Collection of Stories

Black Mask, March 1942

Chapter One A Gruesome Exhibit

Lieutenant Teccard rocked back in his swivel chair. His fingers gripped the shiny oak arm-pieces tightly. It was an instinctive movement to get as far away as possible from the thing on his desk. Ordinarily, his office in the headquarters building seemed large enough. Now, suddenly, it was oppressively small and close. He kept his eyes away from the long, glass tray on the flat-top, as he reached for the phone. “O.K. for Sergeant Dixon.”

The woman who came in wouldn’t have been noticed in the average Manhattan lunch-hour crowd. She was pretty, but she hadn’t worked hard at it. A man might not have paid particular attention to her as he passed her on the street, unless he happened to meet her glance. Her eyes were gray and curiously calm — as if they had seen a lot they hadn’t found amusing.

She wrinkled up her nose. “My God, Jerry! A man can live without food for three weeks and without water for three days! But you can’t last three minutes without air!”

Jerry Teccard shoved his brown felt back off a harassed forehead. “Light a cigarette if it gets you, Helen.” He indicated the roll of checkered oilcloth resting in the photographic tray. “You don’t have to turn yourself inside out, gandering at this. You can take the medical examiner’s word for it.”

Acting Detective-sergeant Helen Dixon, second grade, regarded him grimly.

“After that year I put in at the Forty-seventh Street station, it’ll take something to turn my stomach,” she declared.

He lifted one corner of the oilcloth cylinder. “What’s left of a woman’s thigh. After the wharf rats worked on it awhile.”

Her lips compressed a little, but none of the color left her face.

“Where’d it come in?”

“Twenty-third precinct. East Hundred and Fourth.” He consulted a report sheet. “James Boyle, probationer, found a child trying to salvage the oilcloth that had been tied around it with some string. Boyle’s beat takes him along the Harlem docks, foot of Ninety-eighth. This thing was on the tide flat at the side of the Ninety-eighth Street pier.”

“When was this, Jerry?”

“This a.m. Quarter past ten. Doc says it’s been lying there, or under the head of the pier, more’n a week. Some pupae of flies in the end of the bone. Eggs must’ve been laid seven, eight days ago, anyway.”

Helen Dixon bent over the tray. She didn’t peer at the discolored bone, her finger pointed to brown shreds of fiber which clung to the outside of the oilcloth.

“You said it was tied with string?” she asked.

Teccard pointed to a soggy tangle of frazzled gray in one corner of the tray. “Was. Doesn’t mean a thing, though. Million yards of that stuff used every day.”

“But these look like rope strands to me.”

He squinted at them. “I noticed those. I’m going to send ’em up to the lab, for a microscopic. But the reason I sent for you—”

“You figure this might be one of the Happiness cases?” She moved past his chair to the window, opened it from the bottom a few inches, stood staring down into Centre Street.

“There’s better than an even chance. That’s why I asked the Policewomen’s Bureau to send you up here. I know you’ve been plugging like hell on that assignment. If Crim. Ident. can help, maybe you and I can work together on it. Like old times, when you were playing Big Sister to the floozies we picked up on Sixth Avenue.” He swung around toward her. “My office wouldn’t want any credit.”

She touched his shoulder lightly for an instant, spoke without turning around.

“Damn the credit! If I could only break the case. I’ve been running around in circles for three weeks, hoping it’s just another flock of old maids forgetting about friends and families because wedding bells are still ringing in their ears. But if this,” she inclined her head toward the tray, “is one of them, it means the very nastiest kind of murder.”

Teccard nodded. “Never knew a suicide to cut off her leg. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Any special reason to think she was one of this matrimonial agency’s customers?”

He lifted his chin, ran a finger around under his collar uncomfortably. “Remember what you said that day we had lunch at the Savarin? About the kind of heels who have to find their females through an ad? Especially when they pick on dames who’ve had the lousy luck to be disfigured or crippled?”

Her voice was bitter. “I’m not likely to forget. Every one of those five appeals for inquiry come from friends or relatives of women who have some physical disability — or some facial blemish that would put them at a disadvantage in the national pastime of husband-hunting. Of course those poor lonely lambs could be led to the slaughter, by some unscrupulous devil who flattered them and promised them... whatever he promised.”

Teccard fiddled with pipe and pouch. “Well, that thigh bone was broken. In two places. While she was living, I mean.”

Helen Dixon turned, perched on the window sill. “The left leg?”

“Yair. Wasn’t there one of those dames...?”

“Ruby Belle Lansing.” The sergeant eyed the oilcloth with repugnance. “Spinster. Thirty-six. Grade-school teacher in Tannersville. Hip broken in automobile accident, October 1939. Double fracture, set at Catskill Memorial Hospital. Entered into correspondence with the Herald of Happiness in August 1941. Came to New York, October sixth, after being introduced, by mail, to Philip Stanton, then of 4760 Madison Avenue, this city.”

The lieutenant consulted his report sheet. “Length of femur, 18.1 inches. Let’s see — factor for women is three and six-tenths. About sixty-five inches tall. Would this Lansing—”

“She was just five feet, five, Jerry. By the Tannersville Board of Education records. What must have been more important to Stanton, Ruby Belle had a little more than two thousand dollars in the savings bank at Phoenicia. Three days after her arrival, she had this deposit transferred to the Emigrant Bank here. On October tenth, the next day, it was withdrawn, except for ten dollars. Since then, there hasn’t been a trace of her. Or of Stanton!”

“Any description of him?”

Helen shrugged. “Nothing to count. He never went to Tannersville. Her uncle — the one who asked us for a check-up — said he saw a snapshot of Stanton. But all he remembers is, the fellow was good-looking and had a mustache.”

“That’s a great big help!” Teccard called for a policeman to take the thigh-bone back to the morgue. “What about the people where Stanton lived?”

“A rooming house. Man who runs it’s nearly blind. Stanton didn’t seem to use the room much, anyway. Half the time the bed wasn’t disturbed. Best I could get was, he was kind of dark.”

“Ah! Send out an all-borough to pick up dark guys with mustaches! And reserve Central Park to hold ’em in! Yair! How about the other four who’re missing? Same skunk, each time?”

Helen bent over the oilcloth, peered at the brown fiber again. “I wish I could remember what that stuff makes me think of. About the men in the other cases — I’m up against one of those things, Jerry. The disappearances were strangely similar. In every instance, the man resided in New York. The woman involved always lived in some small town, upstate. And every time the man sent the woman a ticket to come to the big city. What’s more, flowers were invariably sent. Can you tie that? A bouquet for the unseen bride! Also, every one of the five dropped out of sight within three or four days — after sending for their home-town funds.”

“All cut from the same pattern!”

“I thought so, at first. But the men in each of the cases had different names. Different addresses.”

“What the hell! A crook of that kind could pick out a new alias or a new address as easy as you choose a blue plate!”

“I saw some of the letters these men wrote. In the agency files. The handwritings don’t bear any resemblance.”

“He could fake them. Or get someone else to write them for him.”

“Not usual, is it? A murderer taking someone into his confidence? Unless it’s a gang. Which it might be, from the varying descriptions of the men — according to the photos. There was always a snapshot, you see. One of the Happiness rules. One man had a beard. Another was partly bald. One was around fifty. The fellow in the Schwartz case couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, the victim’s brother claims. You wonder I’ve been stymied?”

Teccard spread his hands. “We’ll have to go at it from this end. That oilcloth probably came from the five-and-dime — be tough to trace. But if this killer chopped the Lansing woman up, there’d have been more than a thigh bone to dispose of. Not so easy to get rid of a cadaver. And he slipped up this once. If he was careless again, we’ll get somewhere. I’ve put a crew from the precinct on that. They’ll sift that whole damn waterfront through a sieve, if necessary.”

The sergeant sauntered toward the door. “I hope you beat me to it, Jerry. I haven’t been sleeping so well, lately. Thinking about some other poor, lonely fool on her way to meet a murderer. If this guy — or this gang — has gotten away with it five times, there won’t be any stop now. It’s about time for another one. They’ve been spaced about a month apart.”

Teccard frowned. “I thought you said you were up a blind alley on it. What do you mean, beat you to it?”

She smiled, tightly.

“I didn’t say I was licked. I still have a card to play.”

“If we’re going to work together—”

“That would be all right with me. But this is something you couldn’t very well come in on. I’m entered in Cupid’s Competition.”

He jumped to his feet. “Now what in the hell!”

She nodded, calmly. “Current issue of the Herald of Happiness, Meeting Place of the Matrimonial Minded Department. ‘Miss Mary Lownes, single, thirty-one. Of Malone, New York. Pleasant disposition. Capable housewife, though suffering from slight spinal complaint. Occupation, nurse.’ I was, you know, before I turned policewoman. ‘Anxious to meet amiable, sober businessman under fifty.’ That ought to get him, don’t you think?”

“Just because you were assigned to an investigation doesn’t mean you’re supposed to risk running up against a killer, Helen.”

“After the slimy specimens I’ve been running up against, a murderer’ll be a relief. This chasing up and down subways and elevateds to trap exhibitionists, those hours of sitting through double features to nab mashers in the act — that’s not only hard work, it kind of gets you to thinking half the world’s made up of perverts.”

“Yair. But that’s the sort of stuff only a woman can handle. Homicide isn’t for the Women’s Bureau, it’s a man’s job.”

“It’s my job to put a stop to any matrimonial agency that’s doing business like this — to see that love-hungry women don’t get murdered when they figure on getting married.”

“You find the man. We’ll put a stop to it — without your getting into it.”

“That would suit me swell. But it might not work. I may have to get into it, to find the evidence necessary to convict.”

The lieutenant put his fists on his hips and glared. “Hey! You don’t mean you’d go so far as to marry the murdering so-and-so?”

“I’ll go as far as I have to, Jerry. Maybe you’ve forgotten I had a sister who fell for a slimy snake like this Stanton. Alice turned on the gas one night — without lighting it. I found her body. I hate men like that worse than those phoney abortionists I rounded up this spring. At least those girls knew they were taking a terrible chance. These poor, misguided love-seekers don’t even realize their danger until it’s too late.” There was a dull, hurt look in the gray eyes. “But so far, there’s been no proof that any of these women wound up with any legal certificates. No record of any licenses at City Hall, even.”

“God’s sake, Helen! You know the regulations forbid any infraction of ordinances in attempting to trap a criminal!”

“Nothing criminal about getting married, is there, Jerry?”

He opened his mouth, shut it again, glared at her. When he spoke, it was in the tone of a commanding officer. “You let me know before you go through with any damn nonsense like that, hear?”

She saluted, stiffly. “Yes, Lieutenant.”

He wasn’t more than a minute behind her in leaving the office. The police clerk by the rail in the outer room spoke out of the corner of his mouth to a plainclothesman one-fingering on a typewriter. “Geeze! The Lieutenant musta just swallowed a cup of carbolic or something.”

“Teccard? He always looks like that when the Dixon dame gives him ‘No’ for an answer. He’s been carryin’ the torch for her so long, he sleeps standin’ up, like the Statue of Liberty.”

Chapter Two Herald of Happiness

The detective-lieutenant drove his department sedan up Broadway to Twenty-eighth, studied the directory board in the lobby of a ten-story office building, pushed into the elevator.

The Herald of Happiness was housed in a single room at the rear of the third floor. The door was locked, but there was a bulky shadow moving against the ground glass. He rapped.

The man who let him in was fat. Tiny purple veins laced the end of a bulbous nose. The eyes that searched the lieutenant’s were slightly bloodshot.

“You the proprietor of this agency, mister?”

“I am, sir. T. Chauncey Helbourne, if I can be of service to you. You are a subscriber?”

“I’m from police headquarters.”

“What, again? I’ve already put up with a distressing amount of annoyance from a Miss Dixon...”

“You’ll be putting up with a prison diet, if you’re not careful.”

“Prison! You can’t frighten me, sir. I run a legitimate business.”

“Nuts! You come close to being a professional panderer. Don’t tell me you have a license, it doesn’t cover complicity in fraud!”

Helbourne’s neck reddened. “I won’t be bulldozed by any such tactics, officer!”

“Lieutenant. Lieutenant Teccard.” He surveyed the cheap furniture, the unpainted rack of pigeonholes along one wall.

“It makes no difference to me if you’re the commissioner, himself. I have influential connections at City Hall, too. And my records are always open for inspection by authorized parties.”

“O.K. I’m an authorized party. I’ll have a look at any letters that’ve come in here the last week or so.”

The fat man waved vaguely at the row of green-painted files. “Help yourself. It would take me a couple of months to locate ’em. I don’t file by dates.”

“I’ll make a start at it.” Teccard pulled out a steel drawer marked L. He ran his thumb along the tabs until he came to one with the letters LO, took out all the folders in that section. “How many letters you rake in, per day, mister?”

“You mean the preliminaries?”

“What the hell is a preliminary?” There was a folder with the name Mary Lownes at the top. It was empty, except for an envelope in Helen’s handwriting, addressed to Herald of Happiness — and a clipped-out advertisement.

Helbourne picked up a proof-sheet of a page. “Subscribers are allowed one free advertisement to each subscription, plus as many answers to other advertisements as they wish. Our only restriction is, these replies to ads must be addressed to the box-number of the Herald.” He pointed to one. “Any letters coming in, addressed to that box-number, are copied and sent along to the advertiser, no charge. Without the name or address of the sender, naturally.”

Teccard slid the folders back in place. “The old come-on. What do you tap them for giving out with the address?”

The proprietor of the Herald frowned. “Our fee is five dollars.”

“At each end of the transaction? Five from the snappy skirt who wants the address of some dope who’s given her a line of mush? And another five from the dope himself, if he wants to get in touch with her direct?”

“I don’t like the way you put it, Lieutenant.”

“Catch them coming and going, don’t you! Next thing you know, you’ll catch five years in the pen.” Teccard drifted toward the rack of pigeonholes. There were letters and folded carbon copies in most of them. Under each space was pasted a copy of some Herald advertisement.

Helbourne watched him sullenly. “I’m not responsible for what my subscribers do after I’ve performed an introduction.”

“Hell you aren’t! You’re wide open for prosecution. You were warned some New York crut has been rooking old maids from upstate, using you as a go-between.” There was a cubbyhole with two letters, over an advertisement reading:

Helen was a brunette — the age and the references to the spinal injury and having been a nurse clinched it. Teccard reached for the letters.

The fat man caught his arm. “You’ll have to get a court order, if you’re going to ransack my mail, Lieutenant.”

Teccard disengaged the pudgy fingers. “One side, mister. A minute ago you told me to help myself. I am. You want any trouble, I’ll see you get plenty.” He crackled the letters open. The first one read:

The lieutenant stuck it back in the pigeonhole. “Park your pants in a chair, mister. It makes me nervous to have anyone reading over my shoulder.”

Helbourne sat down. Has mouth was open and he was panting as if he’d been climbing stairs. He kept rubbing his palms on his knees while he watched Teccard run through the other letter.

Teccard put the letter in his pocket. East Eighty-eighth wasn’t so far from the pier where that grisly bone had been found.

“This Harold Willard,” he said. “Let’s see the other letters you’ve had from him.”

Helbourne shook his head quickly. “That’s the only one. I never heard of the man before. I can’t keep track—”

“Yair. I heard that one. You recognize his signature?”

“No. Not at all.”

“You sent the copy of this drool along to Box LL27?”

“Not yet. It was going out today,” Helbourne said.

“Don’t send it. And don’t send out copies of any letters that come to you from New York City. Not until I’ve had a look at them. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Helbourne held his head sideways, as if he expected the lieutenant to take a punch at him. “Is there — ah — any cause for you to believe the writer of that letter — has been involved in these — ah — irregularities you are investigating?”

Teccard stuffed a copy of the Herald into his coat pocket. “Only that he writes phoney as hell. You ought to have your butt booted for handling that kind of sewage. And if I find you’ve passed on any more of it, I’m coming back and rub your nose in it.”

It was dusk when the sedan reached the Twenty-third Precinct station house. Teccard was glad to get out of the chill wind whistling across Harlem from the river. “Cap Meyer around?” he inquired of the desk sergeant.

“You’ll find him in the muster room, with a couple boys from Homicide, Lieutenant.”

Teccard strode into the back room. Four men stood about the long table under a green-shaded bulb. Three were in plain-clothes, the fourth was in uniform. There was a black rubber body-bag at the one end of the table, at the other a piece of wax paper with as grisly a collection as the Identification man had ever seen.

“What you got, Meyer?”

The captain turned. Has face was a curious greenish-yellow in the cone of brilliance. “I wouldn’t know, Teccard. But whatever it is, you can have it.”

One of the Homicide men finished tying a tag to the third finger of a skeleton hand. “All we’re sure of, it was an adult female.”

His partner stripped off a pair of rubber gloves. “That’s all you’ll ever establish, for certain. Person who hacked this woman up was pretty tricky.” He indicated the cracked and flattened end of the finger bones. “Mashed the tips to prevent any print-work.”

Meyer tongued around his stub of cigar. “Wasn’t really necessary, though. The rats took care of that.”

The uniformed man spoke up. “All this mess had been dumped under the shore end of that Ninety-eighth Street pier, Lieutenant. There was a loose plank there, somebody must of ripped it up. It was near covered by muck, but we shoveled it out and used the hose on it, well as we could.”

“Including that thigh bone, we got everything but one foot now,” the first Homicide man said. “But it wouldn’t do any good to try a reconstruction. All the teeth were hammered out of that head, before it was dropped in the mud.”

Teccard bent over the yellowish skull, stained with dirty, grayish mold. “Parts of some fillings left. Jaw still shows where she had some bridge-work done. We can check the dentists, up around Tannersville.”

Captain Meyer exclaimed: “You got a line on her, already?”

“Yair. Schoolteacher who thought she was coming to town for her wedding ceremony. ‘Till death do ye part.’ It parted her, to hell and gone, didn’t it?” He turned away. “How about letting me have one of your men who knows the Eighty-eighth Street beat? In the nine hundreds.”

Meyer and the uniformed man looked at each other. The captain gestured. “Patrolman Taylor, here, had that beat up to a month ago. How long you need him?”

“Depends. Bird we’re after may have flown the coop already.”

“O.K. You’re relieved, Taylor. And if you have any trouble when it comes to putting the arm on the crut who did this,” the captain jerked his head toward the table, “do me one favor.”

The policeman touched the rim of his cap. “Yuh?”

“Shoot him a couple times where it’ll really hurt. All he’ll feel, if he goes to the chair, will be a few seconds’ jolt. Way I feel, that’d be letting him off easy...”

Out in the car, Taylor pulled a folded-up newspaper from his hip pocket. “That kid who found the leg this morning squawked all over the neighborhood. We warned him to keep his puss shut — but the papers got it just the same.”

Teccard didn’t read it. “They can’t print much, if they don’t know any more than we do, Taylor. What you know about number 971?” He pulled up half a block away.

The patrolman craned his neck. “Nine-seven-one? The old brick house? Nothing much. Just four- or five-buck-a-week furnished rooms. No apartments.”

“Who runs it?”

“Old dodo named Halzer. Ham and his wife. They got 969, too — operate ’em together. He’s harmless, stewed about half the time.”

“Yair? You ever hear of a guy, name of Harold Willard, in this parish?”

“Harold Willard. Harold Willard. I don’t recall it, Lieutenant. What’s he look like?”

“Dark, about thirty-five years old. That’s all we’ve got to go on. My guess is he fancies himself for a double of one of the movie stars. Likely to be a flash dresser.”

“I can’t seem to place him. Maybe he’s just moved in. They keep coming and going in a joint like this.”

“Yair. If he happens to be in now, we’ll keep him from going.”

“We can do that, Lieutenant. There’s no rear doors on this side of the block.”

“You go on ahead, then. Go into 969. Find out from Halzer what room Willard has. When you know, stand in the door of 969 and wait for me to come past. You can give me the high sign without anyone watching you from one of the windows next door,” Teccard explained.

“Check.”

“And after I go in, nobody comes out. I mean nobody. Until I say so.”

“Got you, Lieutenant.” The patrolman strolled away, idly twisting his night-stick.

Teccard stood on the curb, tamping out his pipe. He gazed curiously up at the lighted windows of 971. What kind of murderer could it be who took such care to hack his victim to pieces — only to attempt to hide all the remains in one spot? There had been other instances of dismembered corpses in the records of the Criminal Identification Bureau but, so far as Teccard could remember, limbs and head and torso had invariably been strewn far and wide, to prevent any reconstruction of the body. Was he up against one of those unpredictable, pathological cases of sadism — where mutilation gives the killer a diabolical satisfaction? That didn’t seem to match up with the carefully planned disposition of the victim’s funds...

Taylor’s club showed, in the areaway of 969. The lieutenant walked along, briskly.

“Third floor rear,” the policeman whispered hoarsely. “Room J.”

Teccard didn’t turn his head, or answer. He marched up the steps to 971. The front door was unlatched. There was a row of battered, black-tin mailboxes. He paused just long enough to make sure one of them bore a piece of paper with the penciled scrawl: Harold M. Willard. Then he went in.

The hallway smelled of cooking grease and antiseptic, the carpeting on the stairs was ragged. Somebody was playing a radio. A baby squalled. There was a sound of running water from a bathroom somewhere on the second floor.

Over the sill of room J was a thread of yellow light. Someone was moving about in the room, but Teccard, with his ear to the panel, heard nothing else. He transferred his gun from his left armpit to the right pocket of his coat, kept his grip on the butt.

He knocked and, without waiting, raised his voice.

“Telegram for Mister Willard.”

The movement behind the door ceased. There was a pause, then: “Slide it under the door.”

Teccard kept his voice high. “You got to sign a receipt, mister.”

“Shove your receipt book under, too. I’ll sign it.” The answer came from halfway down the door — the man inside was evidently trying to look through the keyhole.

“The book won’t go under. You want the telegram, or not?”

Another pause.

“Wait a second. I’m not dressed.”

“O.K.” Teccard tried to make it sound weary.

“Where’s the wire from?” The man had moved away from the door, but the tone was strangely muffled.

“We ain’t allowed to read telegrams, mister. If you don’t want to accept it—”

The door opened.

The man was in his underclothes. He stood sideways, so Teccard couldn’t get a good look at him. Has black hair was rumpled, he held a towel up over his mouth and the side of his face, as if he’d just finished shaving.

“Is there anything due—” He reached out with his other hand.

The lieutenant stepped in, fast.

“Yair. You’re due, mister. Put down—”

There was a faint “Hnnh!” from behind the door, the uncontrollable exhalation of breath when a person exerts himself suddenly.

Teccard whirled.

The blow that caught him across the top of the head knocked him senseless before his knees started to buckle!

Chapter Three Murder in Room J

Talor poured a tumbler of water over Teccard’s head. “Take it easy, now. Amby’ll be here any second.”

The lieutenant rolled over on his side. “Quit slopping that on my head.” The floor kept tilting away from him, dizzily. “Lemme have it to drink.”

The cop filled the glass from a broken-lipped pitcher. “You been bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Teccard paused with the tumbler at his lips. Was that a pair of shoes lying on the floor behind the patrolman? He shook his head, to clear away the blurriness. “Who in the hell is that?” he cried.

Taylor’s jaw went slack. “That’s the lad you was battling with. You fixed his wagon, all right!”

“I wasn’t fighting with anybody! Someone slugged me from behind that door, before I could even get my gun out.” The lieutenant got his elbows under him, propped himself up. The man on his back was T. Chauncey Helbourne — and his skin was a leaden blue.

The officer nodded sympathetically. “A crack on the conk will do that, sometimes. Make you forget what’s been goin’ on, when you snap out of it.”

Teccard felt of the back of his neck. Has fingers came away wet and sticky, the ache at the top of his skull was nauseating. “I didn’t kill him, you dope!”

“Geeze! You had a right to drop him, didn’t you! He was resistin’ arrest, wasn’t he?”

Teccard crawled on hands and knees to the dead man’s side. There was an irregular dark blot on Helbourne’s vest, just inside the left lapel; in the center of the blot something gleamed yellow-red, under the naked bulb overhead. The lieutenant touched the fat man’s face. It was still close to normal body temperature.

“You got him first clip out of the box.” Taylor pointed to the gun on the floor, by the side of the iron cot.

Teccard stood up shakily, sat down again, suddenly, on the sagging edge of the cot. Taylor, the corpse on the floor, the barren furnishings of the room — all seemed oddly far away. He bent over to let the blood get to his head again. “Where’s the other gent who was in here? The one in shorts?”

The uniformed man squinted as if the light hurt his eyes. “The only lug I saw is this stiff, Lieutenant.”

Teccard closed his eyes to stop the bed from shimmying. “He let me in here. How’d he get downstairs, past you?”

Taylor put up a hand to cover his mouth, his eyes opened wide. “Now I swear to God there wasn’t a soul on them stairs when I come up. If there’d been a guy with his pants off—”

“How’d you happen to come up, anyway?”

“Why, geeze, Lieutenant. When this dame comes scuttling down to the front door, yelling for ‘Police’ naturally I hotfoot over from next door.”

“A woman? What kind of a woman?” Teccard demanded.

“Why, just an ordinary mouse like you’d expect to find in one of these joints. Kind of blond and plump — I don’t know.”

“What’d she say?”

“She says, ‘Officer, come upstairs quick. There’s a couple of men fighting and making a terrible racket right over my room.’ She says, ‘Hurry!’ So I figure it’s you subduing this Willard and maybe needing a hand. I come up on the jump.”

Teccard started to shake his head, thought better of it. “Where is she now? Bring her here.”

The policeman pounded out in the hall, downstairs. He left the door open. There was an excited hum of voices from the corridor.

Teccard took a pencil out of his pocket, stuck it in the barrel of the pistol, lifted it off the floor. He wrapped his handkerchief carefully about the butt, broke his weapon. Only one chamber had been fired from the .38. The bullet hole in Helbourne’s chest would be about right for that caliber.

Taylor came clumping upstairs. “She put one over on me. That room underneath ain’t even occupied. And she’s scrammed, anyway.”

“So has the jerk who was half undressed.” The lieutenant put down the revolver, poured himself another drink of water. “That’s over the dam, don’t get gidgety about it. You were right, according to the way you figured it.”

The cop wiped sweat off his forehead. “It’s all balled up in my mind. Was this Willard the one who shot the fat boy, here?”

“Might have been. The gun was still in my pocket when I went down. Somebody took it out and used it on T. Chauncey Helbourne. Somebody else. Not me.” Teccard gazed grimly around the room. “The worse of it is, I couldn’t absolutely identify Willard, even now. He was covering his smush with a towel and he sort of kept his back to me, anyhow.”

He didn’t bring up the point that bothered him most — it was a cinch Willard hadn’t been the one who crowned Teccard from behind that door. Maybe his unseen assailant had been Helbourne. In any case, what was the proprietor of the Herald of Happiness doing up here, when he had claimed complete ignorance of Willard!

A siren wailed, out in the street.

“Holler down to the doc, Taylor. Tell him all he needs to bring up is a few stitches for my scalp.”

“You’d ought to go to the hospital, Lieutenant. Have an X-ray, to be sure there ain’t any fracture.”

Teccard went over to the closet door, opened it. “There’s nothing more the matter with my head than’s been wrong with it for thirty-seven years. Did you buzz the station, too, Taylor?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Cap Meyer is coming right over, himself, with a couple of the boys.” Taylor went out into the hall, shouted down the stairwell.

The lieutenant sniffed at the empty closet. The only things in it were a few coat hangers and a sweet scent that made him think of church. Queer thing to find in a place like this, probably came from clothing that had been hung up here.

He looked around the room for the weapon with which he had been slugged. There wasn’t anything heavier than a cane wastebasket. The wastebasket was empty, too, except for a crumpled piece of cellophane stripped from a pack of cigarettes. He fished it out with the point of his fountain-pen, put it on the bureau.

The interne arrived, went to work with needle and sutures. Meyer and two plain-clothesmen came up. While the doctor jabbed the needle through his scalp, Teccard told the captain what was wanted.

“Box up that cellophane, run it down to my office. There might be prints on it. Get a photographer up here from Homicide. Have him powder the knobs, the bureau drawers, the iron part of the bed, those hangers in the closet. Run a vacuum over the floor, ship the dust down to the lab for examination.”

Meyer crouched over the fat man. “Who’s this guy, Lieutenant?”

“Crumb who ran a matrimonial agency. That’s what’s back of those bones your boys dug up today. Go through his pockets, will you? And mark someone down for going through the house, here, to see what they can get on Willard. Taylor, you learn anything about him from the landlord?”

The patrolman scratched his head. “Not much. Oh, one funny thing. He must have a night job. Because he only comes here in the daytime. And he must write a lot of letters, because practically the only thing old Halzer remembers his having up here, outside his clothes, is a box of writing paper and a bottle of ink.”

“Yair? See can you find if he threw any of his scribbling in the wastebasket. Maybe some of it is still in the trashcan.”

Meyer said: “Not much dough, but plenty of unpaid bills, on this fella. He’s been hitting the high spots, you ask me. Here’s a credit-jewelry store summons for non-payment on a diamond wristwatch. And a bunch of duns from department stores and an automobile company.” He tossed the sheaf of papers on the bed. “Eleven fish and some chickenfeed, a cheap ticker, two nickel cigars, a silk handkerchief stinking of whiskey, and a bunch of keys.”

“No weapon?”

“Not even a pen-knife, Lieutenant. You’re pretty positive he wasn’t the fella cut up that girl’s body?”

“He’d have been well-padded with folding money, in that case, Cap. No. You rustle around, get a description of Harold Willard.”

Teccard waited until the doctor growled: “Kind of a patchwork job, Lieutenant. You’d be smart to take a couple days’ sick leave. That’s an ugly gash.”

“If that stuff about the stitch in time is on the up and up, you must have saved about ninety-nine of ’em. Thanks. I’ll be around, for you to rip them out again.” He picked up the keys. “I might use these, Cap.”

“Want Taylor to go with you?”

“No.” Teccard examined his hat. There was a right angle cut where the brim joined the crown. He smoothed the felt thoughtfully. “You might let me have a gun, though. Mine’ll have to go to Ballistics.”

Meyer brought out an automatic. “You can take Betsy, if you don’t mind a big caliber.”

The corners of Teccard’s mouth curled up. “A forty-five is just the ticket.”

“You after big game?”

“Yair.” Teccard checked the magazine to make sure it was loaded. “You ever go after moose, Cap?”

“Moose? Hell, no. Duck is my limit.”

“Well, when a guy goes after moose, he uses a horn that makes a sound like a female moose. The bull comes a-running — and the hunter does his stuff.”

A puzzled scowl wrinkled Meyer’s forehead.

“I’m going to get me a horn, Cap. But there’s nothing in the book says for the rest of you to stop hunting.”

He went downstairs.

The night elevator man in the building housing the Herald of Happiness regarded Teccard coldly. “Who you want to see on the third, mister?”

“Just giving the premises the once-over.” The lieutenant held his badge out on his palm. “Snap it up. I haven’t got all night.”

“Ain’t anyone up on that floor.”

“That’s why I’m going up. Do I push the lever myself?”

The car started. “I can’t have people going in and out alla time. I’ll lose my job.”

“Don’t worry about it. Everything’s strictly copacetic.”

The elevator door clanged loudly. Teccard swung around the corner of the corridor into the hall where Helbourne’s office was located — and stopped short. Somewhere ahead of him a light had been suddenly extinguished. He stood still, listening. There were none of the noises to be expected when an office is being closed for the night. No door opened.

He balanced the heavy automatic in his left hand, held the keys in his right, tightly, so they wouldn’t rattle. Quietly, on the balls of his feet, he moved to the Herald’s door. Still he heard nothing, except the faraway roar of Broadway. He tried the key which showed the most signs of use. The latch turned. He stepped aside swiftly to the right, kicked the door open.

If there was anyone inside, the only target would be Teccard’s hand, holding the pistol. He snaked his wrist around the jamb of the door, fumbled for the light switch he knew must be there. It clicked. The office flooded with brilliance.

There was a laugh.

“Kamerad!”

He swore under his breath, stepped out into the doorway. She was sitting back in Helbourne’s chair, her feet cocked upon the desk. There was a pile of letters in her lap, a flashlight in one hand and a short-barreled .32 in the other.

“Imagine meeting you here,” he said dryly. “I phoned the Policewomen’s Bureau for you. They knew from nothing!”

Sergeant Dixon took her high heels off the desk. “I’ve been using the super’s passkey every night for the last two weeks. How’d you get in?”

He jangled the keys. “Property of T. Chauncey Helbourne. For the evidence clerk.”

She looked at him sharply. “Evidence? Is Helbourne... dead?”

Teccard sat down on the edge of the desk. “That’s what happens when you take a slug under the fourth rib.”

“Who shot him, Jerry?” The sergeant tossed the letters on the desk, stood up.

“There seems to be a general impression I did. The bullet came from my Regulation, all right. But I’d say the killer was the same one who did away with Ruby Belle.”

She saw the bandage on the back of his head. “Jerry! You were in it! You’re hurt!”

“Yair.” He managed a lop-sided grin. “That was no love-tap. Somebody dropped the boom on me, but good.”

She reached up, lifted his hat off gently. “That was close, Jerry.”

“They meant to kill me, at first. Changed their minds when they fished through my pockets, found my badge.”

“They? Were there two of them?”

The lieutenant nodded. “One K.O.’d me while I was putting the gun on the other one. I went bye-bye before I got a square look at either of them. They both scrammed. Now they know we’re closing in, they’ll be foxier than ever. If they’ve got anything on fire, they may try to pull it off before they do the vanishing act. But we’ll have to move fast, if we’re going to catch up with them. That’s why I came down here, to see if there might be any other poor boobs readied up for the kill.”

“You might have asked me. Just because I spent two years putting fortune tellers out of business and running around to disorderly dance halls, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how to use my mind.” She held up a sheet of pink notepaper. “I dug this out of Helbourne’s private postoffice, there. It has all the earmarks. Box KDD. A Miss Marion Yulett, seamstress of Algers. Thirty-three. Possesses certain means of her own. Has a cheerful, homeloving disposition, yet is full of pep. Miss Yulett encloses five dollars to secure the address of a certain Peter Forst who’s apparently been giving her a buildup about his charms.”

“He live in New York City?”

“Can’t find any folder for Mr. Forst. Peculiar. Not even any letters to him — or from him.”

Chapter Four

Teccard chewed on his pipestem. Was Forst another one of Willard’s aliases? Had Helbourne been putting one over when he claimed to know nothing about other letters from the mysterious individual who always wrote from Manhattan? “When did this deluded dame come through with Helbourne’s fee?”

“Week ago today.”

The lieutenant reached for the phone. “Hustle me through to your super, pal. Supervisor? This is Lieutenant Jerome Teccard, New York Police Department, Criminal Identification Bureau. Talking from Bryant 32717. Yair. Get me the chief of police of Algers, New York, in a hurry, will you? Algers is up near Whitehall. Yair... I’ll hang on...”

While he was waiting, Teccard tried the only-flat key, from Helbourne’s bunch, on the locked middle drawer of the desk. It fitted. In the drawer was an empty cigar carton, some paper matchbooks, an overdue bill from one printer and a sheaf of estimates from another, a half-full flask of Nip-and-Tuck Rye, and a torn, much-folded plain-paper envelope, addressed to the Herds of Happiness, Box KDD!

The envelope was postmarked three weeks ago, from Station U, New York City.

Helen looked up Station U. “East One Hundred and Sixth Street, Jerry.”

“Same precinct as the bones. And friend Willard. One will get you ten that’s where we find brother Forst, too.”

There was a voice in the receiver. Teccard held it to his ear, muttered “Yair” a few times, added “Much obliged, Chief,” racked the receiver.

“Too late. Sucker Yulett left Algers on the morning train.”

Helen punched the files with her fist, angrily. “For New York?”

“Didn’t know. Southbound, anyway.”

The hurt look came into her eyes again.

Teccard shoved his hands into his pockets, gloomily. “All he did know — she had her suitcase, and the station agent said she was wearing a corsage.”

She showed teeth that were clenched. “Those damned flowers again!”

“They’ll probably last just long enough to be used on her casket,” Teccard brooded. “Wait, though. We might still be in time.”

“It wouldn’t take her all day to get to New York!”

“It might. Station master didn’t tell the chief what time the train left, this a.m. Might have been late morning. And those trains up north of the capital run slower than a glacier. If the Yulett girl had to change at Albany, and wait...”

Helen got the phone first, called train information. It was busy. The sergeant kept pounding the desk with her fist until she got her connection.

Before she hung up, Teccard was asking: “Can we stop her?”

“Only train making connections from Algers to New York arrives at Grand Central, eight forty. Gives us about twenty minutes.”

He caught her arm. “Hell it does. We’ll have to burn rubber to make it. We can’t wait until she gets off the train. We’ll have to find her, convince her we’re on the level, tip her off what she’s to do. Chances are, Forst’ll be waiting for her. We’d scare him off before we spotted him.”

She was streaking down the corridor toward the elevator. “We catch the train at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth, come in with her?”

“If she’s on it. If we can locate it. And if she’ll listen to reason. That’s a hell of a lot of ‘ifs.’ ”

The department sedan zoomed over to Park and Thirty-fourth — went through the red lights with siren screeching. They didn’t stop to park at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth, sprinted up the stairs as the conductor gave the “Boa-r-r-r-d!”

The sergeant saw the bunch of lilies-of-the-valley first. “That sweet-faced one, in the dark blue coat and that God-awful hat, Jerry.”

“Yair. You better break the ice. She’ll be suspicious of a man.”

Helen dropped into the empty seat beside the woman in the unbecoming hat. The lieutenant stayed a couple of paces in the rear.

“Miss Yulett?” the sergeant inquired, softly.

“You’re Miss Marion Yulett, from Algers, aren’t you?”

The woman smiled sweetly, opened her bag, produced a small pad and a pencil.

Swiftly she wrote: Sorry. I am hard of hearing.

Teccard smothered an oath. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been crippled or scarred up — Helen would have been able to fix it so the Yulett woman could step into a ladies’ room, somewhere, and give her instructions to handle the man she was going to meet. But there wouldn’t be time to write everything out in longhand, without arousing “Forst’s” suspicions. And if the killer had an accomplice, as the lieutenant believed, this deaf woman couldn’t hear what “Forst” and the other would be saying to each other — and that might prove to be the most important evidence of all!

Helen scribbled away on the pad. Teccard sidled up alongside so he could read.

I am Sergeant Dixon from the N. Y. Policewomen’s Bureau. Are you Marion Yulett?

The woman shrank back in her seat.

“Yes. Why do you want me?” Her voice shook.

The pencil raced in Helen’s fingers.

Only to save you unhappiness. Maybe worse. You plan to meet a man named Peter Forst?

“Yes. Is anything wrong?”

The sergeant held the pad out, again.

We believe he’s a killer who’s murdered several women who became acquainted with him through the Herald. Have you a picture of him?

Miss Yulett fumbled nervously in her bag, produced a small, glossy snap-shot. Teccard’s forehead puckered up. This couldn’t be a photo of Willard, by any possibility! The man in the snap-shot was round — faced and pudgy-cheeked. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and his hair receded at the temples, from a high forehead!

Helen wrote: How will Forst recognize you?

“I had my picture taken, too. I sent it to him day before yesterday.” Miss Yulett bit her lip to keep from crying. “I’m afraid it wasn’t a very good likeness — I don’t photograph well. But I was wearing this hat and these beads,” she touched a necklace of imitation pink jade, “and I’m wearing his flowers, too.” Tears began to stream down her cheeks, she turned her face toward the window. “You must be mistaken about Peter, his letters were so sweet and kind. I can’t imagine his... hurting anybody.”

The train began to slow for the track intersections in the upper yard. There was no time for softening the blow, with sympathy.

Helen made the pad say: If he’s the man we’re after, he doesn’t intend to marry you at all. If you have any money, he’ll wheedle it away from you and then— Did he mention anything about money?

The words came out between convulsive sobs: “Only that he had a small and prosperous business. With a partner who wasn’t... quite honest, perhaps. If Peter and I... got... along... he said I might want to buy out this other man’s interest. So my... my husband and I... could be partners.”

The pencil moved so swiftly Teccard could hardly follow it.

Brace up now, Marion. We’re getting in. Take off your hat. And your beads.

Miss Yulett dried her eyes on a tiny handkerchief, did her best to smile. “You’re going to meet him, with me — so he can have a chance to explain?”

No, I’m going to meet him. As you. Wearing your hat and beads. Unpin those flowers, too.

“But, please! Please let me—”

Don’t waste time arguing. If he looks all right to me, I’ll let you meet him later. I’ll take your bag, too. You take mine. And wear my hat.

The disturbed woman unclasped her beads. “But what on earth am I to do? Where will I go? I don’t know anybody but Peter—”

The gentleman standing behind us is Police Lieutenant Teccard. He’ll see that you get to a hotel. Stay where he tells you to until I can get in touch with you.

Teccard gripped Helen’s shoulder. “No you don’t. You take Miss Yulett to the hotel. I’ll meet pal Peter.”

Sergeant Dixon looked up at him. “What evidence do you think you’d get out of him, Jerry? He’s not the same man you ran into uptown, is he? As things stand, you haven’t a thing on him.”

“I’ll sweat the evidence out of him, all right.”

“Maybe you couldn’t. There’s always the possibility this fellow’s on the level. If he is, I turn him over to Miss Yulett. If he isn’t, I’ll be able to give first-hand testimony as to how he operates. This is a job only a policewoman can handle effectively.”

Teccard grimaced. “Put your gun in her bag, then. And don’t be dainty about using it. Another thing: I’m going to turn Miss Yulett over to one of the pick-pocket squad in the terminal and tail you and your intended.”

“All right, as long as he doesn’t spot you.” Helen adjusted the ridiculous brim of the hat, snapped the beads around her neck. Hastily, she used the pad once more.

Did Forst tell you where you were to stay in New York? Or how soon you’d get married?

“As soon as we could get the license.” Tears glistened in the woman’s eyes again. “He said I could stay with his family. But I don’t know just where they live.”

“I bet Peter doesn’t, either,” Teccard muttered, beneath his breath. He watched Helen go through the contents of Miss Yulett’s bag — the little leather diary, the packet of envelopes like the one in Helbourne’s desk drawer, the savings bank book.

The train slid alongside the concrete platform, redcaps kept pace with the slowing cars.

Helen put her arm around Miss Yulett’s shoulders, hugged her lightly. Teccard pulled down the worn, leather suitcase from the overhead rack. “I’ll get a porter for you.”

“Don’t be silly.” The sergeant hefted the bag, easily. “She wouldn’t spend a quarter that way. So I won’t.” She nodded cheerfully at the woman, joined the procession in the aisle.

Teccard got out his notebook, penciled: I’m going to get a detective to take you to the Commodore Hotel. Right here in the station. Register and stay right in your room until Sergeant Dixon comes for you. Don’t worry about your bag, or expenses. We’ll take care of them. Understand?

She didn’t hide her fear. “Yes. But I’m afraid.”

He patted her shoulder. “Nothing to be scared of—” he said before he realized she wasn’t reading his lips. He followed her out to the platform, located one of the boys on the Terminal Squad, told him what he wanted done. “Keep her here on the platform for a while, too. Better take her out through one of the other gates — in case the man we’re after is still waiting there. Phone my office and tell them her room number. Notify the desk at the hotel to route all calls to her room through the office of one of the assistant managers.”

He tipped his hat to Miss Yulett, left her staring blankly at the bandage on the back of his head. The poor soul must be scared stiff, he knew. Well, better than being a stiff...

He had managed to keep sight of Helen’s abominable hat, thirty or forty yards ahead. He put on steam to catch up with her. She was playing the part of the timidly anxious woman, to the hilt — searching the faces of the crowd lining the gate-ropes with just the right amount of hesitancy.

Teccard couldn’t see anyone who resembled the snapshot. He was completely unprepared for what happened. A young man of thirty or so stepped abruptly out of the thinning crowd and took the suitcase out of the sergeant’s hand.

Except for the exaggerated sideburns, his thin, clean-cut features could have been called handsome, in a sinister sort of way. If it hadn’t been for the cream-colored necktie against the extravagantly long-pointed soft collar of his mauve shirt, he might have been considered well-dressed. There was no goatee, none of the full roundness of the face in Miss Yulett’s snapshot. Yet Teccard was sure he recognized the man. He had only seen those dark eyebrows in side view — the deeply cleft chin had been covered with a towel when the lieutenant had pointed a gun at him. But this would be Harold Willard, beyond much doubt.

Teccard couldn’t get too close to them. “Willard” or “Forst,” or whatever his name was, would be certain to recognize the man who had crashed the room on Eighty-eighth Street! How could the lieutenant shadow them without being spotted himself?

Evidently “Willard” knew that Miss Yulett was deaf, he showed no surprise when Helen offered him the pad. But apparently there was some difference of opinion going on. The sergeant was shaking her head, as if she were bewildered.

When her escort took her arm and led her across the great central lobby, toward the subway entrance, she evidently protested. She made her way to one of the marble shelves alongside the ticket windows, pointed vehemently to the pad. “Willard” began to write, furiously...

Teccard bought a newspaper, unfolded it, kept it in front of his face so he could just see over the top. He edged, unobtrusively, within a dozen feet.

“But I don’t understand.” Helen gazed at “Willard” in obvious fascination. “You’re so much better-looking. Why did you send me the other man’s photograph?”

The youth favored her with a dazzling smile, proffered her a sheet from the pad.

She read it, crumpled it, seemed to thrust it into the pocket of her jacket. “I would have liked you even more, Peter — if you had trusted me — told me the truth.”

They moved on toward the Lexington Avenue subway. Willard was having difficulty holding up his written end of the conversation. He kept setting the bag down, scribbling rapidly, then seizing her arm and rushing her along again.

Teccard followed them through the stile, downstairs to the uptown platform. They boarded the rear of one crowded car. The lieutenant squeezed onto the front platform of the car behind. He saw Helen’s hand release the crumpled paper, before she was pushed into the car. People surged in like a mob pressing to the scene of a fire. Teccard struggled through the door over the car-couplings, into the space Helen had just vacated. He stooped, retrieved the paper.

He held it down at his side, unfolded it.

I wanted to be certain you were not attracted to me merely because of my looks, darling. That’s why I sent you the other picture. Now I am sure you will love me, for what I really am — not merely what I seem to be. Is that not better, dear one?

Teccard spat out a sibilant, jammed the paper in his pocket. The doors closed, the train rumbled out of the station.

He searched the crowded car aisle, ahead. They must have found seats somehow.

He unfolded the paper again, elbowed his way slowly forward.

They were nowhere in the car. Long before the brakes had screamed for the Eighty-sixth Street stop, he knew they were nowhere on the train.

Chapter Five Primrose Path

Teccard was in a cold rage as he shoved through the throng and up to Eighty-sixth Street. “Willard” had made a sucker of him with the old on-again, off-again, Finnegan — gone in the rear door, made his way, with Helen in tow, up by the side door at the middle of the subway car and — at the last instant — stepped off to the platform while the lieutenant was perusing the note Helen had dropped.

Of course, the sergeant couldn’t have stopped the man without giving her hand away. Of course, also, “Willard” must have caught a glimpse of Teccard. Now, the make-love-by-mail guy would be on his guard — and likely to suspect Helen. Teccard had dragged her into this mess, by requesting her assignment from the Policewomen’s Bureau. Now she was literally in the hands of a cold-blooded killer!

By force of habit, he called the Telegraph Bureau first, to get the alarm out for the dark-haired youth. The description was complete now. Teccard was good at estimating weight, height, age. Long experience in the Criminal Identification Bureau made him remember points that the average policeman wouldn’t have noticed. “His ears are funny. Kind of pointed, at the top of the helix. He brushes his hair to cover them as much as he can. And his chin looks as if somebody had started to drive a wedge into it. And don’t forget, this man is sure to be armed and dangerous.”

Then he called Captain Meyer, repeated the description.

“Send a car around to check every man on beat, will you, Cap? Odds are good he hangs out in this parish somewhere. Have ’em keep an eye out for Sergeant Dixon, she’ll be with him.”

He had half expected to find a report from her, waiting for him when he called his office. He was wrong about that. The office didn’t have much — there hadn’t been any prints on the cellophane, too many on the knobs and furniture in the Eighty-eighth Street room. They hadn’t been able to find any of record, though.

Talking with the Telegraph Bureau had given him an idea. He called Western Union, located the night traffic manager. “There was a bunch of flowers wired from this city to Miss Marion Yulett in Algers, upstate, sometime this a.m. Chances are, they went through Floral Telegraph Delivery. Find out what shop put in the order, will you? Buzz me back.”

He fumed and stewed in the drugstore phone booth for what seemed like an hour. When he passed the clock over the soda fountain, on his way out, he found it had been seven minutes.

The address the telegraph company had given him was only a few blocks away. He didn’t bother with a cab, but went on the run. Over to Second, up to Eighty-seventh. There it was, next to the undertaker’s place in the middle of the block.

Potted ivy and cactus in the window, flanked by lilies and dried grasses in tin vases — inside, a glass-front icebox with cut flowers, roses and carnations.

Carnations! Now he knew why that fragrance in the closet had reminded him of church, there had always been a big bunch of white carnations in front of the pulpit, when he was a kid. “Willard” must have had a carnation in the buttonhole of the coat he hung up in the closet...

A girl stood talking to the shirt-sleeved man behind the counter. As Teccard walked in she was saying: “You’ll send those wreaths over to the sexton right away? He’s waiting for them.”

The florist nodded impatiently. “I’ll get ’em right over, right away.” He turned inquiringly toward the lieutenant. “What can I do for you, sir?”

Teccard drew a deep breath. This was the man in the snapshot! Round face, goatee, receding hair! “You can tell me who ordered some lilies of the valley wired to a lady up in Algers, New York.”

“Was there some complaint?” asked the florist.

“Just checking up on the person who sent them. I’m from the police department.”

The girl paused, on her way out, to stare at him out of stolid blue eyes set deep in a square, pleasant face.

“Police! What’s the matter the police should come around?” The man waved his arms, excitedly.

Teccard said softly: “You have a duplicate record of your F.T.D. orders. Let’s see it.”

The florist ran stubby fingers through his hair, dug a flat, yellow book out of the debris on a bookkeeping desk. He ruffled the pages. “It ain’t against the law, sending flowers like this!”

The carbon copy of the wired order wasn’t helpful. All it indicated was that Peter Forst had paid two dollars and fifty cents to have a corsage delivered to Miss Marion Yulett at Algers.

“Who took the order?”

“Nobody. The envelope was under the door when I’m opening the shop this morning. With the cash. What’s the matter, eh?”

Teccard’s hand clamped on the other’s wrist. “You sent those posies yourself, Mr. Forst.”

“Forst! What’s it, Forst?” The man’s eyes narrowed. “I’m George Agousti, I run this business, no nonsense. I pay taxes.”

The lieutenant’s grip remained firm. “Then someone’s been framing you, Agousti.”

“Framing me? For what!”

“Murder.” Teccard spoke quietly.

Agousti recoiled as from a blow. “It’s terrible mistake you making. So much as a single flea, I ain’t ever hurt.”

“You don’t know this Peter Forst?”

“The first time I ever hear his name, so help me!”

“What about Harold Willard? Heard of him?”

The florist shook his head.

“You don’t feel like talking, do you? Maybe you’d feel more like it if you came down to headquarters with me.”

Agousti shrugged. “I’m telling you. There ain’t nothing on my conscience. I ain’t afraid to go anywhere you like.”

Teccard made one more try. He described the man Helen had gone with.

“Know him?”

Recognition crept into the florist’s eyes. “I ain’t dead sure. But from how you putting it, this one might be Stefan.”

“Who’s Stefan?”

“Stefan Kalvak. He’s no good, a low life, sure.”

“Yair, yair. Who is he? What’s he do? Where’s he live?”

“He’s Miss Kalvak’s brother, she really owns this shop. I run it for her. She’s O.K., fine. But Stefan’s a bum, a stinker. Always stealing dough out the cash register when I don’t watch. Or getting girls into trouble, you know.”

“He’s done his best to get you in trouble. He sent your picture to this girl up in Algers — so she’d come to New York to get married.”

“Holy Mother!”

“Where’s he live?”

“You got me. His sister threw him out of her apartment. But you could phone her—”

A freckle-faced boy burst into the shop. “My pa sent me for the ivy for ma’s birthday, Mr. Agousti.”

“All right, Billy. Excuse me, one second.” The florist whisked out of sight, back of the showcase.

The boy jingled seventy-five cents on the counter, an elevated roared overhead — and Teccard began to sweat, thinking of Helen Dixon and Stefan Kalvak.

The youngster called. “Pa says you needn’t bother to wrap it up, Mr. Agousti.”

There was no answer from the rear of the shop, though the sound of the elevated had died away.

Teccard stepped quickly around the glass case.

Agousti was leaning, face down, over a wooden bench — his head under the spreading fronds of a potted palm. There was a dark puddle on the boards of the bench, it widened slowly as drops splashed into it from the gash in the florist’s neck.

A sharp-bladed knife that had evidently been used to cut flower stems lay with its point in the glistening disk of crimson. There was blood on Agousti’s right hand, too. Teccard lifted the limp wrist, saw the slash across the base of the fingers.

That settled it! A man didn’t cut his hand that way, when he slashed his own throat! The florist had been attacked from behind, while he was putting the ivy in a flowerpot. He had tried to block off the blade that was severing his jugular — and had failed.

Not five feet from the dead man’s back was a rear delivery door, with a wire screen nailed over the glass. The door was closed, but not locked.

Teccard tore a piece of green, glazed paper from the roll fixed to the end of the bench, wrapped it around the knob and twisted it. Then he opened the door.

A narrow alley ran behind the two-story building. It was floored with cement. There wouldn’t be any footprints on it — and there wasn’t anyone in sight.

He came inside, shut the door. He stuck his nailfile through the oval handle of the key, turned it until the bolt shot home.

The boy stuck his head around the corner of the glass case. Teccard stepped quickly between him and the body.

“Is he sick?” the youngster began.

“Yair. You go home, tell your father the ivy will be over later.”

“O.K., mister. Gee, I’m sorry—”

“Wait a minute, son. You seen Stefan Kalvak around tonight?”

The boy made a face. “Naw. Steve ain’t never around, except with girls. I don’t like him, anyways—”

“You know where he lives?”

He jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “I guess he lives right up over the flower store, here.”

Teccard was startled. “That so?” Maybe the kid didn’t know about the sister tossing Stefan out on his ear...

The boy ran. When he’d gone, the lieutenant felt in the pockets of the dead man, without disturbing the position of the body. There was a leather container, with four Yale keys. He took them.

One of the keys fitted the front door. He used it, from the street. Then he stepped into the entrance-way to the second floor stairs.

There was only one mailbox, a big brass one with a mother-of-pearl push button and a neatly-engraved card: Vanya Kalvak, Floriculturist.

He went up the stairs, noiselessly.

There were two doors opening off the second-floor hall. The one nearest the front of the building had another of the engraved cards tacked to it.

He heard voices. They came from the room behind the door at the head of the stairs.

The tones of the girl who’d asked Agousti to deliver the wreaths were very distinct.

“Why do you come here, anyway, Miss Yulett?”

“Your brother brought me here,” Helen answered. “He said it was all right.”

Teccard’s heart skipped a couple of beats. What was Helen doing, talking? She must have been startled out of her wits by this other woman and been caught off guard. He put his ear to the panel.

“I’m very sorry for you, Miss Yulett.”

“I don’t understand! Why should you be?” The sergeant was still playing her part. “Peter said he would be back in a moment. He’ll explain.”

“Peter!” The girl’s tone was one of disgust.

“His name is Stefan. Stefan Kalvak.”

“It all seems very queer. I can’t imagine why he lied to me about his name. But you ought to know, since you’re his sister.”

The girl laughed harshly. “You stupid idiot! He is my husband.”

“What!” The sergeant didn’t have to fake that exclamation, Teccard thought.

“It is the truth. I am his wife, God forbid.” The girl spat out the words. “I know what he told you. The same as he told those others.”

“You’re just trying to drive me away from him.”

Teccard decided they were in the kitchen of the apartment. One of them kept moving about restlessly — probably Mrs. Kalvak.

“I’m trying to save your life. You don’t know Stefan. He’s a fiend, absolutely. After he’s taken your money — have you already given it to him?”

“No,” Helen answered. “Tomorrow after we get the license, we will talk over buying the business.”

“Tomorrow, you will be dead — if you do not let me help you get away.”

“I should think you’d — hate me, Mrs. Kalvak. But honestly, I didn’t know Peter — Stefan — was married.”

“I don’t care about you one way or the other. The reason I’m praying to God for you to get away quickly is that I don’t want him caught.”

“No...”

“I know what would happen to him, if the police got him. My eyes haven’t been closed all these months. Stefan hasn’t earned the money he’s been spending. Nevertheless—” she hesitated — “nevertheless, I love him.”

A phone bell jangled in the front room. Mrs. Kalvak stalked away to answer it. Teccard waited until he heard her answering in monosyllables, then he tried the door. It was locked.

“Helen,” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Helen!”

The sergeant didn’t hear him.

Mrs. Kalvak was storming back into the kitchen. “You talk of lying!” she cried. “You... trickster!” Mrs. Kalvak’s voice rose in anger. “That was Stefan on the phone.”

“He’s coming back, then?”

“Sooner than you like, my fine deaf lady!”

“Wait—”

“You’re no country innocent, Miss Yulett. I know who you are. You’re a detective — trying to trap my man. And all the time I was sorry for you, thinking you were caught in his net!”

Helen screamed, once. Teccard heard a thud. He lunged at the panel. “Helen! Get the door open!”

There was no answer.

He pointed the muzzle of Meyer’s automatic an inch from the edge of the jamb, at the lock.

Before he could pull the trigger he felt something, like the end of a piece of pipe, jab painfully into the small of his back. A suave voice murmured: “Use my key! It will be easier.”

Chapter Six Cupid Turns Killer

The lieutenant held the pose. A hand came around his side and relieved him of the .45.

“Come on, Vanya! Open up!”

The door swung wide.

The girl stared, white-faced. “I didn’t know you were out here, Stefan. I heard him — trying to get in.” She held a heavy, cast-iron skillet at her side.

“I came upstairs while he was bellowing like a bull.” Kalvak prodded Teccard between the shoulder-blades with the muzzle of the automatic. “Get inside, there.”

Helen sprawled on the floor beside the refrigerator. Her hat lay on the floor beside her, the wide brim crushed by the fall. The sergeant’s head rested on a brown-paper shopping bag, her hair over her forehead.

Kalvak whistled, softly. “You killed her, Vanya!”

“She’s only stunned.” The girl lifted the skillet. “When I found she was a detective, I could have killed her.”

“We’ve enough trouble, without having a cop-murder to worry about. Did you search her?”

Vanya kicked the sergeant sullenly. “There’s no gun on her. What are you going to... do with them?”

Kalvak snarled at her. “I’ll take care of them.” He dug a spool of adhesive out his pocket. “Sit down in that chair. Grab the back with your hands. Close your eyes.”

“Hell! You’re not going to tape us, are you?”

“You think I want you to follow us, you—!”

Teccard saw a peculiar bulge inside the lining of Miss Yulett’s hat. He couldn’t be certain what it was — but it might be worth a gamble. “If you don’t want to fret about a cop-murder, you better call a doc for her.”

“She’ll snap out of it, all right.”

“Damn it! I tell you she’s dying!” Slowly and deliberately, so Kalvak couldn’t mistake his intention, Teccard moved a step closer to Helen — dropped down on one knee beside her.

The weapon in Kalvak’s hand swiveled around to follow the lieutenant’s movement. “Leave her alone.”

Teccard rested his weight on one hand, close to the hat brim. The other he put on Helen’s forehead. “She’s like ice — if you don’t get her to a doctor, fast—” His hand touched cold metal under the loose lining of the big hat.

Kalvak sensed something wrong. “Keep away from that hat!”

Teccard fired without drawing the stubby-barreled .32 out from under the hat-lining where Helen had hidden it. It was an angle shot and risky as hell — but the lieutenant knew the risk he and Helen were running, if he didn’t shoot. The bullet hit Kalvak about three inches below his belt buckle. It doubled him over and spoiled his aim with that automatic. But the heavy slug ripped across the lieutenant’s hip. It felt as if molten metal had been spilled all along the thigh. He lifted the .32 — hat and all — emptied three more chambers. The first bullet missed its mark. The second one caught Kalvak under the V-cleft in his chin. The third wasn’t needed.

Vanya sprang, caught him as he fell. She slumped on the floor, held his head in her arms, whimpering.

Helen struggled to sit up. “You and the U.S. Cavalry, Jerry,” she mumbled.

He helped her to stand. “I was a sap to lose you, there in the subway.”

Helen pressed her hands on top of her head, winced. “Peter — I mean Harold — or Stefan— Gone?”

“Thanks to your hiding that .32 in the Yulett dame’s bonnet.”

Vanya whined, wretchedly: “I know you’re glad he’s dead. I ought to be glad, too. After all the terrible crimes he’s committed. But I’m not, I’m not.”

The lieutenant limped over to her. “It was a good act, while it lasted, Mrs. Kalvak. But it couldn’t last forever. You can take off the disguise.”

She stopped rocking. “You mean I knew about Stefan’s having committed murder? Yes, I knew. When it was too late to prevent them.”

“I’ll say you knew.” He picked up Meyer’s pistol. “The one who didn’t know — for sure, anyway — was Stefan!”

Helen said, “What?”

The girl sat there, as if stupefied.

“All right. O.K. See what that innocence stuff gets you after Patrolman Taylor identifies you as the woman who ran downstairs at Eighty-eighth Street to tell him there was a fight going on over your room. Why’d you chase over there after your husband, anyway? Because you’d read that story in the newspaper about the kid finding the Lansing girl’s bones?

“That’d be my guess. You were up there in the room Stefan had rented as Harold Willard, so he could get his hooks into another dame,” he waved ironically toward Helen, “and you were packing up the clothes he had in the closet, or maybe just arguing with him so he wouldn’t think you knew too much about those bones under the pier. Then who should ride up on his charger but T. Chauncey Helbourne. When he heard about the disappearing dames and the dough that vanished along with them, he wanted a cut of that, too. And he went to the right place to get it.”

Vanya laid her cheek against the bloodless one in her lap. “You do not really believe such horrible things. No one could believe them.”

Helen was at the sink, using cold water. She held up a small camp hatchet. “Could it be this Boy Scout meat axe? Somebody’s been scouring it with steel wool.”

“The head of it would fit the gash in my fedora just ducky,” Teccard answered. “But it didn’t kill Helbourne. It knocked him cold. He was shot after I’d had my light put out. You shot him, Mrs. Kalvak — so I’d either get blamed for bumping him myself or think Helbourne was the rat responsible for the Happiness murders.”

“I was there at Eighty-eighth Street.” Vanya stroked the corpse’s forehead. “I did hear the fight. I told the truth to the policeman. You shot that man yourself.”

“No cop shoots a man lying down, lady. The blood stain on Helbourne’s vest was round, with the bullet hole in the center. If he’d died on his feet — the way it would have been if he was shot in a fight — the blood stain would have been tear-shaped — with the point down. How’d you beat it out of the house? Rush your husband down to that bathroom on the second floor — have him wait there, while you murdered Helbourne without Stefan’s knowing it? And then take a powder after the patrolman ran up to the third floor?”

The sergeant went over to pick up what was left of Miss Yulett’s hat. She picked up the brown-paper market basket at the same time. “Don’t tell me this girl cut up that Lansing woman, all by herself, Jerry!”

“Yair. Probably did it all with her little hatchet.”

“But why?” The sergeant held the bottom of the market bag up to the light. “If Stefan got the money out of these women, with his honeyed words...?”

“Stefan wheedled it out of them — and turned the cash over to Mrs. Kalvak. She’s the sort of skirt who wouldn’t mind her husband monkeying with other femmes, if it paid enough.”

Vanya kissed the corpse on the lips. “Darling! Listen to the hideous lies they make up about me!”

“Talk about lies, Mrs. Kalvak! You must have lied plenty to your husband. You’d probably promised to get the lovelorn out of his way after he’d garnered in the gold.” Teccard turned his back to inspect the wound on his hip. “Maybe he thought you scared them off by that ‘he’s-a-married-man — I’m-his-wife’ line. I don’t know. But I’m damned certain you thought the easy way to keep the suckers quiet was to plant them. Why you had to hack them to pieces—”

Helen held up the market bag, by its brown-twine handle. “Recognize those brown fibers that clung to the oilcloth, Jerry? From this twine. Goes through the bottom of the bag to give it strength. She used this to carry... them... in.”

“Yair. Yair. That’s why she had to axe them in small hunks. So she could carry the pieces out of here and down to the wharf, without being conspicuous!” He went over, hauled the girl to her feet. “Or maybe it’s you just like cutting up people. Like Agousti.”

Vanya touched the wound in Stefan’s neck, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Stefan went to... see Agousti. I know nothing of that.”

“Don’t, eh? Then it won’t be your prints on that stem-cutter or the doorknob downstairs, eh? You didn’t decide Agousti’d have to be shut up before he prevented your getaway, then?”

Mrs. Kalvak looked up at him. There was murder in her eyes.

Helen hurried to the front room. “I’m going to call the wrecking crew, to take over here.”

“I’ve had all of this I want,” Teccard agreed. “And I’ll sure be glad when you don’t have to muck around in this kind of slop.”

“Man works from sun to sun,” the sergeant twiddled the dial, “but woman’s work is never done. In the police department.”

“Far as that goes,” he got out his twisters, “one cop is enough... in any one family. Don’t you think?”