Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 12, No. 60, November 1948

Getaway Money by Thomas Walsh

Copyright, 1943, by Pro-Distributors Publishing Co., Inc.

As we sat down to prepare Thomas Walsh’s “Getaway Money” for the printer, we suddenly realized that all we know about Mr. Walsh is his work. Of the man himself we know nothing. What kind of guy is he? And then it crossed our mind that there is one man in New York who knows. We picked up the ’phone and called Joseph T. Shaw... Tom Walsh? A salt-of the-earth guy, said Captain Shaw. Yes, I’ve known Tom Walsh for twenty years — bought his first story when I was editor of “Black Mask” — saw him climb and climb until he is now a steady contributor to “Saturday Evening Post” and “Collier’s” — you know, one of Tom Walsh’s most outspoken admirers is Octavus Roy Cohen — something about his background? well, he used to be on the “Baltimore Sun” — yes, scratch a writer and you find a newspaperman — oh, he’s a big man, stands higher than six feet and weighs more than two hundred, but he’s a big man in other ways too — got the sweetest disposition of any man I ever knew, even-tempered, gentle, an understanding guy — yes, that’s it: he understands people, he knows character, and that’s the best equipment a writer can have... and how right the old maestro is: strength in characterization is the most precious literary possession a writer can have; it is the secret weapon in a writer’s arsenal; it covers a multitude of sins.

Pete Mayo smiled politely with his thin pale lips. He said: “I guess you’re topped again.” He placed his cards on the table, spread them out carefully with his fingers, and drew in the pile of chips around them. Drake saw three aces, a queen, and a five.

Young Jimmy Harris had been the only one to stay. He bent forward his strained boyish face, with the eye hollows dark drawn, the mouth desperately narrow, nodding when he saw Pete Mayo’s hand. He pushed the cards to Drake, looking dully at him. When he spoke his voice was tensed, shaky.

“I think it’s your deal,” he said.

The Limited clicked past a crossing, the metallic clatter of its wheels purring softly through the compartment with a rhythmic drowsiness. In the blue dusk outside Drake saw a small stone station blur by.

“Martinsville,” Drake said. He looked at his watch. “We’re due in at seven; twenty more minutes. The last hand for me, gentlemen.”

“Then we’ll make it big,” Joe Madigan said jovially. He had a hearty voice, small merry eyes in a plump, very pale face. While he spoke he looked around the table at the players in turn; at Drake’s lean tanned features, at Pete Mayo’s expressionless white mask, at young Harris’ twisted lipsmile. Neil Grant, next to Madigan, pushed a hand caressingly through his curly blond hair, smiled with his pretty mouth.

“But give me something good, Drake,” he said. “You’ve won altogether too much. If I win this time I’ll buy you something real nice, darling.”

The girl on the end of the seat turned sullenly from the window. She said angrily: “I’ve sat here for five hours like a fool. I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.”

Neil Grant said: “Now, darling.”

Drake shuffled, dealt the cards. Joe Madigan on his left took his five, tapped them three times on the table top. He prayed, his eyes rolling comically: “Come up, baby.” He grinned at Drake as he said it, then spread the cards out slowly in his cupped hands, squinting at each revealed corner.

“It’s open,” he said. “Get in for the gravy, boys.”

They all stayed around to Drake. He held three fours, an ace, a ten. He took two chips from his stack and flipped them to the table center, smiling at Joe Madigan. “You wanted it big,” he said.

Neil Grant pursed his lips in a soft whistle; after a moment he threw his cards down, pushed back from the table.

Madigan’s chunky face lost geniality. He growled: “Damn if you ain’t putting the whip to me this trip. I’m staying.”

Pete Mayo spoke in a low voice, metal hard without resonance. He said: “Bigger, Joe.” His chips jiggled a little with the swinging of the car as he tossed them out.

Jimmy Harris grinned nervously. His eyes were wide, very dark in his face, as he met both raises.

“I’m kicking it,” Drake said. He put out three chips.

Madigan stayed. Pete Mayo didn’t raise again. His calm eyes were blank, remote.

Madigan drew three cards, Pete Mayo one, Jimmy Harris one. Drake picked up his hand again, considered, played one of the hunches he had been winning on all afternoon. He tossed the ten into the discard, held the ace as kicker, and drew one from the stack.

Madigan’s face was jovial again. “Cost the boys two,” he crowed. When he finished speaking the door to the corridor opened, and a very small, very lean man came in. His face was shrewd, wizened, holding beady black eyes like brightly painted dabs of china.

Drake glanced at him. “Last hand, Nicky. Be right with you.”

The dried-apple face grinned cockily. “Oke,” it answered. He came over with brisk movements and stood behind Drake’s chair.

Pete Mayo’s cold eyes were detached, blank. He took two chips from his heap and placed five more beside them. He did not say anything.

Jimmy Harris drew in his lips and licked them with his tongue tip. His face was eager, glowing. “And five again,” he said.

Drake looked at his hand. He saw the ace of hearts he had held, the three fours next, and he spread the cards a little to reveal the one on the end he had just drawn. It was the ace of diamonds. He felt Nicky’s breath slightly hotter on his neck. He said: “Once more, gentlemen.”

Joe Madigan slapped down his cards. “To hell with it,” he grumbled. “You took me for three gees. That’s enough.” He looked dark and fretful puffing at his cigar.

Pete Mayo raised again, the boy raised, Drake raised. Joe Madigan said: “Damn if it ain’t a pot,” and leaned forward, his little eyes greedy on the soaring pile of chips. Neil Grant hummed, his hands in the pockets of his tweed suit, his face handsome, sardonic.

Pete Mayo bet steadily, young Harris began to call, Drake raised back. The boy wasn’t so sure now; his face was drawn uncertainly, the eyes flicking in rapid panicky arcs from one to the other. When he met Mayo’s last raise the space before him held a lone white chip.

Drake said: “I’m calling, Mayo.”

Pete Mayo arched his penciled black brows, looked incredulous, and laid his cards down. He was holding an ace high straight.

Jimmy Harris laughed suddenly — a sharp sound that had the relief, the breaking from tension, of a sob. He cried: “But it’s no good, Mayo. I’ve—” He stopped speaking, looked at the five spades he spread wide before him, then up to Drake’s gray eyes without raising his head, without, Drake thought, breathing.

Drake nodded, looking disgusted. He pursed his lips and threw his hand irritably into the discards, pushed his seat back from the board. Behind him Nicky’s mouth dropped. He began: “What in the hell did you—” with his voice getting louder on each word. Drake’s glance moved coldly at him and he stopped, his eyes astounded.

Joe Madigan’s plump face was pouting. “Not my luck to win that.” he said sourly. “They took us this time, Neil.”

He set his cigar on the rim of the board, bent to one side, and hoisted up a small leather portmanteau from the floor. A mass of papers on the top, removed, displayed a greenish edge of bills, massed in without order in overlapping heaps.

Neil Grant, his smile bright, facetious, said: “Mr. Money Man Madigan. Carries the cash with him. Some day, friend, that habit will get you taken.”

“Safer than a bank,” said Madigan. He leaned forward, his eyes hard, probing. “With this, Neil.” Drake looked at a shoulder-holster inside the bookmaker’s coat, saw a revolver butt black against worn leather. Madigan tapped it, grinned thinly. “They see papa first.”

Pete Mayo piled his counters without speaking, looking down at them thoughtfully; when he got his money from Madigan he straightened his slim dapper body and said: “I’ll be seeing you,” to no one in particular.

Jimmy Harris stacked his chips and pushed them across to Madigan. He made extravagant motions with his hands, laughed buoyantly as he spoke.

“What a break I got! I figured Mayo for a straight on his one draw — I wasn’t afraid of him. But Drake over here—” He grinned, looking up, mopped back his dark hair with one hand. “What did you have, anyway?”

Drake said, shrugging: “It doesn’t matter.”

Madigan finished paying off and clicked the leather bag shut. He grinned again, heartily, the hail fellow well met. “They better run right tomorrow, or little Joey will be down to getaway money.”

He took a folded hundred dollar bill from his vest pocket, patted it, kissed it, put it back. “Four years that’s been in the old sock. If the boys keep hitting me like they did these last few meetings, I’ll be using it. What you got in the Derby, Drake?”

“Oh, yes,” Neil Grant said. His eyes were sleepy, half closed, with the brown glitter narrowed in them. “You really owe us a tip after taking all our money.” Smiling brightly, gaily, he smoothed down his hair with one careful hand. “You have a reputation, you know — the bookmaker’s bane. Chicago Drake, the man of mystery. Strong, silent, and extremely fortunate. Do pass me the good word; I’ll take Joe’s money, as a friend.”

“Sorry,” Drake said. His tone was bland, withdrawn. “I don’t know a thing.”

Joe Madigan grinned, played with the handle of the brown leather bag. “I hope you’re coming clean, Chicago. You took me for plenty last meeting. The boys are beginning to mark you down as no bargain. Me, I’d hate to take your money on a brewery nag.”

Neil Grant said. “Oh, come on, Drake. A good word to a friend—”

Drake said, “Sorry,” again, without displaying sorrow in his faintly smiling face. He bowed to the girl, waved a hand at the others, went out to the corridor behind Nicky’s gnome-like form.

Two Pullmans up they entered another compartment, and before the door was closed behind them Nicky exploded. He barked: “What in the hell was the matter? Almost four grand on the board, a guy with a straight, a guy with a flush, and you—” Nicky choked, sputtered, looked at once bewildered and savage — “you with nothing at all in your mitt but a lousy full house. Why—”

Drake said: “He’s Pop Harris’ boy.” He whistled over the bag, not looking at the little man. “I guess he was playin’ with Pop’s money, three grand of it.”

Nicky nodded his head. “Pop Harris’ boy,” he said slowly. “So that’s the why. Your old pal Pop — and the kid’s his. I heard about the boy; he’s been tearin’ things open since Pop died and he got the old man’s little bit o’ jack. That’s—”

Drake growled: “Cut it out, I’m not giving anybody anything — not even Pop’s kid. He had me beat, that’s all. If I’d had the full I’d have pulled in the pot.”

“Sure, sure.” Nicky mimicked him with a distorted swagger, a bitter heartiness of tone. “Two aces don’t count with three fours. I know. But if Mayo had the kid beat, I got a hunch Pete would have lost the pot anyway. Lost to a full.”

Drake said: “Don’t bet on hunches. You’d always lose.”

Chicago Drake left his hotel room a little after eight that evening. He bought cigarettes at the stand downstairs, lit one at the gas flame before the counter, and crowded his way, with one shoulder hunched, through the press of people filling the lobby.

Out on the street he whistled a passing cab to the curb, got in, and gave the driver directions. Fifteen minutes later the taxi turned off the main road to a graveled lane lit by a string of colored bulbs, rumbled past a clump of trees to an open space hazily green with concealed lights. Drake got out and paid the driver.

High, sweet smelling stacks of hay flanked him as he went forward. On a building before him the word Haystack flicked on and off against a ramshackle wooden building that resembled too obviously a barn, with premeditated spots of rustic and quaint antiquity dotted across the worn board fronting. A smooth-faced man in evening clothes received him at the door and escorted him inside.

The air was warm, sweetish with the mixed odors of gin and liquors. It was dim over the tables, shadow hovered, with the only light a palish halo at the end of the long room, wherein a platinum blonde in a dark velvet dress moaned mournfully through the closing stanza of a torch song.

Drake threaded his way behind the waiter through a vague whiteness of tables, catching stray snatches of talk, a woman’s low laugh. It was too dark for him to distinguish faces; but all around him colored evening gowns and starched shirt fronts blurred together in movements under the pink light that retreated confusedly into the shadows from the silver glitter of the singer’s hair. Drake sat down and gave his order, lit a cigarette while he waited.

“My man’s go-ooo-one.” The orchestra surged suddenly up from under the blue cadences of the girl’s voice, overpowered it, and crashed brassy notes in crescendo against walls and ceiling. The lights went on, very brightly.

Drake looked about him. Four tables away from him his eye caught the bright glitter of Neil Grant’s hair, head turned from Drake as he applauded the singer. Jimmy Harris sat on his left, between him and the girl; he was smoking, a faint, absent frown on his brows. On the opposite side of the table Pete Mayo’s cameo cold face was remotely absorbed above the sleek small body; his glance crossed Drake with the barest perceptible widening of recognition. He made no other sign.

The waiter brought Drake’s order and he began to eat. When he had finished the band was playing again, a swift syncopation of notes that twinkled rapidly under the saxophones’ thin lament. Pete Mayo got up and went outside; Neil Grant and the girl left the table to dance. Drake wondered where Joe Madigan was as he arose and snaked a way through the dancers to where young Harris was sitting alone.

Drake nodded to his nod, looked narrowly at the boy over his cigarette end, noting the uncertain flexible curve of his mouth, the dark gleam of something unrevealed in his eyes. He said: “How are they coming, Jimmy?”

“So so.” Jimmy Harris smiled twitchily, looked away. He tried to make his voice forceful, hearty. He didn’t succeed. “Looking for something good in the big race tomorrow. Got anything, Drake?”

“Maybe I have,” Drake said quietly. “If you want it, Jimmy—”

A small, squarely set man bumped aside a dancing couple, stopped at their table with a loud whoosh of expelled breath. His face was small, red, jolly. He said cheerfully: “Hello, Drake,” and looked down at the boy with the same expression. “You Jimmy Harris?”

Blood faded from Harris’ face, leaving it sheet-like. The dark something in his eyes flamed higher, spread. He made groping motions with his hand, started to get up, looked at Drake. He said: “Yes — yes,” in a breathless, excited voice.

“Proctor,” Drake said. He glanced up at him from the boy, puzzled. “What are you doing out here?”

The short man, still cheerful, jerked his head downward. “I guess he can tell you.”

Jimmy Harris started to speak, choked, blurted out: “I didn’t kill him. I went in there for something I forgot. When I—”

The short man said: “But you knew he was killed, Jimmy? Why didn’t you call somebody? Why you didn’t makes it kinda tough on you, Kid.” He looked across the dance-floor and nodded to a burly man by the entrance. Then he said: “Get your hat.”

“Wait a minute,” Drake put in slowly. “What’s the point? This isn’t a game of charades, Proctor?”

Proctor looked down at him, little eyes bright. “Nope,” he said. “Not charades. It’s a game called bing bing and hot foot, Drake. Joe Madigan’s it. He got tagged, knocked off, rolled down the chute. He’s croaked.”

“Joe Madigan!” Drake’s incredulous voice matched his eyes, his wide mouth. “But — I played cards with him this afternoon, Proctor. When — What you picking up the boy for?”

Proctor explained, a little impatiently: “For questioning. They found Madigan’s body in his compartment on the Limited half an hour after it pulled in. When we went down to look things over the conductor and porter give us the names of the guys that were playin’ with him. You, Neil Grant, Pete Mayo, the kid.” His thumb flipped briefly to Jimmy Harris. “The conductor saw this lad coming out of Madigan’s compartment as the train got in to the station. He said the kid’s face was white as hell. He looked all upset.” Proctor shrugged. “What would you figure it?”

Jimmy Harris cried desperately: “But I told you I forgot something — my cigarette case.” His eyes were dark, terrified in the pallor of his face. He held his arm rigid on the table, half lifting him out of his chair. “When I went back to get it I saw him. I got scared. Maybe I didn’t use my head. I thought if I told—”

Proctor said, his tone friendly: “I got nothing to do with that, brother. They won’t hang you tonight. All I was told was bring you down for questioning. If I was you I’d come along peacefully.”

Jimmy Harris nodded dully. He said: “All right.” He got up, not looking at Drake, and walked over to the doorway. Proctor followed him. The burly man turned, flanking them carefully.

An instant later Pete Mayo came in by the door they had left, turning his head over his shoulder to watch. Then he faced about, marched precisely, with his small contained arrogance, across the room. He said to Drake: “What’s the parade for?” in a tone faintly amused.

Drake’s tanned face was surfacely casual, pleasant. His voice affable, he asked: “You don’t know, Pete? Some little something. The boys played quoits with Joe Madigan. But Joe didn’t duck. Maybe you know something?”

Pete Mayo stopped smiling; the grave cold mask dropped down over his face, leaving it carefully inexpressive. He stared at Drake, said: “You speaking English?”

Drake didn’t answer, didn’t look at Neil Grant and the girl when they came up. He pushed back his chair and crossed the dance-floor in crisp strides

Drake felt lonely and a little cold, thinking of Pop Harris. Old Pop! The best friend a man ever had. And his boy now up for murder. Pleasant, that.

The yellowish sheen of a taxi left its line near the road and rumbled to him. With one foot on the running-board, Drake said: “Police Headquarters. And step on it.”

He got back to his room shortly past eleven. The radio was on, tuned loudly to an incoherent splutter of jazz. Before it Nicky was trying dance steps on the rug, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and his eyes wrinkled against the smoke. When he saw Drake’s face he stopped, looked serious, shut off the radio with his small finger.

“Bad?” he asked. “I couldn’t figure what you wanted in the phone call.”

Drake sailed his hat to the bed and lit a cigarette before speaking. His voice poured out rapidly, earnestly. “Joe Madigan’s been murdered, Nicky. They picked up Jimmy Harris on suspicion. He owed Madigan eight thousand dollars in unpaid bets. I saw him at Headquarters and he admitted that to me. But the cops don’t know about that yet.”

Nicky said, wide mouthed. “Hey! Wait a minute! Joe Madigan croaked? Where, when?”

Drake explained, briefly. He went on: “Proctor let me see the boy at Headquarters. He says Grant and the girl left Madigan’s compartment before he did, and that when he got to his seat three cars down he remembered he’d left his cigarette case on the table. Then he got out his bags, brushed up a little in the smoking compartment — five minutes altogether — and went back for it. Madigan was lying on the floor with blood all over the back of his head. It frightened him so much that he didn’t tell anybody, but just sneaked out. He figured, too, the eight thousand might make it look bad for him.”

Nicky stopped scowling, stopped prodding his thumb at some side teeth long enough to say: “So what?”

Drake’s eyes were bitter, slitted; he moved his head impatiently, stared before him. After a while he said:

“Madigan carried money in that leather bag of his. A good bit of money. You and I knew that — so did every regular at the races — and that includes Mayo and Neil Grant. The bag was empty when they found Madigan. So he was killed for the money. An ordinary stick-up man wouldn’t take Madigan on the train — it would be easier, safer to get him in town. Figure it like that — a job done without planning, for money. Harris was away five minutes; plenty long enough for anybody who had left before him to come back and knock over Madigan.”

Nicky said. “I think you’re hinting, boss.”

Drake’s smile was brief, grim. “Smart boy, Nicky. We got in at seven, too late for the money to be banked. So it’s reasonable to suppose the killer still has the money somewhere around him.”

“That means?” Nicky asked.

“That means,” Drake said, “we search two rooms in this hotel. Neil Grant’s and Mayo’s — maybe Grant’s girl, too.”

Nicky grimaced. “Nice and easy. Just like that?”

Drake said: “Just like that.”

He went to the phone on the table and jiggled the hook. He said: “Mr. Mayo’s room, please.” When the connection was made he listened to the long ring, perhaps twenty times before the operator cut in. “Sorry, sir. Your party does not answer.”

Drake jerked impatience into his tone. “They’re in, operator. They must be in. Sure you’re ringing the right party? What room number are you trying?”

The operator said: “Yes, sir. Room nine-o-six. Mr. Mayo.”

Drake said: “Thank you,” and hung up. He told Nicky: “Mayo’s out; we’ll try him first. Nine-o-six — that’s Miss Carrigan’s floor. Amorous Carrigan.”

He grinned, rubbed his blunt chin with nicotined fingers, snapped them suddenly before him. “Not so tough to crash it if she’s on duty. Nicky, you go down to the lobby and hang around the elevators. When you see Pete Mayo come in ring nine-o-six on the dot. Got that?”

“Nine-o-six,” Nicky nodded. “Right.” His face clouded a little. “I don’t like it, boss. Suppose you find dough; how you gonna prove it was Madigan’s? And this Mayo is tough. I hear a yarn he’s a killer down from Detroit. Bad boy. If—”

Drake said contemptuously: “He’s a little rat. As for the money — we plan from that when we find out where it is. If things break—” He stopped, shrugged, beckoned Nicky out to the corridor.

Several minutes later he left the elevator at the ninth floor, stepping into a small reception room ornately carpeted, with a small desk at one side behind which a stout woman of forty, with plump rosy cheeks, sat reading an evening paper.

Drake smiled widely, advancing. “Miss Carrigan,” he cried, heartily. “Well, well, well! How are you?”

The floor clerk blinked surprisedly, took a moment to look coy. She squealed in a flutter of emotion: “But it’s Mr. Drake! Oh, I’m so glad to see you! But I had hoped you’d be on my floor this time, too. I want to take care of my boys.” She smiled archly.

Drake lied gallantly, shrewdly: “I hoped so, too. But they stuck me upstairs, on the twelfth.

“By the way, Miss Carrigan, Mr. Mayo isn’t in, is he?” He smiled confidentially, bent closer. “We’re going to play a little joke on Pete — Mr. Mayo. You know—” He waved his hand vaguely, smiling at her, winked one eye meaningly.

“I know it’s against the rules, but if you could let me have the pass key to his room for just a few moments—”

Miss Carrigan looked doubtful, then wavered, surrendered, under the warmth of his smile.

Drake took the key not too quickly, contrived to look pleasant and good naturedly mysterious, and escaped into the corridor with a last meaning nod. Outside Mayo’s room he looked at his watch. Half past eleven. If Mayo came home from the Haystack early—

The lock yielded easily, without sound. He groped for the switch on the wall, found it, and light swooped at a click after instantly banished darkness.

He went first to the closet door and yanked it open, pulling forth the two dark leather traveling bags it contained. They were unlocked, half empty, and he thumbed rapidly through the contents. There was nothing interesting.

He drew out the dresser drawers, tossing aside shirts, underwear, handkerchiefs. He found nothing. There was a bathroom at one side and he crossed to this and went in. Behind the mirror the white metal cabinet contained the usual toilet things. Nothing else. Drake fingered them irritably, flipped through the Turkish towels on the rack, and turned back. Two paces out he stopped.

Pete Mayo was in the bedroom, with his small, well-tailored back against the closed corridor door. He was dressed in a tuxedo, with a black banded straw hat on his head. He was frowning a little — a very tiny brow contraction of puzzlement. There was a revolver in his right hand. He said to Drake: “Sit down.”

Drake shrugged, feeling like a petty thief, started to speak as the phone on the bedside table tinkled out over his words. Watching him, Pete Mayo stepped the two paces to it. He said: “Hello,” in his hard, recognizable voice when his left hand brought it up to his lips.

Drake heard a staccato mutter from the other end. Nicky, of course. What in hell had kept him? Now...

Pete Mayo put down the receiver without saying anything else. His palely abstracted eyes glided over the room, the heaps of clothing on the floor, the open closet door and the two gaping traveling bags. He said again, looking at Drake: “Sit down.” When Drake didn’t move, Mayo’s narrow body seemed to contract, to tense and draw in without motion. It became hard, compact, purposeful, and when he spoke his flat voice was toneless. He said: “I don’t tell you again.”

Drake suddenly saw madness in the small exquisite features; in their white glistening sheen something flamed paler and more merciless than fire. He realized in the instant that he moved to obey that Pete Mayo would shoot — that Pete Mayo wanted to shoot.

He was cold, not afraid, wary. He sat down. Crossing to him, behind him, Pete Mayo’s steps were soundless, light, as if there were no weight in his body. He said: “Put your hands behind you.” Drake obeyed, felt a thin loop fasten about his wrists, grow tighter until the edge of it sliced into his flesh.

He moved suddenly, knocking his chair back, jerking his body to one side as he fell. Metal flashed in the light above him, crushed hard, cold, on to his skull. He felt no pain. Red light streamed like drunken lightning across his eyeballs, burst in a crimson glow that expanded and covered the room.

When he could see again he was on the floor, on his side, his head pushed against the cold metal roller of the bed. His legs were bent up a little, fastened to his arms. Someone seemed to beat with a great muffled hammer at the inside of his skull. It was very painful.

His eyes roamed dully around the room, picked out Pete Mayo’s slender form before the dresser. The pale man was silent, attentive to the cord held in his widely separated hands, snapping it once, twice. He turned to Drake.

The perfect oval of Mayo’s face was absorbed, very white. His arms, his legs, moved in a delicate precision as he crossed the rug. He knelt before Drake, turning Drake’s bound body until it rested on its back.

Drake stared up at the ceiling cluster of bulbs, watched them contract, dim, flow out and expand to an enormous brilliance. The hammer kept thudding inside his skull, and he felt the blows of it all over his body like a heart beating with intolerable force. He could not think clearly; a formless surge of dark gray rolled forward and back in alternate waves inside his skull.

He shook his head, annoyed. He tried to speak to Pete Mayo. He wanted to ask him what the hell was the matter. But something soft and bulky was forced far back in his mouth, parting his jaws, rubbing coarsely against his tongue. The sound Drake made was hoarse, moaning.

Pete Mayo lifted Drake’s head, passed something under it, put it back. The something was slender, ridged. Drake rolled his eyes down heavily and saw one of the small white hands on either side of his neck. The hands were bent palm to him, with the fingers clenched down on the thing they held. Pete Mayo crossed wrists, transferred the cord ends from one to the other. He began to breathe very fast.

He drew his arms apart slowly. The cord slid a bit on Drake’s throat, then tightened. The monstrous hammer stopped beating inside his head and his body, below the neck, grew intensely hot. Trying to move, to struggle, he discovered in the queer fog of his mind that he could no longer breathe. Above him the milky white balls of Pete Mayo’s eyes spread with a steady growth over the paleness of each iris, leaving them blank, horrible.

Fire scorched Drake’s throat, biting at the tissue. He twisted his head, threw back his body madly, writhed on the floor. Pete Mayo was laughing; his arms tensed and drew wider; the complete whiteness of his eyes gave to his face the expression of an idiot.

Drake’s mind swam down and down, became infinitesimal in the giant’s stature of his body that seemed to fill the room, to tower and broaden in the swirling streams of brilliant light that circled him in the empty space of soaring. For a moment the lights cleared, and the pain stopped. He could see. He was quite peaceful, calm. He could see the mad laughter, the madder exultation in the narrow, insane face of Pete Mayo above him. Then the lights came again, and faded slowly, silently, to grayness.

Out of the grayness Nicky whimpered, his face frightened: “Gosh Almighty, boss, I thought the rat put you down. I been workin’ on you for ten minutes. You—”

Drake with an immense effort pushed the upper part of his body erect, resting it against the bed. Nicky’s voice droned meaninglessly around him. His throat seemed swollen, dry, and packed with harsh cotton burning slowly. When he tried to speak he made a croaking sound; it sounded so funny to him that he laughed. He laughed, putting his head back against the metal bar.

Nicky said: “Now, boss — now, boss,” looking wildly around the room. He got up and ran across the floor that billowed under Drake’s eyes in slow steady waves. Drake wondered, interestedly, how he did it. Pete Mayo was lying before him, on his face. He was curious, too, about that.

Nicky came back, his eyes distracted, and slopped water from a glass down on him. Drake reached greedily for the tumbler, got it, and sloshed the liquid down the fiery tube of his throat. It hurt going down, but when he had swallowed it he felt better, more normal. He managed to get to his feet.

“—!” sighed Nicky, over a long breath. “Boss, I’ll tell you—”

Drake croaked again, pointed his finger at Pete Mayo and raised inquiring brows.

Nicky scowled, spoke slowly, with hatred. “The lousy little rat. I saw him come in, but a dizzy operator gave me the wrong number. When I got, 906 I recognized his voice say hello. I made out I had the wrong place, asked for foe. Then I came up here to wait in the hall. I didn’t know what to do. But after a while I got nervous — the door wasn’t locked but I couldn’t hear anything — so I come in. Mayo didn’t hear me; he had the rope around your neck and I saw his hands pullin’ it.” Nicky reached out with his foot and pushed it into Pete Mayo’s side. “So there was a chair here and I smacked him with it. Which is all, boss.”

Drake looked and saw a chair splintered by the body. He rasped: “Dead?”

Nicky said: “No,” regretfully. “But he won’t feel like doin’ much for the rest of the night.”

Drake nodded, steadying himself with one hand on the footrail of the bed. His mind felt light and uncontrolled; he had a constant desire to burst out laughing. There seemed to be something inexpressibly funny in the back of his head but he could not think what it was.

Nicky’s arm helped him to the door and out into the hall. The dimmer light there was grateful to his pain streaked eyes, though the corridor itself seemed narrow and infinitely long. He staggered a little, pushed away Nicky’s arm, but managed to reach Miss Carrigan’s desk steadily enough.

Her face gaped in surprise when she saw him. “Why, Mr. Drake,” she said. Her bright little nose sniffed suspiciously, seemed to wiggle; she shook her head sternly, in disapproval.

Drake couldn’t help laughing at her face, her expression. The sounds bubbled from him and exploded against the walls in a rush he couldn’t stop. Miss Carrigan looked outraged, old maidish, quite forty. The illogical thought came to him that she must be thinking of the duplicity of man.

He laughed, roared. The spasm drained him of breath and he leaned over gasping. Before him the metal doors of the elevator shaft drew noiselessly apart, and Neil Grant and the girl got off. Drake began, after an instant, to roar again with laughter. Neil Grant smiled, not understanding, but brightly.

“What ho!” he said. “A large evening for the boys.”

Drake boomed: “I’m drunk. I’m drunk as hell! I want to blow things up, Grant. High’s sky, higher!” He threw one hand clumsily to the ceiling, let it plop down on the blond man’s shoulder. He shook him playfully, his eyes cunning, his mouth pleading. “And I want one more drink before I blow. One more. How about it, friend?”

Nicky looked angry. “Come on,” he growled. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” He shook his head disgustedly.

Drake leered: “He thinks I’m drunk. Me!” The great laughter roared forth, reverberated. “Me, Grant!” He spoke quietly, confidentially in the hoarse whisper of an intoxicated man. “I’ve got a tip — a good tip. On the Derby, Grant. For you. You’re my friend.” He half closed one eye, put his head to the side, moved a finger before his face. “But you’ve got to give me a drink, friend, to get it. Just one. I’m dying for it.”

Neil Grant took his arm. The brown eyes were bright, gay. His glance shot to the girl warningly as she said: “For crying out loud—” and stopped when she caught his look.

They left Miss Carrigan’s outraged presence, with the girl annoyed, Nicky sour looking and uncertain.

The blond man’s room was nine eleven, two doors down across the corridor from Pete Mayo’s. Inside, Drake sprawled in a chair, breathing heavily, as if asleep. He didn’t move until Neil Grant brought him a glass of Scotch.

Then he got up, lunging to one side, staggered to the bathroom door behind the bed. He muttered, heavy eyed: “All right, friend. You’ll excuse — the lady—” He hiccoughed, bowed to the girl, wavered with drunken dignity past her. He lurched inside, hiccoughed again, closed the door.

There he crossed steadily enough to the basin. In the mirror his face stared back at him, darkly congested, the eyes bleary. He grinned without mirth. Not hard to convince anybody he was blotto, looking that way. There was a livid mark apparent on his neck when he bent forward, and he pulled the linen collar of his shirt higher to conceal it.

From his inside pocket he took a pen and a small leather notebook. On one of the unlined pages in back he wrote rapidly: “Go downstairs phone Detective Proctor at Police Headquarters. Get him over as soon as you can and wait for him. Thee* bring him right up. Don’t mind an) thing I say before Grant.”

He put back the pen, folded the pa per in a small ball and concealed it in his palm, then ran the water thirty seconds before going out. In the bedroom he saw the girl had gone, and noticed from the tail of his eye Nicky looking sourly at him from the bed.

Neil Grant was handsome, gracious. “About that tip?” he smiled.

“Oh, no,” Drake said, cunningly. “Not that way, friend. Firsht — the drink.” He picked up the glass of Scotch, drained it, continued: “A cigarette — must have smoke.” He lurched over to Nicky’s scowl, said: “Whass matter, kid? No fun? Come on, get hot.” Nicky gave him a pack of cigarettes and he took one out, lit it. Under the cardboard box, as he returned it, he slid the piece of paper, pressing it into Nicky’s palm.

Neil Grant said, his words eager, fast: “But the tip, Drake? You’re not going to forget that?”

“Thirty to one,” Drake said. “That’s what shell pay. Got that? Now—” he turned to Nicky. “You get Brannigan, bring him up here, right away.” He roared suddenly: “Damn you, get going.”

Nicky looked sullen, puzzled. He held the pack of cigarettes in his hand, hesitated a moment, then at Drake’s clumsy pass went across to the door and out. Drake dropped on the bed, turned over, began to snore.

Ten minutes later Nicky and Proctor came in. Drake lifted himself dully, rubbed his eyes, boomed out: “Brannigan, pal! I’m ringing a friend in, got it? All my friends in. Good thing — can’t miss.”

Proctor said: “Ya-yuh,” cheerfully, looking at Neil Grant.

The blond man appeared uncertain. He said:

“But you haven’t told me the horse’s name.”

Drake said: “All right. Brannigan’s my commissioner — places money. Spreads it around — Chicago, St. Looey, New York. Wires it like that, just before race time. Then it’s put down. Then no chance to beat down odds, unnerstand? Still high, thirty to one. But the money mustn’t be bet at track. That knocks down odds, beats hell out of ’em. Unnerstand?” He made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Okey, friend. You give Brannigan five thousand dollars, now. Got it?”

“Five thousand dollars!” Neil Grant pressed his lips far out, then drew them together into his cheeks in a grimace that resembled a smile. “I don’t know that I—”

Drake roared with sudden violence: “Then to hell with you! I don’t have to beg the tip. Do I have to beg it? Do I, Brannigan? No piker money goes down with Chicago Drake.” He got off the bed, said again, bitterly: “To bell with you!” and lurched for the door. “Let’s go down for a drink, Brannigan.”

Neil Grant’s voice and smile were conciliatory. “Don’t be like that, Drake. I’ll get it. A minute—”

He went over to the closet, entered it, was concealed by its door for thirty seconds. When he came out there was a large manila envelope in his hand, bulged out thickly in the center. Without speaking he placed a sheaf of bills on the table, looked up sidewise at Drake, the brown glitter in his eyes amused and tolerant.

Drake was boisterous and his voice was loud. “Tip on Gallant, boy. You got it now. Five grand there, Brannigan?”

Proctor took up the bills, flipped each one straight in the center like a bank teller, and counted them out upon the table. There were three five-hundred-dollar-bills, the rest hundreds, older, more used, than the others.

Proctor reached three thousand, four. They all watched him. He droned: “Forty-five hundred—”

Drake said: “Wait a minute.” His face hardened, became clear, and he lost his drooling smile. He reached over and picked up the hundred dollar bill Proctor had just put down; he brought it close to his eyes, nodded, looked up at Neil Grant. He said: “You killed Joe Madigan.”

The blond man kept smiling; his eyes kept bright. He said softly: “You’re not drunk, Drake. You tried to trick me.”

“I’m not drunk,” Drake said. He held the bill taut between fingers, read off the serial number. “06091113. That was Madigan’s getaway money — his lucky bill. Ended in thirteen; Joe was superstitious about it. He’d had the bill for years, and everyone that knew him knew that. This afternoon in the train you saw him take it out of his vest pocket and kiss it and put it back. He said something — I forget. But when you went back to kill him you didn’t forget to take it, after you’d taken the bag. Pretty cheap, Grant. So cheap it’s going to hang you.”

Neil Grant said, shaping his mouth: “No.” He leaned forward, soft voiced, smiling, triumph relaxing his mouth, making merry glitters of light in his brown eyes. “No, Drake. Shall I tell you why?” He chuckled, looking around at each of them in turn. “Because it isn’t Joe’s getaway money. The killer might have known that, too — known the thirteen Joe was superstitious about. But they’ll find Joe’s bill in his vest pocket when they search his suit. That’s the one thing you didn’t know, Drake.”

Drake said slowly: “I didn’t know, Grant. Only one man did know. The man that murdered Madigan.”

Neil Grant looked thoughtful, not concerned, nodded after a moment. “Yes,” he said. “You’ll call as witnesses Brannigan, your tout? Nicky, your friend? Yourself?” He laughed aloud. “We know it, Drake. We three. Unfortunately there isn’t a judge, a jury, to hear. So—”

Proctor lost his cheerfulness; his voice grew surly, his face hard. “Uh-huh,” he said. “You got me wrong, mister. My name’s Proctor; I’m a detective on the city homicide squad.”

He lunged for Grant, staggered back with blood flowing from his nose at the snapping of the blond man’s arm, swift and keen like a rapier. Nicky staggered, went down under a kick; only Drake, his lean body shooting from the chair, barred the corridor door.

But Neil Grant didn’t move for that; he raced back, his handsome face sullen, hard, with dark horror coating the eyes. Proctor’s body contorted by the table and drew up, and shots — one, two — crashed over one another in the narrow walls of the room.

Neil Grant made the bathroom door — staggering, he made it, and clicked it behind him. Proctor, squinting, brushing the red stream away from his nose, went over to it. He said to Drake: “A way out from here?”

Drake shook his head, coming across, and together with the short man threw his body against the door. There was a sound from inside. The scraping whine of a raised window.

Proctor grunted breathless: “Fire-escape?”

“No,” Drake said. “But I think he knows that.”

Proctor looked at him, pulled down his mouth corners, said: “I should worry.” He placed his revolver close to the door, fired twice, again, then pushed out the lock and went in.

The room was empty. Thin curtains fluttered lightly in the night breeze from the open window. When Drake crossed to it and looked out he saw, far below, long lines of small things like ants scurrying along the light-splotched stone canyon. There was a knot of them below him, and the long lines converged on this. But there was an open space in the center, with something spread out, and this the ants did not touch.

In the elevator Nicky said: “How did you figure him in, boss? After Mayo tried to croak you—”

Drake’s tired face moved irritably. “My throat hurts like hell,” he said. He put up fingers and rubbed it tenderly. “They got a name for men like Pete Mayo, but I don’t know what it is. The act of death means something to him that life itself doesn’t. He loves death too much to be quick about it. He wouldn’t have shot Madigan on the train — too abrupt for his fancy, too dangerous. He’s a professional. He saw right off what I was trying to pin on him, and, catching me where it was all on his side, he would have killed me. If he wasn’t a little insane he would have shot me at once.

“I wasn’t sure it was Grant; but when I figured it wasn’t Mayo, the odds were it was Grant and I was certain it couldn’t have been Jimmy Harris. So I took the chance. Miss Carrigan thought I was drunk; when Grant got off the elevator I knew he thought the same. I played it up.”

Sirens screamed as they crossed the lobby; a heavy car slid past the front windows and braked, whining, to a stop. Two men came out of it with a stretcher.