Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 60, No. 1, July 4, 1931

Eddie Corbin was too good a dick not to leave a tip for Porky Neale when he was caught unarmed.

I

Catching the faint sound from the window overlooking the fire escape, Detective Eddie Corbin turned his head to stare incredulously at the slim young man who had one leg hooked over the sill. The late afternoon sunlight streamed upon the floor, upon the checkered cap the intruder was wearing, upon the gun held rigidly before him.

“Keep your seat, dummy!” the man snarled. “I got something to say to you. It won’t take long.”

Corbin drew in a quick breath that set his pulse racing, that sent a cold prickle of dread scurrying along his spine. Five minutes before he had come into his room, had shed his coat and shoulder holster. Both lay upon the bed, six feet away. His eyes jumped from the trespasser’s pale face to the bed.

“Forget it!” the man snapped. He squirmed through the window as he spoke and stood erect. Then he moved toward the detective who, in shirt sleeves, sat at the table.

Corbin saw now that the gun leveled upon him was equipped with a silencer, and realized the grim significance of that. He kept his hands flat on the table. They were damp, tingling.

“It’s too bad you had to climb out of a uniform and get yourself promoted to a dick,” the man began slowly. “Too bad you stopped swinging a night stick and pounding a beat, flatty. Too bad you had to get so curious about things that didn’t concern you. You ought to know it would be the death of you.”

“Lay off the chatter,” Corbin flung back. “What’s this cheap show of yours about?”

“It’s about finished, for you,” the other returned. “You’re all washed up.”

“Put that gun away!” Corbin ordered.

“In a minute. I’ll take it apart and put it away when it’s spoke its little piece.” The man’s lips twitched derisively. “It won’t speak so loud. I’m always careful about that.”

Corbin contrived a smile, although his lips were like cardboard and a thin stream of perspiration was trickling down the back of his neck. He had been in jams before, and squeezed out of them, but somehow he felt this was not the same.

Being out of uniform, meeting punks on a new level, changed the perspective of things.

He knew the man who confronted him; knew his name, his unsavory contacts and reputation. They had met once — twelve hours ago. He saw now that he should have made his pinch then.

“Soon’s I finish my business here,” the man continued, “I’m calling the inspector, telling him how one of his boy scouts done too good a deed and gets a lead medal for it — hot lead.”

From somewhere below a hurdy-gurdy ground out a jerky tune. The shrill voices of children piped above it... dancing children.

“Listen,” the man was saying. “When you get to glory, or wherever all good dicks go, just keep on twanging your harp and minding your own business. It’s always safer.”

Corbin made no response. His eyes drifted to the pot of yellow flowers that stood on the edge of the table; a big pot dressed in bright, crinkly paper, and tied with a bow of silver ribbon. The flowers were as golden as the April sunlight. He had bought them this morning, and would be carrying them to Nora after dinner.

The man watching him, laughed. “You’re taking it pretty cool,” he said. “Some of ’em don’t. Well—”

Corbin’s eyes were still on the flowers, but his mind was spinning. It might be possible to upend the table, drop behind it before the prospective killer could squeeze the trigger. No other plan suggested itself. Without looking up, he began to slide his hand warily toward the edge of the table...

He heard the click and saw the puff of smoke. Something smacked tremendously against his chest, drove the breath from him, but he felt no pain. He sat gripped in a queer paralysis of mind and body until his head tilted and he sagged against the table. He closed his eyes and opened them again.

The room was empty, crowded with shadows. He was hit all right. Pain stabbed him, and with it a fierce, bitter resentment. To have had a chance, to go down fighting, wouldn’t have been so bad. He wouldn’t have complained. But to pass out like this — alone — with so much to tell...

He groped despairingly for the pencil he had sharpened a few minutes before. His fingers touched the knife he had used. It was open. The room was darker than ever now, the flowers blurred. Too late now to tell all that should be told, all that Inspector Neale hoped to hear. But time enough for one thing. The killer was not to escape.

The top of the table was soft, the blade sharp. He dug the blade into the wood, smiled grimly at thought of the damning evidence he was to leave behind.

II

Inspector “Porky” Neale was cocked back in his chair, his feet hoisted upon his battered desk, enjoying one of Sergeant Wallace’s birthday cigars and passing comment with the donor.

“The kid’s been right on the job from the start,” he declared. “I knew he’d be. That’s why I’ve done all I could to get him out of harness and under your wing. Wasn’t Bob Corbin a go-getter in his day? Eddie’s a chip off the old block. Blew in here an hour ago, all steamed up. Been working a week on the Kelsey case and says he’s going to bust it wide open.”

“Didn’t spill anything?” Wallace asked.

“Might have, but I was busy at the time. Told him to see me first thing in the morning. I tell you, sergeant, it puts a little pep into one, having a few hustling youngsters around.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Wallace conceded. “They’ll be shoving the both of us off the shelf before long. Last time I talked with Eddie he was in a furniture store with a girl. Getting married, he told me.”

“Next week.” Neale chuckled and expelled a great cloud of smoke. “And that reminds me. Don’t forget to kick in with a five-spot. The boys are buying ’em a present.”

“Eddie won’t be worth a hoot for the next month,” Wallace remarked. “You can’t honeymoon and—”

The ringing of the phone cut him short. Neale reached for the instrument without taking his feet off the desk.

“Yep, inspector speaking... What’s that?” He listened to the low, obviously disguised voice that purred in his ear. “He’s what?... You mean Eddie Corbin?... Say, who—”

He glared into the mouthpiece as the receiver at the other end of the line banged. His feet thudded to the floor.

“What’s the trouble?” Wallace demanded.

“Eddie’s been smoked!”

The sergeant reared from his chair. “Who says so?”

“The bird who just phoned tells me!” Neale growled. “In his room. Even gives me the address.” He reached for his hat. “Maybe a false alarm, but we’re finding out. Coming along?”

The two sped from the office, clattered down the stairs to the street, piled into a waiting police car that roared off when Neale barked an address to the alert driver.

“If it isn’t a false alarm,” Wallace said, “then Eddie’s found out too much.”

Neale said nothing. The sergeant promptly followed his example. The car whirled them through the crowded streets to their destination. The men jumped out. Neale, who had visited the apartment house before, bounded up the stairs to the second floor, flung open the door at the rear of the hall.

“It’s the kid, all right,” he groaned.

Detective Edward Corbin lay face down across a table, his head pillowed in his arm. He was dead. His shirt was red, soggy red. Neale made a swift examination.

“Hasn’t been fifteen minutes ago,” he announced. His voice was husky, his eyes suddenly damp. “Get some men up here — post ’em.”

The sergeant departed. Neale locked the door behind him. After that he inspected the room and its furniture, but touched nothing. He covered the whole of the floor, probed the corners, stopped for some time at the open window and looked out upon the fire escape. He turned away presently and stared at the potted plant with its gay, yellow blooms.

At length he was beside the dead man again and saw the knife that was clutched in his fingers; saw, when he had pushed the stiff arm to one side, the deep scratches in the top of the table: He was studying the crude, shaky letters — printed letters — when the door rattled and Wallace’s voice was heard. Neale unlocked the door to admit the sergeant.

“Look at this,” he said, and led Wallace to the table.

The sergeant peered at the scratches, spelled out the three words and swore deep in his throat. The three words were plain. Brant got me.

Only the crude “N” was scratched as the illiterate often write it, with the cross bar reversed.

“Brant!” he exploded. “What do you know about that?”

“Good boy, Eddie,” Neale murmured. “Knew he was done for — left this behind.”

“I’ll have that skunk in an hour,” Wallace asserted grimly.

The inspector nodded. “If you don’t, I will.”

“It’ll be easy. He won’t stay under cover — never suspect what we’ve got on him. Think it was Brant who phoned you?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

A patrolman came along the hall and stopped in the doorway.

“The sergeant just told me what’s happened,” he said. “I was talking with Eddie down at the corner about half an hour ago.”

“Where were you after that?” Neale asked.

“Haven’t been more’n a block away from here since then.”

“See any familiar faces in the neighborhood?”

“Only Brant.”

“Huh,” Neale said. “Coming from this direction?”

“I couldn’t swear to that. Think it was him?”

“Might have been. Where’s he hang out?”

“Down at Moony’s — corner of Third. Him and the rest of his crowd. I hope you put a bomb under the lot of ’em, inspector,” the officer ran on fervently. “Of all the rotten, loafing gorillas—”

“Who’re the others besides Brant?”

“Well, there’s Halsey and Dillon and Evans.”

“I know ’em all but Evans,” Neale said. He looked across at the sergeant. “That’s the bunch Eddie’s been after.”

He ordered the patrolman to close the door, post himself at the head of the stairs. For some time after that he stood looking down at the evidence scratched upon the table. He bent over, finally, and ran an exploring finger along the scratches that formed the three words.

Wallace watched him speculatively. “What now?” he asked. “Find something?”

“Two somethings,” Neale admitted. “Look here. Maybe you’ve noticed that these words are printed, not written, and that all the letters are capitals.”

“I’m not blind,” the sergeant answered.

“And you noticed the ‘N’ in Brant’s name is reversed?” the inspector asked.

“I do now, since you’ve called my attention to it,” Wallace replied. “The letter was started with a down stroke instead of an up one. See it often in home-made signs.”

“Correct,” said Neale. “You can be observing at times. Now look at the card on that pot of flowers. Eddie must have printed it. It says: ‘To Nora From Eddie.’ All caps, too. But the ‘N’ isn’t reversed.”

“Which means what?” Wallace returned. “Say, he wasn’t worrying about the correctness of his lettering when he cut that message. You wouldn’t either, with a hole—”

“Eddie didn’t carve the message,” Neale broke in. “He was used to printing. Most of his reports were that way. First of all, no matter how much of a hurry he was in, he never would have made that blunder; and second— Just run your finger over the scratches.”

The sergeant did so. When he reached the last word of the message he scowled, lifted his finger and bent lower. “There’s something here. I felt it... I can see it.”

III

“You can do both,” agreed Neale.

He took a knife from his pocket, opened the smaller blade and with it carefully pried an object from the deep scratch. Together the men scrutinized the shiny, pointed bit of steel, perhaps an eighth of an inch long, that had been dug from the down stroke of the letter “E.”

“It’s the point of a knife blade!” Wallace cried.

“Nothing else. Now take a squint at the blade Eddie was presumed to have used.”

“It’s whole!”

“Sure it is. Tells you something, doesn’t it? Eddie never left this message. It’s a plant — a piece of bait. He probably did get hold of the knife, intending to carve something for us to find — passed out before he succeeded. The bird that croaked him must have come back to make sure his victim was dead — saw the knife in Eddie’s hand, realized what he had been up to — and got himself a brilliant idea.”

“I’m a son of a gun,” murmured Wallace. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Maybe?” snorted Neale. “Of course I’m right. The blade that cut this message left a snapped-off point in the last letter. Eddie’s blade isn’t damaged. There’s only one answer and you’ve heard it.”

“The brilliant idea was to frame Brant, eh?”

“What else? Brant wouldn’t have carved his own moniker, would he? That seems to let him out.” Neale took up the bit of steel and deposited it carefully in his vest pocket.

“We’ve got to find the wielder of the damaged blade — fit this tip to it. Then we’ve got the killer. And it’ll be some one who hoped to sink Brant.”

“That eliminates all of Brant’s mob,” Wallace said.

“Does no such thing. I’ll wager the culprit’s a playmate. He set out to close Eddie’s mouth, did so, and saw a chance to pin the job on some one he had a grudge against. Merely another instance of killing two birds with one stone.”

“Yeah, it’s been done,” the sergeant agreed. “There’s always a heap of friction in the best of mobs. You think Eddie knew who drilled him?”

“I’ll say he did,” Neale declared. “It looks like he got hold of the knife and started to leave some sort of a message for us to find. What would be more important than the name of his slayer?”

“Nothing,” conceded Wallace.

“The guilty man must have been in a hurry, probably doesn’t know what evidence he left behind. Chances are we’ll find the knife he used on him.”

“That’ll be lovely,” the sergeant said. “Damned if we won’t frisk every mug in this territory. And God help the rat who’s carrying a knife with a busted blade!” he added grimly.

Others came into the room now to take charge, to make the usual examinations and reports, but neither Neale nor the sergeant were interested in the dull routine. The halls began to fill with a morbid, buzzing crowd. Questions were asked of those who occupied the adjoining apartments. Nothing new was learned. None recalled hearing a shot, or of seeing any one leave Corbin’s room.

“The killer used a muffler on his rod,” Neale said, as he and Wallace descended to the street and climbed into their car. “I saw some marks on the window sill that might indicate he came up by the fire escape. Maybe left by the same route. Evidently figured things out in detail.”

“We didn’t find the door locked,” the sergeant remarked. “Eddie had shed his coat and gun. The punk didn’t take any chances.”

“Didn’t give Eddie one either,” Neale returned. “A wonder he didn’t shoot him in the back. We’ll head for Moony’s first.”

The car deposited them half a block from their destination. The Moony establishment was a pool hall, with an alleged soft drink stand in front and rooms in the back for card playing; a hangout for the undesirables of the neighborhood.

As the two alighted, the patrolman who had talked with them some time before at the apartment, approached.

“I been looking over the premises below,” he announced. “You’ll find the bunch I mentioned in a back room playing pinochle. Brant’s among ’em,” he added.

“Better stick around,” Neale directed.

“I’ll do it,” the other answered. “And listen,” he went on, “I don’t know what you’ve found, inspector, but after you’d brought up Brant’s name a while ago, I remembered something Eddie Corbin dropped yesterday. I run across him on the street, got talking with him about Moony’s dump and the bunch that hangs out there. When I mentioned Brant he as much as told me the man was stooling for him.”

“Brant stooling for Eddie?” Neale repeated.

“I took it that way,” the patrolman answered.

The inspector and Wallace exchanged pertinent glances at that bit of news, but Neale reserved comment until they had walked beyond earshot of the talkative copper.

“That hooks up with what we’ve found,” he declared jubilantly. “The mob got wise to the game. That accounts for Brant’s name being engraved on the table. We already got the motive for the murder, and now we’re tipped off about the message. It’s as plain as rain.”

Neale stopped to relight his cigar. “I’m going to pull something when I get inside,” he announced. “Maybe it’ll jar some of the punks. One of ’em anyway. Have ’em guessing. Don’t be surprised by what I say or do.”

“I’m past being surprised,” Wallace returned, grinning. “You putting on another sideshow?”

“You might label it that.”

IV

The men strolled through the open doorway of the Moony establishment. The place was empty, except for a girl who sat at the soda counter and the youth who waited on her. They paid no attention to the newcomers. Moony was not in evidence.

Neale headed for the rear of the long room and pushed open the first door he came to. The room he disclosed was small and blue with smoke. The four men, playing cards at a table, looked up and stiffened perceptibly at sight of the two visitors. The men were young, sleek-haired, well groomed, with pale, hard faces.

Neale recognized Joe Dillon, Bert Halsey and Brant. The fourth man he judged to be Evans. The inspector closed the door behind him and eyed the stranger.

“Are you Evans?” he demanded.

“That’s me,” the man responded.

“Stand up!” Neale ordered.

The man hesitated. Halsey, sitting beside him, whispered something from the corner of his mouth. Evans scowled, put his cards down on the table and got sullenly upon his feet.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Detective Edward Corbin,” Neale charged. “Fan him, sergeant!”

Too well schooled to betray surprise at the inspector’s tactics, Wallace obeyed. A deliberate and thorough search of the prisoner produced no gun, no knife.

“What in hell’s this foolishness?” Evans growled, as the sergeant stepped back.

Neale’s bleak eyes swept the four countenances. He had hoped to learn something, to catch some involuntary flicker of surprise from one of the men when he launched his phony charge. He was disappointed. Except for Evans, who glowered resentfully, the others presented blank, stony faces.

“You say Corbin was bumped off?” Halsey asked. “You mean that kid dick of yours?”

“I said it!” Neale retorted. “In his room — an hour ago. I suppose that’s news to the lot of you.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Dillon countered. “We’ve been parked here all afternoon.”

“The four of us,” Brant supplemented.

“Right at this table,” Halsey testified.

“Quit the stalling,” Neale said.

“Ask Moony,” Dillon spoke again. “He’ll tell you as much.”

“Why pick on me?” Evans demanded. “I never heard of Corbin.”

“We’ve got you cold,” Neale said quietly. “You used a muffler on your rod. Corbin was unarmed. You didn’t give him a chance. But he lived long enough to write a message — leave it for us to find.”

Evans started a laugh, but checked it. “Oh, yeah? What sort of a message?” he asked.

“It named the killer.”

“Me? There’s more than one Evans in this town.”

“Only one right one,” Neale bluffed.

He wondered if, in shooting in the dark, charging Evans with the crime, he had made a bull’s-eye.

“You may as well come clean,” he advised. “We’ll riddle your alibi. You’re sunk.”

Halsey laughed. “Don’t let him kid you, Evans. You don’t know Porky. He’s full of tricks.”

The inspector turned upon the speaker. “Stand up! Go through him, sergeant!”

Wallace went to his task with undisguised eagerness. Halsey’s pockets were speedily emptied, dumped upon the table. No knife rewarded the search. Neale motioned for Brant and Dillon to stand. The men submitted placidly to the sergeant’s exploring fingers. A knife was found in Brant’s pocket.

The instant Wallace came upon it, he stopped, opened it. Neale leaned forward expectantly. The knife had two blades. Both of them were whole, undamaged.

The men watched the proceedings with marked interest. When their belongings had been restored to their pockets, Dillon spoke.

“Where’s a knife figure in this?” he twitted. “I thought you said your dick had been smoked.”

Neale did not answer. He cast a glum look at Wallace, and was answered in kind. They were getting nowhere. With three likely suspects before them — Brant being eliminated — they had failed to uncover a scrap of evidence. If the guilty man was in the room, he had got rid of the knife.

Some one knocked on the door. Neale stepped forward, opened it a few inches. A girl stood outside, a plump, over-dressed blonde.

“I want to see—” she began.

“You’ll have to wait,” Neale interrupted. “We’re busy.” He closed the door and this time bolted it.

The tension in the room seemed to have lessened now. The suspects relaxed. Apparently they had been quick to detect the uncertainty in Neale’s troubled eyes.

“We may as well lock the bunch of ’em up,” Wallace said, obviously aware of his superior’s dilemma.

“How do the rest of us figure in this?” Dillon asked. “You’re pinning a job on Evans — trying to — and now—”

“Go ahead and call his bluff,” Halsey broke in, grinning. “Lock us up, Porky. What’ll it get you? We’ll be out in an hour.”

But Neale was not listening. His eyes dropped to the table, to the scattered cards that had been pitched there. They jumped suddenly to the pad upon which one of the men had been keeping score. It contained the names of the four players. The names were printed in capital letters.

That wasn’t all. The “N” in Dillon’s name, in Brant’s and Evans’s were reversed — precisely as the letter had been in the message found on Corbin’s table. The score-pad was directly in front of Halsey. No need to ask questions.

Although outwardly calm and betraying none of the thrill that raced through him, Neale’s mind was churning. Here was a lead. The reversed letter furnished a clew, but it wasn’t indisputable evidence. It would take more than that to convict the man.

He took up the pad, tore off the leaf containing the scores, and thrust the pad at Dillon. “Print your own name and the names of the others,” he directed.

Dillon frowned at the singular request. “What the—” he began.

“Print ’em!” Neale repeated.

With a shrug, Dillon took a pencil from his pocket and followed instructions. He put down the four names. Every “N” he printed was reversed. Wallace, who apparently had not seen Halsey’s copy, shot a triumphant look at the inspector, but Neale ignored it.

He reached down, tore off the leaf, thrust the pad at Evans.

“You try it,” he ordered.

Evans grinned, took Dillon’s pencil. His printing was smaller, neater than his companions. But the “N’s” were not reversed.

“What’s the racket?” Halsey inquired. “You starting a school of penmanship, Porky?”

Neale’s jaw tightened. The reversed letter meant nothing now. Already he had found two examples. No doubt he could find plenty more if he cared to make the test. The lead was worthless.

“Maybe you’d like to have us sing for you,” jeered Evans.

The inspector turned his back and strode to the window. He stood there a long time, his hands clenched, his heart in the depths, aware that the men around the table were watching him derisively. He was licked. The confidence he had entertained a few minutes before, the feeling that he was on a hot trail, deserted him. Rage and chagrin were mirrored on his gaunt face.

He might arrest the suspects, grill them, but the chances of wringing anything from the men seemed remote. They were cool, arrogant, assured that Neale was faltering. He was still convinced that Corbin’s slayer was in the room.

The message containing Brant’s name, the knowledge that the murdered detective had been investigating the activities of these men, the significant information dropped by the patrolman, all pointed that way. But how was he to pin the crime on the guilty man? The knife with a broken blade was his sole bit of evidence, and that evidence was still to be found.

Neale had hoped, in charging Evans with the crime, to provoke some unguarded comment from the guilty man. But that ruse had failed. The criminal, if present, had been too cagy. He had kept a straight face and a curb on his tongue. And now the inspector must withdraw his charge, admit his trickery.

It was possible, he reflected, that if Brant had been Corbin’s stool, the man might be persuaded to squeal. But would Brant know anything? It seemed unlikely that the criminal, having deliberately framed the informer because of his suspected dealings with Corbin, would have confessed to the murder.

Still something might be gleaned from Brant once he learned that his name, not Evans’s, had been found cut in the table. That message alone, provided Neale withheld his own discoveries, would convict the man. Although the inspector did not propose to see the innocent suffer, he could hold that threat over Brant’s head, perhaps learn a few relevant facts. In the present emergency, any straw was worth grasping.

V

Neale turned from the window and was on the point of ordering Wallace to take the men to headquarters when his eyes fell upon an object under the table. It was a knife! He crossed the floor, stooped and picked it up.

The knife was a handsome one, expensive. Its ornate handle was inlaid with bands of white and yellow metal — platinum and gold, Neale judged. His heart skipped a beat when he saw, even before opening the blades, that the point of the larger one was missing.

“Who does this belong to?” he inquired casually.

No one answered him. The four men about the table contemplated the find with passive faces, indifferent eyes. Only Sergeant Wallace, in the background, registered an immediate interest.

“Must belong to one of you,” Neale insisted. “One of you must have dropped it.”

“I’ve got mine,” Brant stated.

“I never carry one,” said Halsey.

Both Dillon and Evans shook their heads when the knife was extended toward them; both favored their inquisitor with thin, mocking smiles that Neale accepted as challenges.

“Somebody must have lost it here before we came in,” Evans remarked.

With professed indifference, although his mind was seething, Neale stepped to the window again, as if to inspect his find in a better light. With his back to the audience, he opened the larger blade. From his vest pocket he extracted the bit of steel that he had pried from Corbin’s table. The broken point fitted the end of the blade perfectly.

Neale’s fingers shook a little as he restored the evidence to his pocket. The murderer was in the room! No doubt of it now. This gold and platinum knife had carved the baited message. Its owner must have noticed the damaged blade, realized where the point of it had been left, tossed the knife away before risking its being found in his possession. How long before, Neale did not attempt to estimate. It was of no consequence now.

The guilty man had been quick to sense his peril, and his companions, whether they had been taken into his confidence or not, were as quick to shield him. Undoubtedly all of them had identified the knife the moment it had been displayed. Any one of them could have named its owner.

Neale turned to meet four pairs of leveled eyes, four inscrutable countenaces.

“Sure none of you lost this?” he asked once more.

“Why all the fuss about a knife?” Halsey countered with a shrug. “Go ahead and keep the thing for a souvenir.”

“Better hand it to Moony,” Dillon advised. “Maybe the owner’ll show up and claim it. Maybe,” he added with a smirk, “you’ll collect a bit of reward.”

As if acting upon that suggestion, Neale unlocked the door and stepped outside. He saw the bald, paunchy proprietor close at hand, beckoned. In the same glance he saw the plump, over-dressed blonde sitting in a chair against the wall, recognized her as the girl who had knocked on the door some time before.

Neale, toying with a sudden inspiration, closed his hand over the knife as Moony approached.

“What’s the trouble?” the proprietor asked.

The inspector’s question was far remote from his thoughts. “How long have the boys back there been on the premises?”

“All afternoon,” Moony assured him promptly. “All of them. Why?”

“I just wanted to know,” Neale said.

He turned and reentered the room. His countenance was glum and funereal. “Hustle these punks out of here, sergeant,” he ordered wearily. “Load ’em in my car. I’ll have a session with ’em later.”

The men exchanged amused glances, and without protest or argument permitted Wallace to herd them from the room. They moved leisurely and chatted among themselves, betraying no alarm over the prospective grilling that awaited them. To the few hangers-on present, there was nothing unusual in their departure.

Neale purposely hung back. He saw Dillon wink at Moony; saw Moony nod and head toward the phone. That signal, interpreted, foretold the prompt arrival of a rescuing lawyer at headquarters, a time-honored procedure, too often successful.

It threatened to succeed in the present emergency, Neale reasoned, unless his final maneuver...

The blonde got out of her chair, ran up to grab Halsey’s arm.

“Listen, Bert,” she pleaded. “I been waitin’ to see you. You—”

“Beat it!” Halsey growled, and flung off her hand.

The girl fell back and looked after the man, her hands clenched, her face white with rising fury. Neale, watching the performance, glided beside her.

Turning, she glared at the inspector, started to move away, but stopped abruptly at sight of the knife he twirled in his fingers.

“Where’d you get that?” she demanded.

“One of the boys threw it away,” he answered, with a nod in the direction of the prisoners.

“Threw it away, did he?” The girl’s voice quivered indignantly. “The dirty bum! After me payin’ fifty berries for it!”

“That’s tough,” Neale murmured. “You gave it to Halsey?”

“Last week — for his birthday. I... I see myself givin’ that egg another present,” she choked. “The way he’s treated me!”

The blonde began to cry. Neale smiled, turned in time to catch the stricken look on Halsey’s face as the man glanced back.

“Cheer up, sister,” Neale consoled softly, patting her arm. “You won’t be giving him another present. Halsey won’t be having another birthday.”