Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

Frayne looks over the “lilies of the field” for the slayer of the lovely Baa-Baa Jackson...

I

“On your toes, Don. Five-four in games, remember. If I lake this one it ’ll give me the set.” Inspector Frayne walked to the service line.

“Better give me all you’ve got, chief,” came back Haggerty. “I’ve just been kidding you along.”

The famous manhunter’s answer was a nod and a smile and a ball that Haggerty was barely able to lob over the net. Frayne killed it, and Haggerty grinned.

“Still kidding you, sir,” he said.

Frayne laughed, this time. He rarely laughed. He enjoyed these games with Don, though. Although Don was younger and had been a tennis crack in college, the two were fairly evenly matched. It was the only outdoor sport in which the police official indulged, and he drove to this upper West Side club whenever he could find the leisure. There was no better physical exercise on the market, in his opinion, and he had to keep himself in trim.

Frayne, after a beautiful volley, took the next point. And took the following one after a still harder tussle. He didn’t get a chance, however, to put over his next serve.

A club attendant came rushing up excitedly. All club attendants had strict orders to interrupt any game at any presumably crucial moment, if necessary, if an official call came over the wire.

“Mr. Haggerty, sir,” the man was literally bellowing, apparently enjoying the importance of the layman at being mixed up in police business. “From headquarters. Lieutenant Geogan. Very important. He’s on the wire, sir.”

Frayne dropped his arm, nodded just once, and Haggerty took a hurdle over the net and raced for the clubhouse.

Haggerty was Frayne’s right hand man; his protégé; his buffer. It was Don’s task, before anything else, to see that his superior was not troubled with any murder problems that might have been dissected by any average detective. No one was allowed to communicate with the famous manhunter directly; they had first to give their stuff to his assistant.

Frayne had been forced to lay down this law. Otherwise he would have been swamped with all the unimportant and easily untangled eases that are bound to occur in the five boroughs that comprise the miracle city of the world, New York.

Frayne was twirling his racket, impatiently. Lieutenant Geogan wouldn’t have called unless the affair had been a vital and baffling one. Geogan was one of the shrewdest men on the New York force.

But Haggerty was back, now. He was running his fingers through his reddish hair, as he invariably did when he thought a mystery was on deck.

“Baa-Baa Jackson, chief,” he said, his keen face alive with enthusiasm. “Paid the so-called wages of sin at last. Found in her bed this morning. Cold murder. Beaten up first, then stabbed. A kitchen knife from her own apartment. She—”

“Why not?” Frayne cut in with a frown. “She must be — yes, she must be thirty-eight. She had a long run. Couldn’t Geogan put his Broadway crew on the job?”

“Wait, chief, wait a minute, please,” replied Haggerty. “The maid let herself into the apartment with her key at nine o’clock this morning, as she always did. Baa-Baa sort of half woke up and said she didn’t want to be disturbed until eleven. The maid got busy on the job of cleaning up the place. In something less than half an hour, as near as she can figure, the doorbell rang. It was Vince Lamont. He insisted on waking Baa-Baa. They found her dead — beaten up and slabbed. Geogan swears that the colored maid is O.K. Good rep, and she also stood up under questioning. She says she can’t be wrong; that Baa-Baa spoke to her when she came in at nine. The bedroom window was latched. Besides, the maid didn’t hear a sound.

“Chief,” Haggerty finished, “it looks nice!”

Frayne, fingering his well trimmed mustache with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, was smiling a trifle skeptically. His voice also had the same tone.

“Another of these miracle murders, eh?”

Haggerty didn’t answer this one. Haggerty wasn’t supposed to answer it. Haggerty knew just when, and when not, to speak, which was one more reason why he was a valuable asset to the great manhunter.

Frayne’s eyes, of that cold blue of a particularly cold winter sky, had gone to triangular slits. They always did, when he was musing on murder.

Murder, it so happened, was his hobby. It was more than his hobby. It was food and drink to him. It was what made his blood keep on pumping and his brain keep on throbbing. It was his life.

“Lamont?” he suddenly asked.

“Alibi looks on the square, Geogan says. Vince says he left Baa-Baa’s apartment at about four in the morning, after one of their merry rows. He stopped in an apartment on the ground floor, where a party was going on, and had a few drinks. Seven or eight witnesses to that. Coming back to make it up with Baa-Baa when the maid answered his ring, he says.”

Frayne nodded and tucked his racket under his arm, starting briskly for the clubhouse.

“Let’s go, Don.”

Four minutes and fifty seconds later, after having shed tennis flannels and taken a shower and changed into street garb, they were roaring through traffic in Frayne’s private roadster, that had the fastest engine made in America under its hood.

II

Baa-Baa Jackson?

You should ask, as the phrase has it.

Back in the days when Italian table d’hôte dinners, including wine, were fifty-five cents; back when drinks were two for a quarter and name your brand; back before the self-starters could always be counted on to do their stuff; back before the affair at Sarajevo that is said to have precipitated the War To End Wars — back in nineteen hundred and twelve, to be explicit — a little girl had come out of the South.

The newspapers had said she came out of the south anyway — and so did she — although two or three catty souls averred that she had been born and reared and raised up in Herkimer County. They said, furthermore, that Ike Schubel, the New York musical comedy man, had found her in the station of this same up State town. She had, they added, been serving coffee, and pie, and sandwiches from under circular glass cases, in the station restaurant.

Maybe yes; maybe no. Mr. Schubel, at least, had seen her innate possibilities. She had had a more than fair figure; she had had a voice with exactly the correct touch of throatiness; she had had, also, very large black eyes and very natural light golden hair. And that, in itself, as Mr. Schubel stated, is always something to telegraph home about.

Briefly, he hadn’t done any telegraphing. He had signed her on the spot for his next production, and he had taken his two bags from the waiting train. He had caught the next train for Tammany Town, with Baa-Baa in tow.

So the story goes, when it is told by those two or three catty people.

Her first appearance, which nobody noticed, it must be admitted, was when she went through the motions with the rest of the chorus in “Little Fleecy Lamb.”

Just how long she would have kept on kicking up her legs, in company with twenty-three others, can never be definitely ascertained.

Appendicitis was quite fashionable that season, and the second female lead came down with it. She could afford to, having recently annexed what is now known as a big butter and egg man to attend to the tedious task of seeing the landlord on the first of the month.

This little lady had been singing a song that Ike Schubel had thought would be a wow. So had the lyric man and every one else. Only it hadn’t been. That was why they hadn’t been so grieved at the outbreak of appendicitis. They could chuck the number, now, and let it go at that. One salary saved.

But the girl with the golden locks and dark orbs had pleaded to be given a tryout. Just once.

“It costs nothing,” was how Mr. Schubel had argued down the opposition. “Let her she should try it once.”

That is the true history of how “I Want to Be Somebody’s Baa-Baa Lamb” came to be the greatest song hit of the period.

No one can dope it out, for many have tried and all have failed, yet it happens to be a fact that certain personalities have been able to put over certain things that other equally colorful personalities have flopped on completely.

Baa-Baa Jackson, from that night, was made.

She didn’t have to have appendicitis to break her contract with Ike Schubel; she merely told him to go to hell.

She had quit “Little Fleecy Lamb” for the protection of a great big wolf — one of the Wall Street variety. He had given her very pleasant pastures in which to gambol, including an imported car with a liveried driver and some rather lavish articles of jewelry. She seemed to have had a proper eye for precious stones from the start, too.

Baa-Baa, in short, had gone from one gilded cage to another, for the lady tired easily and seemed to find no difficulty whatsoever in discovering playmates who were not precisely poverty stricken. That is to say, during those first five or six years while the so-called bloom of youth still lasted.

But she didn’t seem to mind her descent in the social grade, so to speak. There were still plenty of suckers, even if they didn’t spend quite so lavishly. She wanted, as the years rolled on, a good time more than anything else. So, at least, she said. Apparently she was having one, according to her standards.

She was still known, at the present period, in every night club in town, and when her escort happened to be a particularly generous one the host always asked Baa-Baa to get up and do her stuff. Sing her once famous “I Want to Be Somebody’s Baa-Baa Lamb,” in other words. She could always get a kick out of that. She had been getting a kick, recently, out of Vince Lamont.

He had not in any form or fashion, by any remote possibility, been another of her “protectors.” Not Vince. In fact, he rather wasn’t averse to having ladies take him under their wing. The minute you gave a dame even a lousy nickel, was his ironclad axiom, right from then you lost all her respect.

Vince was another lily of the field who neither toiled nor did he spin. Not in legitimate pursuits, anyway. He was a race track tout; a fixer for a few big gamblers; a go-between in an occasional important bootleg deal.

His interest in Baa-Baa, rumor had it, was because business had been a bit slack, and because Miss Jackson had been in funds. A wealthy South American coffee planter, Broadway gossip ran, had presented her with a perfectly good check for ten grand, not a month previously, when he had sadly taken the boat back to his tropical shores after having enjoyed a hectic few weeks of her hospitality.

III

Inspector Frayne was reminding himself of this gossip, anyway, as his car zoomed along down town. Inspector Frayne, incidentally, knew more about New York and the various characters in it than any man living. He had been born there. He loved the place as if it were his own flesh and blood. He found it highly profitable, also, to know as much as he could of what was going on in the miracle city of the world.

Don brought the car to a halt before an old apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street. It had been a grand apartment in its day, perhaps, but its day had been in the ’80’s and ’90’s. A five story affair, with only two flats on a floor. Big rooms but dark rooms, running the length of the building and known as the railroad type, with only the front and rear getting any light to to speak of. There was no elevator, no hallway attendant. A seedy place for seedy people.

There was a little knot of loiterers before the steps, as well as an officer in uniform. The latter cleared the steps with a sweep of his night stick, as Frayne descended, and stood rigidly at salute:

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning, Harrigan,” said Frayne pleasantly, leaving the cop flushing with pleasure at having his name remembered.

Upstairs, in the apartment, the man-hunter found Lieutenant Geogan and one of his plain-clothes squad, Davis.

“Anything new since the phone call, Geogan?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Uh huh.”

Frayne, nodding, glanced about. The hallway was a wide one, with the entrance door about in the center. A kitchen and dining room were toward the rear, with a bath next, almost opposite the door. Then came two bedrooms, with the living room up in front of them, facing the street.

“Where is she?” asked Frayne.

Geogan pointed to the first bedroom.

Frayne went in. A pathetic death chamber, seeing that Baa-Baa had previously had some exceedingly nice boudoirs in other and more genteel parts of the city. There was too much gilt in this one. Too many laces; too many beribboned pillows; too many startling colors.

She lay on the bed, in scant negligee, with a big red bruise on her left jaw and a big dark red patch on her left side with a kitchen knife sticking in the center of it.

“Denham been here yet?”

Denham was the finger-print expert.

“No, sir. We waited for you,” said Geogan. “You’ve asked us to always—”

“Thanks,” said Frayne, and added: “Get Denham, Don.”

Don was at the telephone before Frayne could speak again.

“Maid and Lamont up ahead?”

“Yes, sir. In the living room.”

The manhunter walked up forward, to a room quite as garish as the one in which Baa-Baa had met her death.

Vince Lamont and the colored maid, with an officer in charge, were there. The tout was sitting in a rocker by the window, comfortably stretched out, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t rise, but raised inquiring eyebrows. The maid — a “high yaller” type — was walking the floor and moaning.

“Come out of it,” snapped Frayne.

“Y-yessuh,” she said, and changed her moaning to a sob.

“What’s your name?”

“B-Bethenia, still. Bethenia Gibbons.”

“All right, Bethenia. The sooner you get hold of yourself the sooner you can go — back home, or behind bars, one of the two. Let’s get to work and get your story.”

“Bellin’ bars, suh. Oh, Lawdy, suh, you ain’t meanin’ that for me, is you?”

Frayne didn’t look at her as he spoke. He looked at Vince Lamont, as if silently asking his opinion.

Lamont shrugged. It was an expressive shrug. It said that the maid had, after all, been found in the apartment with her dead mistress.

Frayne nodded, as if in understanding, and then spoke with gentle patience.

“Come now, tell me what happened, Bethenia.”

Bethenia Gibbons did try to pull herself together. She somewhat succeeded. Her lower lip quivered and she shook her head.

“I done tol’ it so many times to them other police gen’lemen, sub.”

“Just try once more,” said Frayne.

“Well, suh, I opened the door with my key at nine o’clock. I always tiptoes to Miss Baa-Baa’s bedroom to see if she’s awake or not, to see if she wants her breakfast or what order has she got. I ain’t only come in the door this mornin’, though, when she asks out in a sleepy an’ yawny kin’ o’ voice — you know, suh — if it’s me. I says yes, an’ then she says go ahead an’ clean up the front room an’ not wake her till about eleven o’clock.”

Frayne frowned. He had seen, when he had looked at the dead body of Baa-Baa Jackson, that rigor mortis had already set in. How could this have occurred had Baa-Baa not been killed until after nine o’clock?

Was the maid lying?

“Did you kill her?” Frayne suddenly snapped. “What was your motive?”

“I didn’ kill her,” the girl said sullenly. “I usta keep a-tellin’ her she would be killed, though, if she didn’ start leadin’ a more clean an’ decent life.”

“Mmmm,” said Frayne. “So you used to tell your mistress that you didn’t approve of her mode of living, eh? How did she take that?”

Bethenia flushed, hung her head, stubbornly remained silent.

“Speak up — speak up,” snapped Frayne.

The girl did.

“She... well, she give me notice to leave the end o’ the week, if you wanta know. I... it’s the fu’st place I ever been fired from, too. I’m a respectable workin’ girl, I am, an’ I’s worked for real quality folk down in—”

“And you killed her because she fired you, eh?”

“I—”

But Frayne had raised a hand. Frayne could always get instant action by merely raising a hand. He got it now. The girl sullenly hung her head.

“Well,” he asked, “what happened when you say she told you this morning to clean up the front room?”

Bethenia Gibbons looked frightened, panicky, for a moment.

“I went right to the front room — right to this here room — and begun a-tidyin’ an’ a-sweepin’ an’ all. I wasn’t here so long, suh — maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen — an’ then I went to fix the dinin’ room an’ kitchen an’ put a pot o’ coffee on the stove for myself, like I does. I... I dunno. The coffee wasn’t b’iled, quite, when the bell rings, an’ it’s Mistuh Lamont.”

Bethenia hesitated again. She looked at Vince Lamont, a trifle pleadingly. But he shrugged again, and a faint smile came to the lips under his thin, black mustache.

Frayne didn’t nod at him this time. Frayne winked.

“I tol’ Mistuh Lamont that Miss Baa-Baa wanted to sleep till eleven, but he says that’s all right, she wouldn’ min’ him a-wakenin’ her. An’... an’— Well, suh, that’s all they is. He went to wake her an’ he foun’ her dead! So help me God I’m tellin’ you the truth!”

Frayne began pacing up and down the room, then, his eyes narrowing, a slight furrow on his forehead.

The bell rang presently, and some one entered.

“That Denham, Don?” called Frayne.

“Yes, chief,” replied Haggerty, coming to the door.

Frayne sat down suddenly, as if he were a trifle nervous. He took out a pencil and began tapping the arm of his chair, as nervous people frequently do.

But it wasn’t that Frayne was nervous.

The manhunter was tapping out a message to his assistant, in a private code that he and Don had invented.

The message said that Haggerty was to send for Grady, the coroner, and that the latter was to get there without delay.

Frayne rose, stretched, again began to walk leisurely up and down the length of the room. Finally, with a frown, he paused before Vince Lamont.

“What do you think about the whole mess, Lamont?” he abruptly asked, his voice and face frankly puzzled.

IV

The tout smiled. It was a cynical smile, tinged with a touch of candid relief.

“There’s one thing I’m thinking of right now, inspector,” he said, “and that is that here’s one thing they can’t hang on me!”

Frayne regarded him gravely. The thin mouth with the thin black mustache; the dark brown eyes that Baa-Baa had probably liked; the coal black hair showing a contrasting white line where it was parted with meticulous care straight down the middle.

Although his clothes verged slightly on the Broadway cut, Frayne nevertheless noticed that Lamont could be called a well-turned-out man. Frayne was qualified to judge clothes, too. He himself was the best garbed police official that New York or any other city had ever had. He wondered, idly, why it was that on this hot August day Lamont wore silk gloves in the house.

“It doesn’t seem so,” agreed Frayne thoughtfully. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Don’t think I’m such a hard-boiled guy for speaking of that right off the bat, inspector,” Lamont said, suddenly losing his cynicism and looking troubled. “I guess if I didn’t have this cold turkey alibi it could be made to look damn bad for me. I—” he shrugged. “I don’t know what to think, inspector, since you ask me!”

“I believe the boys got your story, Lamont, but give it to me again just for form’s sake,” said Frayne.

“I... oh, you know about Baa-Baa and myself, I guess. I’ve known her on and off for three or four years, but we just didn’t click all that time. You know, we didn’t get this yen for each other till about a month ago. Since then we’ve been together pretty near all the time. We—”

“Live here with her?” interrupted Frayne, although he knew that Vince hadn’t.

“Nothing doing, inspector.” Lamont laughed with a wave of his hand. “No dame gets me like that. I’ve been hanging out at my own little room-and-bath at the Piccadilly Circle ever since it’s been built, about four years ago.”

“Wise man,” nodded Frayne. “Well? Last night?”

“We blew in early from the ‘Spanish Slipper.’ A little after two, I’d say. We had a few shots more of rye and... aw, hell, you know how this hooch hits some dames, lately. They get naggy and start to hang things on you that you never done. We... well, Baa-Baa was jealous, and she starts saying I was trying to make a cabaret kid at the Spanish Slipper. One word led to another — and that word led to about six more — and—”

Vince Lamont shrugged again, made a helpless gesture with outstretched hands, and blew out smoke.

“Maybe I am wise in some ways, inspector_; like you said. I am in one way, I know. I never let a dame get me into a deep argument that’s maybe gonna lead to a fight. I blow, instead. I blew last night. It was about four.”

“That’s when you stopped down below and had a few more shots, is it?”

“Yeah. Flo and Toots Mason — you know, from the Scandals — have got a flat there. They were throwing a party, and I—”

“You stayed there how long?”

“Oh, maybe an hour; maybe a little longer.”

“And then?”

“I blew over to Jerry Spino’s place and had a few more shots. Not many, two or three, I think — yeah, three. I got to mopin’ about Baa-Baa after that. I — aw, hell, inspector, maybe I’m a little hard-boiled, see, but I’d lately got to thinkin’ a lot of Baa-Baa. I felt sorry we’d had that spat; I got to thinkin’ I was too quick in takin’ her up; I got to thinkin’ perhaps I had give that Wop cabaret kid the eye; I... Aw, I figgered it was up to me to come back and make up!”

He paused, looked somber for a moment, and took out another cigarette. He lit it, and blew the smoke out with a sigh:

“Well, you know what I come back to!”

“Uh huh,” said Frayne.

Frayne was telling himself that he knew one thing for certain. He knew that the alibi at Jerry Spino’s speakeasy would be copper riveted and otherwise unimpeachable. The Spino crowd stuck together, as the man-hunter was well aware.

“So you rang the bell, eh? You didn’t have a key?”

“Baa-Baa was shifty about handing out keys, inspector. Nope, she didn’t even give one to me. Hell, I only know one guy that ever had — but ain’t that right, Bethenia? I never had a key, did I?”

“No, suh,” said Bethenia. “He didn’ have no key, Mistuh Lamont didn’!”

Frayne was fingering his close cropped and well trimmed mustache with the thumb and index finger of his right hand:

“So another lad did have a key?” he was musing.

“Nix, inspector,” laughed Vince with a positive wave of his hand. “Wrong there. This was just a bird that Baa-Baa fell for a coupla months ago, for about a week. She probably hasn’t seen him since, and I know he gave her back the key. He—”

“Why so positive?”

“He’s a dub. Gawd knows how she ever did fall for him, even for a day. He’s the night clerk at the Piccadilly Circle — a sap that’s always tryin’ to beat the ponies from the outside. I take most of his bets for him.”

“Losing lately?”

“Ever see a sucker that won, inspector?” countered Vince.

“No,” said Frayne, “and I never saw a wise guy that did, either.”

“You’re tellin’,” chuckled Lamont.

“What’s he called?”

“Baker — Blondy Baker, inspector. But say, you’re all wet, an’ I mean that right. He had no more to do with this than—”

“What time does he finish his shift?”

“Seven in the morning.”

“Live at the hotel?”

“Yeah!”

“Don,” said Frayne.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll make better speed in the roadster. Chase over to the Piccadilly Circle and round up Blondy Baker, the night clerk. Step on the gas, Don.”

“I will, sir.”

Frayne took out a cigar, presumably searched his waistcoat pocket for his lighter and didn’t find it.

“Let me have a light, Lamont.”

Lamont fumbled in his own pocket, clumsily, took out a match, lit it and held the flame for Frayne.

“Thanks,” said the inspector. He noticed that the tout had not removed his gloves.

Frayne started to walk up and down, his eyes narrowing. Denham appeared in the doorway, then. Denham’s face told Frayne, furthermore, that no finger-prints had been found on the knife or on the body of Baa-Baa.

Frayne continued his pacing. He stopped, presently. He stretched, yawned, looking like a man who is immeasurably bored; who was slightly annoyed, too.

“Too bad you had that row with Baa-Baa last night, Lamont. Might have averted the murder, if you hadn’t. It came at a devilish awkward time for me. I was having some tennis with Haggerty when we were called, and I needed only another point to beat him. It isn’t often I beat my young assistant, either,” he ended ruefully.

“I’m not a tennis shark, inspector, but I sure do like my sleep,” grinned the tout. “Make believe I couldn’t use some now.”

“Oh, you’ll get enough sleep in, Lamont,” he smiled. “It’s infinitely harder for me to get in enough tennis.”

He stretched again, as he finished, and strolled out into the hallway a bit impatiently.

V

Don must have stepped on the gas, for Frayne’s wrist watch told him that his protégé had been gone a few seconds less than twelve minutes.

Blondy Baker was with him.

Not so vicious when it came to looks, Blondy. A foppish little fellow with pretty curls, wearing a gorgeously striped silk shirt that tried to vie with an amazingly hued cravat.

Frayne wasted no time. He did not speak harshly; he spoke in a coldly matter-of-fact tone.

“Baker, did you kill Baa-Baa Jack-son this morning?”

“Did I kill — did I kill Baa—”

It looked like legitimate surprise, beyond question, as the night clerk gasped out his words. His face went white.

“Precisely,” said Frayne. “Did you stick a kitchen knife into Baa-Baa Jackson’s heart this morning?”

Whatever Broadway veneer Baker had attained now left him, and he showed up for the frightened young lad that he was.

“Oh, my God, inspector,” he cried, “what do you — what do you think I am?”

“I told you so, inspector. Not him.”

It was Vince Lamont speaking, and every officer there looked to see the tout raked by Frayne for the interruption.

Frayne didn’t rake him, however. He merely turned on him, with a grave nod.

“That’s right, Lamont, you did,” he said.

The manhunter faced Blondy, then, and spoke in an exceedingly kindly voice.

“Yes, you seem to have a champion in Lamont, Baker.”

Blondy was blinking. Blondy was looking as if he didn’t quite get what it was all about. Blondy looked, all at once, as if it had just come to him what the trouble was.

“You... you mean Baa-Baa’s been murdered, Inspector Frayne?” he asked hoarsely.

“With a kitchen knife,” said Frayne.

“That... that’s awful, isn’t it?” breathed the night clerk, after a moment or two.

“Better than the chair, perhaps,” said Frayne. “Some one’s going to get the chair for this, remember. That’s why you’re here. You’ve got to clear yourself. You—”

“Clear myself?”

“You had a key to her apartment, didn’t you?”

“No, sir. I have not, sir. I did not have... Well, I mean I haven’t had one in — oh, in two months, Inspector Frayne. I swear to God I haven’t, sir,” he ended with a sobbing gulp.

“You might have had an impression made, when you did have one,” Frayne reminded him.

A whistle came, at that. It came from Vince.

“I’m... I’m not a murderer, sir,” Blondy Baker was saying, his voice quavering.

“Take it easy; take it easy,” suggested Frayne. Then he asked, briskly:

“When did you last see Baa-Baa?”

“See her?”

“See her. Speak to her,” said Frayne.

“I... oh, I haven’t spoken to her for a month or more, except when I’d see her at some club on my night off. I... you see, we didn’t play around for very long together, me and Baa-Baa. She just took a fancy to me for a few days — a pretty strong one, if I do say it myself — and I guess she wasn’t hard for me to fall for. She... well, she dropped me as quick as she took up with me,” he ended, flushing and hanging his head as if ashamed to admit his inability to hold the affections of the little girl who had wanted to be somebody’s Baa-Baa lamb.

Very suddenly, however, Blondy Baker jerked up his head. His eyes were very wide, and understanding had come to his entire face. He spoke in a rush.

“Oh — o-o-oh, now I see why yon suspect me,” he cried. “Somebody saw me come here this morning. Somebody—”

“You were here this morning?” asked Frayne quietly.

“Well, I was here at the door, I mean. I rang the bell but Baa-Baa didn’t open. I rattled the knob, too, and knocked on the door. I wanted to see her badly.”

“What time was that, Baker?”

“I leave the job at seven, sir. I brushed up and walked right over, so I guess” — he thought for a moment — “oh, I guess it was before half past seven, anyway.”

“Why did you want to see her?” pressed the manhunter.

The night clerk of the Piccadilly Circle did some more flushing. Then he spoke out.

“Well, she was always a damn good fellow, inspector, and I was in a hole — I mean I still am in a hole, God knows,” he laughed bitterly. “I been playing the ponies, and they’ve been taking me for all I’ve got. I owe everybody, and I don’t know where to turn. I got to get some jack by to-night, and I thought of Baa-Baa. I heard she’d grabbed ten grand, and I thought she might maybe let me have just three hundred. Just three hundred would—”

He paused and licked at his lips, and his eyes, naturally pale, became strangely darker:

“There’s one in the fifth to-day at Saratoga, that if I had three centuries on his nose... God, it would put me all in the clear, inspector,” he ended feverishly.

A knock came on the door, then.

“Come in,” called Frayne.

It was Grady, the coroner.

“Where’s the body, Frayne?” he asked his friend.

“Second bedroom down the hall. Bring me a report right away, will you, old man?”

Frayne followed Grady out of the room. He did not stop in the death chamber. Grady would get everything that he wanted there, he knew. Instead, the manhunter examined the other rooms.

He went to the unoccupied bedroom. To the dining room. To the bathroom. To the kitchen. He didn’t spend much time in any of these rooms, for it was said that Frayne, in a single glance, could take in more details than the average man would absorb in minutes of close scrutiny.

The kitchen seemed to interest him. At least, he stood there in the center of the room, frowning, his cold blue eyes going to triangular slits.

Suddenly he walked over to the dumb-waiter. He peered down the shaft, his body stiffening. He began to pull on the ropes, presently. All at once he stopped.

Then he leaped back and called out sharply.

“Don!”

“Sir?” replied Haggerty, coming like a flash.

“Cut out those dumb-waiter ropes. There’s our evidence!”

Frayne, instantly, was back in the living room. He was standing over Lamont.

“Take off those gloves, you rat,” he snarled.

“I like to keep my gloves on, Frayne,” said Lamont, his voice and his eyes defiant.

“And I want ’em off, damn you,” snapped the manhunter. “Peel them off, Lamont.”

Slowly, his eyes on Frayne’s, the race track tout obeyed. He had to. He knew they would have been torn off, otherwise.

“I thought so,” Frayne exulted, as he saw the bruises and blood blisters on the palms of Lamont’s hands.

“Whaddaya mean, you thought so?” said Lamont, his voice ugly. “Hell, can’t a guy go rowin’ an’ get blisters on his hands?”

“Sure he can,” agreed Frayne, “but they’re not rowing blisters.”

He turned, then, and beckoned to the finger-print expert.

“Got your magnifying glass with you, Denham?”

“Yes, inspector.”

“Examine Lamont’s hands. Examine those bruises and blisters. Examine them for particles of hemp.”

“You can’t hang nothin’ on me, Frayne,” Vince Lamont was now snarling. “I got my alibi. I got—”

“Take him, Don,” said Frayne, as Haggerty came to the doormat and stood ready for orders.

Lamont started to bound from his chair, but Haggerty was across the room like a leaping panther, the race track tout’s wrists gripped between his fingers.

Denham was a painstaking workman, and he was an exceedingly efficient workman. It took him three or four minutes — maybe five — to study those blistered hands.

When he straightened up and faced his superior his face had a contented look.

“Seven particles, sir,” he said. “Five on the right hand, two on the left. There may be more, on closer examination. I’m certain about the seven, though.”

“Good,” said Frayne.

“Say, I heard a lot about somethin’ bein’ Greek to a guy,” smiled Lamont, trying to bluster, “and now I know what it means. Put it in plain American, will you?”

“Glad to oblige,” said Frayne. “You’re arrested for the murder of Baa-Baa Jackson!”

Vince Lamont looked at his hands. Looked about the room.

Suddenly hope blazed up in his face and he cried out loudly:

“How in hell can you hang that on me when Baa-Baa was alive when Bethenia come in at nine-somethin’ o’clock? She spoke to her, didn’t she? And wasn’t I drinkin’ over at Jerry Spino’s all mornin’?”

Frayne didn’t answer. Frayne, instead, called out:

“Finished, Grady?”

“Right, Frayne, coming.”

“What’s the report?” asked the manhunter, when the coroner showed up in the doorway.

“She was killed somewhere in the vicinity of four o’clock this morning, Frayne.”

“I knew the maid was wrong when she said Baa-Baa called through the door at nine o’clock,” Frayne said. “The body had already stiffened when I got here. The answer to that is — somebody was imitating her voice.”

Frayne, then, faced Vince Lamont. His voice, now, came in a drawl.

“Still Greek to you, Lamont?”

“Worse than ever, inspector,” laughed Lamont, his own eyes not doing such a bad job of bluffing.

“When Mr. Haggerty slips the handcuffs on you, as the murderer of Baa-Baa Jackson, I’ll explain.”

The handcuffs clicked.

“I’ll try to reconstruct the crime for you as nearly as I can,” said the man-hunter. “You and Baa-Baa did have a fight, of course, but I don’t think it was about any little cabaret girl. I think it was because she wouldn’t come across with as much money as you asked for. Right on that, Lamont?”

“Aw—”

But Frayne had started to walk forward. Frayne was flexing the fingers of his right hand. A good many crooks — a good many other people — knew about those fingers. It was said that Frayne, with a mere pressure of them here and there, could cause a man torture. He did not have any sympathy for a killer, either. He did not believe they were sick creatures who should be coddled; he believed they were extremely dangerous people who should be eliminated from the scheme of things.

“Aw... aw, maybe we did have a run-in about jack,” grumbled Lamont, as Frayne’s hand went for a handcuffed wrist.

“I thought so,” said Frayne suavely. “Thanks. Well, I don’t know with what you hit her on the jaw — it’s unimportant, now, and we’ll get it later — but you hit her so hard that you thought you’d nearly killed her. You got frightened, then, and you’d been drinking, and you were sore because you couldn’t get the money. Anyway, you went and grabbed that knife and stuck it in her. Did you say I was right?”

“You leave me alone, Frayne! You... All right, all right! Jeez, I’ll say yes. I got to say yes, ain’t I?”

“Sensible lad. Too bad you weren’t as sensible before you killed her. Then you wouldn’t have done the job. Too bad you weren’t as sensible after you killed her. Then you wouldn’t have pinned all those clews onto yourself!”

“What... what clews?”

“Wait. Let me tell you what you did. You went out the door, after you’d murdered her, and you went to that party downstairs. When you left there, though, you went into the cellar from that door in the back of the main floor hallway. When you got in the cellar you went to the dumb-waiter, and yon hoisted yourself up here. Then you waited until Bethenia let herself in!”

Frayne, paused, started to stretch out a hand. But Vince Lamont, with a cry, had covered his face.

“You imitated a female voice — Baa-Baa’s voice — and told the maid to clean up the front room and not to disturb you until eleven. It isn’t so difficult, imitating a female voice, especially when that voice is supposed to come from a person just waking from a sound sleep. Anyway, as the maid came into this front room, and you heard her start to clean, you sneaked out of the bedroom and again made for that dumb-waiter in the kitchen. Then you let yourself down. You hid in either the cellar or the hallway downstairs. After a few minutes you came and rang the bell!”

Frayne paused. He pointed to Blondy Baker.

“This lad? Where does he come in? That was just one of those things that happen. You heard him ring the bell and knock at the door, when you were waiting here with the corpse. You probably peeked out of the window to see who it was. You brought his name up to me because you thought you might pin something on him. You thought you had a break there, didn’t you?”

Lamont was swaying.

“I asked you a question, Lamont,” came Frayne’s voice. “Answer that one and answer the rest. Have I or have I not doped it as it all happened?”

Lamont uncovered his face. It was a very weak face, now. A very stunned face. Dazedly, he nodded his head.

“Your clews?” Frayne was saying, his own voice quickening. “That dumb-waiter rope was hard on soft hands. You left blood on it. The rope left little particles of hemp in your bruises and blisters, too, as Denham saw with the magnifying glass. Your shoulder blades, as you went down the shaft brushed against the kalsomined wall. My dear fellow, you should see how the back of your coat looks. For one as particular about his clothes as you are, you’d be damned ashamed of yourself. But another thing, too. How could a woman speak at around nine o’clock when as reputable a physician as Dr. Grady will testify she was killed in the vicinity of four?”

Vince Lamont didn’t answer this one. He sagged forward, a great gulping sob coming from his throat.

Frayne didn’t expect him to answer. Didn’t want him to answer. He was speaking to Geogan.

“Take him away, lieutenant.”