Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition

The Slay’s the Thing by Phil Richards

Ex-playwright James Greer gave flop space to the local parasites — so his guilt complex could wear a halo.

It was a hot, sticky night and even the air was sweating. But Rawne, turning west on Twenty-second Street, looked cool enough. Everybody else was parboiled. Brown-stone stoops were draped with people too fagged to stagger to the corner tavern. They stared languidly at Rawne as he strutted airily along.

Halfway down the dusty block he spoke to a wispy little man leaning against the brick wall of an apartment house. The little man was bald and he had a straggly gray mustache. He wore a pink-striped silk shirt dabbed with green paint, and the sleeves were cut off near the shoulders. His arms were muscular. He was nursing a perspiring bottle of beer.

“Good evening, Mr. Rawne,” the little man said. He polished his moist skull with a calloused hand. “Hot, isn’t it? I hear Mr. Greer has Blown Smoke in the seventh race at today and goes to the fifty-dollar window with a stack of win tickets. Mr. Greer doesn’t visit me and pay six months back rent.”

Rawne blew a cloud of smoke. “You’re the superintendent, Schmidt,” he said. “You’ve known the bum for years. He’s got dough. Reach him quick. Because fellers he don’t owe are fellers he don’t know.”

Rawne went down two steps into a spotless foyer. He pressed the button opposite the brass name plate James Cullen Greer. There was no click to the front door’s lock release. Schmidt came in jingling a large ring of keys. He let Rawne into a gloomy hall lit by a small bulb.

“Whenever I ask Mr. Greer for the rent,” Schmidt said, “he gives me his speech on the brotherhood of man, but now that Blown Smoke pays sixteen forty, I think Mr. Greer resigns from the lodge.”

“You’re sharp, Schmidt,” Rawne said, and bounded up the creaking stairs.

The odor of cabbage and ham hocks mingled with the mustiness of old walls and gave the house a lived-in smell. The white paint in the wall niche at the top of the first flight was mottled with cigarette burns. At the landing Rawne glanced down. Bottle tilted to his mouth, Schmidt was looking up at him. Two more flights, and Rawne stopped before a door marked 4A. Inside, a woman’s voice was raised in angry tones.

Rawne hammered on the door and the angry voice stopped. He puffed his cigar and looked at the clinging ash. Rawne’s face, as brown as iodine, was flat and square. The bulging frontal bone above deep-set brown eyes, the nose with the Irish dip, the blunt jaw with its curved, heavy line, made him almost as handsome as an English bulldog. He hitched his left shoulder. The brown sports coat flapped, showing the shoulder holster under the left arm. He knocked again.

“Want the door busted in, Jimmy boy?” he said loudly.

The apartment floor creaked. A man of perhaps fifty, though with a full head of black hair, opened the door. He’d been handsome, but his face, sensitive and even, looked tired and drained. The lines around red-rimmed pop eyes were deep, and under a weak chin hung a wattle of useless flesh. The bristly black mustache was neat.

A moth-eaten robe of faded blue, minus a sash, took away none of his distinguished air. He gave Rawne a muscular smile, but there was no love behind the thick-lensed glasses.

“Nice to see you, Kevin,” Greer said to Rawne. “How’s the private detective racket?”

“You should know,” Rawne said. “You’ve been living off it. I’ve loaned you twenty-three hundred dollars, if your memory needs jogging. Let’s go to the fifty-dollar window and pay off.”

Greer attempted to build up the smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched and the upper lip took on a mean little curl. He stepped aside for Rawne to enter. The hallway was cluttered with yellowed magazines and dusty cardboard boxes of old theater programs.

Rawne went into the living room, his cigar at a belligerent angle. Two large studio couches with threadbare green covers took half the space. A tall girl with deep-red hair falling softly to her shoulders was facing the peeling green wall, looking at autographed photos of famous people. She swung around and Rawne’s cigar sagged.

The nose was lovely, the mouth full and red. The short upper lip had a tantalizing lift. The anger in the big green eyes took nothing from her.

“Have you met Lulie Nolan, Kevin?” Greer’s voice was weak in his throat. “Wonderful Lulie Nolan? What an actress! What an answer to an old playwright’s dream. I’m writing the play for her.”

Rawne gazed at the angry green eyes and tensed face. “Relax,” he told her. “I’m not a talent scout.”

“You know Lee Searle,” Greer said dispiritedly.

Rawne turned to a lean kid in his twenties, who was glaring at Rawne and looking as though he wanted to hit somebody. Lee Searle had a high forehead and hollow temples. He was almost milk-white with a jutting nose and lopsided mouth with fuzz on the upper lip. He wore a checkered shirt with a button off and his black trousers had frayed cuffs.

“Sure I know Lee Searle,” Rawne said amiably. “Searle’s one of the bums you feed and give flop space to, Jim — so your guilt complex can wear a halo.”

Greer acted as though the barb had gone in deep, and he looked very sad, though the twitch at the corner of his mouth wasn’t sad. The girl Lulie studied Rawne with sudden interest. Searle’s lopsided mouth twisted straight. An unhealthy flush tinged the milk-white skin. Searle was narrow-shouldered but strong, and his clenched fists were large.

“You’d better take a walk, Lee,” Greer told Searle.

Searle gave Rawne a malevolent look. He reluctantly swung a faded green gabardine jacket under his arm. “I’ll walk. But when I come back and you got marks on you, Jim, I go looking for this keyhole peeper.”

Searle went out and slammed the door. Greer was standing by a crowded bookcase over which hung a policeman’s nightstick. He was moistening his lips. Rawne grinned at Lulie Nolan. The damp air accentuated her perfume. He inhaled deeply and blinked his eyes.

“Delightful, but it weakens me. Now, honey chile, if you’ll just step outside. I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“Don’t be coy, goon boy!” Lulie Nolan retorted. “I don’t brush. Not when I’m owed money. Grandpappy here talked me loose from nineteen hundred dollars.”

She stepped to a maple dropleaf table piled with books and unwashed dishes. Rawne watched the loose-hipped movement of her stage walk with no apparent distaste.

The girl slapped open a bulging scrapbook of time-scorched clippings. “Reviews of Tarnished Lady,” she said. “A smash-hit on two continents. Six future stars in the cast. So I listened to grandpappy say that he did it once and he can do it again.”

She walked toward Rawne. She wore a gray skirt and she was slender and small around the waist. Her arms were smooth and the black blouse was a startling contrast to the green eyes and red hair. Rawne took the cigar out of his mouth. Lulie stopped a step or two away from him.

“Grandpappy is writing a play for me. Oh, yes.” Lulie Nolan’s voice had a husky quality, a low-pitched vibrancy. “Grandpappy is going to make me the greatest star ever seen on Broadway.”

“It’s a great play, Lulie darling,” Greer protested weakly.

“Sure,” the girl jeered. “Act One, Scene One. That’s as far as you’ve got. You haven’t even written in an ashtray.”

Rawne took her arm. “You and I, Lulie darling,” he said, “are not the only suckers who’ve been supplying Jim with cabbage which he fed to racetrack parimutuel machines. But I’m putting in the prior claim. You can go to work when I get my twenty-three hundred.”

She turned on Rawne, her green eyes hot with anger, but his grip was not light. He guided her firmly into the hallway and closed the door on her. She hammered on the panel.

“Oh,” she shouted in a trembling voice, “what a slow, slow death I’d like to arrange for you!”

Rawne returned to the living room. Greer was standing by a lounge chair that had a torn gray slip cover. He was wiping his glasses. Tears rolled slowly down his aging cheeks.

“Kevin boy,” he pleaded with Rawne, “you talk like I have money. Good Lord, Kevin, don’t upset me now! I’m too finely tuned. I’m keyed to concert pitch. I’m so filled with this new play I should be in an ivory tower. I should be in a monastery. It’s all written, Kevin. Every beautiful line of the play. In my head. You’ll make me lose it.”

Rawne rolled his cigar across his mouth. “Cut it, Jim. You’ve been washed for fifteen years. You haven’t written anything except bad checks for years. You’ve been living off this racket, kidding chumps like me that with a little financial help you could repeat Tarnished Lady. When I stopped dreaming of fast cars and a hunting lodge in Maine, you were in my bankroll so deep I kept supplying the spinach, hoping you’d pick a horse that wouldn’t graze in the backstretch. Today you had him — Blown Smoke in the seventh, and you walked away from a cashier’s window with ten thousand dollars.”

Greer put on his thick glasses. He ran a nervous hand through his black hair. “You’ve been drinking, Kevin.”

“I’ve been talking to a detective,” Rawne said. “He phoned me from Belmont Park after the eighth. I’ve been slipping him beer money to keep tabs on you.”

“Oh.” Greer nodded grimly, wisely. “I see.” His tone was bitter. “No trust. No faith. Little wonder the world’s upside down. Okay, Kevin — if that’s the way you want it. I’ll pay you. Tomorrow.”

Rawne took a short puff and waved his cigar impatiently. “You’ll pay me now. The detective put an exercise boy on your tail. You came straight home. The money’s here. So make it easy for yourself.”

The wrinkled lids came down over Greer’s pop eyes. He went to the closet muttering, and fished a bulging wallet from an old coat. The corner of his mouth kept twitching while he counted hundred-dollar bills into Rawne’s palm.

Rawne gave them a second count and put the money in his wallet. He buttoned the wallet down in his back trousers pocket. He stood there, scowling thoughtfully, smoking, his gaze shifting about the eluttered room. The radio was on, tuned low.

Across the way a man and woman leaned together on a window sill.

Rawne looked at Greer and shook his head. Greer’s cheeks were unnaturally red. He stood rigidly. His thin lip had its mean little curl and the corner was working. His eyes were like black agates. With a final wondering glance, Rawne turned around and went out, humming.

The hallway was pitch-dark. He walked down the creaking stairs, his cigar a red lamp in the blackness. Radios blared. Somewhere a woman was screaming. A child was crying. Rawne groped along the third-floor hall.

Starting down the next flight he felt along the wall. He touched somebody who was crouching in the wall niche just below the landing. Rawne started to speak. He got a violent shove from this somebody, a terrific shove. Rawne crashed into the railing, almost toppling over it. He cut loose with loud, short words and threw his right fist.

His fist hit this somebody in the face and there was a groan. Rawne got slammed in the stomach. He got slammed with a foot that caught him on his belt. His breath left him in an agonized grunt. His cigar went spinning.

He went crashing down the stairs, backwards, feet out from under him, left arm hooked over the railing. His head hit the floor, and the vertebrae in his neck clicked.

He lay there like a drunk sleeping it off. Somebody yanked at his back pocket. A button rolled off into the stairwell. The stairs creaked going up.

Pretty soon Rawne began cursing and then he was able to push himself to his knees. There was no weight under the left armpit and his voice grew as loud as the radio’s. The baby was still squalling and the shrill lady hadn’t worn herself thin. Rawne slapped around in the darkness until he found his gun. He stuck it in the holster and got up.

A sag was in his knees. He labored up the stairs, lurching from side to side. On the fourth floor a line of soft light came from 4A. The door of Greer’s apartment was opened a crack. Rawne kicked it wide. He went into the foyer and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. His hair was rumpled and his face was dirty. The right side was covered with blood.

Rawne went into the living room, still waltzing a little. The odor of Lulie’s perfume still hung in the wet air. The room was lit by a parchment-shaded reading lamp on an end table by a studio couch. The glass over one of the pictures was shattered and the policeman’s nightstick wasn’t hanging over the bookcase any more.

The bulky scrapbook of Tarnished Lady lay on the floor and clippings were scattered everywhere. James Cullen Greer, lying face down between the dropleaf table and the lounge chair with the torn gray slip cover, was almost covered with clippings, almost buried with them.

The nightstick lay there, too, with blood and black hair on it. The back of Greer’s head was crushed.

Rawne’s bleak gaze traveled from the bludgeoned skull down the threadbare robe to the shabby, runover slippers. His square face was blank. The telephone rang and he gave a little start. It rang again and stopped. In the kitchen a mouse was gnawing at something. The radio picked up the scrape of a phone that was being dialed somewhere in the house.

In the house opposite Rawne, the man and woman stood back from the window. Their features were indistinct but they were facing the Greer apartment. Rawne’s lower lip slid out slowly and his heavy brows pulled down.

Suddenly his eyes opened wide. He jerked his head around. Lulie Nolan was standing in the doorway. Her lips and hair were very red against the blanched face. She was holding a gray corde handbag and a worn black wallet.

Rawne slapped at his empty back pocket. His brows went up. He reached the frightened girl before she could do anything. She cried out. Her green eyes were shiny with fear. Rawne took his wallet and was rough with her. He flung her into a lounge chair where she broke into convulsive sobs, her long red nails digging into hair stuffing which tufted through the torn gray slip cover.

“Oh, please!” the girl cried. “Oh, please!”

Rawne opened his wallet to nothing but black leather. “Lady, lady,” he chided her. “You’ve had a busy evening.”

The man across the way stood at his window. He was telephoning.

“You and Searle working as a team?” Rawne asked her.

Lulie Nolan leaned forward, sobbing, her red hair tumbling across her shoulders.

Rawne’s fingertips touched the hair lightly. “You do something to me,” he said. “You sure do. If you didn’t knock off old Jim, it’d be a pleasure to be seeing you in all the old familiar places. Provided you come across with twenty-three hundred bucks.”

“I haven’t your money!” She pounded the arms of the chair. “I walked to the corner, but I was worrying. Nineteen hundred dollars, that’s how much I was worrying. I came back and the halls were dark and I stepped on something and it was this — this wallet. Then I—”

Rawne whirled around. This time his hand was moving to his left armpit. Lee Searle was in the room. His lopsided mouth was puffed, the upper lip split, and fresh blood was trickling over a dried smear. He was sobbing. His right hand was wrapped around something that he pressed his thumb against. A long blade leaped out with a click.

“I used to win bets throwing a knife,” he said.

Rawne lowered his hand. “Your mouth is bleeding,” he said. “I was standing on the stairs is the reason you’re only skinned up. If I’d got you solid, you’d be wearing your teeth through your lip.”

Searle broke into tears. “I shoulda stayed. Jim always said you was a dog. Jim said you was a low-grade moron. Poor Jim. He was a genius and you killed him. You murdered a great heart. Jim never turned a Joe down. Jim believed in the brotherhood of man—”

“Jim was a bum,” Rawne said. “Just like you. He fed you phonies and drifters to delude himself that he was a right guy. He was a chiseler, a plain thief.”

Searle was trembling. His entire mouth had become an ugly smear of blood. His right shoulder went back and Rawne scooped an egg-encrusted plate from the dropleaf table and let it go. Searle dodged and the plate shattered itself against the door frame. The knife left Searle’s hand. A silver flash went by Rawne’s head and an inch of blade sank into the picture on the wall behind him.

A siren shrieked outside. Rawne’s heavy fist got to Searle’s chin and the stiffened body went back and down, Searle’s head striking a taboret and upsetting a pile of books. Dust spiraled around Searle, and he sat there on the floor, head against a cane-backed chair, quite unconscious of the reading matter which tumbled into his lap.

Lulie Nolan was standing up. Her lower lip was caught between her white teeth and she was too frightened to move. Rawne pulled her into the cramped kitchen, getting tangled in drying shirts and underwear hanging overhead. She skidded on a piece of bacon and knocked over the garbage pail, scattering eggshells and coffee grounds.

Rawne opened the dumb waiter, measuring the width of the shaft with his shoulders. “Hear that?” A siren wailed and faded. “Another radio car. There’ll be more. The house will be swarming with cops. Our inquisitive friend across the way phoned Centre Street.”

Rawne hauled down on the greasy rope. “If they catch you, baby, you’re in for a rough shuffle. Questions all night long. By morning line-up you’d have circles under your eyes you could trip over.”

The dumb-waiter box rattled up to the dirt-caked rectangle.

“Get in.” Rawne said. “I’ll stand on top and let us down easy — I hope.”

Lulie Nolan looked at him with terrified eyes. A bell rang and she jumped. With a hopeless expression she scrambled into the box. Rawne shot a strange glance at her. He lowered the box and muscled himself on top. At the bottom the girl was gone before he could get out. He picked up a rag, shrugging, and wiped his hands. She came back, trembling.

“Police!” Her voice was hoarse.

“It’s their party,” Rawne said.

They were in the furnace room. Pipes ran overhead and a naked bulb burned dimly. On the side wall next to a racked hose hung old work clothes, overalls, shirt, a boiler suit. A fire roared under a boiler and a scattering of coal was spread in front of the bin and the cement floor was covered with coal dust. A shovel lay near the wall under a fuse box which was open. The box was dusty, but there was no dust on the switch handle to the hall lights. A splatter of blood stipled the concrete wall. Rawne looked closely. The blood was fresh.

He took the girl’s hand. Her fingers gripped his. They were very cold. They went up a wooden stairs into a small storeroom that smelled of disinfectant and was cluttered with brooms and mops and squeegees. They went through a white, spotless kitchen to a bedroom furnished with double-decked walnut bunks and into the front room which faced the street. The Venetian blinds were shut and a bridge lamp was lit alongside a typewriter on a small metal desk.

Rawne went to the bathroom. When he came out, the blood was gone and his hair was combed.

“We’re in Schmidt’s apartment,” he said. “Schmidt the superintendent. This must be his quiet hour at the corner pub.”

The girl threw herself on the blue divan and put her hands over her eyes. Rawne looked at her thoughtfully, lower lip buried between his teeth, and then he took a turn about the room. The walls, rug and upholstery were a deep blue. A sheet of paper was in the typewriter. A white-enameled box in a corner was half filled with colored catalogs or something. On the long oaken library table the city’s business directory, was open to a page near the end.

Rawne took Lulie Nolan’s corde handbag and emptied it on the table. Among the jumbled contents were no hundred-dollar bills.

“Fork over,” Rawne said.

“I haven’t your dirty money,” the girl said bitterly.

“Do I have to search you?” Rawne said.

A loud pounding on the door cut off the girl’s retort.

“Any one in there?” a deep voice demanded. “Superintendent. You in there? Open up.”

Rawne’s eyes were harried. He stood in the center of the room, indecisive, looking at the door and then at the girl. He motioned toward the back rooms and the girl tiptoed across the rug. She had both hands to her mouth and her eyes were wide with terror when she went into the next room.

Swiftly Rawne got his clothes off and hung them in the closet. He stowed his gun and harness under sheets on the shelf, putting the girl’s bag with them. He rumpled his hair. When he opened the door, he was yawning and stretching.

“No vacancies,” he said drowsily.

A stout man in gray tropical worsted stuck his foot against the door. He wore a new light-cream panama. Purple veins mottled his cheeks. He had a thick, splayed nose and a double chin. He was grinning.

“What brand of sleeping pills you use, super?” he asked. “I want to get some for my wife.”

“Ask me tomorrow,” Rawne said, yawning.

“I probably will,” the stout man said. He came in, looked around quickly, and sat down, taking out a small notebook and a ball pen. “I’m Griffin. Lieutenant. Homicide. I ask questions in my sleep.”

“Homicide?” Rawne said with a note of disgust. “Where? Not in the hallway. I have enough trouble keeping this place clean.”

Rawne got his trousers from the superintendent’s closet.

“What do you know about Four A?” Griffin asked.

Rawne shoved a foot through a pants leg. “Four A? Greer? Jim Greer’s all right. A little slow on the rent, that’s all.”

Griffin jotted something in his book. The questions were routine and Rawne dressed while he answered them. Griffin stood up and put his notebook away.

“We’ll go up,” he said, “and view the stellar attraction. By the way, Schmidt,” he asked Rawne, “do you like perfume?”

“Huh!” Rawne looked at Griffin as though he hadn’t heard right. “Do I— Sure, sure.”

The hall lights were on, and Rawne’s palm left a moist trail on the railing. He kept wetting his lips. The fat man was puffing, but he wasn’t pouring sweat the way it was coming from Rawne.

“Relax,” Rawne told Rawne while he paused for breath on the fourth floor. “These stiffs never rise up.”

Rawne was rigid going into the apartment. Lee Searle was slumped unconscious in a lounge chair, head wobbly, and some one was working over him. There was coal dust on Searle’s shoe point. Rawne’s eyes swept about the room, not focusing on anything. Griffin was watching him. Griffin was looking at Rawne’s big hands.

The body hadn’t been moved. A photographer was still working and Rawne blinked when flash bulbs went off. Fingerprint men were throwing aluminum powder around. A neat little man with a black satchel stood by, waiting for the photographer to finish. Rawne went over and looked at the body, nodding at Griffin.

The homicide man jerked his thumb at Searle. “This guy got knocked hard. Concussion. Maybe a busted noggin. I think he can explain the knife in the wall. Searle’s his name. You said you’d seen him. Now and then he mutters the name Rawne. You know Rawne?”

Griffin was looking at him intently and Rawne gazed at the ceiling, rubbing his chin.

“Rawne. Rawne. The name’s familiar,” Rawne said. “But Greer had a parade going in and out all the time. I never kept track of his friends.”

“Okay, Schmidt.” Griffin grinned at Rawne. “Thanks for helping us. We’ll call you if we need you.”

Rawne went down the stairs heavily, hitting each step hard. He was talking to himself and his brown face was sulky. He had the expression of a child who has been caught in a shameful act. He went into Schmidt’s apartment, slammed the door and cursed loudly.

“Do I like perfume!” he spoke in an outraged tone. “Do I know Rawne!”

Lulie Nolan came out of the bedroom with that walk of hers. Her eyes were dry and she seemed more self-possessed. She held a book or something in a yellow cover. On the divan were strewn other books in colored covers, and the white-enameled box in the corner was empty.

“Griffin! Lieutenant! Homicide!” Rawne exclaimed. “He treated me like a water-brain.”

The ting-a-ling-a-ling of an ambulance came down the street and stopped outside. Rawne scowled and took a bite at his lip. The latch release on the front door buzzed and clicked and tramping steps went up the stairs.

“That Griffin!” Rawne exclaimed. “Cat-and-mouse stuff. Griffin had the effrontery to look at my hands. I don’t shovel coal. I haven’t any janitor’s callouses. The way he acted he must have found those work clothes in the furnace room. Schmidt’s boiler suit wouldn’t fit me. If Griffin likes me as Jim’s killer, why doesn’t he take me in?”

He went to the closet. Lulie Nolan swallowed. The green eyes followed him tensely. Footsteps were coming down the stairs now.

“You could have scrammed,” Rawne said.

“I was going to,” the girl said. “But I couldn’t trust myself. If a cop even looked at me, I would have gone to pieces screaming.”

Rawne walked toward her. “Is that all? You weren’t stopped by some quality you saw in me, a certain, let us say, something?”

The girl clutched the yellow book to her. The cover was wet where her hand had been. She was not at ease.

“Your repulsiveness,” she said, “is the source of deep pride to you, isn’t it?”

Rawne grinned and went back to the closet. “You helped get Griffin interested in me. The next time you use perfume, don’t spill the bottle. Schmidt’s apartment smells like a boudoir.”

He opened the closet door and the girl almost dropped the yellow book.

“Have you seen this?” she asked quickly, ruffling the pages. “It’s a play script.” She motioned to the divan. “Those are play scripts, too. Schmidt — Emil Schmidt — is a playwright.”

“Yeah,” Rawne said. He reached up and took the shoulder harness off the shelf. “I read what’s in the typewriter. Dialog between Lady So-and-So and Lord Something. A Twenty-second Street janitor writing about British nobility.”

Rawne reached for the shelf again. The girl gulped.

“But this play,” she rushed on. Her voice was unsteady. “It was written in nineteen twenty-six. The title is Shady—”

A knock on the door sent her scurrying to a back room. Rawne flung his holster in the closet and when he opened the door Griffin was standing there, grinning. A stretcher was going by with Lee Searle on it, with a man in a stiff-visored cap and white coat on each end. The basket with Greer’s body was ahead of them.

“We’re carting away the debris, Schmidt,” Griffin said.

“I see,” Rawne said. He nodded toward the stretcher. “Does Searle close the case for you?”

Griffin grinned at Rawne. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Schmidt. Neighbors saw more than one party in Greer’s room. We’re not finished with the loose ends. There’s a busted dinner plate that’s interesting. And a bit of coal dust and a dash of perfume and an odor of cigar smoke with no cigar butt around and a slice of bacon with the narrow part of a woman’s shoe imprinted on it. The neighbors in an opposite apartment saw some of the show. They couldn’t see much, but they called us up. Maybe they can help. I’m leaving a patrolman at Four A. Well, I’ll see you, Schmidt. Thanks for everything.”

Griffin went away grinning and Rawne closed the door fuming. The soft, irritating ring of the ambulance went up the street and car gears ground in the shifting.

The girl came back. She was flushed. “It’s my shoe print on that bacon up there.”

Rawne was glowering at the floor, jerking his head from side to side. “Yeah, yeah.” He looked up angrily. “They’ll have a tail on you the moment you walk outside. Griffin considers me in custody already. He’s going to see where I go and then he’ll tag me when he wants me. I can fry for what they can build up against me.”

He went to the closet. “They packed Searle off — the lead I wanted. I was hoping to crack Searle open. He had plenty of motive. He could dodge work forever with Greer’s ten grand. What does that leave me?” He looked sourly at the girl. “That leaves me you. You’re not excused, Lulie darling. You had my wallet. But how can I bang you around?”

Rawne felt under the sheets on the shelf. He muttered and turned on the girl, his eyes sharp. “Hey! What’d you do with it? Where’s my gun? Don’t play katzenjammer with me.”

Lulie Nolan shivered. She clutched the manuscript of Shady Something to her. “I hid it. I was afraid. How do I know you didn’t kill Jim Greer?”

A key scraped in the lock and the door opened. Schmidt came into the room with a startled look of perplexity. His narrow face was shaved and pink and powdered and he smelled like a barber shop.

“What is this, Mr. Rawne?” Schmidt rubbed his nude pate apologetically and nodded to the girl. “Miss Nolan.”

“You’re looking at a pair of suckers, Schmidt,” Rawne said, “who are going to stay awake all night getting pushed around at police headquarters. Jim Greer was murdered.”

Schmidt nodded solemnly. “The whole block’s buzzing with it.”

“We were in Four A,” Rawne said, “when the sirens hit Twenty-second Street. We came down the dumb waiter and ran in here to keep from bumping into cops. I was Emil Schmidt for a while, but I didn’t fool anybody.”

Schmidt was self-conscious in his own apartment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rawne. It’s too bad about Mr. Greer. I guess if you owe everybody, it’s best to stay poor.” Rawne strapped on his empty shoulder holster. “We’ll get out, Schmidt. Thanks for the use of your apartment. You can read all about us in the morning papers.” Rawne sniffed. “You smell mighty nice. Schmidt, and you look pretty.”

Schmidt rubbed his powdered face sheepishly. “I went in for a shave and the barber wanted to sell me a massage. I said that was gilding the lily. When you make a wisecrack like that you got to pay for the laugh. I had the massage.” Schmidt mopped his skull. “Have some beer before you go.” He gestured toward the yellow-covered manuscript in the girl’s hands. “I see you have Shady Lady, Miss Nolan. Have you read any of it? Does it play?”

“A lot of the lines,” Lulie Nolan said, “are identical with the lines in Jim Greer’s Tarnished Lady. And your play was written two years before Jim’s.”

Schmidt nodded. “Every producer on Broadway rejected Shady Lady before Mr. Greer bought it. Mr. Greer gave me fifty dollars and two complimentary tickets, but one seat was behind a post. I’ll get the beer.”

Rawne looked up from the city directory, opened on the library table to the T’s. “Schmidt,” he said. His voice was strangely soft. “Mind coming here?”

Rawne was humming. Schmidt looked at him oddly and advanced a few steps.

“What’s the matter with your eye, Schmidt?” Rawne asked. “The left one.”

“My eye?” Schmidt caressed his skull. “It’s bloodshot, you mean? I got a clinker in it.”

“Around the outside, I mean,” Rawne said. “The flesh looks raw and tender.” Rawne ran a finger down a page of the Red Book. “Look, Schmidt.”

“Yes, Mr. Rawne?”

“Under the caption Tattooing,” Rawne said. “There’s a finger smudge opposite the name Flags Buchanan. He’s the tattoo artist and black eye specialist. I know Flags Buchanan. He’s painted out more than one black eye for me. I know how the flesh looks after the leeches are taken off.”

Schmidt backed away. His left hand was on his head, his right hand was in the pocket of his yellow-green sports jacket. He was frightened, but he was looking at the empty holster under Rawne’s arm.

“You’re the guy, Schmidt, I slugged on the stairs, aren’t you?” Rawne said. “I’m the guy you kicked in the head. Right? You hairless little rat! I can find out pronto. You wouldn’t trust a hiding place. You’d pack the whole ten grand around with you. You killed Jim Greer!”

Schmidt whipped a blued .32 from his coat pocket. “I have a permit for this gun. I keep rent money overnight and this is a bad neighborhood.”

Rawne laughed. “Put that away. You can’t buck the whole police system.” Schmidt’s eyes were diamond hard. “It’s been done. This is my home, my castle. You’re trespassing. I come in. You go for your gun. I shoot you. Miss Nolan tries to get your gun. I shoot her. Two murder suspects dead. The case of James Cullen Greer, deceased, closed.”

“Awfully simple, the way you tell it. How about Lee Searle? You caught him switching off the hall lights, didn’t you? He was going to hijack me. You swiped him with the shovel, slugged him with your fist, came upstairs, dumped me, emptied my wallet and tossed it in the hallway, killed Greer, got the rest of the ten grand, and sneaked down after I went into Greer’s apartment.”

“Searle didn’t see me,” Schmidt said.

“But the man and woman across from Greer’s saw you,” Rawne said. “He called the cops.”

Schmidt laughed harshly. “Try to describe him. His face, I mean. I was too far back in the room when I hit Mr. Greer. They might have seen a shadowy movement but nothing more.”

Lulie Nolan caught Rawne’s eye and her glance went briefly, sharply to a corner of the divan. She made a motion with the manuscript.

Schmidt glowered at her. “What’s this, Miss Nolan? You going to throw Shady Lady at me? You want, maybe, a bullet in your sweet little nose?”

Rawne belched loudly and plopped down in the corner of the divan. He sang softly.

Schmidt stared at Rawne. “You’re nuts. I’m going to knock you off and you sing ragtime. I’ve been waiting years for James Cullen Greer to snag himself a bundle of lettuce so I could bump him off profitably. This is my night.”

Schmidt stepped toward the typewriter. “You read, maybe, what’s on the machine? Yah! Lady Vandermeer: Blah, blah, blah. Lord Cavendish: Blah, blah, blah. Funny, eh? Pathetic, eh? Who’s going to buy a janitor’s lords and ladies? Why don’t I write about deadbeats and all the riffraff I know? I’ll tell you. Because I’m part of the riffraff. My life’s a gray monotone. My life screams for escape. So I kept up the facility, I kept up the flow in a fantasy world of lords and ladies. Now I’ve got the escape — ten thousand dollars’ worth of escape. I can write about the drabs now. Tremendous stuff about deadbeats and—”

Lulie Nolan laughed hollowly. “And they’ll all be as worthless as — this!”

She ripped the yellow-covered manuscript of Shady Lady in two.

“Hey!” Schmidt shouted.

Rawne’s hand came from where it was dug down behind the end cushion of the divan. That brown hand came up wrapped around a snub-nosed automatic and it was spouting flame. The walls took the angry crack of it and bounced it around. The bullet smashed the distracted Schmidt in the shoulder and knocked him back.

Schmidt was blasting as be fell. A bullet splintered the closet door. Blue-tinted plaster fell from the ceiling. Schmidt collapsed then and Rawne kicked the smoking gun from Schmidt’s hand. Rawne kicked it again, across the room.

Then he had Lube Nolan in his arms.

“You suspicious honey!” Rawne said. “If you hadn’t hid my gun—”

The door crashed open and a cop stumbled into the room with a drawn Smith & Wesson. Griffin, breathing heavily, came in behind a .38 Special. Men poured in through the bedroom.

“Whew!” Griffin exclaimed. “My tobacco heart! We heard Schmidt canary on himself, Rawne, but we were afraid to disturb him. I sent men up through the furnace room to pick Schmidt off from the rear. That wasn’t good, either. A dying man can do a hell of a lot of damage with a gun in a split second.”

“You certainly had your fun with me,” Rawne said.

Griffin shrugged. “You liked it that way, didn’t you? You were on top of the list, but I thought things would go faster letting you move around a bit.”

A plainclothesman extracted a stuffed wallet from the cursing Schmidt.

“Hey!” Rawne exclaimed. “Go easy with my money!”

“Life’s little ironies,” Griffin said, grinning. “You’ve got to stand in line with the other creditors now, Rawne.”

“I think,” Rawne told Lube when they were in a squad car bound for Headquarters, “that we should commiserate each other over a quantum of Daiquiris. We’ll be lucky to pay off ten cents on the dollar. I’ll vary the mood with a few passes.”

The car stirred up a breeze and Lube made herself comfortable in the curve of Rawne’s arm. “We’re old enough not to cry over spilt milk.”

“Okay,” Rawne said. “I’ll just make passes.”

He kissed her and her bps were dinging.

“Maybe,” he said after a while, “I should go home first and change to my bowtie.”

“You mean the one that lights up,” Lube murmured, “and makes you the life of the party?”