it wasn’t you.”

“Who’s been murdered?” I asked.

“Maxine Keyes,” he said quietly.

“How do you figure?”

Sammy puffed, marched his cigar from one side of his mouth over to the other. “Simple. Where she landed, there was plenty of loose dirt. She lit face down. If she’d been alive at the time, she’d have snuffed up a lot of dust. There wasn’t any in her nasal passages.”

“So it’s murder. Well, what d’you know?”

“Of course, you’re surprised as hell. You only wanted that prop gin bottle for a souvenir, I recall. And now the diary. Was it the same thing?”

This wasn’t funny. I couldn’t tell him the truth — that I burglarized Maxine’s house looking for a letter in which a client of mine threatened her life. And it wasn’t going to be easy to convince him I had been after her diary in the spirit of Hallowe’en.

“All right, Sammy. You win,” I said. “You’re going to give me hell for this, but I might as well get it over. I was on the level when I said I wanted the bottle for a souvenir — just a goofy idea. But when I got home, I noticed something we’d both missed. It was bone dry! I was afraid you’d bounce the bottle off my nut, unless I could find something else to back me up when I hollered murder. So that’s what I was up to last night. I found her diary, but I’m just as glad I can turn it over to you.”

Sammy looked blank for a minute. “O.K., Junior G Man,” he growled. “I’ll buy it. But I’ll take it from here, if it’s all right with you.”

I made a date with Marion for Maxine’s funeral. Shortly after twelve, I picked her up and we drove down to the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. The services were being held in the chapel.

As far as I was concerned, Maxine’s funeral was a waste of time. The flowers were pretty, Maxine made a lovely corpse, the music was moving, and, I thought, the eulogy was just corny enough to give the girl a last laugh before they covered her.

Marion identified the principal mourners for me but I was too thick to make anything of it. Except for one thing — Wally Burke was not among those present.

I wanted to have another talk with this Burke, so after we’d done all the public grieving we could for Maxine, I asked Marion if she would mind riding out to his place with me. The idea was, she knew where he lived. Besides, keeping Marion around for the rest of the afternoon wasn’t exactly unpleasant. She wasn’t my type — too pure. But I could dream.

Burke lived in one of those white ranch house mock-ups like no ranch outside San Fernando Valley. But it was all right, if you like that sort of thing — nice lawn, trees, and pansy beds beside the walk.

Marion and I couldn’t raise anyone inside. In the back yard, a dog barked and was answered by several hounds in the neighborhood.

So it wouldn’t be a total loss, I walked around to see Burke’s dog. He was a big, rust-colored collie. He knew Marion at once and jumped around, inviting us in. While Marion was mauling his ruff, I noticed his water pan was turned over. So I bought him a drink. He slurped it dry in twenty seconds Mex and woofed for more. It had been a long time between drinks. He acted hungry, too. I scouted the porch to see what I could find for him.

The back door was unlocked. I asked Marion if she thought it would be O.K. if we raided Burke’s ice-box — for the mutt, of course. She thought so, and while she was poking around in the frigidaire, I helped myself to the rest of the house. I got my money’s worth.

I found Mr. Burke hanging around in his closet — by his neck. He was wearing white silk pajamas, and his little blue toesies dangled a few inches off the floor. A small stool was kicked over behind him. He’d been there long enough.

I went back to the kitchen for Marion. “Come here a minute. I want to show you something.”

I took her to Burke’s bedroom. She looked, then buried her face in my shoulder. I could feel a shudder run through her. I led her to the living room, got a chair under her and helped her with a cigarette. Her eyes were large with fright, or shock, or something, but quite dry and clear. If she was having hysterics, they were all inside.

I located Burke’s telephone and had about half dialed the police, when I changed my mind and put in a call to Johnny Clark.

“Look.” I said, to his gruff hello, “what kind of an alibi have you got for your time last night?”

He laughed. “Part of the evening I spent with a dopy detective named Fowler.”

It wasn’t funny. “I’m serious, Clark. What time did the game break up?”

“About four o’clock.”

“You were there all the time?”

“Right. I wasn’t out of the room, except to talk to you,” he replied. Then he got curious. “Hey, what’s up?”

I told him. Then I said: “It’s another phony suicide — a hanging. This would be a good time for that letter of yours to stay lost.”

“Yeah,” he growled, “it better.”

I called the police in Hollywood. I knew this was out of his jurisdiction, but I wanted Sammy Hillman in on it.

“You’re going to hate me for this, Sammy,” I told him, “but I’ve found another stiff for you. Put away the crib board and come on out.” I gave him the address.

Since the homicide squad from North Hollywood was officially stuck with this one, Sammy and I were on our own, once I had explained how I found the body.

I drew Sammy aside. “I might as well volunteer this information,” I explained. “It’s going to come out sooner or later, and I owe you something for not springing those pictures of Burke and me.”

I told him about our brawl over the Zolta hunting accident: “Last night, I didn’t give a damn how Zolta was killed, except for its bearing on Maxine’s death. I thought if Maxine knew it was murder, and Burke knew she did and might use it on him, he might be our cookie. I know this much for sure: I had him plenty worried last night. If he had killed Maxine, he might have decided the game was about up.”

“He might have,” Sammy conceded, biting into a fresh cigar. “Except that somebody garroted him with his bathrobe cord and hung him up like a Virginia-cured ham. The Zolta angle is interesting, but I’d rather hear about someone who had a good motive for killing Burke and Miss Keyes. Well, let’s go see how the boys from the branch office are doing.”

Chapter Four A Dog’s Life

I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I took Marion and Burke’s collie home with me. He whined and acted a little jumpy when we drove away. He missed Burke, but hadn’t figured it out yet.

After he had cased my apartment with his nose, he flopped down on the rug in front of us and tried to study out the whole situation.

I fixed a drink. “Anything you want to tell Daddy?” I asked, as I handed Marion her highball.

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?” she countered.

I sat down and took her free hand. “It might be easier to talk to me than to a police inspector.”

She nibbled at her drink, then shook her heard. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I...”

I tightened my grip on her fingers until she winced. “Don’t,” I told her. “Don’t expect me to believe that.” I nodded toward the dog, who had laid his nose across her feet. “It’s pretty obvious you’re old acquaintances. Burke’s friends, his housekeeper, will drag you into this mess. Sammy Hillman is no dope. He’ll want straight answers for a lot of questions.”

She started to cry. It wasn’t a big boo hoo, just tears and silence. She didn’t shake or sob, and her nose didn’t run. It was very different crying. Finally she said it: “Wally and I were going to be married.”

Then she shut up again. I dropped her hand and walked the floor for a few minutes. She kept spilling out at the eyes.

“You realize,” I explained to her, “that from Hillman’s point of view, your conduct this afternoon was a little screwy. I don’t suppose he’s met very many girls who would take it like that.”

Marion dabbed her eyes, and took a big slug of her drink. “Don’t you see? I couldn’t... I couldn’t make a scene. It wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t let myself go.”

I called Burke’s house and caught Sammy still there. I told him I had a new angle for him, and put Marion on the phone. She explained about herself and Wally, I guess he believed it. I did.

We had another drink and I assured her she had done the right thing. She smiled at me around the edges of her mouth. Her eyes were still moist, but under control now.

I made a small fuss over the mutt. He loved it, sat up and waved a paw at me like he wanted to fight. He was leading with his nose.

“I wonder what’s going to happen to this character?” I asked. “Can we pawn him off on any of Burke’s relatives or friends?”

“I wish I could take him,” she said, “but I’m afraid if I moved him into my apartment, I’d have to go. I’ll see what can be done in the morning.”

The mutt had me by the wrist and was growling as if he meant to keep it. “How about Burke’s housekeeper?” I asked. “He had one, didn’t he?”

Marion nodded. “I saw her at the funeral this afternoon. I suppose Wally gave her the day off. She worked for them, Maxine and Wally I mean, before the divorce.”

I oh’d and pinged my four-footed friend on his schnoz. He sneezed and let go of my wrist. “Do you suppose she could look after Junior?”

She thought it might be worth a call. She had the fun of breaking the news to Burke’s housekeeper that she was out of a job, and why. I gathered this party was pretty completely floored. But she would make a home for our orphan.

I offered to drive Marion home, then take the dog to Mrs. Andersen. I had myself a deal.

This Mrs. Andersen turned out to be a pleasant little widow lady, old enough, and wrinkled enough, to be safe working for an actor. She had been crying, and it was my guess she was about to cry some more, when I brought Burke’s dog in.

Rover and I were stuck with a very wet scene. I changed my mind about her being old enough to be safe working for Burke — I guess they never get that old. Give her a break, say it was mother love of some kind. Whatever it was, there was hair down all over the place — some of it Burke’s.

I asked her what her angle was on the Burke-Keyes marriage. What broke it up? I got a small rise out of her and choked off some of the tears.

“It was her fault — her drinking and carrying on!”

“Did you ever witness anything between Miss Keyes and another man?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t have to. Everybody knew. Everybody was talking about it.”

“How about Mr. Burke — did he know?”

“Not at first. We kept it from him the best we could. We knew it would hurt him.”

“We?”

“Miss Marion and I,” she replied. “We tried to protect him from her.”

I said: “Oh.”

“She was living with us then,” Mrs. Andersen explained. “She was so fond of them both. She did everything to keep them together.”

I oh’d again. “But Mrs. Andersen, I understand Burke and Miss Marion were engaged.”

She smiled. “That came much later, Mr. Fowler — after the divorce. It was really the best thing that could have happened to Mr. Burke. Marion is such a lovely girl.”

I knew when I was at the end of the line. So I got off.

When I pulled up at my apartment house, there was a police patrol car parked in front. Some of my neighbors were probably throwing bottles, furniture, or themselves out of the windows again, I thought. That was a bum guess.

I found a cop leaning against the desk in the lobby. The clerk looked up, brightened. “Here’s Mr. Fowler now.”

The cop got off his elbows. “You Martin Fowler?”

I nodded.

“You’re under arrest.”

I turned to the flustered desk clerk. “Call Iggy Friedberg for me, Charlie. Tell him I’ve done it again.”

We went out and got in the police car. I knew I wasn’t being taken in for jumping a traffic light. I just wondered how good a case my friend Sammy Hillman had against me. It was no joke, son. They booked me for murder before I found out.

I was plenty hot when Sammy finally got around to seeing me. Sweating it out in a cell for a few hours hadn’t sweetened my ever-loving disposition a bit.

There was a room full of guys on his side. I was dropped in a chair and lighted up like the Smiling Irishman’s Comer. Hillman came out of the shadows.

“I told you I didn’t want to do this, Fowler,” he said, by way of introduction.

“What am I expected to do, apologize?”

He extended a package of cigarettes.

“Aren’t you pampering the prisoner?”

But I took one. I needed it. He lighted it for me and permitted me a couple of drags in peace, before he opened up. “We decided you were in this thing too consistently, Fowler. So we decided we ought to have a talk. Of course, you know your constitutional rights—”

“I was wondering if you boys had ditched that old scrap of paper,” I remarked.

“—but it would be a lot better if you talked,” he continued.

I laughed. “Sammy, I’m touched. The interest my friends take in my welfare.”

He let it pass. “Incidentally,” he remarked, “I imagine Friedberg is going to have a little trouble getting a writ. You’re apt to be with us for quite a time. So let’s be pleasant about it.”

“O.K. Heard any good stories lately?”

“You’d be more amusing, Fowler,” Hillman commented drily, “if you’d tell me why you killed Maxine Keyes and Wallace Burke.”

“Is that all you need to know?”

He nodded. This guy had even less sense of humor than I thought.

“All right, I’ll tell you.” I paused to set up the gag. “I murdered them because I can’t stand actors. I’m going to kill them all. Blood will run in the gutters of Hollywood — blood and greasepaint!”

Hillman wasn’t amused. That hurt. “You’re a very funny fellow,” he said.

“What’s funny about it?” I asked. “It’s the best reason I can think of for killing a couple of strange people.”

After that we had at it for more hours than I ever thought there were. But it could only end one way. Hillman’s a stubborn guy, but even he knows you can only twist the truth so far. I think he was finally convinced he had pulled a wingding — that I was innocent. Anyway, he let me go.

As I was getting into my coat, he said, “I’m sorry we had to put you through that.”

“Don’t mention it, Sammy,” I shot back at him, “just stand by for a false arrest suit that’ll curl your hair.”

Hillman shook his head sadly: “Sue me if you want, son. But you’ll have to wait your turn.”

I scorned Hillman’s free ride home and took a cab.

I paid the hack-driver, and took two steps at least before I realized I was being convoyed right past the door of the apartment house by two of Johnny Clark’s men. My client wanted to see me.

Johnny had moved from his hotel. He’d become exclusive. He was in the hills off Beverly Drive. A real estate agent would have called it a “secluded private estate”. To me it looked like a hideout.

He was waiting in the living room. I started to ask him what it was all about. His fist looked like a basketball when it exploded in my face. I seemed to remember him spitting out a name for me, but the room was moving too fast and I piled up hard against the wall and slipped to the floor.

I didn’t get up for a minute, but when I did, I came up fighting. I knew it was nuts to take on a guy this big, but I go kind of screwy when anybody hits me.

He wasn’t much of a boxer, but when he landed he made the lights dance for me. I kept running into the walls. That’s what whipped me.

I came to with a fire raging in my mouth. My tongue and lips were swollen and cracked, and someone was forcing brandy down my throat. I gagged and thought I was going to be sick. Then I saw Johnny. He’d been feeding me the brandy. His face was marked up, too. That made me feel better right away. I pushed the bottle aside with my arm and sat up.

“Nice work,” I commented. My voice sounded as if I was talking through a catcher’s mitt.

Clark smiled and wiped a trickle of blood off his upper lip. He took a slug at the brandy bottle.

I looked around the room. Three of his boys were standing by for when the boss got through with me.

Clark put down the bottle, after having offered me another drink. “For a guy your size, you’re a pretty good man,” he conceded.

I said thanks and left it up to him.

“I always figured you a smart guy, too,” he continued, “but I don’t get you trying to ease a bum rap off on me.”

I propped a cigarette between my swollen lips and got it lighted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Clark. But this is straight dope — if I knew anything to hang on you, I’d do it now.”

His eyes narrowed. “I suppose next you’ll tell me you didn’t square yourself with the cops by giving them the letter I wrote to Maxine?”

I was brave. I guess I didn’t think he’d hit a man in my condition. “Look, Clark. If the police have that letter and can prove you killed those people, they’re doing it without any help from me. But more power to them.”

Johnny snorted. “You’re a helluva detective!”

I laughed. With my mouth it hurt me more than it did him. “You’re no prize yourself. Incidentally, where are you getting all this bum dope?”

“I got a telephone call,” he explained. “Some dame said you were going to turn a letter over to the D. A. to clear yourself—”

“A dame?”

“Uh-huh.”

I got it.

“Come on, Johnny.” I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the door. “I want you to meet a lady!”

The clerk behind the desk at Marion’s apartment was a highly nervous little guy with a marcelled blond toupee. When Clark and I ground our elbows into the desk, our battle-scarred pusses upset him frightfully.

“Inform Miss Trenton she has guests,” I told him. “Mr. Clark and Mr. Fowler.”

He complied and turned to us triumphantly: “Miss Trenton says she can’t see you gentlemen right now.”

Clark reached across the desk and thumped his narrow chest with a forefinger the size of a small salami. “You call the lady back and tell her to expect us.”

We started for the elevator, but the Filipino boy slammed the doors in our face. There was nothing to do but take the stairway. Marion lived on the fourth floor. Jumping up those stairs two at a time was no casual sport for a couple of guys who kept in shape by resting one foot on a bar-rail. When we levelled off on her floor, my head felt as if I was caught between a benzedrine and a bromide. Clark wasn’t any better off. We reeled down the hallway to her apartment.

The door was slightly ajar, so we didn’t wait for an invitation. That was more than just a social error. If I hadn’t been so damned lightheaded, I don’t think I would have been sucked in. But I was, and there we were, stranded in the center of Marion’s living room. The lady herself was between us and the door with a .32 that made the idea of trying our entrance over again sort of silly.

She closed the door quietly. “So nice of you gentlemen to call,” she said. “Please be seated — on the davenport, if you don’t mind. And keep your hands in sight — on your knees, I think would be fine.”

Marion was standing with her back to the door. She acted as if she knew what she was doing. She wasn’t going to come close enough for one of us to jump her, and at that range she couldn’t miss. The chips were very definitely down, and we all knew it. It was her play.

“To what am I indebted for this charming visit?” she asked, adding, “As if I didn’t know.”

I smiled, or tried to. “We thought you might be a good kid and tell us about Maxine and Wally.”

She thought about it for a minute. Her gun didn’t waver. Neither did Clark or I. “Wally killed Maxine, then lost his nerve,” she said, calmly. “I had to kill him.”

“Why did Burke kill Maxine?” Clark found his voice.

Marion shrugged. “I asked him to — she’d done enough to spoil our lives.”

“You lying devil!” Clark exploded, half-rising.

The muzzle of Marion’s gun pin-pointed the second button on his vest and he sank down beside me. He was very mad, very dangerous, but he knew he was on the wrong end of the gun.

“So what are you going to do about us?” I asked.

“Anxious, Marty?” she chided.

“No, just curious,” I replied. “I don’t suppose you can get any more for killing four people than for two, but up to now you’ve been a pretty smart baby about these things. I just wondered how you’d figured this one out.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s really no point in keeping you in suspense. I’m going to shoot you with Clark’s gun, which he is going to toss over to me in a minute. Then I’ll shoot Clark with this one.”

“I suppose I’m thick, but I’m missing the point. It’s an interesting switch, but what does it accomplish?”

“I’m disappointed in you, Marty,” she replied, “but I think when the police find a certain letter Clark wrote to Maxine in your pocket, they’ll believe you and he got in a row, he shot you, and then in self defense, I shot him.”

“Good, good. Then you’ve had the letter all the time?”

“Naturally.”

If I had to be in this kind of a jam, Clark was a good man to have on my side.

“What if I don’t toss my gun over, lady?” he asked. “I hate to spoil your act, but I think you’re taking a lot for granted.”

“Don’t worry, Clark, you aren’t crabbing the act,” she replied, without even a trace of annoyance. “It doesn’t matter really who is shot first. Now, do you want to throw your gun over to me — carefully?”

Clark looked at me and winked. “It looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, chum.”

He withdrew a .38 from his shoulder holster, butt first, and tossed it toward Marion. “Here it comes, sister.”

It was a good throw, a little short. I got the idea.

Marion moved to get it, keeping her own .32 on us. As she stooped for the gun, we both took off. Marion fired and I heard Clark yelp as we hit her. She went down under us — her gun flying out of her hand.

Clark and I were concentrating on the main chance. I went after her gun, and Clark was busy collecting his own. In the scramble, Marion somehow got off the floor and escaped into her bathroom before we could stop her.

We looked at each other foolishly. Clark had a bum wing, where her bullet had taken him, but nothing dangerous. The next thing was to pry her out of the bathroom. With some dames that’s a big proposition.

I beat on the door. No response. I told her to stand clear, I was shooting the lock off the door. Still no sound from the bathroom. A couple shots for the lock and we walked in — just in time to see her jump from the tiny bathroom window. It was four flights straight down to a cement driveway. She spread herself on the yell going down.

I turned away from the window, and for the first time saw what she’d written in lipstick on the mirror. It was for me:

I got to the telephone and called the inspector. “Hillman,” I said, “it’s that man again. Yeah, Fowler. Look, Inspector, I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got another dead body on my hands and don’t know what to do about it.”

I gave him the address and told him I’d hang around until he arrived. Then I called the desk and told them they’d better send someone around to keep the souvenir hunters from walking off with Marion’s body.

Clark was standing in the center of the floor. He looked a little green around the gills. I pushed him into a chair. “Relax, Johnny. The rest of this is strictly for laughs.”

Hillman arrived in a covey of subordinates and police reporters. He eyed Clark and me sourly. “I knew it was a mistake to let you out,” he commented.

The docs couldn’t do anything for Marion, but they put a dressing on Clark’s arm. By the time they finished, Hillman was back from viewing the body. He nosed around the apartment, then turned on me. “I imagine I might just as well hear your version of it.”

I told him all there was to our little rough-house with Marion. Clark backed me up.

“What about the note on the mirror?” Hillman asked. “What’s that mean?”

I smiled. “Of course, I didn’t discuss it with the lady, Inspector,” I explained, “but it would seem a couple of other suicides she staged didn’t hold up so well.”

“Keyes and Burke?”

“Isn’t that what she’s telling you?”

Hillman thought about it for a couple of minutes while he chewed his cigar. “Maybe,” he conceded, “but I still want to know why.”

“The Inspector,” I explained to Clark, “has a complex about these things. He spent hours today asking me: ‘Why did you kill Keyes and Burke?’ Now he wants to know why Marion killed them. Don’t ever let him start on you.”

I thought Hillman’s complexion was a little unnaturally ruddy. “As a comedian,” he growled, “you stink!”

I laughed. “That’s not nice, Inspector. I think you’re a swell comedian. But just to show there’s no hard feelings, I’ll give you a tip — Marion was jealous.”

“Jealous?” he echoed.

“You know, the green-eyed monster. Look, two lovely young ladies reach into the Hollywood grab-bag. For one there’s stardom — for the other, crumbs as her stand-in. That was pretty rough for a girl with Marion’s ambition.”

Hillman shook his head. “So she decided to kill off the competition. I can’t buy that, Fowler.”

“Naturally, it didn’t happen quite that way,” I explained. “At first it was just a matter of sniping at Maxine’s reputation. She was clever about it. She always planted her lies, while seeming to defend Maxine. Everyone knew she was her best friend. I imagine the first time she really felt her power to destroy Maxine was when she sold Johnny here on the idea his wife was playing around with Jake Reed. Reed was killed and there was one helluva scandal that just about wrecked Maxine’s career. But not quite. Maxine pulled out of it, and Marion had to start from scratch.

“This time, she played Maxine’s director, a bird named Zolta, off against husband number two, Burke. Zolta was killed in a hunting accident and Marion was the only witness. My guess is she let Maxine in on the fact that it was really murder. At least something happened to come between Burke and his wife, and start her boozing.

“That wrote finis on Maxine’s career and gave Marion the go sign. Incidentally, she picked Burke up on the rebound, so she was really filling Maxine’s shoes. Then when Marion is just getting her own career under way, she’s engaged to Burke, and Maxine is flat on her fanny. That’s the time my friend Johnny Clark blows into town with a part for his ex-wife.

“She is thrilled and naturally tells her best friend all about it. Marion gets panicky. If Maxine makes another comeback, everything she has accomplished will be ruined. She knows there isn’t room for both of them in pictures? — they’re too much alike.

“So she pumps Burke full of poison to the effect that Maxine knows about the Zolta incident and is going to talk. They plot Maxine’s death to look like suicide. Only it doesn’t quite come off that way.

“I run into Burke and give him a pushing around on the Zolta affair. He goes to pieces on Marion, she garrots him while he’s asleep and hangs him in the closet. Also to look like a suicide. But again nobody’s fooled.

“All this time she’s holding an ace — a letter Clark wrote to Maxine when she married Wally Burke threatening to kill them both when he got out of poky. If it gets too hot, she figures she can always produce this letter and Clark will take the rap.

“There’s only one little thing wrong. She figures I’m having hunches about her. She’s working on that, when you pick me up and charge me with murder. It looks good, but when it doesn’t take, she calls Clark and tells him I gave the police his letter to shift suspicion to him. She’s counting on Clark killing me. Then she can play her hole card — turn the letter over and let Clark collect for killing Keyes, Burke, and me.

“Well, that’s about all there is to it. Clark only half-killed me. You know the rest.”

Hillman smoked it over in silence for a minute. “Kid,” he said, at last, “I don’t know what kind of a detective you are, but you’ve sure got a talent for slinging the bull.”

I turned to Clark and offered him a cigarette. “You see, that’s the thanks I get. He sits around smoking two-bit cigars while I solve his case for him, then the joker turns on me!”