Black Mask (Vol. 31, No. 4 — July 1948)

Manville Moon was used to shots — in the arm or elsewhere. But baby-sitting with a dopey eyeful who drew visitors with death in their minds was a chore he wished he’d never taken on after the first kill.

Chapter One

How I became legally responsible for an adult incompetent was primarily a matter of economics. For if anyone at all, in the two months prior to Mrs. Quentin Rand’s request for my services, had offered me three meals a day to walk his dog or shadow his wife, I’d have steered clear of Vivian Banner as though she had scabies.

But right at a time when food prices were climbing, the demand for private investigators — or at least the one named Manville Moon — dropped to zero. And having a mouth the size of two to feed, I require lots of energy-building food, even when I’m doing nothing to expend the energy.

So, much as I disliked the job, for a month I had lived at the oversized home of Mrs. Quentin Rand as twenty-four-hour-a-day watchdog over her niece, Vivian Banner, and prospects were good that the month would stretch to seven.

Just to make everything cozy, a court had committed Vivian to my care, and she couldn’t legally even take a bath unless I gave the O.K. Days she was allowed to move about as she wanted, within the limits of my field of view, but nights I kept her in the locked and barred bedroom between my own room and Mrs. Rand’s.

One key had been made for each of Vivian’s three doors, and there were no extras. The one to the hall door and to the connecting door between my room and Vivian’s were in my possession, but Mrs. Rand had the key to the door between her own room and her niece’s.

Vivian might not have cheered if I dropped dead, but she wouldn’t have cried either. My job was to see that she kept from morphine until the doctor decided she was free of the habit, and Vivian liked morphine almost as much as she disliked me. Tonight she disliked me more intensely than usual because with Dr. Yoder’s permission I had allowed her out of the house for the first time, and her attempt to run away and shoot herself full of dope had been singularly unsuccessful.

When I knocked on her door at dinner time, she inquired through the panel: “Who is it?”

“Moon,” I said.

“Go away,” she said crossly.

“Time for dinner.”

“I don’t want any.”

I shrugged and went downstairs alone to the bleak prospect of dinner with Vivian’s angular aunt. The dinner was hot, but the atmosphere was clammy. Mrs. Rand let me build no illusions concerning my social status. I was an employee, not a guest, and she obviously would have preferred that I eat in the kitchen. Nor was it politeness which prevented her from suggesting it, but only the certain knowledge that I would tell her to douse her head in the kitchen sink. With her continual peering at me through the distorting lenses of ribboned nose glasses, as though checking my use of the proper fork, Mrs. Rand was not an inspiring mealtime companion. Immediately after the last silent course, I grunted an apology, went up to my room and rapped on the connecting door.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Vivian called loudly.

Mildly irked, I moved out into the hall and tried her front door. I found it locked and continued on to Mrs. Rand’s room. I knew Mrs. Rand was still downstairs because I had just left her there, but I knocked in order to prove I was a gentleman, pushed open the door and entered. The connecting door to Vivian’s room was locked as tightly as the others.

As I started back out into the hall, I noticed a key lying on Mrs. Rand’s dresser. Picking it up, I saw it was the key to Vivian’s door.

Back downstairs, I gave the key to Mrs. Rand and said: “You left this on your dresser again. That makes twice.”

All that got me was a curdling look through her thick glasses, but she took the key and wrapped it in her handkerchief.

Returning to my own room, I stared at the walls and thought over my next move in the campaign to keep Vivian from dope. Before accepting the job I had realized that once Vivian’s treatment reached the stage where she was allowed out of the house, it would be impossible to keep the girl in sight constantly for six months. She probably would spend most of her time trying to shake me and would only have to be lucky once. I had reasoned that my only chance of success was to let her run, tail her to her source of drug, and eliminate the source.

That afternoon, her first outside the house since the treatment started, Vivian obligingly but unknowingly had led me to private detective Joseph Alamado, who maintained his office in a ramshackle building on Second Street. Now, my problem was how to pin the goods on Joe and shove him behind bars, while I was handicapped by not being able to leave Vivian. I still hadn’t solved the problem when I feel asleep.

When I awoke at eight, I shaved and dressed, then tapped on my incompetent charge’s door. When there was no answer, I tapped again, waited a minute, then unlocked the door and walked in.

I thought she was sleeping until I caught the faint purplish cast of her features and saw that her eyes were wide open. For a moment I stood looking down at her, feeling a dull rage mount within me and mix with self-recrimination. Drawing back the covers, I lifted one thin arm and found the fresh needle puncture just above the wrist. Vivian had had her last shot in the arm, and it hadn’t been morphine. It hadn’t been self-administered either, because the syringe was missing.

I tried to tell myself there had been no intimation of danger to Vivian’s life, and even if there had been, keeping her in a locked and barred room was ample protection, but I couldn’t sell myself the alibi. For this was the second murder, and after the first, I should have been on guard. Half-heartedly I told myself Vivian’s mother had been murdered before I took this job, that her killing had apparently been done by a motiveless maniac, that I hadn’t been retained either to solve Mrs. Banner’s murder or prevent Vivian’s, but any way I looked at it, the situation boiled down to one point: I had let a client get murdered right under my nose. And the fact that I thought I could guess the murderer, or at least the instigator, was little consolation to either Vivian or me.

The door to Mrs. Rand’s room stood slightly ajar. I pushed it open, saw the key was in the lock and walked over to the bed, where Vivian’s aunt still lay sleeping. I stood over her long enough to decide from the even rise and fall of her covers that she was all right, then went to the open window. A light gardener’s ladder leaned against the side of the house immediately beneath the window.

Returning to the bed, I shook Mrs. Rand awake. She looked up without surprise, and I was startled by my first glimpse of her eyes unprotected by their heavy eyeglases. Weak and watery and red-ringed, they gave her an appearance of meek frustration, entirely counter to their imperious haughty glint when magnified.

Apparently conscious of my surprise, she shielded her eyes from the light with back of one hand and said: “Hand me my glasses from the dresser, if you please.”

I found the ribboned, thick-lensed spectacles and gave them to her. When she had them adjusted to her nose, she sat up, pulled the sheet protectively across her shoulders and asked: “What’s the matter?”

“You left the key on your dresser again,” I said. “Somebody borrowed it.”

“Has Vivian run away?”

“She’s dead,” I said bluntly.

Behind their thick lenses, her eyes widened.

“How... What happened?”

“Murder. You’d better get up and phone the police. I have to see a man.”

She stared at me as though she had never seen me before. “Where... where are you going?”

“To pick up a guy. Tell the cops to put out a call for Joseph Alamado, a private dick with an office on Second Street. I’m going after him, but he may have holed up. If I find him, I’ll bring him back here and turn him over to the cops. Got the name?”

“Alamado. Joseph Alamado.” Her eyes were wide and frightened. “Did he kill Vivian?”

“Probably. If he didn’t, he knows who did. He’s the peddler who supplied Vivian’s drugs, and yesterday she threatened to turn him over to the police.” I added thoughtfully: “It was probably a hired job. Don’t believe Joe has the guts for murder himself. If I thought he had any guts, I’d have squashed him yesterday and Vivian would still be alive.” I pondered this idea for a moment, then said impatiently: “But I didn’t squash him, and post mortem strategy can’t bring Vivian back to life. I want to use Harry and the Packard.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll phone Harry to bring it around front.” She reached for her bedside phone.

I said: “I have to get some things from my room. Tell Harry to honk when he’s ready.”

She had the phone to her ear and was pressing the inter-house switch when I pulled her door closed behind me.

Back in my room, I slipped off my suit coat, strapped on my shoulder holster and put the coat back on. From my bag I took a pair of handcuffs and stuffed them in my hip pocket. Then I went down to the kitchen, found Nellie, the housekeeper, pouring herself a cup of coffee and had a cup myself while waiting for Harry to honk.

Chapter Two Discreet and Incorruptible

The first time I saw Vivian Banner, six weeks before her death, I was impressed by her beauty. And since few beautiful women call at my apartment, which for reasons of economy doubles as an office, I racked my brain for a method of keeping her for cocktails and politely sending her aunt home as soon as the aunt got around to stating her business.

In a tone of quiet innocence, which suited her soft skin, delicate features and large-irised eyes, Vivian said: “What aunt is trying to say, without shocking you, is that I’m a drug addict.”

I quickly adjusted my thinking and examined the girl again. Her hair was as smooth and golden as the first time I looked, her figure as soft and her complexion as clear. But now I noticed pinched lines at the edge of her nostrils and a faint redness of the eyelids. The large irises I had admired took on a different significance, too. They were large because the pupils had contracted to points.

I said inanely: “I’m out of dope, but I can offer you a cocktail.”

Too often my humor convulses no one but myself. Neither woman died laughing.

Mrs. Quentin Rand said coldly: “My lawyer recommended you, Mr. Moon. Alexander Carson.”

“Alex?” I said, surprised. Alex Car-son once remarked that his highest social ambition was to be seen at my funeral.

“He said you were both discreet and incorruptible.”

“Alex said that?” I asked, even more surprised.

Vivian Banner’s soft voice put in: “He also described you as insulting, flippant and uncouth.”

I relaxed. “That sounds more like Alex.” I had once insultingly refused his bribe to commit perjury, flippantly gathered up the seat of his pants and uncouthly tossed him downstairs.

Mrs. Rand said: “As my niece so abruptly put it, she has been unfortunate enough to contract the morphine habit.” Through ribboned glasses with thick, distorting lenses, she frowned at Vivian exactly like my sixth grade teacher used to frown when I failed to do my homework.

Mrs. Quentin Rand was tall and spare, and faintly disapproving of social inferiors like myself. From hearsay and the society news section, I knew a little about her. Her husband was one of the broker suicides of 1929, but something must have been salvaged from the crash, because Mrs. Rand maintained an expensive home complete with servants, and more than once her chauffeur-driven Packard had passed street cars on which I happened to be riding.

“We want Vivian cured of the habit,” Mrs. Rand said.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

She raised her eyebrows. “The whole family. Myself, Vivian’s parents — she’s my brother’s step-daughter — and of course, Vivian herself wants to be cured.”

I said: “You must have gotten the wrong address. I’m not a doctor. I’m a private detective. Aren’t there sanitariums for that kind of treatment?”

“I’ve flunked out of the three best in the country,” Vivian said. “They rate me incurable.” She flashed a mocking smile but deep in her eyes was a quivering fright. She fished a cigarette from her purse and her hand shook when she put it into her mouth.

Mrs. Rand said: “Dr. James Yoder is now treating Vivian. Her parents have placed her completely in my charge until the cure is effected, and I’ve had a room prepared at my home. I have also engaged three private nurses. Under the treatment Dr. Yoder has outlined, Vivian must stay in bed for two weeks, be confined to home for another two, and then constantly watched for six months, making the whole treatment run for seven months.”

I asked: “Where do I come in?”

“You’re to stay with or near Vivian from the time treatment starts until she’s cured.”

I blinked. “For seven months?”

Mrs. Rand nodded.

“What am I supposed to do?”

Mrs. Rand drew her lips into a prim line. “I know nothing about drug habits, but Dr. Yoder says an addict will use every subterfuge to get drugs while a treatment is being attempted. Right now Vivian wants nothing so much as to be free of the habit. But once the cure starts, she’ll try bribery, she’ll attempt to sneak out at night, she’ll try literally anything she can think of to get more morphine. It will be your job to make sure she doesn’t get it. That’s where previous treatments have failed, and Dr. Yoder believes if we can actually keep her from drugs for six months after the initial treatment, the cure will be permanent.”

I thought over the proposition before I said anything. Then I said: “Seven months of my time will run into money.”

Mrs. Rand waved that aside. “Expense is not a consideration.”

“My fee is twenty-five dollars a day, plus expenses.”

Mrs. Rand’s straight back straightened even more. “Twenty-five dollars! The nurses I engaged charge only nine!”

I shrugged. “Then hire another nurse.”

Vivian said: “After all, Aunt Grace, Dad will be paying for it.”

Mrs. Rand gave in, though not graciously. “I suppose we have no choice. But twenty-five dollars! Everywhere you turn, you meet inflation.” She looked me over distastefully. “When will you be available?”

I shrugged again. “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. Depends on my talk with Dr. Yoder.”

“Dr. Yoder? What has he to do with it? We’ve agreed to your exorbitant fee, and you’re engaged.”

“Listen, lady,” I said, “I’m not for sale like a pound of sausage, and I won’t starve next week if I turn you down.” I neglected to mention I would starve the week after. “I’ll tell you tomorrow if I want the job.”

She didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do. She fumed a bit, and talked down to me as though I were one of the hired help, but in the end she left Dr. Yoder’s address and her own telephone number, and departed with her niece.

I came out of the war with only a leg and a half instead of the usual quota of two legs. The cork, aluminum and leather substitute, which the Veterans’ Administration furnished to replace the missing portion, is as useful and comfortable as science has yet been able to devise, but it is neither as useful nor comfortable as the original right leg.

I started a blister on the stump by walking the six blocks to Dr. Yoder’s office, and arrived in a sour mood. Having a false leg has restricted my physical activity very little except when I rub a blister, and then it sometimes leaves me a cripple for as long as two weeks.

Dr. James Yoder was a general practitioner of the type commonly called a “society doctor”, which meant his oversized fees were not necessarily a criterion of his training and ability. He was in his sixties — stocky, bland and courteous — with an affability which would have made him a pleasant barroom companion, but which failed to inspire my confidence in his professional ability.

“Normally wouldn’t discuss a patient’s condition with a layman,” the doctor said. “But since Mrs. Rand informs me you’re to act as some kind of guardian or watchdog over Miss Banner during her treatment, suppose that makes you sort of a colleague.”

He showed his teeth in a confidential smile. “Actually, I don’t hold much hope for a cure. Nearly as I can determine, Miss Banner’s been a morphine habitué since she was twenty, and she’s twenty-four now. Claims she takes but one injection a day, but I suspect she uses at least three, and possibly four or five.” He frowned slightly and pulled at his lower lip. “Trouble with morphine is it acts on that part of the brain controlling moral tendencies. Habitués are always such infernal liars, even when there’s no point in it. Especially dreamers.”

“What’s a dreamer?” I asked.

“An addict who takes enough drug to throw himself into a dream state. Morphine affects different people differently, you see. Some get all pepped up and don’t act any different from you or me, except they’re more full of energy. Others pass into a drowsy state and imagine all sorts of things. Have dreams something like opium dreams. Morphine’s an alkaloid of opium, you see. All morphine habitues are liars, but dreamers are the worst, and Miss Banner sometimes drugs herself into a coma lasting hours. Awfully hard to treat a patient who won’t tell the truth, you know.”

He looked at me for sympathy and I nodded my head. Encouraged, he went on.

“Actually, I think the place for the girl is a locked ward in a sanitarium. Told the family so, but Mrs. Rand has this room fixed up, and insists on home treatment. Says they’ve tried sanitariums.” He snorted. “The girl’s been in three as a voluntary patient. Damn-fool family refused to commit her, and all she had to do was walk out.” He shrugged. “But it’s their money, and if I don’t treat her, someone else will.”

He glanced at me slyly, as one confederate to another in on a soft touch. I kept my face expressionless.

“Then the treatment’s a phoney?”

“Oh, no,” he protested quickly. “If Miss Banner were actually kept from morphine for several months, she’d probably be cured. But how you going to keep it away from her?” He glowered at me from beneath down-drawn brows. “Judas, man, you don’t know what a morphine addict without drugs is like. Twenty-four hours a day she’ll have only one thing on her mind... Morphine. She’ll do anything for it. And I mean literally anything. She’ll lie, bribe, steal. She may even try to kill you. If you block all that, she’ll try ducking out of your sight. And you can’t possibly keep her in sight for six months.”

I said: “Why not?”

He looked exasperated. “You going to accompany her to the shower bath? You going to sleep in the same room?” One fist pounded softly on his desk. “Watch the door and she’ll be out the window. Watch the window, and she’ll be out the door.”

I stood up. “You take care of your end, Doc, and I’ll take care of mine. She won’t get any dope.”

He said skeptically: “Think not?” Then he shrugged. “All we can do is try. After all, if I don’t treat her, they’ll just go to another doctor, and if you don’t take the case, they’ll just hire another private detective. Might as well be us getting the fees.”

“Sure,” I said. “But just for the record, I’m intending to earn mine.”

As a matter of course, the Rand home had been built on Lindell Boulevard, for of all streets in the city, only Lindell was as socially distinguished as the name “Rand”. A pleasant, but oversized structure of rose granite, it somewhat resembled a public library. Wide lawns kept the neighboring houses on either side a sedate two hundred feet away, which, in a city, is isolation.

A dour-faced housekeeper pushing seventy answered my ring and examined me with eyes bitter at the world.

I said: “What’s the matter? Boy friend jilt you?”

She said: “What you want?”

“Mrs. Rand. And a kind smile.”

She muttered: “At that face, who could smile?” and stepped aside. “You must be that detective. She said you was ugly, but she missed it by half.”

I’m not sensitive about my face. The one I was born with wasn’t too bad, but in my early youth before I learned to duck, a set of brass knuckles gave me a drooping eyelid and a bent nose. Still. I don’t think I’m repellent. A maudlin woman once told me I resembled a battered Saint Bernard.

I followed the old woman into a drawing room, where a tea party seemed to be in progress. On the surface it was an innocuous tea party. Only weeks later, when little bits of evidence began to fall into place, did I understand I had viewed the prologue to the first murder, and even contributed to its necessity without realizing it.

Mrs. Rand, a saucer expertly held in her left hand, glanced up as we stopped in the doorway, and thick-lensed glasses, behind which her eyes were magnified out of proportion, glinted as she dismissed the housekeeper with a cold nod of annoyance.

On a sofa next to Mrs. Rand’s chair sat a plump woman and a tall, gaunt man who was a male version of Mrs. Rand. Relaxed in an easy chair which seemed to have been specially built for him, with the crook of a heavy cane lying in his lap, was a giant fat man whose quantities of excess flesh could only be described as oozing. His head was a melon, smooth and white and benevolent, and as hairless as the sole of my foot. He was gesturing with a sugared cookie, while he discoursed on the subject of ants. I learned that red ants had a much more efficiently organized civilization than humans before Mrs. Rand cut him off by introducing me around.

“These are Vivian’s mother and stepfather, Mr. Moon,” she said, indicating the couple on the sofa. “My brother, Claude Banner, and my sister-in-law, Martha.” To the man she said: “Claude, this is Mr. Manville Moon, the private detective I told you about.”

I shook hands with Claude Banner and murmured something polite to his wife.

“And this is Mr. Sheridan,” Mrs. Rand said, indicating the obese giant. “Norman Sheridan, the entomologist, you know.”

Her tone suggested that of course I had heard of Norman Sheridan.

“Oh, yes,” I said, never having heard of him, and having only a vague notion that entomology somehow concerned bugs.

His hand gobbled up mine as though I had thrust it into a bucket of dough. I got mine back as quickly as I could.

“Will you have some tea?” Mrs. Rand asked.

I said: “No, thanks.”

“Tea is a ritual in this house,” she said with a curious air of defensiveness, as though she thought I might not approve. “I think it a shame most Americans have let the custom lapse.”

“Delightful custom,” rumbled Norman Sheridan, heaving his bulk forward to reach another sugared cookie.

I found myself a chair and prepared to wait patiently for Sheridan to leave so that Vivian’s parents, Mrs. Rand and I could discuss our highly private business. But apparently Mrs. Rand kept no secrets from her fat friend.

“Dr. Yoder phoned that you were coming,” she said. “When can you start?”

I glanced at Sheridan and hiked my eyebrows.

“You may speak freely before Mr. Sheridan. Norman is one of my oldest friends, and he knows all about Vivian. He spends nearly as much time here as I do.”

“A case of unrequited love,” Norman explained. “The drone hovering about the queen bee.” His gelatinous body shook at his own jest.

I said: “I can start as soon as we agree on terms.”

Mrs. Rand drew in her chin and examined me suspiciously. “We have agreed on terms.”

“I don’t mean financial. I mean concerning my responsibility and authority. Particularly my authority.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I said: “Dr. Yoder tells me your niece is pretty far gone. Possibly incurable. He seems to think keeping her from dope for six months after she’s allowed out of the house will be a difficult job. If I’m to keep her from it. I want absolute authority over her actions. I want her declared legally incompetent and committed to my care for a period of seven months.”

Claude Banner said: “That’s ridiculous. Vivian’s not incompetent.”

“Of course not. You’re just hiring a doctor, three nurses and a private detective because she gets lonesome.”

He turned a faint red. “My stepdaughter is a capable and intelligent young woman, Mr. Moon. I regard her condition as a disease, just as though she had diabetes or heart trouble, and I’ll thank you not to refer to her as though she were some kind of moron.”

“Stop kidding yourself,” I said. “Vivian’s a dope addict and has no more right to exercise her own judgment than a two year old. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, so I’ll put it in the form of an ultimatum. We’ll do things exactly the way I want them done, or you can hire another watchdog.”

Banner said: “In that case, we won’t need you.”

“I’ll decide that.”

It was the first time Vivian’s mother had spoken, and although her voice was quiet, an underlying chord of decisiveness ran through it.

All eyes swiveled toward her. I was surprised at the immediate attention she drew, for she had not impressed me as an imposing personality. Mrs. Banner swept her gaze around the circle in a gesture of what almost seemed defiance, then turned to me.

“Do I understand you want to be appointed Vivian’s guardian, Mr. Moon?”

“Her committee,” I said. “Guardianship applies only to minors, and they call you a committee instead of a guardian when your charge is an adult incompetent. Amounts to the same thing.”

“Why do you think this necessary?”

I explained why bluntly. “First, I don’t want well-meaning interference from you people. Second, I make it a point to finish what I start. Once I take the case, I’ve no intention of letting anyone fire me. And you can’t fire me if a court commits Vivian to my care.”

Mrs. Rand said: “That would involve administration of her funds.”

“So what? You’ve checked me so thoroughly, you probably know which cheek I shave first in the morning. Think I’d steal your niece’s money?”

Mrs. Banner said: “I think we’d better do as Mr. Moon wishes.”

Mrs. Rand’s thick glasses glinted as she peered estimatingly at her sister-in-law. Then, with an expression which seemed to ask, “What else can we do?” she said to her brother: “Alex Carson told me I’d find Mr. Moon stubborn, blunt and... ah... tyrannical. But he also recommended him as scrupulously honest and the only person he knew who might accomplish what Dr. Yoder says is necessary. It rather looks like we won’t get along with Mr. Moon, but we can’t get along without him either.”

“Alex Carson is your lawyer, isn’t he?” Mrs. Banner asked.

“Yes.”

“Have him make the necessary arrangements then.” Her tone made it almost an order, and again I was surprised, because she didn’t look like an imperious person. She turned to me. “I’m sure that between you and Dr. Yoder Vivian will be in excellent hands. You do think this treatment will work, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Possibly. Dr. Yoder told me he advised you people to commit her to a sanitarium and leave her there till she’s well, but you prefer home treatment. If Vivian were my daughter, I’d follow the doctor’s advice. Of course you might not be able to keep it quiet, but I assume your primary objective is to get Vivian well.”

Mrs. Banner glanced sharply at her husband. “You didn’t tell me this, Claude.”

Banner raised an appeasing hand. “Now, dear, don’t get upset. It seems to me Grace has things well organized, and I see no reason to have Vivian committed if we can accomplish the same end without danger of publicity. If this doesn’t work, we’ll talk about another sanitarium.”

His wife continued to look at him coldly without saying anything, until his face turned a faint red. Fumbling out a gold pocket watch, he dropped his eyes to it, looked surprised and rose.

“My plane leaves in an hour and I have to stop at home for my bag. Guess I’ll have to borrow your car, Grace.”

“Certainly, Claude,” Mrs. Rand said. She rose from her chair and pulled a cord hanging against the wall.

Claude Banner said something about getting their coats, and disappeared into the hall. As he passed through the door, the ancient housekeeper entered.

Mrs. Rand said: “Send Harry in, will you, Nellie?”

Nellie nodded grumpily, turned around and left.

Banner returned wearing a light topcoat and carrying a short fur jacket, which he held while his wife slipped into it.

“Pleasant to have met you, Mr. Moon,” Mrs. Banner said, and held out her hand.

I returned the compliment, wondering again at her previous flash of decisiveness. She looked like the average housewife, plump and goodnatured and inclined to consider her husband the head of the house.

A quiet voice from the doorway said: “You wanted me, Madam?”

I glanced that way and there in a neat chauffeur’s uniform stood Harry Gusset. My last sight of Harry was when he stood before a judge receiving a two-year sentence for extortion, largely as a result of my testimony. He had been standing on crutches, which was also my fault, since he had broken a leg trying to prevent me from arresting him.

He saw me the same moment I saw him. and he literally seemed to wilt.

Mrs. Rand said: “What’s the matter, Harry?”

I don’t believe in hounding ex-convicts who try to go straight. Harry’s uniform indicated he was trying to make an honest living, and I had no intention of spoiling his chance. Keeping my face expressionless, I gave him a wink.

Straightening his back, he looked sickly at Mrs. Rand and said: “Nothing’s the matter, Madam.”

She peered at him through her glasses. “You look frightened to death.”

I said: “He bumped his elbow on the door coming in.”

For a moment Harry stared at me blankly. Then he got it. “Yes. The crazy bone. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Rand, losing interest. “Is the car out front?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Drive Mr. and Mrs. Banner home and then take Mr. Banner to the airport.”

Claude Banner shook my hand and said: “Glad I met you, Moon. Won’t see you for about a week because I’m flying south on business tonight. In the meantime Grace can go ahead with incompetency proceedings and I’ll sign any necessary papers when I get back.”

Norman Sheridan, who had sat beamingly silent for a long time, gripped his cane handle with both fists and heaved his huge body from its chair. “I’d better run along too, Grace. May I hitch a ride, Claude?”

Banner indicated that he could, and Sheridan, his cane ornamentally hooked over a fat forearm, now that it had served what seemed to be its sole function — helping him erect — lumbered out.

In the doorway, Mrs. Banner smiled back at me over her shoulder.

I never saw her again.

Chapter Three No Body at All

“Where’s Vivian?” I asked Mrs. Rand. “In her room?”

She shook her head. “Beauty appointment.”

“Then I’d like to look at this room you’ve prepared.”

Mrs. Rand led me upstairs and down a hall to the right wing of the house. The room was an ordinary bedroom with private bath, and with doors connecting it to other bedrooms on either side. The only “preparations” consisted of three-quarter inch steel bars at the two bedroom windows and the across bath windows.

“Dr. Yoder says the initial treatment may leave Vivian temporarily irrational,” Mrs. Rand said, indicating the bars. “Of course, it’s unlikely she’ll become so irrational as to attempt suicide, but we’re taking no chances.

“That’s my bedroom,” she said, pointing to the right connecting door. “Yours is the other. I’m sorry you won’t have a private bath, but there’s a general bath down the hall.”

“I’ll live,” I said.

I examined the locks of the hall door and of the connecting doors into Mrs. Rand’s and my bedrooms.

“I want special locks put on all these,” I said. “Locks making it impossible to open the door from either side without a key. And have only one key made for each lock.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Do you think that really necessary?”

“Yes.”

She frowned and said in a prim voice: “Very well. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment. You can start incompetency proceedings immediately. Tell Alex he can reach me at my flat.”

Alex phoned me the following afternoon.

“Take about two weeks to put everything through,” he said. “But I don’t contemplate any hitches. Explained the whole situation to Judge Crawford this morning, and he’ll go along if we get proper medical statements and so forth. Yoder will take care of the medical end, and it makes things less complicated that Vivian herself is making no fight.”

“She isn’t?”

“Think the idea intrigues her. Being ordered around by a Saint Bernard. That’s what she calls you.”

“I’ve been called one before,” I said. “Bribed any witnesses lately?”

“Aw, don’t you ever forget?”

“No,” I said.

The following week I spent mainly on my back, listening to my bank account dwindle and allowing my stump blister to heal. It was past the danger of re-irritation when I had a caller.

Lieutenant Hannegan, neat and dapper in his perennial blue serge suit, and looking exactly like a cop in plain clothes, brought an invitation from Inspector Warren Day.

“For what, he didn’t say,” Hannegan told me. “All I know is he wants you.”

Since it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, he had caught me in bed. He waited passively while I shaved and dressed, then drove me over to headquarters.

Several people sat around in the chief of homicide’s office. Aside from Warren Day were Mrs. Rand, Vivian, Claude Banner, Norman Sheridan and Harry Gusset. Banner seemed worried, Vivian seemed upset, but the rest looked only puzzled.

Inspector Warren Day ducked his skinny bald head to peer at me over his glasses and said with heavy irony: “Sorry to disturb your rest, Manny. I know it’s tiring to lean against a bar every night.”

“Always glad to come down and solve any cases you can’t handle,” I said courteously.

Fishing through his littered ash tray, Day found a cigar butt which satisfied him, stuck it in his mouth without lighting it and leaned back in his chair to view the assemblage.

“I called you people together because you were the last to see Mrs. Banner.”

The others waited quietly for him to proceed, but I broke in: “Wait a minute. What’s happened to Mrs. Banner?”

Day swiveled his head to peer at me coldly. “She’s missing. Hasn’t been seen since Mrs. Rand’s car dropped her at her home a week ago.”

I asked Mrs. Rand: “The day I was at your house?”

She nodded and Claude Banner said: “Harry ran us home and I stopped in just long enough to pick up my bag. Norman was with us, if you remember, and the last any of us saw of her, she was waving from the porch. Harry dropped Norman at his house, and then ran me to the airport. When I got back last night, the house was locked, the fire out and Martha had simply disappeared. I inquired everywhere I could think of and learned no one had seen her since the day I left, so I reported it to the police.”

“She’s only missing?” I asked Day.

He moved his skinny head up and down, watching me suspiciously.

“When’d you take over the missing persons bureau?”

“Now listen here, Moon,” the inspector started to say.

“She’s dead,” I said flatly.

Everyone but Claude Banner looked at me, startled. Banner wet his lips and looked at Warren Day. He didn’t seem particularly upset. Vivian’s mouth drew into a thin line.

“You speak when you’re spoken to!” Day exploded. “I’m directing this investigation!”

“Sure. And you’re chief of homicide. I don’t know what you’re pulling, but you wouldn’t be interested unless you had a body.”

Vivian said: “It’s true. My mother’s dead.” She began to sob quietly.

“Hannegan!” Day shouted at his right hand man, nearly blasting him over, since he stood only a foot from the inspector’s desk. “Clear everybody out but Moon! Keep ’em outside till I call for ’em.”

Hannegan shooed the startled group from the office, and Warren Day glared at me furiously. “Why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?”

Relaxing in a chair next to his desk, I reached into his cigar humidor, but jerked back empty fingers when he snapped down the lid.

“If you’d take me in on your plans, I wouldn’t blow them up,” I said reasonably. “How was I supposed to know you had secrets?”

“I didn’t want that bunch to know what’s going on till I had their stories,” Day growled. Dropping his dead cigar in the ash tray, he fished out another butt. “What were you doing at Mrs. Rand’s house?”

“Just a social call.”

He glared at me over his glasses. “Don’t want to cooperate, eh?”

“Sure I do. Soon as you tell me what’s going on.”

Day chewed his cigar while he examined me with distaste. “All right, Manny,” he said finally. “I know if I gave you the rubber hose, I’d get nothing, so I’ll save time for both of us. I’ll bring you up to date, if you’ll unload what you know to me.”

“Fine,” I said, and managed to snake out one of his cigars without losing a finger.

“The body showed up at Bakersville, ten miles down the river, about an hour before Banner reported his wife missing. She had a bullet in her and had been dead about a week. We called Banner in late last night to identify the body, and told him to keep his mouth shut until we released the news ourselves. He’s the only one who knew she was dead.”

“Why the secrecy?”

“Wanted to see their reactions. Got to start somewhere, and there’s not a sign of a clue.”

“How about the bullet?”

“Hit a bone. .45 caliber, but the lab can’t tell us whether it came from a gun or a pea-shooter.”

I asked: “Think Banner himself did it?”

Day snorted. “Mrs. Rand’s chauffeur and that fat guy, Sheridan, both saw Mrs. Banner wave goodbye. After that Banner wasn’t out of the chauffeur’s sight till he boarded a plane for Mexico City.”

“Maybe he flew back again.”

Day shook his head. “We had the airlines check passenger lists for that. Just to make sure, we’re also making a checkup by Mexico City police, but I think Banner’s clear. He makes regular trips to Mexico City every month. Operates an importing business, and does all the buying himself. Says he always stays at the same hotel, so it should be easy enough for the Mexico City police to verify his alibi.”

He didn’t seem inclined to pass on anything else, so I asked: “That the whole story?”

“Yeah. Now what were you doing at Mrs. Rand’s place?”

“Just a social call,” I said, snaking another cigar from the ash tray.

In spite of her aunt’s and stepfather’s arguments that Vivian’s treatment be postponed until she got over the shock of her mother’s death, Vivian insisted on going ahead with original arrangements. Her insistence was fanatical rather than merely determined, for she was obviously terrified at the agony she thought she would go through. As the day of the court session drew near, she developed an air of numb fascination resembling that of an early Christian preparing to throw herself in the flames in pursuit of an ideal. I saw her only twice, and both times she was drugged to the eyebrows.

The murder remained a mystery, at least to me. What progress the homicide department was making, I didn’t know, since Warren Day stopped speaking to me after our last session together. And since I was engaged by Mrs. Rand only to keep Vivian away from morphine, and not to solve incidental murders, I made no attempt to check up.

Now that it’s all over, and I can look back at the complete picture in all its details, I can see I might have saved Vivian’s life if I had done something about her mother’s murder. Even if I had merely thought about it seriously, I might have drawn some significance from the casual happenings during the tea party where I met Vivian’s mother. Not enough to solve the case, probably, but perhaps enough to stir an awareness of danger to Vivian and place me on guard.

It bothers me still when I think about it, but actually I had no reason to concern myself. In the first place no one asked me to do anything about Mrs. Banner, and I get in enough trouble sticking my nose where I’m hired to stick it, without prying into murders for free. In the second place no one in the family, including Vivian, who was so completely obsessed by her approaching ordeal that she hadn’t even time for grief, so much as mentioned the matter. And just because you’re a private investigator, you don’t tactlessly choose a murdered relative as a conversational subject when you talk to people, unless somebody pays you to pry.

When I thought about it at all, it was to idly wonder if it had been a lunatic murder, one of those tough ones where a nut with no motive except desire to kill picks a victim he never saw before. Those happen, you know, and happen frequently. And the killer is rarely caught until he butchers two or three.

In any event, I left the investigation of Mrs. Banner’s murder to the homicide squad and continued to spend most of my time on my back waiting for Judge Crawford to get around to convening court in order to consider the competency of the murdered woman’s daughter. The days dragged by one by one and my bank account shrunk to zero, and I started a charge account at my favorite restaurant.

But even Judgment Day will arrive if you wait long enough, and nine days after my conversation with Inspector Day, Judge Crawford held a closed session in his chambers. When Alex Carson, Ms. Rand, Vivian and I left the courtroom together, I bore a document naming me the temporary committee of Miss Vivian Banner, aged 24, declared legally incompetent by court order. The document emphasized in several places that my appointment was temporary, and named a date seven months away at which time the court would again consider evidence of my charge’s competence and take such additional action it deemed appropriate.

Mrs. Rand also carried a document, one carefully prepared by Alex Carson and to which my witnessed signature was affixed. In it I declared that I had been employed by the family for the sole purpose of preventing Vivian Banner from obtaining or taking drugs during the next seven months, that by general family agreement I had been chosen as the proper temporary committee for that purpose only, that I had no interest nor claim in Miss Banner’s estate and, in the event of her death, I waived all rights of inheritance and/or administration of her estate.

Alex, in spite of his recommendation that I was “scrupulously honest,” was taking no chances.

All four of us squeezed into the rear seat of Mrs. Rand’s Packard. I offered to sit with Harry, but Mrs. Rand chilled the suggestion as though it were improper. Alex Carson and I drew small folding seats and rode backward, facing the two women.

During the ride to Mrs. Rand’s home Alex tried to make light conversation. He looked every inch the distinguished barrister as he sat erect but easily on the uncomfortable drop-down seat, his gaunt, intelligent features carefully holding a poised smile. Narrow, snow-white sideburns which merged into dark, gray-flecked hair, added to the effect of mature integrity. “What an honest looking guy,” I thought, feeling to see if I still had my wallet.

Mrs. Rand answered Carson’s conversational attempts with monosyllables, and Vivian and I made no attempt to answer at all.

Once Vivian said to me: “How does it feel to be a father. Daddy?”

I scowled at her, expecting to meet a mocking expression. Her lips smiled, but in her eyes was an almost incredible fright. I let my scowl fade into an encouraging grin.

Dr. Yoder was waiting for us in the drawing room when we arrived at the Rand home. With him was a middle-aged nurse in a starched uniform. Dr. Yoder rose from his chair.

“Good afternoon,” he said affably in all-inclusive greeting. He introduced the nurse as Miss Livingston, then said to Vivian: “Ready to become a patient?”

“Today? Are we going to start today?”

She looked from one to another of us, and I could see a pulse begin to beat in her throat. Nobody said anything.

“I mean, it’s been such a trying day already...” Her voice trailed off and she gave a nervous laugh. “Whatever you think best, Doctor. It’s just that I didn’t expect to start today.”

Mrs. Rand said: “I asked Doctor Yoder to be here when we returned from court. There’s no point in delay.”

The doctor made his voice patronizingly hearty. “Sooner you get to bed, young lady, sooner we’ll have you up. Go on upstairs and Miss Livingston will be up in a minute.”

Vivian summoned a ghastly smile and left the room without a word. Dr. Yoder immediately dropped his jolly manner and turned professional.

“Nurse has her orders,” he said to Mrs. Rand. “Be relieved by a night nurse at eleven. You understand, of course, the nurse is in complete charge of patient when I’m not here. Please give her any help she needs.” He glanced at me. “Afraid not much for you to do next two weeks, Moon.”

I asked: “What’s this treatment involve?”

He drew down his brows in fair imitation of Lionel Barrymore in a Dr. Gillespie role. “We gradually withdraw the drug. Otherwise too great a shock, you see. Same time we administer cathartics and use hyoscine as an antidote. End of two weeks, hope to shut off medical treatment and let her system rebuild itself. That’s when your main problem starts. Meantime, wish you’d stay close by to help the nurse, case Miss Banner becomes violent. Don’t anticipate that, but always a possibility.”

I said: “I’ve already moved in. I’ll be sleeping in the room right next to her.”

“Fine,” he said. “Fine arrangement. Be handy if nurse needs you.”

I turned to Mrs. Rand. “You have those locks installed?”

“Yes,” she said, rummaging in her purse and producing three keys. “They’re numbered one, two and three. One is the connecting door to your room, two the hall door and three the key to my bedroom.”

I said: “Keep yours,” took the other two and handed the hall key to Miss Livingston. “You can pass this on to the other nurses as they change shift. There are no extras, so don’t lose it.”

Accepting the key, she started from the room, but I stopped her. “When Vivian’s ready for bed, have her put on a robe and come back downstairs,” I told her.

By the time the nurse returned with Vivian, Dr. Yoder and Alex had gone, Mrs. Rand had disappeared into the rear of the house, and I was alone in the drawing room. Vivian wore a flowered wrap-around housecoat over green nylon pajamas. Clenched fists were thrust into the housecoat pockets.

I went over to her, took her wrists and gently pulled her hands from her pockets. She raised them palm upward and looked at me questioningly.

Smiling at her, I thrust my own hands into the pockets. One held a lace handkerchief and the other was empty.

“Any pajama pockets?” I asked.

She shook her head. “What are you doing? Searching me?”

I said: “You catch on quick. Wait right here,” and went right on up to her room.

I wasted fifteen minutes going over every inch of the bathroom and bedroom before I finally found it under a hat in a hat-box on the closet’s rear shelf. It was a compact little outfit neatly assembled in a small tin box; an alcohol lamp of the type found in toy chemistry sets, a small test tube, two teaspoons, a bottle of innocent looking pills and an hypodermic syringe with several extra needles.

Returning to the drawing room, I handed the box to Miss Livingston. “Better turn this over to Dr. Yoder.”

Vivian’s eyes burned at me with sudden anger. “What right have you to search my room?” she demanded in a high voice.

I said: “We fathers make our own rules. Go on up to bed.”

Except for one or two incidents, the next two weeks was a period of utter boredom for me. I had literally nothing to do but sit in my room and wait for the nurse to call me if Vivian grew violent, which she never did. She grew irritable, and her complexion turned muddy and oily from constant sweating. Her eyes reddened and streamed gallons of water, her fingers twitched and occasionally she sobbed with pain in her body joints, and she lost weight until her cheeks were gaunt. But she kept her mind.

To me she seemed pretty sick, but Dr. Yoder seemed pleased with her progress. He stopped by every day, examined Vivian, boomed a few hearty jests and went away with an air of satisfaction.

Norman Sheridan came every day too, asked if Vivian were well enough to have visitors, and nodded understandingly when the nurse informed him she was not. Whereupon he would retire to the drawing room with Mrs. Rand, drink a cup of tea and devour a prodigious amount of sugared cookies.

The first incident to break the boredom was when Nellie, the ancient housekeeper, let Vivian out of her room. She only got as far as her aunt’s bedroom, because I discovered it almost at once. When no answer came to my rap on Vivian’s door. I unlocked it. found the room empty and the door to Mrs. Rand’s room open.

When she heard me enter, Vivian slammed shut the bureau drawer she was rifling, turned her back to the bureau and crouched like a cornered animal, her red-ringed eves spitting hate at me and her lips pulled back from her teeth.

“What are you looking for, Vivian?” I asked gently.

“A handkerchief.” Her voice was a sullen whine.

“I’ll have the nurse bring you one. Better get back to bed.”

Mrs. Rand’s key lay on her dressing table. I picked it up, looked at it, laid it down again and left it there. After seeing Vivian safely relocked in her room, I went downstairs to give Mrs. Rand a verbal blast.

“But I know nothing about it,” Vivian’s aunt protested. “The key was on my dresser.”

“It’s still on the dresser.” I said. “You simply left the door unlocked.”

“I most certainly did not,” Mrs. Rand denied. “I tried it very carefully before I came downstairs.”

We questioned the servants then, and Nellie readily admitted her guilt. “Can’t clean Miss Vivian’s room less I open the door, can I?” she asked belligerently. “Can’t walk through no closed door.”

“You have the nurse let you in and out,” I said. “If Vivian gets out again, I’ll skin you alive.”

She sniffed disdainfully. “Bigger fellers than you tried that and got set on their haunches.”

“And you keep that key in your possession,” I told Mrs. Rand. “Don’t leave it lying on your dresser again.”

The second incident occurred not more than an hour later, when Alex Carson made his single visit during Vivian’s illness. It was his sole visit because I afterward told him if he stuck his nose inside the house again, I’d break it off even with his face.

I was in the back yard when he called. Every afternoon I spent a half hour there getting some fresh air in my lungs while Mrs. Rand took over my watch. When I came back into the house Mrs. Morgan, the 7:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. nurse, met me with fire in her eyes.

“A man named Carson was here and got into Miss Banner’s room,” she announced indignantly.

“He was?” I asked, mildly irked, but not particularly disturbed.

“Come look at our patient.”

I followed her indignant back up the stairs to Vivian’s room. Thrusting her key into the door, Mrs. Morgan flung it open and dramatically pointed to the patient, who sat upright in bed talking to Mrs. Rand, who was seated in a bedside chair.

Vivian’s complexion was no longer muddy, and there was even a touch of color in her cheeks. Her eyes were still red-ringed, but they were clear and waterless, and the pupils were contracted to points.

She waved at me gaily. “Hello, Daddy”

“Take her in my room,” I told Mrs. Morgan. “Search her while you’ve got her there. If she won’t let you, call me.”

Vivian docilely allowed herself to be led through the connecting door. Mrs. Rand watched silently while I went over every inch of the bedroom, bathroom and closet.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, when I finally gave up.

I ignored her question. “How did Car-son get in here?”

“I let him in. Vivian asked to see him. Why?”

“Were you here all the time?”

“No. Vivian asked to see him alone. Why are you asking this?”

“Because your niece is doped to the heels. Starting right now all visitors will be referred to me. No one uses your key but yourself.”

She put her nose in the air and tried to curdle me through her distorting eyeglasses. “Alex Carson wouldn’t give Vivian morphine. The whole idea’s ridiculous.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Of course not!”

“That leaves Alex,” I said.

Mrs. Morgan brought Vivian back into the room and shook her head before I could ask if her search had turned up any drug on Vivian. I told her to throw her patient back in bed and went downstairs to phone.

After twenty minutes of trying, I finally caught Alex at home. To put it conservatively, by that time I was mad.

“Alex,” I said, “I knew you were a shyster, but I didn’t know you peddled dope.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. I told him my plans for his nose and hung up.

Chapter Four Human Again

The second two weeks were more interesting, because I had something to do. Vivian was allowed up now, though she still spent much of her time in bed. When she was up she moped around the house dispiritedly, spending most of her time yawning and incessantly smoking cigarettes, and the rest of it trying to sneak out without my catching her. Once she tried violence and put a long scratch on my cheek, but the next meal she had to eat from the mantel. After that she kept her distance.

The nurses had been discharged at the end of the second week, and I now carried both the key to the door between my room and Vivian’s and the key to Vivian’s hall door. Mrs. Rand still had the third.

I let Vivian pick her own bedtime, but each night when she retired, I carefully locked her in and left her there until she pounded on the connecting door the next morning. Mrs. Rand had instructions to ignore pounding on her door.

By the end of the fourth week Vivian began to look human again. She was thin and extremely nervous and she tired easily, but her complexion began to freshen and her eyes to clear. Dr. Yoder decided she was well enough to leave the house.

“Now your real job begins,” he told me. “Amazing, success you’ve had so far. Be nice if you can keep it up.” He looked at me, not very hopefully.

“I’ll keep it up,” I said.

Up till then Vivian shrank from any contacts because of embarrassment at her appearance. Even after she was allowed up, she returned to her room when Norman Sheridan made his daily call, or when any other visitor arrived. But now she blossomed forth all at once.

At Vivian’s request I ordered a beauty operator and a dressmaker, both of my own choosing, to report to the Rand home at nine the next morning. They spent three hours together locked in Vivian’s room, and when at noon the rap on my door to let them out came, Vivian was again a beautiful woman.

The green knit suit she wore had been subtly altered to compensate for a loss of twelve pounds, changing her thinness to a willowy slenderness. And expert makeup had converted gaunt hollows to interesting high cheek bones. She wasn’t the same woman who had visited my apartment nearly seven weeks before, but she was just as beautiful a woman.

“I want to go out to lunch,” she informed me imperiously.

I let her have a wolf whistle. “We’ll look like beauty and the beast.”

For the first time since she had gotten up, she smiled at me, proving that even though she doesn’t like you, no woman can resist a compliment.

Norman Sheridan and Mrs. Rand were together in the drawing room when Vivian and I entered. Sheridan heaved his soft bulk erect and let a smile of delight slowly spread across his round face.

“Well, well,” he said. “The cocoon has opened and the butterfly emerges.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Rand. “You look stunning.”

Being realistic about my own beauty, I deduced they were speaking to Vivian and not to me, so I kept my mouth shut. A flush of pleasure added even more loveliness to Vivian’s face.

“We’re going out to lunch.” she told Mrs. Rand.

“How nice,” Vivian’s aunt said. She looked at me quietly. “Do be careful of her.”

Vivian frowned slightly. “I won’t run away, Aunt Grace.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Rand protested. “But you’re still weak, my dear. Don’t overdo it.”

Mrs. Rand loaned us the Packard, complete with its sullen chauffeur, Harry. Harry had been avoiding me ever since I moved into the house, probably in deference to our onetime unfriendly relationship. As far as I was concerned, he had served his time and bygones were bygones, so I winked at him in the rear view mirror as we settled back in our seat. But instead of looking reassured, his face turned pale and he clashed the gears in starting.

Vivian chose the Jefferson to dine, and lunch was pleasant except for a heightened and false vivaciousness on the part of my companion. From across the room it probably looked as though she hung on my every word and replied with delightful banter, but behind her tightly fixed smile her mind was turned inward on her own thoughts. Half the time my remarks got no answer at all, and the rest of the time the answers bore little relation to the questions. Our conversation sounded like a Marx brothers’ script.

A choice example was when she brought up the subject of her mother’s death. I had just remarked that the waitress was slow with our coffee.

“Do you think the police have forgotten about it?” she asked musingly.

“Our coffee?” I said, puzzled.

“It’s been over a month now.”

“About ten minutes,” I said. “It just seems long...” I stopped because her blank eyes told me she was a thousand miles away.

“Vivian,” I said.

“I don’t believe the police are doing a thing. But I’ll bet you could solve the case, if you put your mind to it.” She smiled brightly at me. “Now that I’m well and really don’t need you any more, I think I’ll hire you to find my mother’s murderer.”

“Vivian.”

“So much time has passed, you really should start right now. Right after lunch. You can take Harry and I’ll take a taxi home.”

“Vivian.”

I got her attention, and also that of the tables on all four sides of us. “No,” I said more softly.

She smiled at me weakly, once again back in the present. Then her smile brightened and she rose. “Excuse me a moment.”

Pushing back my chair, I dropped a ten dollar bill on the table in case we weren’t coming back, and said: “I’ll go with you.”

One eyebrow quirked up in amusement, she shrugged and started across the floor. I followed her across the dining room, through the hotel lobby to a door reading, “Women.” She grinned at me quizzically and pushed through the door.

Long ago I had decided that once Vivian was allowed out of the house, it would be impossible to keep her in sight for six months. The only possible way to keep her from morphine was to give her some rope, locate her sources of drug, and eliminate the sources.

So instead of foolishly waiting outside the women’s room, I ducked out the hotel’s side door, loped to the alley and got the windows of the room under observation. I arrived just in time to see her drop lightly to the ground.

When she turned my way, I pulled back my head and faded into the cigar store located at the alley corner. Through the display window glass I saw her stop in front of the store, look in all directions and enter one of the line of cabs parked at the curb.

As soon as she settled back in its interior, I was out of the cigar store and into the taxi immediately behind hers.

“Keep the guy pulling out in sight,” I told the cabbie. “But don’t make him suspicious.”

He dropped his flag. “Copper?”

I said: “No,” and let a ten flutter into the seat beside him. My expense account was mounting.

At the end of the first block Vivian peered through her cab’s rear window, and I slouched down until my driver’s back cut off my view. Apparently her one look satisfied her, because she didn’t check again.

Our first stop was the Merchant’s National Bank. Vivian’s taxi came to a halt in front of the bank and we pulled in a quarter block behind it. The other cab waited, so I remained in mine until Vivian came out again.

I suspected she wouldn’t be long and she would come out mad. If she were trying to get hold of some money, she was going to discover one of the disadvantages of being declared legally incompetent was that you can’t cash checks on your own account. It took my signature to get any of her money out of the bank.

In about three minutes she came out, and even from a quarter block away I could see her face was dark red. When she slammed shut the cab door, it nearly broke the glass.

Her next stop was in front of the Uptown Personal Loan Company. This took ten minutes, but the only result was an even more flushed face and a still harder slam of the cab door.

For the next ten minutes Vivian’s taxi wandered aimlessly, while its occupant apparently thought things over. Then it picked up speed and started decisively in the direction of the water front. It stopped a block from the Mississippi in front of an unsafe looking three story building.

In this neighborhood of sidewalk fruit stands and dilapidated one man shops, a taxi was more noticeable than in the uptown section, so I had my driver roll past her taxi and park in the next side street.

When I rounded the corner on foot the other taxi still waited, but Vivian was not in evidence. Unhurriedly I drew abreast of the cab and, without glancing at the driver, turned into the entrance in front of which he was parked.

The building was old and needed airing. A single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling lit its windowless foyer, disclosing worn stairs ascending on either side and a variety of cigarette stubs and other litter on the floor. On the wall exactly between the two sets of stairs was a faded building directory.

Glancing over the half-dozen directory names, which included a chiropractor, a job printer, a seed company, two novelty wholesalers and a private detective, I settled on the last.

“Joseph Alamado, bonded investigator, room 209,” the notice read. I had heard of Joe, and he was no credit to the profession.

Taking the left stairs to the second floor, I passed the print shop and two empty offices before I came to 209. Its plain wooden door repeated the directory’s legend. Opening it softly, I pushed into a drab waiting room containing only a black leather sofa, an iron ash stand and a dusty magazine rack. Across the waiting room voices came from behind another plain wooden door on which was painted the single word, “Private.”

Leaving the hall door ajar, I crossed to the inner door and leaned one ear against it.

“You know I’ll pay you,” Vivian Banner was saying in a tone of tight desperation. “I’ll bring the money tomorrow.”

“You can have the stuff tomorrow,” a heavy masculine voice said. After a timed pause, it added: “If you bring the money.” There was no sympathy in the voice, and it definitely disapproved of credit transactions.

“Just a shot, then. One shot to carry me over. Against tomorrow’s order.”

No reply came from the man, but I guessed he had shaken his head. Vivian’s voice grew wheedling. “I’ve always liked you, Joe. I’d be awfully grateful. I’d be so grateful I couldn’t refuse you anything at all.”

Joe’s tone was heavily bored. “I deal in cash, lady. Cold, hard cash. Period.”

For so long there was silence, I thought Vivian was turning to leave, and quietly started to leave myself. But her voice, low and vicious, brought me back.

“You rotten, sneaking vulture,” she said. “I’ve poured thousands into your filthy hands. Listen to me.” Her voice sank till I could barely hear it. “The police would love to know how many thousands — and what it was for!”

A chair scraped back and Joe said sharply: “Just a minute!”

Silence again, until Joe’s heavy voice explained reasonably: “You know I don’t stock it like a grocery store does apples. I buy when my customers order.”

“You’ve got it right in this office!”

“No, lady. I can get it in an hour, but it takes cash.”

“You’re lying! You always had it before.”

“Sure,” Joe agreed. “But I always knew when you were coming. You ain’t been around lately.”

“All right,” Vivian said. “I’ll wait an hour while you go for it. I can pay you tomorrow. Honestly.”

“Sorry, lady. I ain’t got the money to advance. I can’t get credit either, you know.”

Vivian’s voice again sank to a vicious whisper. “Unless I leave here with at least one shot, I’ll go straight to the police from here!”

Neither spoke for a long time. Finally Joe said: “You wouldn’t want to do that. You’d never get any then.”

Vivian’s laugh was slightly hysterical. “I’ll never get it anyway. At least I can pay you back for some of the torture you’ve caused me.”

For a second time her chair scraped back, and for a second time Joe said: “Just a minute!”

A period of silence ensued before Joe said slowly: “I could fix you up tomorrow, lady, but I couldn’t raise you a shot today even if you threatened to phone Edgar Hoover.”

“What time tomorrow?” Vivian asked eagerly.

Joe’s voice grew persuasive. “Listen, lady. You’re well on the way to cure. Why not be smart and stay off the junk?”

“What time tomorrow?” Vivian repeated. Then she said: “How do you know that I’ve been taking treatment lately?”

“I keep track of my clients.”

For a long time neither said anything. Then Vivian asked: “What time tomorrow?”

“Phone me at noon,” Joe said resignedly.

“That’s too late. Make it earlier.”

“Noon.” Joe’s voice was definite.

“All right,” Vivian said crossly. “Noon.”

She moved toward the door and I faded back into the hallway, timing the click made by the hall door’s closing to coincide with the noise of the other door opening. By the time Vivian reached the hall, I was halfway down the stairs.

But when I reached my taxi and we had swung around the block, Vivian’s cab had already pulled away. We caught it two blocks farther on.

As straight as he could go without cutting across vacant lots, Vivian’s driver headed for the Rand home. When the cab stopped, Vivian immediately stepped out and ran up the walk to the house. I told my driver to park behind the other vehicle.

“Wait again?” the cabbie asked when I climbed out.

“No.”

“That’ll be two-thirty then.”

I said: “Take it out of the ten I gave you and keep the change.”

“Oh,” he said. “I thought that was extra.”

I gave him the fishy eye and he grinned. “No harm in trying, is there?”

Stopping next to Vivian’s cab, I asked the driver: “She tell you to wait?”

“No. Just went in for money to pay me off.”

“What’s the fare?”

“Two-sixty.”

I said: “You guys ought to standardize your rates,” gave him three ones and turned toward the house.

At the front door Vivian met me, holding a five dollar bill in her hand. I flicked it away from her.

“You can’t handle money,” I said. “You’re mentally incompetent.”

She looked at me expressionlessly, glanced past me to see that her taxi was gone, and without a word turned and reentered the drawing room. I followed and found the inevitable tea party in session. Mrs. Rand, Claude Banner, Dr. Yoder and Norman Sheridan all sat around holding cups.

I nodded to the group generally and handed Mrs. Rand the five. “I told you not to give Vivian money.”

“She said there was a taxi.”

“Don’t do it again.”

Her thick eyeglasses flashed hostility. “You needn’t press the point in front of company.”

I glanced over the group. “Nobody here who doesn’t know what’s wrong with Vivian.”

Returning to the hall, I phoned the head waiter at the Jefferson and asked him to find Harry and tell him to come on home. While I was phoning, Vivian and Mrs. Rand passed and went on up the stairs. I hung up and returned to the drawing room.

“Where you been?” I asked Claude Banner, none too politely.

He looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t called to see your stepdaughter once.”

“Had to fly to Mexico City again,” he said in a reasonable tone. “Just got back about an hour ago.”

Mrs. Rand came back into the room, minus Vivian.

“Vivian’s lying down,” she told me. “She doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Lock your door?”

She looked nettled. “Yes.”

Deliberately needling her, I asked: “Mind if I look in your room and check?”

She looked even more nettled, but said coldly: “If you wish.”

Upstairs I found all three doors to Vivian’s room locked. Not caring to rejoin the tea party crowd, I stayed in my room until the guests departed. About five-thirty I heard Mrs. Rand and Vivian talking in Vivian’s room, and then a door opened and shut again as Mrs. Rand left. I continued to lie on my back and stare at the ceiling until time for dinner, then I knocked on Vivian’s door.

She answered through the panel, but I never saw her alive again. The next morning I found her body...

Harry’s face was pale and frightened when I slipped into the front seat beside him.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

He started up, killed the engine and had to use the starter again. I decided Mrs. Rand must have told him of Vivian’s death.

“Four-hundred block on Second Street,” I told him.

“Mrs. Rand wants me to stop by Mr. Sheridan’s on the way,” Harry said diffidently. “His phone’s out of order and she wants him to come over.”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“It’s right on the way.”

“Make it snappy, then,” I said.

We rolled past Forest Park, made a neat right turn and swung into the driveway of Norman Sheridan’s big brick home. The garage doors were open and Harry wheeled the car right through them. Behind us the doors slid shut.

I looked angrily at Harry, started to open my mouth, and closed it again when a voice spoke to me through the side window. “Good morning, Mr. Moon.”

Chapter Five The Bloody Shroud

I glanced sidewise at the round, smiling face of Norman Sheridan. A .45 automatic was half-smothered in one doughy hand, and it was leveled at my ear.

“Move very carefully, Mr. Moon,” he said softly. “I understand you can draw and fire a pistol with astonishing rapidity, but you can’t possibly do it in the time it takes to press a trigger. If you make any abrupt movements, I won’t wait to decide their purpose. I’ll simply fire.”

I sat still without saying anything.

“Get out slowly, Mr. Moon. Very slowly.”

My hand reached for the door handle in slow motion, and I slid from the car at the same rate of speed.

“Turn around and raise your hands, Mr. Moon.”

I did as directed, and Harry climbed from his seat and removed the P-.38 from my shoulder holster. Sheridan motioned with his pistol, and I preceded him through a side door into the house’s cellar.

Except for the space taken up by a furnace, the entire basement had been converted into a combination office and laboratory. Placed diagonally in one corner was a desk, behind which was a double-width swivel chair. Hanging from the chair’s back was Sheridan’s heavy cane. Around three sides of the basement ran a wide, waist-high shelf on which were screened cages of buzzing insects, petrie dishes and assorted equipment.

Motioning me to a chair in front of the desk, Sheridan oozed his own vast bulk into the wide chair behind it. He carefully placed the cocked automatic within reach of his hand, leaned forward on his elbows and favored me with a beaming smile. Harry stood in the corner, shuffling from one foot to the other and avoiding my eyes.

“Harry is frightened to death of you, Mr. Moon,” Sheridan said. “Your name induces quite some fear among the lesser criminals.” He chuckled mildly. “I understand they even carefully address you as ‘Mister’ when they meet you, a habit you have unimaginatively inculcated by beating them up when they fail to use the title. Now, I call you ‘Mister’ also, but merely because I prefer to be formal.”

I said: “Before you fall asleep at the sound of your own voice, get to the point.”

For an instant his eyes frosted over, then he smiled again. “Directness is an admirable trait. I won’t keep you in suspense. We’re waiting for a phone call.”

I thought this over without growing any wiser, and tried again. “Any particular reason you want my company?”

He only smiled, so I kept on. “I suppose you wouldn’t have come out in the open like this unless it was urgent to sidetrack me. And since I was headed for a dope peddler, it follows you must not have wanted me to get to him.”

The smile continued, bland and friendly.

“So we come to the riddle of how you knew where I was going,” I said, smiling just as blandly. “And the only sensible answer is that Harry must have phoned you before we left the house. Then, by the process of logical deduction I learned in my correspondence course in private detecting, a number of interesting things follow.” I ticked them off on my fingers for him. “One: Harry is your employee, and his job as chauffeur for Mrs. Rand is only a blind. Two: Joe Alamado is also your employee, or you wouldn’t care whether I got to him or not. Three: you’re the head of the local dope ring.” I stopped and looked at him questioningly.

But all I got was a lot more smile and a deprecating shake of his melon head. “You are wasting your time, Mr. Moon. We are merely waiting for a phone call.”

Suddenly his eyes fixed on a fly which had settled to the desk top in front of him. With instant coordination one hand shot out and cupped the whirring insect. Carefully he worked two fingers of his other hand into his clenched fist until he had the fly’s legs gripped between the thumb and index finger. Then he calmly stripped its wings and dropped it back on the desk to run in drunken circles.

As though there had been no interruption, he said: “I have no intention of answering any of your provocative questions, Mr. Moon. I’m sure I couldn’t think up any explanation for detaining you which would sound more plausible than the one you’ve deduced, so I won’t bother to either affirm or deny your accusations.” He raised a thick index finger and shook it at me. “I never underestimate opponents, Mr. Moon. I have studied your history very carefully, and am fully aware of your talents. You have a bulldog tenacity which I consider much more dangerous to my interests than if you were intelligent. The only way to beat a man like you is to catch him unaware and crush him at once. Like this!” He suddenly slapped his fat palm over the wobbling insect on his desk.

I said: “You flatter me.”

“No. As I say, I have studied your history. I probably know as much about you as you do yourself.”

“For instance?”

Studying me through half-shut eyes, he began to recite: “You were born on the north side in a neighborhood of... ah... lower middle-class families.”

“Lower lower-class,” I said.

He bent his head courteously. “As you please. Your father was an immigrant laborer, and died when you were three. Your mother died when you were seven, and you and your brother and sister were placed in the state orphanage. Both your brother and sister were adopted, but you stayed until you were eighteen, were turned loose with a high school education and became a dock worker. In a rather rough environment, you soon established yourself as pretty nearly the roughest element, and it was about this time that you received the slight brass knuckle disfigurement your face still bears.

“At twenty you won the Golden Gloves tournament, turned professional, fought three setups which you won by knockouts in the first round; then decided to beat up your manager and, in the ensuing investigation by the boxing commission during which you refused to explain your action, were permanently barred from the ring. Just what was your reason?” he asked curiously.

“He bored me. He talked much too much.”

Sheridan smiled benevolently. “Well put, Mr. Moon. I won’t bore you much longer. At twenty-one you went to work for the Jones Detective Agency, stayed with them two years and then opened your own business. You’ve been working alone ever since, with the exception of four years in the Army, and have built an excellent reputation.”

I said: “You certainly went to a lot of trouble.”

“In the Army you became first sergeant of one of the famous Ranger companies, and succeeded in winning the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star twice, the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart and a theater ribbon with a number of campaign stars on it.”

“You forgot the Good Conduct Medal,” I said.

“You also succeeded in losing your right leg.”

“The left,” I said, just to be cantankerous. “Your sources of information must have been lousy.”

He frowned, and a tinge of annoyance was in the frown. “Cover him,” he said to Harry, and watched from the corner of his eye until Harry got my P-.38 leveled at my head.

He heaved himself erect by holding the desk edge in both hands, grasped his cane by the shaft and rounded the desk to bulge over me like an enormous balanced rock. Without speaking, he slammed the heavy crook across my left instep.

If he had not telegraphed the blow, I probably would have shot clear to the ceiling, for the pain was terrific. As it was, even though it felt as though every bone in my foot was broken, I managed a heckling grin.

“You’ll bust your cane,” I said. “That’s aluminum.”

Again he raised the cane and brought it down, this time at my right foot. I jerked back my leg and let the cane head crash to the floor.

“Easy,” I said, not grinning. “That one bruises.”

For a moment he glared down at me, his eyes nearly closed. Then he swung around impatiently and lumbered back to his desk. Leaning back in his oversized swivel chair, he latched hands across his stomach and waited for his color to recede. When it finally did, he revived the benevolent smile.

“A minor point,” he said indifferently. “On the whole, my sources of information were excellent.”

Since this seemed to call for no answer, I just sat and looked at him. Sheridan looked back, and a conversational pause built up and lengthened. Then the silence was burst apart as the phone on his desk uttered a shrill peal.

Sheridan’s body jerked and the gun leaped into his hand, pointed at me.

I laughed aloud. “I make a different noise, fatty. That was the phone.”

His smile was a sickly, self-conscious version of the bland original as he laid the automatic back on the desk. Glancing at Harry to make sure I was still covered, he lifted the instrument from its cradle.

“Yes?”

I strained to hear the other voice, but it must have been pitched unusually low, for only a whisper of unintelligible sound trickled past Sheridan’s ear.

“He’s here and under control,” Sheridan said.

A short dribble of sound issued from the received, and Sheridan said: “Delay is unnecessarily risky. Suppose he escapes?”

Again he listened. “Of course he’s under control. But why delay? What’s the point?”

This time the other party talked a long time while Sheridan frowned into space. Then he said: “It will be no harder to dispose of now than when we finally act.”

I had an uncomfortable feeling he was referring to my body, and silently began to root for the other person to win the argument.

“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll meet you in thirty minutes. Usual place.”

He hung up and glowered at me.

“So I get a reprieve?” I said. “Who was my benefactor?”

His expression relaxed into its habitual smile. “Reprieve? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Again placing both hands on the desk edge, he heaved himself upright. “Do you have any rope in the car, Harry?”

“Moon’s got handcuffs in his pocket,” Harry said.

“Mr. Moon, Harry,” I snapped.

Harry wet his lips and shifted his eyes to my feet. Norman Sheridan laughed.

“Harry is being brave, Mr. Moon. Please don’t embarrass him.” He turned his eyes to Harry. “Take his handcuffs.”

Picking up his automatic from the desk top, Sheridan motioned me to rise and turn around. When I complied with his pantomined directions, Harry reached under my coat and removed the cuffs from my pocket.

I turned back to face Sheridan then, and he swept his gun muzzle toward a stairway and followed behind when I started toward it. In single file, Harry bringing up the rear, we went clear to the second floor and stopped at a closed room.

“Open the door and go in,” Sheridan said.

I obeyed his order and we entered a narrow bedroom containing a single bed, a dresser and one chair. The bed had an old-fashioned iron frame.

“Sit on the bed,” Sheridan directed.

I swung around until I sat straight-legged in the center of the mattress. Sheridan tossed the handcuffs at me.

“Clip one link to the center bed rung.”

I snapped the loop in place.

“Clip the other to your leg.”

Automatically I moved my good leg forward and reached for the cuff. Sheridan’s soft chuckle made me look up.

“You’re a very enterprising man, Mr. Moon. Clamp it to your good leg.”

Keeping my face expressionless, I locked the metal band around the ankle of my false right leg.

Satisfied that I was adequately restrained, Sheridan tucked his automatic beneath his arm, informed Harry that he would be back about dark and went off to consult with his associates. Harry leaned the lone chair against the wall and sat with my P-.38 in his hand, watching me steadily.

Every time I shifted position, Harry raised the pistol and pointed it at me. I noticed that it shook slightly in his hand.

“What are you scared of?” I asked.

“I’m not scared of anything.”

“You’re scared silly,” I said. “Relax.”

I reached toward my breast pocket for a cigar and the gun came up again. I paused with my fingers touching the cigar.

“Just getting a smoke.”

Brooding, he watched me peel the cellophane, search my pockets for a match and light up. “You’re crazy if you think I’m afraid of you, Moon,” he announced abruptly.

“Mister Moon,” I said.

“Mister Moon,” he amended quickly.

I finished my cigar, yawned, lay back and went to sleep.

When I awoke, I turned my eyes in Harry’s direction and he immediately centered the pistol muzzle between them. I grinned at him, raised myself to a sitting position and glanced at my wrist watch. It was just noon.

“What’s for lunch?” I asked.

Harry wet his lips and remained silent.

“Don’t I get fed?” I demanded.

“The boss said stay in here with you.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “He also said he’d be back about dark. Do we starve?”

“I’m not leaving you out of my sight.”

I shrugged. “O.K. I won’t get any hungrier than you do. But if you went downstairs to rustle something up, how do you think I’d get out of here? Drag this bed through the window?”

Harry wet his lips again, then came over near the bed to lean forward and examine the locked handcuffs, keeping his pistol trained and carefully staying beyond my reach as he looked. With his left hand he reached out and shook the bed rungs to test their strength. He backed to the door, opened it by reaching behind himself and backed out. The door shut and the key turned quickly in the lock.

Rolling up my trouser, I loosened the harness of my false leg, pulled the stump free and swung my knees over the side of the bed. I pushed myself erect, balanced for a moment and hopped over to the wall next to the door. There I patiently waited for the next fifteen.

Finally a key turned in the lock and the door pushed open. Then Harry was standing with his back to me, one hand on the door knob and the other bearing a tray on which rested a plate of sandwiches, two glasses of milk and my cocked pistol. He just stood there staring stupidly at my manacled leg on the bed.

My left arm went about his throat and my right knee raised to his back.

The crash of the tray was immediately followed by the crash of Harry’s body beneath mine as he suddenly went limp, throwing us both off balance. I rolled clear and sat up. Harry had fainted.

It took less time to remove the cuff key from Harry’s pocket, unlock my leg and strap it back where it belonged than it did to revive Harry. And when I finally got him awake, he took one look at me and fainted again.

The second time I threw water in his face, he stayed awake, but he was trembling so badly it took ten more minutes to convince him I wasn’t intending to kill him on the spot. Finally he was in shape to walk, although he stumbled twice going down the stairs.

I opened the garage doors myself, told Harry to get behind the wheel of the Packard, and slid in beside him.

“Four-hundred block on Second Street,” I said.

Harry killed the engine once before he got the car to move, then sideswiped both sides of the driveway in backing out. Normally he was a good driver, but en route to Joe Alamado’s office he killed the engine at every light, clashed gears in starting and nearly had me as much a nervous wreck as himself.

In front of the decrepit building where Alamado kept his office, I clamped one cuff to Harry’s wrist, the other around the steering column, took the car keys and left him to brood over his sins.

The drab reception room of Joe Alamado’s office was empty. I opened the door marked “Private” and found Joe seated behind a cheap desk. He was a squat, narrow-browed man with patent-leather hair slicked back over a nearly flat head. He looked up with a scowl.

I said: “Hello, Joe. We’ve never met, but you may have heard of me. I’m Manny Moon.”

His eyes turned flat and expressionless.

“Get on your feet,” I said patiently.

For another moment he remained motionless, then he slowly rose and advanced toward the door, one hand casually slipping into his coat pocket. He started to precede me through the door, suddenly twisted to face me, and his right arm flashed upward.

I let him bring his leather sap even with his ears before starting the eight inch jab I had been saving for him all day. It connected perfectly, breaking just at the point of impact. He did a back flip and went to sleep.

Harry’s eyes bugged out at me and his face turned yellow when I appeared carrying Joe Alamado like a sack of meal. Opening the rear car door, I dumped Joe in, climbed in beside him and leaned over the back seat to loosen the handcuffs. Then I tossed Harry the car keys.

“Back home,” I said.

Nellie let us in, examined us sharply and went away muttering to herself. Herding my two captives toward the stairway, I spun Joe around, pushed his chest and let him sit down hard on the steps. “Stick out your left wrist,” I said.

Peevishly he held out his arm. I snapped one cuff on it, passed the chain between the railings of the bannister and attached Harry to the other end.

“Don’t wander off.” I said, and went on into the drawing room.

Most everyone I expected to find was there: Mrs. Rand, Claude Banner, Dr. Yoder, Alex Carson, Norman Sheridan, Lieutenant Hannegan and, last but not least, Inspector Warren Day.

The moment I walked through the door, Day bellowed: “Where you been, Moon?” and Norman Sheridan’s hand snaked toward his chest.

“You’ll get a hole in your head,” I said coldly, ignoring Day and walking over to Sheridan.

I jerked him to his feet, spun him around until his back was toward me and cramped one fat arm against his spine. With my other hand I removed the .45.

“Cuffs,” I said to Hannegan.

Hannegan, surprised, but quick on the uptake, moved over and snapped a steel band about the wrist of the arm I held.

Day thundered: “What you think you’re doing, Moon!”

Still cramping Sheridan’s arm, I dog-trotted him over to Claude Banner’s chair, spun him around to face me and pushed him into Banner’s lap. Banner let out a large, “Whoosh!” as three-hundred odd pounds smashed down on him, and before either knew what was happening, I snapped the other end of the cuffs to Banner’s wrist.

Sheridan struggled from his seat to stand erect.

“That makes four packaged up for you,” I said to the now speechless inspector. “The fifth is a lady.”

Crossing to Mrs. Rand, I stood over her, looking down. “Your fat friend was remarkably careful not to implicate you. But no one else knew I was headed after Joe Alamado.”

Warren Day shrieked in my ear: “Who’s Joe Alamado?” His narrow nose was a pale bull’s-eye in a beet-red face.

“I thought Mrs. Rand wouldn’t have passed on the message I left for the police,” I said. “He’s an employee of Sheridan’s and hers.”

Reaching down, I hooked an index finger around the ribbon of her thick-lensed glasses and jerked them off her nose. The pupils of her weak, watery eyes were contracted to dots.

“We’ve got two murderers,” I told inspector Day. “Claude Banner killed his wife, Mrs. Rand murdered Vivian...”

“I knew the whole setup was phoney when they started pinning the second murder on you,” Warren Day told me over rye highballs at my apartment. “Not that I thought you above murder, but using cyanide was too smart for your lame brain. You’d simply have broken her neck.”

Hannegan put in: “How’d the dope racket work?”

I said: “All five helped operate the ring. Mrs. Rand’s husband committed suicide when he went broke in 1929, and the narcotic trade has been her source of income ever since. Norman Sheridan and Mrs. Rand directed operations, Claude Banner handled the smuggling through his frequent business trips to Mexico, and Joe Alamado was the distributor. Harry was general flunkey.

“Whether or not Mrs. Banner was part of the ring is unimportant now, but when she discovered her own daughter was an addict, she blew her lid and threatened to expose the whole deal. In an attempt to pacify her, the gang rigged up a quiet cure for Vivian. But I spilled the beans that the treatment might not work, and wasn’t what Dr. Yoder recommended.

“Vivian didn’t know that her whole family was involved in narcotic trade, but she did know Alamado was the distributor, and she knew her aunt was also a morphine addict. So the gang wanted her where they could watch her in case she broke under the cure and started making accusations. After Mrs. Banner left the Rand home that day, she laid down the law to Sheridan and her husband that Vivian was either going to be committed to a sanitarium, or she was going to the police. So Harry, Sheridan and Banner simply took her for a ride, dumped her body in the river and rigged alibis for each other. Afterward Banner caught his plane.”

“I follow all that,” Hannegan said. “But how’d you know Banner was the one who pulled the trigger?”

“Simple psychology. Sheridan was too smart to do his own killing, and Harry didn’t have the guts.”

Warren Day said: “I still don’t see why Mrs. Rand killed her niece. She must have been nuts.”

“Next thing to it,” I said. “She was full of dope, and her thinking wasn’t quite sane. After Vivian’s unsuccessful attempt to get morphine from Joe Alamado, she went back home, locked herself in her room and began brooding about the next day. Alamado had promised her a supply if she phoned him at noon, remember. Vivian had been* off even medicinal doses for two weeks and was bearing up pretty well, but the idea of actually getting a shot worked on her mind until she couldn’t stand to wait the night through.

“Vivian knew her aunt had a supply, because she’d swiped a shot during her treatment. I nearly caught her in the act, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. But when Mrs. Rand found Vivian all hopped up, she knew I’d ask embarrasing questions, so she deliberately let Alex Carson in to visit Vivian, hoping he’d get the blame. Her ruse worked, and I ordered Alex to stay away.

“The night Vivian died, she called in her aunt, demanded a shot of morphine and threatened to tell me Mrs. Rand was an addict if she didn’t get it. Norman Sheridan had repeatedly warned Mrs. Rand to be careful with me around, and in her drug-punchy mind she thought if I discovered she was an addict, I’d follow through and learn all about the drug ring and the murder of Mrs. Banner. To quiet Vivian, her aunt promised to bring her a shot during the night. But she knew she could never explain to me how Vivian got the shot, so when she brought the needle, it was filled with cyanide instead of morphine.

“After administering Vivian’s last shot in the arm, she had Harry lean a ladder against the house, left her connecting door ajar with the key in it, and calmly went to bed.

“Neither Claude Banner nor Norman Sheridan knew she planned to kill Vivian until she phoned them next morning and told them what she had done. Both blew their lids, but there was nothing they could do but try to cover for her. She got hold of Sheridan in time for him to ad lib a quick plan to sidetrack me from getting to Joe Alamado. Once Sheridan showed his hand, he was cautious enough to want to dispose of me quick, but one of his partners phoned and talked him into waiting.”

“That was Claude Banner,” said Warren Day. “Banner convinced Sheridan they could pin Vivian’s murder on you, but only if your subsequent death seemed accidental. He suggested a car accident, as though you smashed up trying to escape. And, of course, if Sheridan had put a bullet in you, it wouldn’t have looked very accidental.”

“How’d you tumble to Mrs. Rand?”

“I saw her eyes without their thick glasses. At the time I knew there was something strange about them, but it didn’t register until I thought about it later. Then I realized her pupils were contracted just as Vivian’s had been.”

Day said: “They might have gotten away with it if Sheridan had won his phone argument with Banner.”

“You sound disappointed,” I said.

Mixing himself another drink, Day spread thin lips in a hurt smile. “You misjudge me, Manny. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” He sampled his drink and nodded. “Not as long as you keep stocking this brand of rye.”