The Singing Hat by Cornell Woolrich

Copyright 1939 by Popular Publications; originally titled, “The Counterfeit Hat”

Another Woolrich whizbang, this one showing the procedural method of police investigation as it was usually depicted in the “pulp” magazines of the 1930s... action all the way!

Marty Dillon was just a poor guy plodding along year in and year out. He bought a new suit maybe once in five years, and a new hat not much oftener than that. But on the day this story opens the five years for a hat must have recently elapsed, for he was starting on the first lap of a new one. And, like most owners of new hats, he wasn’t very familiar with it yet.

He didn’t have the feel of it, couldn’t have picked it blindfolded out of a dozen others, like his old one. It hadn’t yet mellowed itself to his personality, had none of those dents, creases, and grease spots that marked it as his own. That would come in time; it still had four years and eleven months to go.

Dillon and his new hat went into a one-arm joint. A one-arm joint is a white-tiled place that suggests a clinic, Two long rows of armchairs line the walls. The right arm of each chair is expanded into a china-topped slab. You park your food on it. Hooks on the wall above the chairs. That’s all.

Dillon collected a trayful, sat down in the handiest chair, and got to work. The motions of cutting, spading, and hoisting caused his improperly broken-in hat to slip forward a little on his brow, so he took it off and slung it on the hook behind him to rid himself of the annoyance. Nobody could get at it without reaching up over his shoulder, and his neighbor in the next seat was much better dressed than he in every way, so Dillon felt that it was safe enough.

He was a quick eater; he was tired and wanted to get home, anyway. When he finished and stood up, his neighbor was still there, but was hidden behind an outspread newspaper. Dillon reached behind him without looking, and put a hat back on. Maybe the hooks were closer together than he thought; it’s easy to aim wrong when you don’t watch what you’re doing.

At any rate, a blurred glance at the article as it went up past his face showed the right shape, the right color, and he went on out under it. Outside the door he set it a trifle more firmly in place with one hand, and thought it felt softer, finer-textured, then he remembered it, but didn’t stop to wonder why.

He was halfway back to his room when he happened to glance side-wise into a strip of mirror in a show window as he went by. It was to the left of him, and he thought he caught a fleck of color up by his hatband as his reflection skimmed past.

He stopped in his tracks, backed up a step, took a good look, and there was a jaunty green feather nestled in the bow, where it had no right to be. He hadn’t bought a hat with any green feather-sprig.

Dismayed, he took it off, turned it over, and looked into it. It was the same brand as his, but instead of the gilt-paper initials M D cheaply pasted on the sweatband, it had R S perforated through it, which was a classier way of ticketing it. It was a ten-dollar hat — and he’d only paid five for his.

He had a brief temptation to hang onto it, creditably overcame it, growled, slung it back on his head, and started hurriedly back where he’d just come from.

The seat next to his own was vacant now. He went back to the counter and called the manager. “Hey, I walked out with somebody else’s hat, and he got mine. What’ll I do?”

“Leave it here with me if you want,” said the manager. “If he asks for it I’ll give it to him, and keep yours for you.”

“Naw,” said Dillon firmly. “It’s windy out, I’m susceptible to colds, and I ain’t going home without a hat. He may never come back with mine, and then I’m stuck without one.”

“Suit yourself,” said the manager indifferently. Anything that didn’t directly concern his hashery didn’t interest him much. “Leave your name and address with me, and if he comes around asking, I’ll tell him where he can find you.” He produced a greasy scrap of paper and a pencil stub.

“Yeah, that’s a better idea,” Dillon agreed, and wrote out the identification. The manager stuck it carelessly in the cash drawer.

Dillon left a second time, a little put out at having come all the way back for nothing, when he’d been tired to begin with. “Any other guy,” he grumbled, “would have kept it and shut up. It’s a better one than the one he got off me!”

But if he went to all the trouble of picking out a hat for himself, he wanted to wear that one, and not some other guy’s. He was funny that way. He ambled home, hands in pockets, all pride in his expensive headgear lacking because it wasn’t rightfully his.

When he got back to his room and climbed up the three flights, vague warnings he had heard somewhere or other about the dangers of wearing a hat that had been on someone else’s scalp assailed him belatedly. Dandruff and things like that. He took it off and shook it out vigorously — without being sure himself just what hygienic good that would do. He hit it a couple of good stiff clouts with the back of his hand, by way of helping the cause of sanitation along.

Something rustled momentarily in it, dropped out. He reached down and picked up a twenty-dollar bill from the floor at his feet. Brand-new, spotless, it looked as if it had just come off the Government press, except that it was folded the long way to conform to the width of the sweatband that had encased it.

Also, its hiding place had made it a little rumpled, from the warmth of the wearer’s head, without otherwise detracting from its spick-and-span newness. That is to say, had it stayed up there long enough it would have ended up looking quite wrinkled and as though it had been in circulation some time; which may have been the whole idea, but Dillon didn’t stop to think of that.

The sight of this unexpected windfall held him spellbound for a minute. “Holy cat!” he breathed reverently. He just stood there holding it stretched out between his two hands as if he were going to kiss it in another minute.

“Funny place for a guy to carry his money,” he thought. “Maybe he was afraid of having his pockets picked.” That reminded him, cruelly, that it wasn’t his. Temptation overcame him momentarily. “I wonder if he knew he had it up there?” he thought wistfully. He conquered it almost immediately. Sure, he must have. People didn’t walk around the streets with twenty-dollar bills stuck in their hatbands without knowing it.

He sighed regretfully. “Guess I’ll have to give it back to him. I left my name there. He’ll know where to come looking for his hat.” He shook his head, however, as virtue finally triumphed. “Boy, I could sure use that, though!”

He turned the hat over once more, fingered the sweatband with a new sort of respect. To his consternation a second bill dropped out!

He didn’t waste any more time and turned the entire band inside out. A whole interlocked chain of bills, with a gap where the first two “links” had been, separated and fell down. And they were all twenties, and they were all immaculately new, with just that preliminary warping and dampening.

He unfolded them, counted them over. Twenty of them. Four hundred bucks! (Which is as much as a “passer” can safely unload during the course of a single evening’s workout, even if he buys cigarettes at every corner cigar store he comes to and a beer at every bar.)

Dillon, aghast, was thinking: “That guy musta been carrying his whole bankroll around on his dome!” But it started to smell fishy to him. One was all right, but there were too many now to be accounted for plausibly in that way. All one denomination, and they all looked too new — there wasn’t a shaggy one among them; and — he held the hatful up toward his nose and inhaled — why you could almost smell the sickly sweet odor of fresh printer’s ink coming from them.

He muttered aloud, “Where was it I seen that? Last night’s paper or tonight’s?” He started to ransack the room thoroughly, the treasure hat temporarily laid aside. He found the item in night before last’s paper, fortunately not yet thrown out because he hadn’t finished doing a crossword puzzle it contained. He was not a very scholarly soul and it took him a week to do a puzzle.

New Flood of Counterfeits Deluges City, was the heading.

He hadn’t paid much attention to the item at the time, because he was in little danger of getting “stung” with one himself. He didn’t often get a look at a twenty-dollar bill, and these, the article said, were all twenties.

By the time he finished reading it he was not only thoroughly enlightened about the meaning of what he had just found, but frightened in the bargain. He thought, “I gotta get them out of here! If they’re found here in my room, I’ll be pinched and locked up!”

He had a dismayed feeling the police would refuse to believe his explanation of how he had come into possession of the money. It did sound sort of fantastic at that; picking up somebody else’s hat by mistake, with four hundred dollars of counterfeit currency tucked into it. They’d arrest him for being an accomplice of those guys, whoever they were.

He went into a panic about it, kept walking all around the hat, which now rested upside down on the seat of a chair. He looked at it in terror as though he expected it to jump up and bite him. He was afraid even to go out on the street with it now, to carry it back to the one-arm joint. He might be stopped on the way, or the manager there might even call the cops.

He couldn’t just throw it out the window or burn it here in the room; there was just a slim chance that the bills were not counterfeit, and then he’d get into another kind of trouble; the guy would come around after it, and think he’d stolen it, and then he’d have him arrested.

The more he thought about it, the only safe thing to do seemed to be to take the hat and the $400 to the police and turn it over without delay. Even if they found it hard to credit his story, at least it would be in his favor that he’d gone to them of his own accord, not waited to be picked up.

Meanwhile he was agitatedly refolding each of the bills, interlocking them together again into a circular “necklace” or paperchain, the way they had been. He reinserted this under the sweatband. He tucked the band down just the way he’d found it, eased the hat back on his head as painfully as if it had been a crown of thorns. Yes, he would go to the nearest precinct house right now; the sooner he got it over with the better.

His forehead was liberally bedewed with sweat as he started toward the door on his way out. He reached for the knob with one hand, the light switch with the other. He opened the door first. Then he stood there paralyzed and forgot about the light switch.

There were two men standing perfectly still outside the door, looking at him. They must have just come up the stairs; they must have been very quiet about it. They just gazed at him stonily. He could tell they weren’t just passing by because they were standing there blocking the doorway.

They both had half faces; that is to say, their hat brims cut off the upper parts of their faces as effectively in the dim light coming out of his room, as masks.

Finally one said, “Hello.” There was a touch of cat-and-mouse play to the greeting.

“H-hello,” Dillon quavered..

“Ain’t you gonna ask us in?” the second one said. “After we come all the way over to give you your hat back?”

The first one pointed. He didn’t stick his arm out, or even his hand. He just shot one finger out of his hand, like a trick knife-blade working on a spring. There was something menacing about the gesture. He said, “That’s my hat you got on.”

But why did two of them have to call for it, when it only belonged to one? “I mustn’t let them know I found the money under the sweat-band,” Dillon told himself. “That’s my only chance.”

The air Was perfectly still in that hallway, yet something seemed to be fanning it, stirring it ominously over his head.

They stepped forward, so he had to give ground, step back deeper into the room. They were in now. One of them closed the door. Why did he have to do that, just to exchange one hat for another?

He hoped his face wasn’t as white as it felt. He mustn’t seem afraid; because if he hadn’t found the money he wouldn’t have been. He wouldn’t have known there was anything to be afraid about. He was thanking his lucky stars he’d had the blind good fortune to put the money back under the band just the way he’d found it, instead of starting out for the station house with it in his pocket, for instance, or wrapped up in a piece of newspaper.

But the door had a very large keyhole. How long had they been standing out there unheard?

“You were going out?” one of them purred.

“J-just to a show,” Dillon said, and tried to smile. The smile smashed to pieces against their flinty expressions.

“You were going out to a show in my hat.” More menacing than ever. Did they guess where he’d really been bound for? The speaker turned to his companion. “Whaddye think of that?”

Dillon’s heart was going like a triphammer. It wasn’t that he was a physical coward, afraid of exchanging blows with another man. But these two were breathing violent death. He could sense it all around them, like cold vapor.

He took the hat off, careful not to jar it, and held it out toward them on an even keel. The one closest to him took it from him. Then he turned it over and looked down into it. Then he turned his back and did something to it, holding it so Dillon couldn’t see him. Dillon could figure what it was.

Dillon had got his second wind by now. The hat had been transferred without an accidental betrayal of what it held. He said, “I went back there right away as soon as I found out I had the wrong one, and left my name.”

“Why didn’t you leave the hat, if you knew it wasn’t yours?”

“I... I thought maybe that hash-house guy wouldn’t turn it in, and then I’d be stuck without one.” That sounded plausible enough.

The one who had had his back turned faced forward again. He was still holding the hat in his hand. He exchanged a hard, beady look with the other one.

Dillon could read that look perfectly. It meant: “D’ye think he got wise? Should we take a chance, let him get away with it?” He knew his life was hanging on that one look. He put off breathing while it was going on, and it seemed to go on forever.

The second one hitched his head a little. Dillon read that too. It meant: “Sure, take a chance. I guess it’s okay.”

The first one took off Dillon’s own hat, tossed it contemptuously over on the bed, brushed his hands insultingly. “There’s yours,” he said. “Next time be careful what y’re doing. C’mon, Jupe, let’s get out of this hencoop.”

They turned away, started moving toward the door. Relief gushed hot and sweet over poor Dillon. It was over; another minute and—

Suddenly the one the hat had belonged to whirled around on him, as unexpectedly and treacherously as a snake. Again that finger shot out close to his body. “I’m shy a—” he began sharply.

The reaction was too sudden for Dillon — he was caught off guard. “No, you’re not, it’s all there,” he blurted out. “I didn’t touch any of—” His jaws locked, too late. He moaned a little and just stood looking at them.

They came back slower than they’d started away — as slow as looming figures in a bad dream. “I was going to say, I’m shy another hat right now or I wouldn’t put this one on after you been wearing it. So it’s all there, is it? Wha-at’s all there?”

“Nothing,” panted Dillon desperately.

“So you were going out to a show, were you? Well, you’re going to see a show right here, without going out.” His hand came out from under his coat, heavier than it had gone in. Dillon was so far gone already that the sight of the gun couldn’t do much more to him. “Go on outside and see if the hall’s all right, Jupe.”

The door opened, closed. There was a terrifying wait of thirty seconds. Then it opened again. The lookout’s head peered in. “Hall’s all right,” he reported.

There was something horrible about the sinister meaning they both gave the casual, matter-of-fact remark.

“Go down and wait for me by the street door, Jupe. I’ll be right with you. Go down loud.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t take too long.” The door closed again after him. They may have come up soundlessly; the one going down now seemed to be jumping with his whole weight from one landing to the next. The stairwell boomed with his descent.

Dillon pleaded in a low voice. “What’re you taking that to me for? I haven’t done anything.” It wasn’t any good yelling for help and he knew it; help couldn’t get here in time.

The man standing up to him answered in an equally low voice. “You mean, you won’t do anything after I’m finished in here.”

The report of the gun didn’t sound so different from those clodhopper broad-jumps going down the staircase; at least, in other parts of the house it must have blended in with and been blurred by them.

A door opened somewhere up above and a woman’s voice called down warningly, “Sh! Quiet down there. My baby’s asleep!”

“So is mine,” murmured the departing caller appreciatively, as he closed the door on Dillon’s still-twitching body.

Cleary came walking up the stairs as if he had all night; or as if he lived in the place and was just getting home all tired out from work. Matter of fact, he was getting to work and not from it. He always took stairs slow, not because he was hefty or sluggish — it was just his way. He always trudged, landed on every single step, never more.

The other dick looked out of the open door to Dillon’s room and commented, “Is that how you’d come up if there was a guy firing down at you from above?”

“Pretty much,” said Cleary drily. “Only a little more to one side.” He stepped into the lighted room, looked down at the floor and asked, “Who’s the unlucky one?”

“Martin Dillon’s the tag. Twenty-six, unmarried, runs an elevator in an office building, been living here five years. How’s that for a quarter-of-an-hour head-start?”

Cleary didn’t say how it was. He got down on the backs of his heels beside the prostrate Dillon, but looked peculiarly at a loss, possibly because he let his arms hang down full length at his sides, like a squatting ape. “So,” he sighed regretfully. “Right in the middle of the tum-tum. Nasty but effective.”

“Effective is right. Permanent. Never mind the calisthenics, we been all through that,” the other dick said with friendly derision.

“One more never hurt yet.” But Cleary straightened up again. A chair scraped up above, and he glanced up at the ceiling. “Funny that in a house full of roomers nobody heard the shot. You been around among them?”

“Yeah, I gave that angle a workout. The room next door happens to be vacant; the one two doors down, they were out; the one three doors down, the guy was taking a bath, and he claims-that when the water hits these old tin tubs they got in this house, you can’t hear anything for miles around.”

A cop stuck his head in from the hall and said, “Here’s a lady from the floor above says she heard someone go racketing down the stairs about nine o’clock.”

Clary stepped outside, so she wouldn’t have to come in and face the remains. “I even called down and asked him to go easy on account of my baby. He was jumping full-weight from stair to stair. I never heard anything like it in my life! And he started down from this floor.”

“Did you hear anything like a shot?”

“No, nothing like that!”

Cleary turned to the other dick and they went back inside the room again. “That shows two of them came here and did it.”

“How so? She only heard one on the stairs, from what she says.”

“Don’t you get what that was for? If she didn’t hear any shot, the shot went off while this guy was trooping down in high. That means one of them stayed up here in the room and gave Dillon the business, while the other one drowned him out, on the stairs. That has the earmarks of a professional job. Now why should professionals bother to go after an elevator-pusher-upper?”

“He found out something he shouldn’t have about their ‘profession.’ ”

“Sure, that’s the only answer,” Cleary nodded. He snapped a kitchen match against his thumbnail, held the flame to a cigarette. “Now let’s go on from there. Close the door. What would a guy like him possibly find out about what profession, that would be important enough to get him in Dutch? Did you quiz the rooming house keeper on his habits?”

“Yeah, I covered that and it don’t add up to a row of pins. He was up at seven every morning to go on the job and he came back from work too tired and hardly ever went out. No one ever came to see him here, and he didn’t even have a girl. His light was always out by eleven at the latest; she could tell by the crack under the door, and she liked that about him because she’s a light-saving dame.”

“That makes it tough. Let’s look around, see if we can turn up anything here.”

They rifled bureau drawers and the shabby contents of the clothes closet in silence, Cleary’s cigarette left burning on the edge of a chair seat. The sight of Dillon still on the floor didn’t affect either one of them. Cleary had purposely refrained from giving permission to have the body taken out yet. He had found by experience that he worked better in the presence of the corpse than in its absence, as though the sight of one helped his thinking powers.

But there was a certain amount of not yet completely dried blood on the threadbare carpet. Dillon hadn’t died immediately but had threshed about for a few minutes; and to keep the stains off his shoes and keep from tracking it around the room, Cleary reached for a newspaper to spread over the carpet. Then he stood still looking at it, and didn’t go ahead.

He said, “Davis.”

The other dick pulled his face out of a bureau drawer and turned around.

“Here’s what he found out. Something in here.”

“Everyone brings papers home with them from work.”

“This is the night before last’s — two nights old. There’s tonight’s, shoved under the bureau mirror over there in the corner. This was right out here on the table.”

“No, I’ve got one for that,” Davis argued. “He was a crossword puzzle addict. The landlady says he’d often look out when she was passing and ask her help on a certain word that had him stumped. He was probably two nights behind on his brain-twisters, that’s all.”

Cleary wouldn’t give in “That won’t account for this. This ain’t open where the puzzle is. The puzzle is” — he thumbed — “exactly twelve pages away from where this was folded over.” He turned back again. “Why do I waste time arguing with you? It’s right here staring me in the face. An item about queer money flooding the town. This rings the bell.”

They read it together, one over the other’s shoulder. Cleary snapped his knuckle at it. “He ran into a ‘passer.’ That could be the only possible contact between, an unimportant little nobody like him and a counterfeiting ring. He found out somebody was a ‘passer’ and this is what it got him.” He pointed at the floor.

“I don’t know just how solid a foundation you’ve got, but you’re sure building up a case,” Davis admitted.

“Now let’s see what we’ve got so far. He ran afoul of a passer. That opens up two possibilities. It was either someone he knew all along and only tumbled to since reading this paper. Or it was someone he didn’t know and got wise to. But how? Them guys don’t stand still on a street corner passing out phoney money like handbills.

“He found out something so definite and damning, all in a flash, that he was put out of the way. And the killers came and called on him here, you notice. He didn’t go out hunting them up.”

“So it looks like it was someone he knew.”

“And yet he never went out.”

“So it won’t wash either way,” sighed Davis gloomily. “There goes your foundations.”

“Naw, just the roof. This item about counterfeit money still holds good as far as I’m concerned. It’s what he found out, and what led to his death. Let’s break it down into three fields of operation: the building where he worked; here, where he lived; and the streets he traveled each day between the two. He made his discovery in the first or the last place. We already know it was up here in the room he read about it, but it was in one of the other two places that he found out whatever it was he did, and hooked it up with what he read when he got home.” Cleary shook his head.

“What’s the matter?” asked Davis.

“I was just thinking. My old mother, rest her soul, used to say that’s bad luck, to put a hat on the bed like that.”

“Well, it sure was this time.”

Cleary moved over and studied the hat, but without touching it. “It looks pretty new, compared to the worn-out condition the rest of his things are in.”

“A guy’s gotta buy a new hat once in a while.”

Cleary looked at him. “But when he does, he doesn’t throw it on the bed from all the way across the room, not caring if it hits the floor or lands on its crown or what happens to it. At least not the first week or two. He hangs it up carefully, so it’ll keep its shape as long as possible. And it didn’t fall off him onto the bed as he was shot, because he’s lying over there by the door.”

“Maybe the killer was one of these cold-blooded sons that like to make a guy flinch; lifted it off Dillon’s head and threw it across the room, sort of to get it out of the way just before he shot him.”

“No, he shot him through the stomach. The sadistic gesture to go with that would be to undo the buttons of Dillon’s shirt, one by one. Not the hat.” He produced a handkerchief, took hold of the hat brim with it, lifted it up and turned it over. “M D. It’s got his initials pasted in it. It’s his all right.” Then he brought it up closer to his face.

Suddenly he’d dropped it back on the bed again and was all the way across the room, crouching down over the top of the dead man’s head.

“What’re you doing?” asked Davis, as Cleary’s face dipped, then rose again.

Cleary straightened and made for the door. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go! I want to make a phone call to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ask ’em something about these queer twenties that have been turning up.”

“What’s the rush all of a sudden?” asked Davis querulously. “One minute you’re standing around making speeches, the next you’re on the lam.”

“I think we’ve got a musical hat — one that’s going to sing,” answered Cleary as he went chasing down the stairs. He called the local headquarters of the F.B.I. from a nearby booth. “This is Cleary of the Homicide Squad. I’m working on the case of a man we’ve just found shot to death, and I could use a little cooperation. Are there any peculiarities about those fake bills that have been turning up the last few days?”

“They’re all twenties.”

“Yeah, I know that already. I mean any distinguishing feature about the bills themselves you can give me? I can’t tell you just what I’m looking for, because I don’t know yet myself. It’s got to come from you.”

“Just a minute until I check on you. I can’t give out any inside information until I’m sure who you are.”

Cleary didn’t resent that. There have been cases in which reporters impersonated detectives in order to get information for their papers. He gave his precinct house number and lieutenant’s name, waited on the line.

The Federal official came back quickly. “Okay, sorry to hold you up. Now this is strictly confidential. Please see that it doesn’t get around. The bills all show sighs of having been folded lengthwise, and a number of them, not all but some, when first detected have had a peculiar tendency to curl slightly. D’you understand what I mean? Sort of tip up from end to end. The best we can make of that, so far, is that they were carried for days in a narrow money belt fastened around the wearer’s body. And yet the awkwardness of having to unfasten the outer clothing to extract one each time would argue against that.”

“Or inside the sweatband of a hat!” said Cleary elatedly — but to himself. He was working for the city, not the government.

He turned to Davis as he hung up. “Now I know that hat’s going to get us somewhere! Let’s go down to the office building where Dillon worked.”

A night watchman was the only one left on the premises at this late hour. He took them down to the employees’ locker room, opened the various lockers for them. Dillon and the other operators — there were two banks of elevators in the building — had of course worn their street clothing home. Their service uniforms were all that the lockers contained, but a small pillbox cap went with each. Cleary only showed interest in these; he took each one out and held it close to his face, upside down.

“Nothing doing down here,” he said finally. “I figured there wouldn’t be anyway. It’s between the two places, here and his room, that he found out too much. Let’s retrace his homeward course.”

“How you going to do that?”

“What’s hard about it? We know where he started out from, we know where he was heading for. He was too tired after standing on his feet all day to do anything but take the shortest, straightest line between the two. Along there somewhere he stopped off to eat. He didn’t eat in his room, so he must have. We want where he stopped in to eat. We’re going to try every place we pass on the way until we hit the right one.”

“What’ll that get us?” queried Davis.

“Watch and see,” promised Cleary mysteriously.

“Don’t tell me anything,” grumbled his teammate, “I just came along for the exercise.”

“Now don’t get touchy. You’ll be able to hear for yourself when we hit the right place.”

Davis pointed to a restaurant on the corner ahead. “There’s the first one he’d pass.”

Cleary shook his head. “Never mind that one. Too high-priced for an elevator operator. Just look for the places without cloths and table service — cafeterias, and such.”

“All right, here’s one now.”

They went in and Cleary asked for the manager. “Was there a guy in here tonight, between six and eight or eight-thirty, slim, medium height, about twenty-six, wearing a pretty old suit of clothes but a brand-new, light-gray hat?”

“We feed hundreds of faces a day,” said the manager. “No, I couldn’t say. Maybe there was, and maybe there wasn’t.”

“I’ll put it another way. Have you been stuck with any queer money lately?”

“Yeah,” said the manager. “We got a lead half-dollar wished on us two months ago.”

“Wrong place,” said Cleary, and he and Davis went outside again. “Keep your chin up: We’ll hit it yet. He had to eat some place.”

“I’d feel a lot better if you’d let me in on what you’re aiming at.”

All Cleary would say was, “The hat, the hat.”

“It was his own, wasn’t it? You saw the initials in it yourself.”

“Yeah, it was his own — by the time we got there. But what I want to know is what it was doing before then. Come on. Here’s another, and it looks like about his speed.” He pointed to a sign on the wall as they went in: Watch your hat and coat. “Now is it beginning to come clear to you what I’m driving at?”

The manager looked blank until Cleary came to the phrase, “—and a brand-new, light-gray hat.” Then his face brightened. “Wait a minute! We had some trouble about a hat in here right tonight. A guy that fits that description walked out with someone else’s hat by mistake. But he didn’t do it purposely. He came back later and told me about it. By that time the other party had left too. So he wrote out his name and address and left it with me, in case the second fellow should show up.”

“And he did,” Cleary told him.

“Yeah, how did you know? He was plenty burned up about it too, swearing and cussing under his breath.”

Cleary gave Davis a look. “Now we’re on the home stretch,” he purred. And to the manager, “Now go slow and think hard. I want as close a description of this second man as you can possibly give me. This is police business, in case you don’t know it yet. In the first place, was he alone in here the first time, or can’t you remember that?”

“Yeah, I can — he was!” said the manager excitedly. “Tell you how I know. When this first young fellow came back, he pointed out to me exactly which seat he’d been in. It was still empty, and there was an empty one next to it by then, but all the others were taken. If there’d been anyone with him, there’da been two vacant scats.”

“Good work,” complimented Cleary. “How about when he came back the second time?”

“He came in alone, but there was a car waiting for him outside with another man in it.”

“Give me his description.”

“He was stocky, sallow-complexioned, with a beak like a hawk — let’s see, what else? — he was well dressed, better than the kind of trade we usually get in here. Looked like he was in the money.”

“He was,” the dick assured him sardonically.

“Was he ever in here before tonight?”

The manager tried to recall, couldn’t be sure.

“Well, the answer is probably no. He never eats twice in the same place, or buys anything twice in the same store, for good and sufficient reasons. You been stuck with any queer twenties lately?”

“No, thank God.” The manager shuddered.

“That’s what you think. Take a look in your till. You’ll find one in there now.”

The manager’s face dropped with a consternation that was almost comic as he held up the single twenty that the cash drawer contained. “H-how did you know?” he stammered.

“That’s what I’m paid for. Let me have it a minute.” He showed it to Davis. “See the lengthwise crease? I’ll refold it that way. Now watch it curl up. See that?” He rolled it in the palm of his hand like a little paper boat. Then he drew it slowly across his nose.

“You’re always smelling things,” said Davis irritably. “What are you, a bloodhound or something?”

Cleary didn’t explain. As they left the manager was bellowing to the help, “Who took that spiked bill? I’ll fire the man that accepted it without looking at it first!”

“Well,” said Cleary outside, “now we know what one of the men that killed Dillon looks like. The rest is just a matter of catching up with him.”

“Then why don’t we haul this manager down to the rogues’ gallery, have him pick him out for us if he can? That’s the usual procedure. He probably has a record a mile long.”

“Yeah, but that won’t tell us where he is, only who he is. I’ve got a short cut that’ll do both things at one time. Let’s go back to that first place near where Dillon worked, the high-priced one we didn’t go into.”

This time Cleary didn’t bother with descriptions. He just asked the manager, “You been stuck with any counterfeit bills here recently?”

“God forbid,” said the latter, and rapped on the wooden edge of the counter for good luck.

“You will be,” the dick warned him. “They haven’t got around to you yet, that’s all. Now here’s what I want you to do. The very next time a customer offers one of your waiters a twenty...”

Cleary was alone in the precinct house when the call came in two nights later. That is to say, Davis was out doing some spade work on Featherlite hats, Size 7, Style 42, at the scores of men’s shops around town that retailed them. It was his own idea, not Cleary’s. Cleary still insisted that his short cut would do away with the necessity for all such laborious methods.

The cop on the switchboard said, “The manager of the Empire Restaurant is asking for Detective Cleary.”

“Quicker than I expected,” said Cleary, as he took the call.

The manager said, “I’m doing what you told me to. There’s a party at Table Six just gave his waiter a twenty-dollar bill.”

“Can you see him from where you are? Describe him.”

“He’s sort of stocky, pale complexion, got a sharp nose and—”

“That’s him. Now be careful how you do this. Stall him until I can get there. None of this sending out for change. That’s old in his racket, He’ll catch on right away.”

“I’ll overcharge him, yeah?” said the manager hopefully. “Then he’ll stop to argue about his bill—”

“No, he won’t. He’ll take a loss just to dump his twenty. Have your cashier pretend that the cash register drawer is jammed, that she can’t get it open without a lot of help. That ought to be good for at least ten minutes, until I can get over there.”

He went alone. He didn’t intend making his pinch yet. “Tell Davis I’ve gone over to the Empire Restaurant — he’ll understand what I mean,” he told the desk sergeant as he left.

He got there in seven minutes flat, through four red stoplights. He went in the back way, through the kitchen and serving pantry as far as the flap doors that led out into the restaurant proper. A diamond-shaped insert of glass in each one gave him a view of the place.

There was a mild commotion up near the street entrance. The manager, the cashier, and several of the waiters were gathered in a huddle around the cash register. The manager kept elbowing them aside every time they tried to get at it, saying, “Here, let me try it,” evidently to keep them from learning there was nothing the matter with it.

Dillon’s killer was over at an inconspicuous table against the wall, his back toward the street. That way Cleary could see his face plainly. Cleary got it so firmly fixed in his mind he wouldn’t forget it for the next twenty years.

The man’s eyes were lowered. He was examining the nails of one hand. Then he examined the nails of the other. He was showing more nervousness than the rest of the customers, who were smiling at the difficulties the staff seemed to be having with the cash register. Then the man picked up his napkin and furtively dried his mouth and chin.

“Sweat, you rat,” Cleary growled to himself, “you’re cool, compared to what you’re going to be!”

His hat was on the seat of a spare chair close up beside him, as though he didn’t care to trust it to the checkroom attendant.

Cleary grabbed a waiter hustling by and said, “Tell your boss it’s okay now.” Inside of a minute the jammed drawer had shot out with a triumphant trill that penetrated even back to the kitchen. Some facetious diner clapped his hands. The man at Table Six straightened a little. You could see him take a breath of relief. The waiter came over with his change, and the customer paid up, left something for the kitty, and reached for his hat.

Cleary stepped aside, out of range of the diamond-shaped panes in case the suspect should look over that way. A waiter barged through and nearly flattened Cleary’s nose with the fling he gave the door. Through the gap Cleary saw, his man circling through the revolving door up front. He came out and started across the dining room toward it himself, slowly, almost aimlessly.

The manager edged up beside him. “How was I? I kept holding it back with one hand, trying to pull it out with the other.”

Cleary smiled grimly. “When my teammate comes, tell him to wait here for me.”

He emerged onto the sidewalk. The street was already empty, but that was all right; he didn’t want to tread right on the guy’s heels. As long as there hadn’t been any sound of a car engine starting up and driving off. He went up to the doorman and asked a question.

“Down that way,” said the doorman.

Cleary drifted toward the corner that had been indicated as though he had all the time in the world.

He stopped flush with the building line, so that not much more than the button of his nose showed past it, and took a look down in the new direction. He was just in time to see the man in the light-gray hat go into a haberdashery midway down the block.

He could have nabbed him red-handed in there, just as he could have in the restaurant, but he still didn’t want to do that. He wanted to track him down and get the other guy who had been in on Dillon’s killing with him, and even more important, find out where the headquarters of the ring was, a thing even the F.B.I. hadn’t been able to do yet.

The killer came out again with what looked like a flat box of socks or handkerchiefs under his arm. Cleary moved back a little to avoid that one preliminary glance up this way the man was almost sure to make before he continued on his way. Again Cleary gave him a full-block headstart. He knew he wasn’t very likely to hole up this early in the proceedings — not until he had emptied his hat. Time enough then to get in closer to him.

Within the next three-quarters of an hour the passer, in full sight of Cleary, bought a dozen red roses in a florist’s, mouthwash in a drug store, a two-pound box of chocolates in a candy store, and an assortment of magazines at a newsstand.

He didn’t go along encumbered like that; he dropped each successive purchase in a refuse receptacle before he went on to the next. Cleary let them remain undisturbed as he came abreast of them. He wasn’t after him for passing, he was after him for murder. Some old derelict hunting through the rubbish bins was going to be in luck tonight.

The passer was too smart to leave an easily followed trail by proceeding in a straight line. He zigzagged erratically, up one block, then over to the next, then up that one, and so on, planting his twenties as he went. The abundance of sheltering corners and angles this provided made it easier for Cleary to stalk him undetected.

When Cleary had counted ten separate purchases, and therefore figured he had planted at least two hundred dollars, he knew the man must be running out of his supply and would be reporting back soon. The passer gave himself away at this point. He came out of the last place with his hat in his hands, shaped it between his fingers, and replaced it on his head. He would not have disturbed it if it still had money in it, Cleary knew.

He started to close in; the night’s business was about finished. Even allowing for a purchase discount of ten per cent on each twenty-dollar bill, he had managed to turn two hundred dollars of queer into a hundred and eighty dollars of genuine currency in something under an hour.

Cleary crept up on him until he was less than twenty yards behind. He still didn’t intend to pinch, not until he had followed him back where he belonged. His quarry put about three blocks more, on foot, between himself and the last place he had worked. Then he came to a taxi stand, turned aside, and stepped into one of the cabs. Before it was across the next intersection Cleary was in another.

“Just string along after that cab ahead. Don’t crowd it, but don’t let it pull away from you either.”

The lead cab followed an erratic course that obviously had no destination, was simply for purposes of tangling up the trail as much as possible. Not, Cleary believed, that he was wise to being followed — simply on general principles. The way he had fingered his hat when he came out of the last place showed that up to then, at least, he was unaware of being under observation.

Finally he got out again, in front of — of all places! — a church. This tipped Cleary off instantly that it was a stall. He was simply changing vehicles to blot out his trail. The dick had thought it unusual, all along, that he should take a hired cab back to wherever the ring’s headquarters were.

“Keep going,” he told his driver, “but don’t take me too far past him.”

It was safer than alighting himself and attracting attention.

They went on about half a block. Meanwhile, behind them, Gray Hat’s cab had driven off, empty now, and its passenger stood there, as though at a loss where to go next. The fact that he was standing almost directly under a street light, dangerous as it was for him to do so, gave the dick the answer. He was waiting for a lift, waiting to make connections at a prearranged spot.

The timing was almost uncanny, as though he and his fellow passers worked against a deadline, had orders to dump the last of their queer by such and such an hour, and then clear off the streets. Within two minutes a sleek black sedan Had come nosing down the street. It didn’t stop, just swerved in a little, and Gray Hat hooked on, opened the door, got in, and it swept on with him. It whizzed past the cab at accelerated speed, but Cleary caught a glimpse of a second man at the wheel. “Get going!” he grated. “It’s going to be tough to hang onto that thing!”

“You’d be surprised what I can get out of this coop,” the driver reassured him.

“Well, then, get it out!” Cleary barked. “They’re already down to a red wink!”

One thing was in their favor: the sedan pulled away in a straight line, without any of the tricks and twists of the cab; otherwise they would have lost it sure. It dwindled to a red speck in the distance, but its tail-light never went out entirely, and that ruby spark was as good as the whole car.

It finally turned into a desolate marginal avenue that ran along the river, lined with warehouses, breweries, and ice plants, with occasional open dumps in between. It tore down this with a burst of speed, and only the fact that there was absolutely no other traffic on the godforsaken thoroughfare kept Cleary from losing the sedan.

It stopped finally and its red orb steadied and brightened, blocks ahead.

“Kill your lights and stay over close to the building shadows,” Cleary muttered.

The sedan ahead sounded its horn, just once, evidently to signal its return. A bulb flashed on over a building entrance, then went out again. There was a muffled vibration of a big door or doors being rolled aside and yellow light spilled out toward the sedan. It turned toward it, climbed up a slight ramp, and was swallowed into the maw of the building. The doors closed again and the light blacked out.

“Home at last,” Cleary told himself grimly. He got out, eased the cab door cautiously shut so it wouldn’t crack out a warning in the stillness.

“Take a good look at that place,” he said to the driver. “Think you’ll know it again?”

“Sure,” said the cabman.

“God help me if you don’t. There’s no phone anywhere around here, so it’s up to you. Go back to the Empire Restaurant, on the west side, and ask for a guy named Davis. Just tell him where you brought me — he’ll know what to do. And don’t take too long about it, either. I’m on my own out here. Take it easy backing out.”

He went the rest of the way on foot, hugging the building line. It was an old two-story red brick building with a slanted roof. There was murky lettering still riveted to the face of it close up under the eaves, but it was too dark to make out what it said. Judging by its looks it had once been either a carbarn or a ferry station. The corrugated iron portcullis that closed the wide gap in its front was obviously a later addition. So was the small fireproofed — and probably bulletproofed — door to one side of this. This had the wickered bulb over it that he had seen flash on, then off.

It was going to be a fortress to break into. He hoped Davis had sense enough to bring plenty of assistance with him. He stroked one of his matches against the brick facing of the door frame, sheltered it to no more than a pinhole of light between his hands, and ran it up and around the door seams. He had just made out a small hinged peephole in the metal door, the kind the old speakeasies used to have, when something unforeseen and calamitous happened.

His cab had been easing around in a U-turn to go back the other way, the driver trying to tone it down as much as possible. It was a block off, but it was very quiet here along the waterfront. Maybe he had driven it too hard for its own good, trying to keep up with the sedan. At any rate, it suddenly backfired, shatteringly and explosively. Bang! Bopetty-Bang!

Cleary whipped his match out, swore viciously between his teeth at the betraying mishap. Before he could move an inch, the lookout bulb over the door glowed warningly, and he stood as revealed under it.

There was no time even to step aside out of the door embrasure; the peephole in the panel was already scraping open. He threw himself down on hands and knees and let his back cave in in the middle.

The light was straight above him, luckily — it threw his shadow directly under his belly, not out to one side where it could be seen through the grate. He was packed so tightly up against the door he couldn’t even get his gun out without risking knocking the butt against the metal and giving himself away.

A voice directly over him said, “It’s a machine up the street some place. I can’t see it from here. Sounds like it’s going away.” Now that the damage was done, the betraying cab was receding soft as silk in the distance.

The slot clicked shut, and the door fell away from its frame without warning. It was Cleary’s luck that it opened inward instead of outward. His body sagged after it, off balance, and he went down flat on one side. A foot gave him a vicious, unintentional kick in the kidneys, and someone fell headlong over him and went down flat on his face with an uff! A glinting metallic T-square the other person had been holding in his hand flew up in the air, came down again, and struck sparks from the cement.

Cleary’s arm flailed out, pinned it where it was, reversed it, and again the butt went up, but this time gripped in his fist. It came down with a mean, chunky blow on the back of the already prostrate one’s head. He just spread out a little more and sighed.

Cleary didn’t waste time straightening up. He simply swiveled around, still mostly horizontal, on one folded leg for a pivot, and jabbed his gun toward the door embrasure, where a white shirt loomed. When Cleary got up, he saw the reason he’d got away with it. The second one had come out unarmed.

The hallway was a black tunnel, with just an orange floor crack at the far end. “Turn around and smell the plaster,” Cleary ordered. He swung back and chopped the man down. The odds were too high. He couldn’t leave him active. He broke the man’s fall with the crook of his own left arm, then let him down the rest of the way easy so he wouldn’t thump.

Cleary pushed the door partly closed and the light went out, as he had hoped. He started slowly forward, elbowing one wall as he went to guide himself. The reason the little set-to hadn’t been overheard was plainly because of the thump of machinery somewhere near at hand. Presses. There was the faint odor of printer’s ink noticeable too. But he knew it wasn’t newspapers they were printing here.

He kept edging on until he was flush with the inner door that shows the light under it. The tactical thing to do was to stay outside and keep them sealed in until Davis got here with some help, how that he had them tracked to earth. But in the first place they were almost certain to investigate the continued absence of the two watchdogs before that happened, and then they could spill out the back way and leave him holding the bag. He couldn’t throw a cordon around the place single-handed. And in the second place, he’d accidentally gained admittance now, and it might cost some of the other cops their lives later if he threw away that advantage just for the sake of caution.

He cupped one ear to the door, tried to take soundings, since there seemed to be no keyhole, or if there was it was stopped up. The continued thump of the press, which sounded as if it was coming from a basement directly below, made it difficult to hear anything beyond a blurred murmur of voices on the other side.

“Well, ready or not, here I come!” he thought grimly, and felt for the knob. He gave the door a fling and light flashed into his face. There was an ordinary office desk crosswise in the middle of the room, with a green-shaded light on it. A man with elastics around his shirt sleeves was sitting at it, sorting neat rubber-banded decks of twenty-dollar bills, magnifying glass in one hand.

The man with the gray hat was tilted back on two legs of a chair against the wall, looking on. There was a third guy in the room, the one who had driven the black sedan. He was standing with both thumbs hooked into his belt.

All three started to move their right hands simultaneously, and Cleary, with the sudden light still impairing his vision, had only a split second to decide which was the likeliest to get to his gun first. He made it, more by sheer instinct than visual power.

The man at the desk had his coat behind him, slung over the back of his chair. Gray Hat was off balance, with his knees up higher than his hips. Cleary fired at the third guy, punctured his hand just as it came clear of his coat lapel. Cleary’s bullet knocked the gun flying out of it, and the man screamed and doubled up. Cleary sideswiped the gun out of reach with his foot.

“Get over there by the wall! Get off that chair!” he grated. He pulled Gray Hat’s gun out from under the edge of his coat, stepped clear again. He didn’t bother going after the third gun, just kicked the chair over flat, with coat and gun both still on it.

There was a slithering sound of metal being scraped off the floor directly behind him. Before he could swing around, a gun muzzle was gouging into the hollow of his back, at about the same place he had been kicked.

“All right, let go of it,” a voice said across his shoulder. “Come on, you guys, I’ve got him pinned. He bit off more than he can chew.”

The two facing the wall whirled around again, nearly as surprised as Cleary himself. The third guy was in too much pain to be aware of what was going on around him. He was leaning sideways against the wall, still holding onto his hand.

Cleary let go of his gun so slowly that it turned over in his hand and fell out. He hated to see it go. He knew his life was going with it.

“What a fine bunch you’ve got around you, Carnetti,” the voice behind him sneered. “He walks in and practically sits in your lap. If he hadn’t left me out by the door.”

“Where’s Benny?”

“Still sleeping out there on the sidewalk.”

Gray Hat said, “I told you someone was on my tail tonight!”

He got a clip in the jaw from Carnetti that sent him staggering back against the wall. “You told us you lost him, that’s what you told us!” raged the leader. “Why didn’t you stay out until you did lose him, instead of bringing him back here on top of us! You know what this means now, don’t you? The whole investment’s shot to hell, thousands of dollars worth of machinery thrown away! Come on, we gotta get out of here fast!”

Cleary spoke for the first time. “It’s too late,” he said quietly. “You don’t suppose I walked in here alone, do you? We got a cordon around here three deep and tighter than a knotted shoelace. Now if you want to make it a murder rap—”

Carnetti, the leader, flinched. Cleary’s quick eye took note of that. He was yellower even than his own men.

The one who had him pinned by the spine said, “What’re you standing there listening to him for? I was out there just now. There isn’t anyone around.”

“What good is a cordon when you can see it?” said Cleary imperturbably. He was just talking against time, but that was the only thing left for him to do. “Try to break out, if you don’t believe me.”

“Then why ain’t they in here? You fired a shot yourself a minute ago.”

“Because I’m not giving the orders. Somebody else is. And that wasn’t the signal.”

Carnetti’s cowardice came to Cleary’s aid, unexpectedly. “I’m not taking any murder rap!” he whimpered. “Scorio and Eddie have one on ’em already, but I haven’t and I’m not taking one now!”

A tugboat bleated somewhere out on the river. “That’s them now,” said Cleary coolly. “They’re signaling to find out if I’m okay. Make up your minds. They’ll be in in a minute.” He fixed his eyes on Carnetti, the weak sister of the outfit. “D’ye want to be taken alive or do you want to be cut down?”

Carnetti broke under the tension. He pulled his gun out of his coat, which he had picked up off the floor by now, threw it down on the desk, stepped back.

“I’m not taking any murder rap,” he whined.

The man behind Cleary took his gun out of his back a few inches, held it there undecided, as if hypnotized by his leader’s capitulation. Cleary suddenly snaked around, struck it upward with his forearm.

“Well, I’ve got one already, so here goes for another!” snarled the man in the gray hat. He leveled at Cleary, who was grappling for the gun.

A shot boomed out at the other end of the hall, and Gray Hat jolted, went down.

Davis came pounding in, gun smoking, with a mess of cops a few steps behind him...

Back at the precinct house, while a doctor dabbed cotton at Cleary’s ripped ear, Davis said, “Well, your short cut got results. But what made you so sure, two nights ago in Dillon’s room, that that hat of his was going to get us the guy that killed him? It was his own hat, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, but I could tell it had been on somebody else’s head only recently before then, and therefore when the F.B.I. told me about the peculiar way those bills were creased and curled up, it was easy to figure out what must have happened. Dillon must have accidentally switched hats with a passer and found out too much.”

“Yeah, but how could you tell it had been on somebody else’s head just by looking at it?”

“I didn’t just look at it, I smelled it. And then I smelled Dillon’s hair. Didn’t you see me? The hat recked of bay rum, and there wasn’t a trace of it on Dillon’s head. There was no bottle of the stuff anywhere in the room either, and you could tell by the feathers on Dillon’s neck he hadn’t been in a barber shop in a month.” He winced. “Ouch, Doc! Go easy on that iodine, will you?”