Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 139, No. 6, September 14, 1940

Come and Get It by Richard Sale

A girl can take Daffy for a walk, if she doesn’t mind riding back — in the meat wagon!

There was a knock on the door which I attempted to ignore, but it was a very forthright sort of knock, and it persisted. Still, I am a very forthright sort of sleeper, too... I hiked the sheet over my head and groaned, “Go ’way.” But it was no good. The guy kept knocking.

I finally pulled the sheet off and looked at the battered relic which I call an alarm clock, and it said eleven A.M. nastily. I went across to the door in my barefeet and opened it, and I got a mild surprise.

Outside there was an old coot who looked like something off a Gloucester fisherman. He was tall and rangy and his skin was weathered a very healthy brown. His eyebrows were as thick as a wolf’s tail, and snow-white. They would have put J. Nance Garner’s to shame. He had no mustache, but the finest white and silver beard that ever graced a man’s chin. And his pale gray eyes, although they must have been seeing this world for some sixty-five years or so, were as clear and canny as the eyes of an Islamic prophet.

“My friend,” I said wearily, for, yea, I was weary, “you have made a grave mistake.”

“Have I now?” he said in a crackly, dry voice, watching me sharply. “And what makes you think so?”

“Because you are not looking for me,” I said. “My name is Daffy Dill and I am a newspaperman, and my friends all know that it is courting homicide to disturb me before high noon, when I have been out on the Broadway beat the night before.”

“Indeed,” said the white beard. “But I’ll come in and have a word with ye just the same, Mr. Dill, if ye don’t mind.”

The telephone rang at the same time, and I shrugged at him and said: “Come on, Pop. You might as well.” And I left him to run over and pick up the handset. It was the Old Man on the wire.

“Good morning, picklepuss,” the Old Man said. “So sorry to wake you up but I was afraid some one might walk in and take a gander at you and then call a coroner.”

“Ha ha,” I groaned. “Is it true you are opening a luggage shop with the supply of bags you have under your eyes?”

“Nix,” said the Old Man sternly. “You’re in no position to make wisecracks, Daffy. Where the hell were you at nine A.M.? This is a newspaper you work for, in case you’ve forgotten. I know, I know; I take a lot of kidding and I’m easy on you because of your eccentricities, but the boss in person, and no kidding, raised the devil this morning. He was in a firing mood.”

“Do tell,” I said uneasily. “And did you impress upon him those eccentricities you mentioned, i.e., the garnering of newsworthy stories?”

“That was kind of hard to do,” replied the Old Man tartly, “since you haven’t turned in a number one in over two months.”

That was true enough. I said weakly, “Then you might tell him that I only report the news, I don’t make it. Since that latest blitzkrieg abroad, every crook and killer in the city seems to have taken a vacation. I swear, chief, I think they’re all sitting back and reading the newspapers themselves, and worrying about our own M day.”

“Don’t digress,” said the Old Man. “No stories isn’t a legit excuse. The boss would only give you that old story about James Gordon Bennett. Anyway, a guy was in to see him and the boss wanted the guy to see you, which was what raised such a fuss. I saved the day by saying you had been out late last night on something hot which did not pan out—”

“You were right there. It was Dinah, and I didn’t get to first base.”

“—and then I sent this guy up to see you. He was anxious to see you. Let me know what developes.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I turned around and saw that White Beard had taken a seat after closing the door, and was staring at me with wise, amused eyes. “Is the guy you sent up something out of Neptune’s locker, an old salt, a veritable breath of the sea?”

“Don’t be fooled,” the Old Man snapped. “His name is Joshua Briggs and he is one of the cleverest marine insurance operatives you have ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

“Not this guy,” I said. “He’s too old.”

White Beard grinned. His teeth were tobacco stained and he was chewing a cut. “My name’s Briggs,” he said. “Joshua Briggs, and I reckon it’s me, all right. Suppose you hang up so’s we can come to the point, Daffy.”

I said goodbye to the Old Man and hung up, then turned to sit down on the bed opposite the old coot. “Such familiarity,” I murmured. I looked him over carefully. “Brother, it goes beyond belief. What would an old coot like you be doing as an insurance detective?”

“Detecting,” said Joshua Briggs.

“Sure, but what if the job got dangerous? You’re built like a boxer, I admit, but at your age, you’re in the wrong racket. How can you take care of yourself.”

“Well,” he murmured, “I’ll tell ye. Sam Colt, when he made his equalizer, didn’t take into account what manner o’ man would do the shooting. So although I’ve seen the best years, I expect to see many more on account of I can draw faster than you, if I have to, and it all boils down to who gets there first with the mostest bullets, don’t it?”

Before I could open my mouth, he made a casual but swift passing motion at his chest, and I was staring down into the muzzle of a .38 caliber belly gun. I gaped.

“See?” he said. “I could’ve shot your ears off.”

“You win,” I said, swallowing. I grinned at him. “All is not gold that glitters, eh? That was nice going. You’ve got a sweet draw.”

He put the gun away, chuckling drily. “Let’s get down to business. I know you’re a man to be trusted or Mr. Wilston Kenyon wouldn’t have sent me to you. I knew Kenyon’s pop in the old days. He was a sailorman with as fine a fleet of fisherman as ever waked the Banks. He sure was a sorry man when his son went into journalism instead of seafaring, but times change.”

“Mr. Kenyon sent you then. Why?”

“Well, son, I’m on a big case and I reckon I need a little help,” said Josh Briggs blandly. “Ain’t as spry as I used to be, for one thing, and for another, I reckon I’m getting too well known, and it’s kind of hard to get information. Now you get around and you hear things and you know things and I figured, if you could help, you could have the story, which will be a fine thing, I warn you.”

“That’s not enough,” I said, with a smile. “You’ll have to teach me that draw too.”

“Shucks, that’s simple enough,” he said. “Just takes about forty years o’ practice. But I’ll show you. Are you on?”

“More or less,” I said. “I’d like to hear first what the shooting is going to be about.”

“Ain’t going to be any shooting,” he said. “And it ain’t my business to tell you anything, son, I’m sorry to say. This is Lloyd’s business and not to be bandied, y’see. I’m just the agent. But I’m trying to find a man named Greer. Fabian Greer. He hung out a lot around Broadway, which is why I figured you might know him.”

“I know Fabian Greer,” I said. “He’s not exactly an upright citizen. More on the stoolpigeon side. As a matter of fact, Greer is a first class rat with a yellow spine a mile wide.”

“Uh-huh,” Josh Briggs nodded. “Him I want.” He got to his feet.

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “This doesn’t make sense. Why do you want a stoolie? Where do I bring him? Or do I—”

“Hang onto ye hawser a bit, son,” said Joshua Briggs sternly. “I told ye I can’t be answering questions. You find Greer, you tell me where he is, and then I’ll thank ye for ye services. That’s all.”

“Where can I reach you?”

“You can leave a message for me at the Atlantic Marine office on lower Broadway. Where I’m staying is my own healthy secret. This ain’t exactly a picnic, son, as you will see when I inform you o’ the details later on, as per our bargain.”

“Well,” I said, “all right. But this is an awful let-down. I thought the layout was going to be exciting. Instead, I’m just an errand boy.”

He smiled in agreement and went out without another word.

Dinah Mason called while I was shaving and invited herself to lunch with me. “I’m broke, darling,” she said. “This is Thursday, you know. No mazuma until payday tomorrow.”

“What about me, Angel-eyes?” I said. “I’m flatter than the Danish bill of rights! I spent my last seven bucks last night only to get turned down when I passed at you.”

“Did you pass at me last night?” Dinah said. “I can’t remember that at all. I thought it was a very dull evening.”

“I asked you to marry me at twelve-ten in the taxi on the way to Leon and Eddie’s,” I said. “The cab meter read fifty-five cents, it was raining, and you said no.”

“Do you call a legitimate proposal of marriage a pass at me?” Dinah replied with sarcasm. “The trouble with you, my boy, is that you’re too much of a gentleman; you haven’t enough rogue in you, you rogue. Anyway, I have good reasons for not hitching up with a wack like you, darling, and I’m starving, really. So meet me at the Hideaway where you can sign for the check, broke or not, and you can shoot the taffy to me, Daffy, right there!”

She hung up. I hung up. What can you do with a girl like that?

I waited for half an hour in the lobby of the Hideaway Club, chewing the fat with Bill Latham until Dinah finally wandered in at one-thirty, and made no attempt at an excuse for being late. So we ate. There was no point in bawling her out. I’d asked Bill Latham if he knew where I could find Fabian Greer. He didn’t know.

After we finished, Dinah left. She had a movie to cover and she remembered at least to thank me with a kiss. I decided to wander over to Broadway and mooch along the stem until I got a lead. I was walking toward 45th Street when I spotted a police car at the curb and ’lo and behold, who should be in it but Lieutenant William — Poppa to us — Hanley, the homicide bureau’s fair-haired boy. “Poppa!” I yelped.

Poppa got out of the car looking gloomier than a Dutch frontier post. “Hello, Daffy,” he said. “How the hell you do it I don’t know.”

“How do I do what?” I said.

“How you find out about these things.”

Poppa’s face was red, long and homely, and he kept pulling the lobe of his right ear which is a sure sign that somebody’s person is no longer in that state of activation we call life. “There’s been a bump-off,” I said blandly. “I have an instinct about such things.”

“Yeah?” Poppa Hanley grunted, suspicious. “And all of a sudden, I think you just happened to run into me. Never mind, beautiful. Tag along. The situs criminis is upstairs here in the Hotel Gare.”

The Hotel Gare was an inch better than a flophouse. Well, not as bad as that, but it was only a dump with cheap rates and cheap rooms, jammed in between a movie theater and a chain restaurant. I noticed the pair of cops in front of it; they looked so casual. We went passed them and upstairs and into a room.

Sergeant Babcock was up there, with another cop. There was no sign of Dr. Kerr Kyne, the chief medical examiner. We went in and had a look. The stiff was face down on a rickety bed, with his hands tied behind his back, and his legs bound. There were six bullet wounds in his back, ranging from his head down to his kidneys. He looked familiar.

“Turn him over,” I said.

“Can’t,” said Babcock. “We’re waiting for Doc Kyne, Daffy.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“Sure. He signed the register as Frank Clements.”

I grunted and stared at Poppa. “I never heard of Frank Clements, my friend, and this guy’s gray suede shoes and pin-stripe suit look pretty familiar. Turn him over and take a gander.”

Poppa Hanley took a deep breath, for the corpse wasn’t exactly pretty. He grabbed the stiff by the shoulders and shoved. The body was rigid. But we got him over enough to see that the dead man was Mr. Fabian Greer.

I wasn’t shocked, just surprised. I didn’t hang around, but instantly went down into the lobby and picked up the telephone at the desk and called the Atlantic Marine office. When I got it, I said, “I have a message for Joshua Briggs. This is Daffy Dill. He told me to call there.”

“Yes.”

“You can tell him that Fabian Greer is dead of gunshot wounds in the Hotel Gare on Broadway.”

I hung up.

I didn’t go back upstairs then. Not that I hadn’t intended to, for I wanted the story of what had happened, and I also wanted to see the clues. But I didn’t go back because I couldn’t go back.

She was tall and striking. A very good-looking girl. Her hair was reddish brown, and as glossy as wax, and it fell to her shoulders beneath a perky little thing some one dreamed up as a hat. Her mouth was full and sensuous and she was in there batting one hundred percent. She came up to me at the desk and asked if she could speak with me.

“Do I know you?” I said.

“No,” she said, her voice soft and low. “But I heard you say that you were Daffy Dill, and I’m in trouble, and you can help me.”

“I’m very busy,” I said. “There’s been a murder upstairs, and I’m a newspaperman first, and a helper-outer second, even with a dream walking, like yourself.”

“But this concerns the murder upstairs,” she said. “My name is Margot Leeds, and I really must see you. I know something.”

Well, well, who was I to turn down direct evidence? I took her by the arm and started to lead her to one of the three chairs the lobby boasted, but she shook her head. “Not here,” she said.

“Where away, Venus?”

“Let’s just walk,” she said. “Let’s just stroll on Broadway and talk. That’s the best way. I may be watched.”

“All right,” I said.

She took my arm and we went out. She turned me north and she didn’t say a word. We reached 46th Street and I allowed as how it might be time to give out since we were practically alone among ten thousand people. “Yes,” said Margot Leeds. “It’s all right now, I guess. Turn down this street and keep going.”

“Nix,” I said suddenly. “I don’t like the setup. It’s as phoney as you are, and I’m not playing ball. I’m a sucker for a good-looking gal, Venus, but I’ve got responsibilities too. Come on, we’re going back and see Poppa Hanley.”

“No, we’re not,” she said quietly. “We really are not. Please don’t make a scene. Just keep walking.”

“You’ve got either a lot of faith in your good looks or a lot of nerve, sweetheart,” I said. “Nix.”

She nudged me with her left hand and I felt a hunk of steel tickle my ribs. “Keep walking,” she said. It was the hand with which she took my elbow as we walked. Only she didn’t take my elbow. She had a small caliber pistol in the hand and she hid it from view between my elbow and my ribs.

Oh well, it was a cinch she wouldn’t shoot me in broad daylight if I made a pass at her. I think I could have taken her gun by doing the wheeling trick that Poppa Hanley had once taught me, turning faster than her reflexes could fire the gun.

It makes me laugh anyhow the way people will pull a rod on you and expect you to believe that they would drop you on the slightest provocation. That isn’t a fact. Maybe yes, if a snowbird holds the gun, but not a girl like Margot Leeds. I didn’t doubt that she had the nerve, but I did doubt that she was stupid enough to really do it.

However, there were things to find out, and I strung along. Why not? I was safe enough, really. I had a forty-five caliber belly gun in its holster under my coat. The old corpse-maker, with sawed off barrel, flat-filed spur and sawed-off trigger guard so that nothing would get in the way of my finger when it went looking for the trigger.

We went down 46th, Margot Leeds and I, and once I looked at her and found her very pale and pretty, but nervous, but definitely! She did not say another word until we reached a canopy with the legend Chez Chat on the green canvas. It was a dingy-looking spot as most of the old pre-repeal dives are. “Turn in here,” she said.

We turned in and entered the place. There wasn’t a soul inside. A wispy-looking little punk unlocked the door, with a gun in his hand and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. I’d never seen him before.

“The boss is upstairs,” he said.

Upstairs, we found an office in what had once been the living room of an apartment. Here there were two men. One of them I knew. He was the Dasher, alias Frank Carrone, a quiet, almost gentle gangster with mild gray eyes and a twisted mouth, who could handle a short knife like an old Gothic warrior. The short knife was his weapon.

But Carrone wasn’t the boss. The boss was a polished gentleman in a tweed suit, looking quite normal, clean, and bright; wearing spectacles which lent him a goggly-eyed aspect, having his hair cut too short around the ears. He was very tanned, and he looked fit.

He smoked long cigarettes.

“Well,” Carrone said, staring at me in surprise. “Boss, this guy is a newspaperman. Daffy Dill. The Chronicle.” His hands found his jeans. He looked uneasy and displeased. He said to the girl, “I hope you got a good reason for bringing this guy in.”

“A very good reason,” said Margot Leeds. “He knows where the Briggs man is.”

The boss smiled at me casually. “Your name is Dill? How do you do? Since Margot failed to introduce us, permit me. I am Carl Steiber.”

“It would be rude of me,” I replied, “not to say that this is a great pleasure, so I’ll be rude and not say it. What’s your racket?”

Steiber’s smile did not change. He seemed quite at ease. “You know Mr. Joshua Briggs I take it?”

“From way back,” I lied. “We were spawned together on the high seas and learned to spit curves into the wind together.”

“Where is he?”

“Tso tsorry,” I tsk-tsked.

“But really, old man,” Steiber said, surprised. “I must get in touch with him. It’s most urgent, believe me.”

“I can imagine. It was most urgent for you to get in touch with Fabian Greer too, I suppose.”

Frank Carrone grunted. He moved warily to the window and peered out. “I knew it,” he snapped. “I told you I didn’t want to play ball with a screwy dame. This is a setup. She didn’t bring him in on her own. He let her. He’s up on it already, Steiber. This ain’t no newspaper punk you’re playing with. This guy is one of the smartest legmen in the business and he packs a rod which I’ll take right now.” He turned and faced me.

“Now, now,” said Steiber. “No roughing, please. I’m quite sure Margot knew what she was doing. Do you have a gun, Dill?”

“Yes,” I said. “Quite a baby too.”

I unbuttoned my coat so that they could see it.

“Give it to me, please,” Steiber said.

“Come take it,” I said.

Nobody made a move. Carrone was breathing hard. Margot Leeds looked amused. “You’re very daring, aren’t you?” she said, her eyes bright. “But I think you’re bluffing.”

“Shut up,” said Carrone. “He ain’t.”

She snapped open her handbag to take out the gun she had nudged into me during our walk, and I drew like a flash and shot the bag out of her hand. She screamed and fell back against the wall. Steiber jerked his desk drawer open and then didn’t move. I covered Steiber with the .45 and I covered Carrone with my eyes.

Nobody moved. I could hear Margot Leeds panting in terror at the proximity of the bullet which had separated her from the bag. I said, “All right, boys, give out. One of you talk.”

They kept watching me, petrified into inaction. I said to Steiber, “Pick up the telephone and call the police.”

“Not I,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “That time you called it, and it was a bluff. I think I will be leaving. If anyone makes a pass at me, it’s blitzkrieg all over the place. You know that, Carrone. Be good.”

I backed to the door and opened it. It was going to take a good dash down the stairs, with the chance they might fire from the window when I made the street. I didn’t like the setup.

I liked it even less the next instant. As I eased out of the door, a gun barrel cracked so hard on my wrist I thought the bone broke. The wispy guy, the wispy guy who wasn’t even big enough to be remembered. He’d taken me from behind, and there I was.

I didn’t even make a stab at picking up my gun after it fell...

They were pretty rough on me. First they tied me in a chair and asked me again and again where Joshua Briggs was. It was one time I was really outfoxed, because I didn’t know. So I couldn’t say. Then Carrone went to work on me with his fists. He didn’t hurt me as much as he thought, and I couldn’t say anything.

Then Mr. Steiber stuck a toothpick under my fingernail and lighted it and warned me that it would be extremely painful if it burned all the way down.

“You sawed-off thug,” I snapped, watching that toothpick burn. “This isn’t anything to what the boys at Centre Street will do to you when they go to work on you after I get out of here.”

“After you get out of here?” Steiber said. “You’re not getting out of here, old man. Really you’re not. Not possibly. You’re going to be shot as soon as I think it convenient. You might as well talk and spare yourself some unnecessary pain.”

“I don’t know where he is,” I said. “He wouldn’t tell me himself. You can burn my fingers off, and I couldn’t add anything to that. And I like my fingers.”

Frank Carrone said nervously, “He’s telling the truth. And you ain’t bumping this guy off, boss.”

Steiber sighed and blew out the burning toothpick and pulled it out from under my fingernail. “I agree with you on the fact he may be telling the truth, for Mr. Briggs is no fool and would probably not have told Dill much. But as to his execution, I make the decisions.”

“Listen,” said Carrone, “I’m clear on Greer. See? I’ve got an alibi on Greer. And Dill ain’t getting knocked off, not with my hand in it. You paid me to cover you, and I’m doing it. I’m right-handing for you, but you didn’t pay me for murder. That ship sails at two and after that, Dill couldn’t do a thing, if you held him until the job came off. But no more killing. If cops catch up with me, I ain’t gonna fry. These other raps I can beat. So far it’s only assault and battery. That’s minor.”

“For an American gunman,” Steiber said cooly, “you lack any singular courage. And you aren’t earning your money. Keep your mouth shut and watch him a moment.” His fishy eyes swept to Margot Leeds. “You heard him call Atlantic Marine with a message for Briggs?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s why I brought him.”

“Very good, my dear... In that case, I am going to call Atlantic Marine and make an appointment with Briggs to meet me out front here. Only I will give Dill’s name. Then we’ll see what happens.”

“Why bother?” she said. “Why bother anymore? Dill doesn’t know anything. Briggs only suspects, he has no definite information. Greer would have given him that.”

“As I thought,” I said. “Greer was the squeaker, eh? So you knocked him off before he could get to Briggs and earn a bigger fee.”

Nobody answered me. Steiber picked up the telephone and called Atlantic Marine, and while he was pulling his trick I looked at Frank Carrone hard and said: “I hope you feel good, you rat. You have respect for a guy in the business of being a crook, if he’s a good crook. But when a guy sells out his country—”

“Shut up,” Carrone said.

“Steiber’s a German agent,” I said. “That’s as plain as the nose on his face.”

“I’m not selling out my country,” Carrone said. “I’m neutral.”

“The hell you’re neutral. And if you are neutral, you’re neutral against Germany, and you know it.”

“Dill, please, don’t be naïve,” Steiber said, finishing his phone call.

But Carrone looked uneasy and he kept his hands in his pocket.

I said, “They’ll knock you off anyhow, Frankie. You’ve been worrying about that, haven’t you? You wouldn’t expect Steiber to pay you off and let you walk out of here, knowing what’s going to happen, do you?”

Steiber came over casually and slapped me across the face. It hurt like blazes. “Keep quiet, Esel,” he said. “Rühren Sie sich nicht.”

“Oh, brother,” I grunted, as the pain made my eyes fill up. “How I would like a go at you in the old Andy Jackson fashion — wrists tied, bowie knives. I’d cut your heart out.”

“Americans are such romantics,” Steiber said.

We all sat still, and nobody said a word. Frank Carrone kept staring at Steiber. Carrone was pale. The wispy man who had ambushed me was downstairs again. They spoke of him as Fritz. I knew I’d never seen the runt before. He was a Steiber man, not a Broadway punk.

The day before, Sammy Lyons of the Chronicle, had been ill, and it had fallen to me, through the mind-workings of the Old Man, to cover Sammy’s beat for him. Sammy’s column was I Cover Ships, the waterfront trek.

I mention all this not to point out that I made crushing discoveries in the way of newsbeats, for as a matter of fact, I wrote a very dull column for Sammy, the ship news being practically negligible. With so many countries at war, there were only six transatlantic ships — four American, one Greek, one Spanish. And no news.

But I had picked up that rumor that the British liner Salina was going to sail the following day for war duty. The week before, the ship had taken on a new coat of war paint, and her steam was up. She was taking on no cargo at all, and it looked as if she were going to become a transport.

I didn’t have much doubt than that Steiber’s stake was in the Salina.

“I wonder,” I said, “what’ll happen to the Salina?”

Steiber wheeled and stared at me. Frank Carrone gasped. Carrone said, “I knew it, by God, I knew they were up on it!” He took out a gun and held it carelessly.

“Put your gun away and don’t be a fool!” Steiber said. “He’s only guessed—”

“Time bomb in the hold,” I risked. “Blow her up when she puts out to sea. Nice going.”

Steiber hit me so hard, my chair went over backwards. At the window, Margot Leeds cried, “Carl! A white-bearded man!”

“That is Briggs!” Steiber snapped. “Geben Sie acht! I’m going downstairs to get him. Prepare to move out of here. Once we dispose of Briggs, we are finished. You know what I mean, Margot. I’ll be back. Fritz and I will come up for you.” He went out the door with a Luger pistol.

“It’s murder, Frank,” I said. “You can see it coming. And not only me. You too. Think hard on it.”

“I’ve done my thinking,” Carrone said. “I’m clearing out of this. That Heinie figures to knock me off; it’s been shown all the way. I stuck my neck out getting in this, but I ain’t getting knocked off.”

“Cut me loose,” I said. “I’ll forget your part of it.”

“You’re an honest guy,” Carrone said. He looked scared. “I’ll take you at your word.” He sprang to me and turned the chair over and went through the ropes on my hands with that little short-bladed knife he carried. Margot Leeds cried out sharply at him and ran for the desk.

“Carrone!” I snapped.

She shot him from behind the desk. And she shot him four times at that. She shot him with my gun which Steiber had kept on the desk and when I knew that, I also knew that Carrone was a dead man. He never had a chance against those hard-hitting forty-five slugs. They make a terrible wound, and their power is plenty. He had been singularly careless, turning his back to the dame, but who would have expected a girl as pretty as that to be able to turn on the slugs with such coldblooded design?

I was luckier. I should have been clipped by my own rod too, but I wasn’t. For one thing, those bullets knocked Frankie Carrone right on top of me. When she fired at me, she hit him again. He didn’t know it. He was dead. I half winced for a second, thinking the slug might have gone through him and hit me. That happens sometimes.

It didn’t. And there was Carrone’s own gun. It practically fell out of his hand into my good right.

Downstairs, there was the sound of a police whistle, and then a fusilade of shots, sharp and clear. A man screamed. Another yelled in German — Steiber’s voice.

Margot Leeds drew careful aim on my face and I didn’t waste time with such things as slow aim. I threw the gun on her in an instinct shot and started firing. I kept right on firing until I saw her go down. The noise was earsplitting, and the place reeked with gunpowder.

When I got to my feet, Margot Leeds was no longer pretty. Outside of looking ugly enough dead, with the waxy pallor and mouth agape, my bullets had hit her twice in the face and head, and they hadn’t been kind.

My legs were a little numb. I stumbled over to the door and opened it and tried to get downstairs, but some one was coming up. Steiber. He didn’t have any gun. He was coming so hard, he barely looked at me. I’ll always swear he thought I was Carrone. He never bothered to look.

I hooked him with a weak left which threw him surprisingly off balance, and he went downstairs again, only the return trip was made on his backside instead of his feet. He rolled out of sight around the turn, and I went down after him.

I got the biggest surprise of my life. Down in the lobby, the wispy man was lying on a couch, bleeding from a bad wound in the side. Fritz was on the fritz, and Sergeant Babcock was making sure he stayed that way.

At my feet, Steiber was sprawled, conscious but dazed from his fall, and over him stood a man with a white beard that had seen better days. At first glance, I would have thought it was Joshua Briggs, but a second glance showed him to be Lieutenant Poppa Hanley, and he looked at me appalled and shouted: “Daffy! Daffy! What’ve they done to you?”

I must have looked pretty grim with both my eyes discolored, and the fist welts on my face.

“They have done nothing,” I snapped, “that ain’t gwine to be given back within the next fifteen minutes! What the hell are you doing here? And where is Briggsy?”

Poppa Hanley led me to a chair and I sat down. I was shaking like a leaf, and I tried to get my breath. “Now listen, you dumb-bunny,” he said, “and hear it the first time. Joshua Briggs is on the Salina. He persuaded a German agent aboard to rat, and they found a time bomb in the forward hold, set to go off in ten hours. We were covering the ship with him, cleaning out the nest when a messenger from Atlantic Marine came and said you’d asked him to meet you at the Chez Chat. Briggs said he had shadowed an agent named Steiber to the place and that it was a trap, so I said I’d keep the date. I got rigged out like this, put on a bulletproof vest and came, but Babcock and the others were in the advance guard and they had this street closed when I got here.

“Steiber let me in and tried to take me in the lobby, along with this little guy who got in the way of a .38... That Steiber is a slick eel. But when I heard the shooting upstairs, I didn’t waste time. Who’d you get?”

“The woman,” I said. “Name of Leeds. After she shot Frank Carrone. Take this gun, Poppa.”

“What are you going to do?”

“It’s over, isn’t it? They got the rats? Briggs is all right?”

“Yeah but—”

“Never mind that,” I said. I went over and jerked Steiber to his feet. He had regained his composure and was fishing for a spectacle case with spares, I guess, for his other ones had been broken.

“You can skip those,” I said. “And put up your dukes.”

“Dukes?” said Steiber with a sneer.

“You don’t understand?” I said. “It’s like this. Upstairs you went to work on me when my hands were tied. I could do the same to you down at Centre Street with a rubber hose. But that isn’t the way Americans work, punk. You get a chance to defend yourself. Silly, isn’t it? But then, Americans are so romantic.”

And then I went to work.