Collection of Stories

Fit to Kill

Popular Detective, March 1949

Don Rixey peeled cellophane from a Choc-a-Bloc Nibble, gnawed the confection moodily. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t like it one bit.”

Annalou Kenyon leaned dimpled elbows on the lunch counter, her pert face tilted up provocatively. “Whyn’t you try a Baby Ruth, then? Ask me. I know what you like!”

“Yeah,” He admired her taffy-bright hair, her smoky-gray eyes. “You know what I mean, too.” He jabbed an accusing finger at the newspaper lying beside the salt and pepper rack.

She read the headline aloud: “Icy Eyes Strikes Again! Third Gas Station Stickup in Week Spurs Citywide Manhunt.” Annalou pouted prettily. “If it’s me you’re worrying about — don’t!”

“What else?” Don licked chocolate off his thumb. “You! Out here in this dump, all alone, at this time of night!”

“It’s not either a dump. It’s a modern snack bar. And I’m not all alone.”

“Most the time you are.” His amiable square face was unhappy.

“Bill’s here. Or anyway, he’s right near.” She glanced across the drive-in at the row of red-enamel gas pumps.

“Bill’s a nice old gook,” Don said. “Very fatherly. About as much protection as one of those woolly poodles they sell in toy stores. If this gent the papers call Icy Eyes showed up around here—”

“It wouldn’t bother me!” Annalou asserted flatly. “I know better’n to argue with an automatic. I’d just say, ‘Mister, help yourself.’ It’s not my cash register. He can take the works, for all of me. Don’t you fret!”

“No-o-o!” Don scowled. “I’ll never give it a second thought. You. Way out here on the lone prairee, practically, fixin’ to swap wise cracks with a gunman who’s scared three gas-station attendants so bad they can’t even remember what he looked like!”

“If you don’t like my working out here nights,” Annalou drifted down the counter, began to balance lemon-lime bottles on top of a Pepsi-Cola pyramid, “whyn’t you drag me before a parson, then set me up in a snug little apartment in town?”

He reached across the counter, caught her, squealing. “Right this minute! Now! Tonight!”

Annalou disentangled herself, demurely, pulling down her uniform apron over her trimly rounded figure. “Let’s not go over that again! The future Mrs. Rixey does not intend to start housekeeping on any shoestring.”

“I’ve got nearly four hundred stashed away.”

She scoffed. “You haven’t been pricing refrigerators or stoves or dishes lately. With what we could buy for four hundred,” she waved disparagingly at the meager equipment of the Outside Inn, “we might as well live here.”

“After what’s happened around gas stations the last week,” Don growled, “I don’t want you within a block of one. But we don’t need all that stuff they advertise in the magazines, just to get married. Look at gypsies. They get along with very little and everybody claims they’re the happiest people in the world.”

Annalou punched the cash register violently, and directed his attention to the No Sale card which popped up. She came around the counter with tightly compressed lips. “It just so happens, Mister Rixey, that I don’t care to sleep like any gypsy on a mangy blanket with some smelly old straw for a pillow. I want a nice box spring mattress and a thick, fluffy comforter.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “But the way things are going with Regal Radio Repairs, it’s going to take another year before I can hold out enough from the payback on that GI loan to feather our cozy little nest. Meantime, the idea of your bein’ all alone way out here, nights, with that holdup artist runnin’ wild, is enough to drive me to drink.”

She appeared to deliberate. “Given my choice I believe I’d rather spend my nights with you than with any stickup man. So the sooner you roll your half-ton hoop back to the shop and start operating on the insides of a superhet, the sooner I’ll be able to. ’By now, darling. Don’t run through any red lights...”

A few minutes later a short, stocky man shuffled out of the attendant’s shack which was the Outside Inn’s only neighbor. He was moon-faced and nearly bald, and he wore a yellow polo shirt and faded khaki pants.

“Wasn’t that the demon set-wrecker, Annalou?”

“You’re speaking of the man I love, Bill. Yep.”

“Doesn’t he ever buy any gas for that truck of his?”

“Not at gas stations,” Annalou grinned. “Don has a hate on gas stations. They attract too many holdup men.” She pointed to the stickup story.

Bill read it gravely. “Icy Eyes, my foot! That’s the trouble with these creeps. They pull a gun on some guy with bad nerves, get away with a few bucks, and the papers start buildin’ ’em up like they was Jesse James the Second.” He snorted disgustedly, flipped the page. “So pretty soon they think they’ve got to live up to their rep and then they kill somebody.”

“Hey!” Annalou peered over his shoulder. “You any good at noses?”

Bill stared owlishly at her. “I got the normal amount of same. Maybe a little less’n average. What you mean, Annalou?”

“There!” Annalou indicated a half-page advertisement of a furniture store, a contest puzzle picture in which a pair of brooding masculine eyes surmounted an incongruously thin and lugubrious nose placed above an even more ridiculous button of chubby dimpled chin. The advertisement proclaimed:

“Five hundred smackers,” breathed Annalou. “What Don and I couldn’t do, if we had that!”

“Puh-lease,” Bill murmured. “Spare me the details!”

“I mean we just have to put ’em together.” She colored rosily. “The features they’ve jumbled up here, I mean. I ought to be pretty good at this. I’m terrible on names, but I hardly ever forget a face.”

Bill considered. “That might be Lou Costello’s chin. The comedian, you know.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “And those are Charles Boyer’s eyes, I’ll bet.” She paused, “But whose nose?”

“Ain’t Durante’s. Not big enough.”

“Humphrey Bogart? No.” She shook her head.

Bill clucked sympathetically. “I wouldn’t know. To me, one nose is as good as another, long’s it stays out of my business.”

She glanced up at the sound of crunching gravel. “Excuse me for mentioning it, then. But you got a customer.”

A maroon sedan rolled smoothly onto the drive-in. It had a doctor’s white cross beside the license plate. Bill hurried over to the ethyl pump.

A tall man in fawn gabardine with snap-brim to match, got out of the sedan, pointed to the windshield, asked Bill a question, strolled languidly toward the attendant’s shack. A tall, slim, leggy girl climbed out, too. She looked up at the sign:

“What you want, Eddie?” she called.

“Coffee,” he answered, over his shoulder. “Black.”

Annalou put away the puzzle sheet, slid two cups onto saucers.

The tall girl was willowy and graceful. Like those models at the big stores in town, Annalou thought. The dress she was wearing helped the illusion along. It was something soft and fuzzy in a pink-and-gray mixture, cut way down to there in front. It had that New Look everybody was talking about. On her, Annalou decided, it wasn’t bad.

“Howya, honey-chile.” The newcomer’s voice was throaty velvet. “Hot java on tap?”

“Best in town.” Annalou gazed admiringly at the dress. Must be an exclusive. Pipe that rose-rhinestone embroidery. “Something with it?”

“Uh-uh. Make it two, though.” The girl sat sidewise on her stool, crossed her nylons. “Things kinda slow?”

Annalou set out cream and sugar. “Always quiet this time of—”

A flat report came then. It sounded like a backfire. Annalou glanced quickly at the sedan’s exhaust. The motor wasn’t running. Bill had filled the tank, gone back to the shack.

The tall girl spilled off the stool, scurried toward the car. The driver of the sedan walked swiftly out of the shack. He got about ten paces from the door when Bill stumbled out, all doubled up, holding both hands pressed tight over his abdomen.

“You — skunk!” He coughed. He leaned against the door frame, fell down, got to his hands and knees, crawled a few feet, sagged to the gravel on his face, and lay still.

The tall girl snatched at her companion’s arm. “Eddie!” she screamed. “You promised you wouldn’t!”

He didn’t break his stride, didn’t answer.

“Eddie!” She tugged at his arm. “You’ve killed him!”

He jerked open the car door, slid in. “Coming?” He kicked the starter, the motor roared.

She scrambled in beside him. The sedan leaped forward before she got the door closed.

Frozen with fear, Annalou reached for a pencil on the cash-register ledge. She scribbled a number on the edge of the puzzle.

Then she grabbed a nickel out of the cash drawer, stumbled with pounding heart across the gravel toward Bill...

Lieutenant Les Wiley waited until the flash-bulb boys were through and the starchy internes had lifted Bill’s body onto a stretcher.

“You say this girl called him Eddie, Miss Kenyon?”

Annalou shivered, moved closer to Don Rixey’s protecting shoulder. “That’s right. Twice, she called him Eddie.”

“You’d recognize him, if you saw him?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. 1 didn’t see him close, Lieutenant. He had his hat pulled down over his eyes.”

The phone in the attendant’s shack rang. One of the plainclothesmen answered. “Hello,” he said, and “Yes,” and “Just a sec.” He came to the door.

“For you, Miss Kenyon. Your mother, 1 guess.”

They must have put it on the radio already then, she guessed. Otherwise, how would they have heard, at home? She hadn’t called anybody but Don.

“This is Annalou.” Her hand shook as she picked up the receiver. There was a spatter of dark red on the floor beside the phone shelf. This was where it had happened!

“One minute, honey-chile.” That throaty, velvety voice!

Annalou could only gasp.

“Listen, kid!” It was the man’s voice, now. Those brittle tones were unmistakable, though she’d only heard him speak one word. The murderer! “I’m givin’ you some friendly advice, babe. You talk all you want to, to those Little Boy Blues. But you’ll sleep better if you kind of forget to remember what 1 look like. You didn’t see me very good. Catch wise?”

“Yes,” Annalou breathed, almost paralyzed. “Yes, I catch.”

“That’s a smart kid,” the man at the other end of the line went on, smoothly. “That’s being sensible. I’d hate to have to do — what I had to do there in the office where you are now — again. Understand?”

Annalou nearly fainted. “Yes,” she managed to say. “Oh, yes, I understand.”

“So just be kind of vague, undecided. That’s right. And you won’t hear from me any more. If you play it that way.”

She didn’t hear him hang up. She didn’t hear anything. The plainclothesman picked her up off the floor. Don slopped a wet handkerchief on her forehead. The lieutenant found a flask in his pocket.

When she recovered enough to talk, she told them.

Lieutenant Wiley studied her narrowly: “So now you’re going to find it hard to remember, huh?”

Don snapped: “Why shouldn’t she! What would you do, if your life had been threatened!”

The lieutenant regarded him morosely. “Let the little lady do the talking and me the thinking. We’ll get along. How about it, Miss Kenyon?”

Annalou looked at Don, but she thought about Bill. Good old amiable Bill, crawling across the gravel there, with a hole as big as your fist in his stomach.

“I don’t know if I can describe the man.” She brushed her taffy-bright hair back off her forehead, wearily. “But I might be able to pick his picture out if you have a photo of him in the Rogues’ Gallery.” She bit her lip. “I hardly ever forget a face.”

A few hours later the lieutenant came into the file room with a typed report and an air of resignation.

“A lot of quick thinkin’ — for nothing. That license number you spotted, Miss Kenyon—”

Don exclaimed eagerly: “They picked up the sedan, huh?”

Wiley raised his eyebrows sardonically. “You in again? How’d it be if you pretended you’re just an innocent bystander, hah? Leave me and the little lady go into this kind of private like, hah?”

Don retorted defensively: “I just thought if they got the car—”

“They did. Half an hour ago. Parked. Right here on State Street. It was a stolen heap. We knew that, anyway. The doctor who owns it had reported its loss earlier tonight.” Wiley laid the report on his battered flat-top desk. “There weren’t any prints on the steering wheel or door handles. All wiped off, of course. So we’re back where we started.”

Annalou snapped a fingernail briskly against a glossy black and white print. “Not quite, Lieutenant.”

Don flung an arm around her shoulders, bent to examine the photo. “That him?!”

“Yep.”

Wiley reached for the picture. He had to reach around Don. “Pardon me, Dick Tracy. You positive this is the man, Miss Kenyon?”

“Uh-huh.” Annalou shuddered a little. “If this is the same fellow who stuck up those other stations,” Wiley said, “and we’re pretty sure he is, we’d better get busy. All those other attendants could remember about him was that he had eyes like a couple ice-cubes.”

“Maybe they also had phone calls which might have affected their memories no little,” Annalou suggested.

“Could be. Still and all, you wanna be absolutely certain,” counseled the officer. “Remember you didn’t get a gander at this guy within fifty or seventy-five feet. He had his hat on, then, too.”

“He could have been wearing an Eskimo parka,” Annalou said bitterly. “I’d know that pug nose and cleft chin anywhere.”

Wiley turned the photo over, studied the data on the back. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“Who is he?” Don asked.

Wiley ignored him. “This lug you identify, Miss Kenyon, is Larry, the Gong. There are readers out for him from Cleveland, Pittsburgh and points east.”

“Larry, the gong?” Annalou’s eyes made inquiry.

“They gave him that handle because he is all the time booting that gong around, Miss Kenyon. Y’understand? He is one of those wacky heroin hounds who never know themselves what they’ll do next.”

Don Rixey stuck his chin out aggressively. “I got a pretty good idea what he’ll try to do. He’ll try to fix Annalou’s wagon so it won’t squeak. That’s what he’ll try to do!”

Annalou’s mother was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes. Annalou sat on the sofa in the living-room, chain smoking and arguing with Don.

“What do you want me to do? Stay shut in here all the rest of my life?”

Don patted her shoulder. “I don’t want you roaming around where this Larry, the Gong, might get a shot at you. Particularly I don’t intend to have you going out to that ’burg joint where you been working. It’d be the first place he’d look for you.”

“But, Don, if I don’t show up, I’ll lose my job,” she wailed. “I can’t afford to lose my job. Don’t forget how hard we’re trying to save up for our marriage.”

“They won’t fire you for being out a few days, snooks.”

“Who says the police’ll round him up in a few days, anyhow!” Annalou wanted to know.

“Every cop in six states is looking for him. They’ve been broadcasting his description every hour on the hour. That’s just why he’ll go gunning for you. He’ll be sure you’re the only person who could have identified him.”

“I don’t care,” Annalou persisted, “I’m not going to be cooped up here like a hermit, for weeks, when all the time this Larry is probably a thousand miles away, in Miami or Los Angeles or some place. He wouldn’t dare stay around this city. He’d be sure to be caught.”

“Lieutenant Wiley thinks he’s still here.” Don was grim. “He says none of the trainmen or bus conductors or airports or bridge tenders have seen anyone answering that description, heading out of town. It’s a cinch he can’t be traveling very far by car, because every gas station within three hundred miles is on the lookout for him. Chances are he’s holed up right here close by somewhere, waiting until the heat is off, before he tries his getaway.”

Annalou ground out a cigarette she’d just lighted. “And you think I’m going to stay penned in all that time until the heat is off! Well, let me tell you something, darling!”

He beat her to it. “No, I don’t expect you to hole up here, indefinitely. I have an idea. Listen.”

She listened. Right up to the time he grabbed her with one hand, his hat with the other — and kissed her good-by...

The sergeant behind the desk squinted dubiously at the clock on the wall behind him.

“Lootenant Wiley goes off duty at four o’clock. ’Tis now half-past three. What might be the nature of your business with him?”

Don could hardly restrain himself from blurting out: “I know where Larry, the Gong, is hiding!” He did say:

“I’ve got some important information about that gas station bandit, I think.”

“You think.” The sergeant pondered. “Would it be important enough to confide to Detective First Grade O’Hare, you think?”

“If he’s on the case. Sure.” Don was getting sore. Didn’t these cops want any help in finding a murderer?

“Upstairs. First right.” The sergeant dismissed him.

Ten minutes later, Detective James O’Hare tilted his straight-backed chair against the wall and pulled his hat down over his eyes as if the light hurt him.

“I got to get this straight, Mr. Rixey. You never saw this Larry yourself?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor saw this ritzy dame who was with him at the time of the murder?”

“No, but—”

O’Hare held up a traffic cop palm. “So you couldn’t identify either of ’em, if you was to see ’em. But anyhow, you don’t claim you have seen either of ’em at this—” he glanced at scribbling on the desk pad in front of him “—this School Street address?”

“I haven’t even been around there to try to,” Don admitted. “If you’d only let me—”

The hand came up again, in the Stop signal. “Nobody at this department store actually remembers this dame, either — so you draw a blank there, too?”

“That’s right. Only—”

“Still, you’d like for the police to stick their necks out by going around and arresting somebody, just on your guesswork?”

“It’s more than guesswork,” Don protested. “She was the only one—”

O’Hare smiled tolerantly. “This Bureau doesn’t pull stuff like that, sonny. We’re sort of old-fashioned, maybe. But we like the least little bit of evidence, before we go bustin’ in people’s homes. A wee smidgin, so to speak, of identification. We like some slight indication that we won’t get bawled out by the Commissioner, raked over the coals by the newspapers and sued for false arrest by the wrong parties.” He brought his chair down on all fours with a bang. “Not that we don’t appreciate your public-spirited interest.”

“Public-spirited, bosh! I’m interested in Annalou!” Don rose angrily. “Then you won’t even investigate this lead?”

“We’ve too much to do to’ go wild-goosin’ off at every crackbrain suggestion from amateur gumshoes, sonny.” Gently O’Hare tapped the address in front of him. “By the same token, we won’t overlook any bets, however goofy they may seem. We’ll put this in the hopper. In the morning, the boys will make a routine investigation quietly.”

“By morning this Larry may have taken a run out powder!” Don raged.

O’Hare smiled patiently. “If he runs, we’ll get him. If he stays — and if, he’s where you say, we’ll still get him. We may not be Mounties. We don’t always get our man, but our battin’ average isn’t so bad. Thanks for comin’ around. We’ll let you know, if we hear anything.”

Thirty minutes later Don parked his Regal Radio Repair truck on School Street, in front of the address he’d given O’Hare.

“In the morning!” He mimicked the detective’s tone. “We’ll look into it, in the morning. Maybe, if we don’t forget about it, and if we don’t change our minds!”

He took his kit, stalked into the building. There was a row of mail boxes. Apartment 5-B had a black metal plate with gilt lettering: Tolman. That was the name they’d given him at the store.

He avoided the elevator, mounted three flights, and put his ear to the door of 5-B. Someone was singing “Doin’ What Comes Natch’rally.”

Don grinned tightly. The singer was Lou Blue of KYKI. He’d tuned too many superhets to that smouldering contralto not to be certain.

There was no other sound, inside 5-B. He heard the hum of the ascending elevator, ducked for the stair well, and ran on up.

He went all the way to the roof, congratulating himself on his foresight in wearing the coveralls with the garnet lettering on the back: Regal For Quick Repairs.

On the roof he found the right fire escape, went down it cautiously to the rear of 5-B. He kept a coil of wire over his shoulder, carried his kit conspicuously and held a pair of pliers, in case anyone should start asking questions. Nobody in any of the apartments he passed noticed him.

The shades in the rear windows of 5-B were drawn tight. He wouldn’t have been positive it was the right apartment, except that Lou Blue was giving out with “Mama, mama, mama, come dance with me.”

He traced the Tolman aerial to the roof, did things with wires, and crept back down the fire escape. The radio was giving a passable imitation of the Battle of the Bulge.

He took his time about climbing to the roof again, smeared a little grease on his chin before he went downstairs and thumbed the button at the 5-B door.

For maybe half a minute, nothing happened. The radio continued to explode intermittently, but at lower volume. Somebody had tuned it down.

Don’s mouth felt dry. That was funny, he thought. How could his mouth be so dry when he was streaming sweat.

Click! The door opened suddenly. He had heard no warning footsteps. Nothing — except bang, and there she was!

She wasn’t wearing the dress Annalou had described in detail so carefully to him. She wasn’t wearing much of anything except a filmy negligee that was about as concealing as cellophane. But her general appearance checked with the rough description Annalou had provided the police.

“Well?” she asked. There it was. The bland velvet voice.

“Radio repairs,” he blurted out with just the right mixture of embarrassment and wide-eyed admiration. “Sump’n wrong with the aerials. Mixup.”

“Do I care?” The willowy girl sized him up, coolly. “I didn’t call you. No complaint here.”

“Floor above.” Don grinned vaguely. His knees felt like melting butter. His voice sounded as if it belonged to somebody else and he was hearing it on a play-back. “Like to check your connections, if you don’t mind.”

“I do.” She started to close the door.

He anticipated her by a fraction of a second, blundering in as if he’d mistaken her refusal for an invitation. She blocked his way, suspiciously.

Out in the hall, the elevator door clanged. Somebody got out.

“Must be some trouble in your place,” Don said loudly, “it puts all the radios in the building on the blink. You don’t want everybody complainin’, do you?”

The footsteps clattering down the hall paused, momentarily.

“Come on in,” she snapped venomously.

He moved in. She closed the door behind him.

Acid dripped from her tongue. “Don’t get the idea you’re going to put the tap on me for any expense that’s involved.”

“It won’t cost you a cent, ma’am.” Don wondered if she could hear the way his heart was pounding. “I’m gettin’ mine from the other people.”

He followed her into a snauzy living-room. Thick, cream-colored chenille underfoot muffled his tread. Low, underslung furniture met his gaze all around. There were wood cuts in bleached-wood frames on the walls. Soiled clothes were piled on a huge divan. Among them was a man’s shirt, and a suitcase, lid up, stood beside the clothes.

Packing to go away, he thought. Not much man’s stuff around, though. Maybe I’m too late! Maybe he’s gone already.

She didn’t seem to be conscious of the litter, but she watched him with eyes bright with suspicion.

“Here’s the radio. It only went sour a few minutes ago.” She stood over him as he went down on hands and knees, got busy with his kit.

He put on a pair of dummy ear-phones, pretended to listen while he traced the ground connection. He followed it into the bedroom. Was that a shutting-door sound as he crawled in?

He scraped insulation off one of the cords that fed the lamp on the head of the four-poster. Beside him was the closet-door.

“That’s only a reading lamp you’re fooling with,” she challenged, her tone displaying steel under the velvet.

“You got ground interference here somewhere, lady. I’m right close to it, now.”

“No kidding,” she snapped. “I think you’d better skip the static gag, brother. I’ve got to go out. And so have you!”

“Anything you say.” His nerves tautened. He reached for the knob of the closet door to help himself to his feet.

“Keep your hands off that door!”

But Don pulled the door open as he stumbled laboriously erect. He got a fast glimpse of the closet. The pink and gray dress wasn’t there. A row of shoes was: women’s shoes, slippers, mules, sandals, all colors. Plus a stub-toed pair of Scotch grains, with ankles in them!

It was risky stuff, he knew, but he nerved himself to take his time about closing the door, clamping his foot against it as if by accident when he bent over his tool kit.

He came up with a hammer, a fist full of six-penny nails.

He wouldn’t have been shocked at the blast of a pistol, the sudden pain of a bullet crashing into his back, yet he jumped as if he’d touched a hot wire when she raked his face with needle-sharp nails.

He punched her. With the hand that held the nails. She went over backward as if he’d hit her with the hammer.

Before she could scramble to her feet he was smashing away at the first nail, driving it into the jamb and through into the frame.

There was a crashing blow from inside the closet. Wood strained, cracked. The top of the door bulged out an inch or so.

He drove another nail home before she came back. With a carving knife.

“Come near me with that, I’ll split your skull with this hammer!” he said through his teeth.

A dull muffled thump came from the closet. A splinter stuck out ominously from the door, leaving a small, round hole. Don stepped to one side, hammered in another big nail.

She moved in on him, catlike, knife held low for an underthrust.

He drove one more spike in near the top of the door before she was close enough to strike.

He lashed out with the hammer. She dodged, slashed at him viciously.

“Come on in, boys!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “We got both of ’em!”

She whirled. He flung himself on her back, wrested the weapon away from her.

Thump, bump, bump bump!

Four more holes, nicely shaped, low in the closet door. Don gave thanks, as he tapped the girl behind the ear with the hammer, that he hadn’t been standing there when those bullets came through the paneling. She sagged limply. It only took a couple of seconds to twist wire around her wrist and ankles. Then he went back to the door.

The man inside had reloaded, was shooting at the lock. Don lay flat on the floor, reached up, drove another nail. Another, another...

Before he went out in the living room to phone, he pushed the girl over against the door. For luck.

When he ran into the living room, the door to the hall was opening, noiselessly, slowly.

There was an eternity for Don to realize he’d been dumb enough to forget that the killer and his girl might have pals.

“Turn around!” A cold command from the hallway. “Stick your thumbs in your ears! Stay that way!”

Don obeyed. What a sap! Caught like this! His mind flashed to Annalou. She’d been right. It had been a matter for the police. And now... now—

He remembered how Bill had looked, there on the gravel.

Something prodded him between the shoulder blades. A finger.

“Holy cow! If it isn’t Young Sluefoot!”

It was O’Hare. Beside him, Wiley. Don closed his eyes, opened them again. It was no trick of his imagination. The officers were really there.

While they were smashing down the closet door, while a strangling coughing indicated that Larry, the Gong, was choking on his own powder fumes, Wiley bawled Don out:

“Just because you get some cute notion about where this dame—” the Lieutenant nodded at the willowy figure sitting up with her back against the end of the bed and her front covered with a blanket, “— hangs out—”

“I tried to tell you.” Don dabbed at claw marks on his cheek with his handkerchief. “Annalou remembered the dress this girl wore. She knew it must be brand new.”

“Murder wears the New Look,” O’Hare said, caustically.

“That’s right,” Don inspected his face in the mirror. “Annalou thought maybe the store that sold it would have a record of the customer, if there weren’t too many like it. It was unusual. Rhinestone embroidery gimmicks. So I went around and asked. There’d only been a couple sold, like the one this lady—” he considered a moment, changed it. “—this hellcat, wore last night. One was to a friend of the Mayor’s. The other was sold to Miss Tolman, of this address. So I came here.”

“Just like that,” Wiley said. “Singlehanded. You realize you might have scared them both away? That we might never have nabbed either of them?”

“Never thought about it.” Don admitted.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” O’Hare said. “If we hadn’t come along when we did, no telling who’d be spending that reward dough.”

Don turned. “Did you say — ‘reward’?”

“Five hundred fish,” Wiley said. “Gas companies offered it, tonight. Don’t you ever read the papers?”

“I will from now on,” Don promised. “Especially those furniture ads.”

He went out to call Annalou.