Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 46, No. 6. Whole No. 265, December 1965

Eight Minutes to Kill by Julian Symons

If we remember correctly, it was Ellery Queen who first wrote a series of sports detective short stories — murder and theft against the backgrounds of prizefighting, baseball, football, and horse racing. Since then other sports detective stories have appeared, but surely the theme has not been overworked. So when Julian Symons began a sports series (we have already brought you his story about tennis at Wimbledon), it seemed like a fresh approach all over again.

Now, here is a Julian Symons story about murder in a Sports Arena, during a fight for the bantamweight championship of the world — a murder planned to the smallest detail, so perfectly synchronized with the action in the ring that nothing could possibly go wrong. It is a story of tension, apprehension, and suspension — and of dimension too...

The lights went up all over Harringay Arena. People yawned, stretched, moved out of their seats, went along to the bars and had drinks. Girls in blue coats moved down the gangways, hopefully trying to sell programs, or books about Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano.

Billy Baxter, the promoter, removed the cigar from his mouth long enough to ask half a dozen people to come along and have a quick one with him in his private bar. People were suddenly relaxed and genial; yet mixed with the relaxation was a certain expectancy. The last of the preliminaries was over. The big fight was to come.

As the lights went up, a man in his late thirties, a pleasant-looking man, with nothing unusual about him except his curling reddish hair and his prawn-whisker eyebrows, slipped out of the end seat he occupied in Section N, conveniently near the Number 6 exit, and walked with a light but hurried step toward a telephone box. The man had been christened Max Hoven. Not so many years ago he had been an S.S. officer, in an administrative post at Auschwitz. Now he called himself Art Lancing.

He had come to Harringay that night to kill a man, and he had eight minutes in which to do it. He was now about to make the first move in an intricate but logical and, as he believed, foolproof plan.

A man was in the telephone booth. He stepped out when Lancing tapped lightly on the window. The red-haired man handed him a ten-shilling note, nodded, and went into the booth. The man was an attendant, who knew nothing more than that Lancing had asked him to keep the booth free when the last of the preliminaries was over, so that he could make an urgent telephone call.

Lancing dialed a Gerrard number. It rang once and then a voice said, “Yes.”

Lancing said, “Now, Buster.”

The man said, “Right away. Soon as you put the phone down.”

“You know what you have to do?” Lancing’s English was perfect, although a little mechanical He spoke with a slight American accent.

“Like a book. Ten minutes I’m to keep him talking. Easy. But listen, I don’t know what it’s all about.”

“It is not necessary that you should know,” Lancing said, and hung up.

Buster Marks, a small-time crook, had been paid ₤25 to make a telephone call. It made no sense to him, but it was a job and Lancing knew that he would do it.

He stopped to light a cigarette and walked slowly back to the Arena, showing his ticket to the attendants at the entrance. He stood for a moment watching the crowd of faces going up tier on tier, to the roof as it seemed. Then his light, impersonal gaze moved to a man in the front row by the ringside, a short, plump, baldish man smoking a fat cigar.

This was Jimmy Dain, the man to be killed.

A man sat on either side of Jimmy Dain. These men also were smoking fat cigars. They were his bodyguards.

Suddenly the lights went out, a fanfare played, and two spotlights in the roof played on a man who came out of an entrance to the right of where Art Lancing was standing. The spotlights followed this man as he walked up the gangway and ducked under the ropes into the ring.

The man held up his hands as the crowd roared its applause, clasped them together, and turned round, revealing the name on his dressing gown: Rangeri. This was Paul Rangeri; the thickset French Canadian who was bantamweight champion of the world.

Another fanfare, and the spotlights swung away to another boxer who performed the same ritual of walking up the gangway, ducking under the ropes, and clasping his hands. The cheers were thunderous, especially from the Irishmen in the audience. This was Billy Murphy from Eire, who was taking on what most people felt to be a forlorn hope in meeting the lightning-quick Rangeri. But young Murphy looked fit enough, and confident enough, as he raised his hands to the audience.

This evening Art Lancing was not interested in the boxing. He noticed that a leather-faced, bulky, smiling man had come up the steps and was standing beside him. This was Billy Baxter himself.

How would it be, Art Lancing — who prided himself on his sardonic sense, of humor — wondered, how would it be if he were to tap the promoter on the shoulder and say to him, “You don’t know me, but I’ve come here to kill a man. I do apologize in advance for causing a disturbance, but on this occasion it was unavoidable.”

Baxter would think he was crazy, but he would be making a mistake. Bubbling with suppressed mirth, Art Lancing moved to his seat.

Now the announcer was in the ring, bellowing that this was a ten-round championship fight between Paul Rangeri, bantamweight champion of the world and...

Jimmy Dain was watching the boxers and rolling the cigar between his blubbery lips. “He’s a lovely fighter, that Rangeri. This’ll be a massacre, Mike.”

The man on his right was a bony, hard-eyed Irishman named O’Hara. He said, “I still like the Irish boy. He’s fast and he can punch. If he can last the first couple of rounds I think he can win.”

“You want to express that feeling in cash, Mike?” Jimmy Dain was jovial. “One hundred dollars can win you three hundred.”

O’Hara shook his head. “I never bet except on certainties.”

“How about you, Joe?” Jimmy Dain turned to the man on his left.

Joe Moxon was a hulking, beetle-browed Nordic blond, who seemed to be bursting out of his suit. “What you say?”

“You like to make a little bet on Murphy?”

“I don’t feel like betting, Mr. Dain. I’m worried about Chrissie.”

“Ah, go on. Women have had babies before. It’s human nature, so they tell me.”

“But you don’t understand, Mr. Dain. Chrissie’s got this special sort of blood — you know what they call it, rhesus something or other — and this is her second baby. The doctor told me the danger is always with the second baby—”

“Can it, Joe. This is a fight, not a mother’s meeting.” Jimmy Dain’s voice was sour.

Joe Moxon’s underlip quivered. He did not like to be spoken to harshly.

Mike O’Hara said, “Cheer up, Joe. Day after tomorrow you’ll be back in New York and seeing Chrissie in person.”

One of the blue-coated attendants was coming down the gangway. Lancing pushed his program under the seat and asked for another. As the girl gave it to him he said, “You know what to do.”

“Oh, it’s you.” She gave a little gasp. “Yes.”

“And when to do it.”

“Yes, after the announcement over the loudspeaker.” She said a little fearfully, “It’s only a joke, isn’t it? I won’t get into trouble?”

Art Lancing looked up at her from under the prawn-whisker eyebrows and smiled. “Why should you get into trouble? You’re only passing on a message.”

“That’s right. I’m not doing anything wrong, am I?” She brightened. “I’ll do it. It’d be a shame to spoil your joke.”

Especially when you’re getting £5 for it, you little fool, thought Art Lancing, as he smiled again at the girl. As he listened to the announcer giving details of the fight, he moved a little uneasily in his seat. It was time for Buster Marks to make that telephone call.

During these moments — while the boxers were being greeted by a fanfare, entering the ring, shaking hands, listening to the referee — Buster Marks was speaking to the telephone girl at the Arena switchboard.

“I have an urgent call from New York for Mr. Joseph Moxon.” Buster had been a small-part actor before he became a small-time crook, and he mimicked well enough the clipped impersonality of a telephone operator. “I have been in touch with his hotel and they inform me that he is in the Arena. Could you get a message through and ask him to come to the telephone, please? The name is Moxon — m-o-x-o-n.”

“Just a moment.” The switchboard girl wrote down the name and called an attendant. “Can you ask the announcer to make an announcement, and bring this gentleman here. It’s urgent — a call from New York.” To Buster Marks she said, “Hold on, please. I am trying to contact him for you.”

Buster was telephoning from a girl friend’s flat and the girl was stroking his hair. He winked at her and took a piece of Turkish delight from a box by his side.

It took the attendant thirty seconds to get down to the Arena. Another fifteen seconds, and the message had been handed to the announcer. Another fifteen, and the words boomed round the Arena over the loudspeaker system.

“Will Mr. Moxon, Mr. Joseph Moxon, please go to the main telephone switchboard, where an urgent call awaits him from New York. I will repeat—”

Joe Moxon was on his feet. “New York. That means Chrissie.”

Jimmy Dain waved him away. “Good luck, boy. Love and kisses to that sweet little girl of yours.”

From his seat at the end of the row Art Lancing watched Joe Moxon hurry out of the hall. It worked, he thought. And it worked because it was the logical answer. He had said as much to Charlie Black ten days earlier, when Charlie had come to the New York gym that had art lancing written up outside it. Here Lancing was doing some work with the punchball. He never let himself get stale.

Charlie Black watched him in silence for a minute, then said, “Mr. Fixer’s going to talk.”

Lancing raised his eyebrows but said nothing. It was one of his little vanities never to appear surprised or shocked. But he realized the importance of the news.

Charlie Black was probably the most important racketeer left in New York, and he was being investigated by a Senate Committee. As racketeers go, Charlie Black was respectable. He had always preferred bribery to violence, corruption to murder, and Jimmy Dain, known as Mr. Fixer, was — or had been — his right-hand man.

If Mr. Fixer talked about the various jobs and people he had fixed in the past few years he could say more than enough to put Charlie Black and some other people into prison.

Lancing began to towel himself. Charlie Black watched him. “You don’t say much.”

“What do you want me to say? Jimmy Dain’s in Europe.”

“That’s right. Traveling round with a couple of bodyguards. Not our boys; he picked them up himself. I should have suspected when he did that. He’s saving his own skin, getting out from under. Odds are he won’t come back till it’s time for him to testify.”

Now Lancing was toweling his legs. He did not look up. “Why tell me?”

“I want you to do a job on him. Do it over there. It’s not easy, but you’re intelligent, or so you say. You won’t mind a little difficulty.”

This, as Lancing knew, was an appeal to his vanity. But although he knew that, the appeal was still there. And in a sense the appeal was strengthened by the fact that Charlie Black had no need to make it. Black had provided the forged papers that turned the Nazi war criminal Max Hoven, who was wanted for his activities at Auschwitz, into physical training instructor Art Lancing.

It was Charlie Black who had put up the money for the gymnasium that served as a cover for other activities, some of them legal, others very much the reverse. He had treated Art Lancing well, never identifying him with the small army of thugs who were on his payroll and were sometimes — although reluctantly — used. In three years Charlie Black had asked Lancing to do only half a dozen jobs, and they had always been well paid. Yet the fact remained that he could turn Art Lancing back into Max Hoven any day he wanted to.

Remembering these things, Art Lancing smiled and said, “I don’t mind a little difficulty.”

Then Charlie Black told him some of the details. The job had to be done in England, because as soon as Dain came back the cops would keep him close as a fly in amber until he had testified. But it wouldn’t be easy. Dain never left his hotel or went anywhere without the two bodyguards. They even slept in his suite. Lancing would have to get rid of them somehow.

“It won’t be easy,” Charlie Black said again, as he named the amount Lancing was to get for the job.

Lancing did not comment on the amount, which was double what he had expected. But he did say, “To do a job and get away, that is never easy. But it is always possible. It is simply a problem in logic.”

Next day he was on an airplane to England...

The attendant took Joe Moxon along a passage and into the switchboard room, where a smiling girl pointed to a telephone. He snatched at it.

“Hello,” Buster said. “I have a call for Mr. Joe Moxon, at Harringay Arena—”

Joe Moxon’s great hand gripped the telephone receiver, hard. “This is Joe Moxon. Is that my wife you’ve got on the line?”

“That is Mr. Joe Moxon speaking?”

“That’s right, yes, Joe Moxon here.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Moxon. I will try to connect you with New York.”

Buster jiggled the receiver a little experimentally. The girl beside him rocked with silent laughter. “Hello there. Hello, New York. Are you answering? Please answer me, New York.” To Joe he said, “New York seems to have gone off for the moment, Mr. Moxon. I’ll try to get them again. Hold on, please.”

“All right, all right.” To the girl in the office Joe Moxon said, “How do you like that now? There’s my wife ringing me from New York. She’s having this baby, see, and she’s a rhesus or whatever they call it—”

“A rhesus negative?”

“That’s it. Do you know what they have to do with those poor little babies sometimes? Have to pump all the blood out of them and put fresh blood in. Makes you think, eh?” His brow was corrugated with the effort of thought. “Hello, hello,” he shouted.

Buster had put one hand over the receiver, while with the other he stroked his girl friend’s leg. Now he took a large handkerchief from his pocket and put it over the mouthpiece. “Hello there, hello,” he intoned in a falsetto version of what he imagined to be an American accent.

The words came through faintly to Moxon. “Hello, is that the hospital? Is it about my wife?”

“Would that be Mr. Panchizzi? Are you there, Mr. Panchizzi? You’ve got a fine little baby boy.”

Sweat came out on Moxon’s forehead. “For God’s sake, my name’s not Panchizzi, it’s Moxon.”

“Eight and a half pounds.”

“My name’s Moxon and you’re calling me in London.”

The girl at Buster’s side could hardly control her laughter. He put a finger to his lips. Getting frantic, he thought; mustn’t play the fish too hard. He removed the handkerchief and said in his previous voice, “Sorry, Mr. Moxon, we seem to have hit on a crossed line. Hold on and I’ll try to get it put right.”

Moxon swore.

Act One over, Art Lancing thought. And it was easy. He watched the blue-coated program seller go up the gangway toward the front row. Now comes Act Two, he said to himself. And this may not be so easy.

It had not been easy, not easy at all, to discover a way of getting at Mr. Fixer. Dain knew him only slightly, but Lancing put on a red wig to cover his tow-colored hair, and added the prawn-whisker eyebrows as a concession to the need for concealment. It took him less than a day to discover bribable attendants at the Gloria Hotel, where the three men were staying.

He discovered that Dain went out only irregularly, and then always accompanied by the bodyguards. He ate all meals in his room. He never opened the door in person.

Lancing considered trying to force a way in and leaving a homemade bomb outside the bedroom (but, although he had some criminal contacts in London, he knew nobody who could make such a thing), and half a dozen other ideas involving an attack in the hotel. He rejected them all as too uncertain in effect, or too risky for himself.

Then one of the hotel clerks told him that Mr. Dain and his friends had booked three ringside seats for the big fight between Rangeri and Murphy, and the pieces of the puzzle began to drop into place.

Mr. Fixer loved a big fight. He liked to watch, and he liked to bet. On the night of the fight his alertness would be relaxed a little. But still the bodyguards would be on either side of him. How did it help? Lancing put his mind to it...

Now a hush was over the whole Arena. The boxers sat placid in their corners, while the seconds were adjusting their gloves. The program girl had reached the place where Jimmy Dain and Mike O’Hara were sitting.

There was a period of between four and five minutes between the last of the preliminaries and the start of the big fight. Then the general lights went out during the first three minutes of the first round, but came on again for each one-minute between rounds.

Would it be possible to shoot Mr. Fixer during one of those one minutes, either close to or from a distance? Lancing rejected this idea because he would have so little chance of getting away.

All his investigations led to one conclusion. Somehow the two bodyguards must be removed. Then, under cover of darkness, during the first round, Dain must be killed with a knife. But bodyguards must be got away only just before the fight began, or suspicion would be aroused.

Supposing he started operations when the preliminaries were finished — that would give him the four or five minute gap, plus the three minutes of the first round. Call it eight minutes.

Eight minutes to kill.

But we must be logical, Lancing said to himself. We must cover every possibility. What about a first-round knockout? He decided that the confusion caused by such a sensation would offer him an ideal opportunity. If he could keep to the time schedule the thing could be done.

But how were the two bodyguards to be removed? The big stupid one, Moxon, was always talking about his wife and the baby they were going to have. Something could be done with that. O’Hara was a tougher case, but there must be some way of getting at him...

The program girl leaned over and whispered, “Excuse me, it is Mr. O’Hara, isn’t it?”

O’Hara’s eyes were hard and suspicious. “That’s me.”

“There’s a gentleman from the police to see you, sir. Just outside in the passage.”

“From the police. They don’t want me. It’s a trick.”

“Oh, no, sir.” The girl’s eyes were frightened. Perhaps she should not have done it, she thought, but now that she’d started she had to go on. “Something about a car, sir, a car you’d hired. He said it wouldn’t take a minute.”

“It’s true we use a hired car.” O’Hara hesitated. “What do you think, boss?”

Jimmy Dain waved a fat hand. He was concentrating on the boxers. “You heard her say it was only for a minute. You’d better go, Mike.”

“I don’t like it. Joe’s not here, either. Where’s he got to?”

“Talking to his wife. This is England, Mike. Nobody’s going to hurt me while I’m sitting here.”

“I don’t like it.” O’Hara gripped the girl’s arm so hard that she winced. “How do we know she isn’t a fake, dressed up in these clothes?”

“There’s a man who ought to be able to tell us.” Jimmy Dain got to his feet clumsily. “Mr. Baxter, can you spare time to answer a question?”

Billy Baxter was walking past them, on the way to his seat. “I can’t, but I will. As long as it’s only one.”

“My name’s Jimmy Dain, and I’m over from the States. I’d like to say—”

Baxter held up a hand. “I hate to say this, but I can answer a question, not hear a speech. If you’ve got one, let’s have it.”

“Here it is. Is this young lady one of your official program sellers, or is she not?”

The promoter stared at him. “Well, now, Mr. Dain, I should call this a sort of case of mistaken identity. I’m running a show here, not making up a roster of the program girls.”

“But Mr. Baxter, you do remember me.” The girl was now almost in tears. “My name’s Lily Jacobs and I was serving at your private bar the last time you were here.”

Billy Baxter stared hard at her, then patted her cheek. “So you were. And very pretty you looked behind the bar, too. That make you happy, Mr. Dain?”

“Just clears up a little point. Have a cigar?” He produced a bulky metal cigar case from an inside pocket.

“Just threw one away a minute ago. You wouldn’t believe it, but just before a big fight like this I get nervous as a kitten. Thanks all the same.”

He walked away. Jimmy Dain lowered his bulk back into the seat. “You made me look silly, Mike. Satisfied?”

“I suppose so. I wish Joe would come back.”

“Be your age, Mike. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“If there’s any other message, if they want to get you out of here, stay put. Even if it’s supposed to come from me.”

Jimmy Dain rolled the cigar round in his mouth. “Boy, wild horses wouldn’t drag me away from this ringside just now.”

O’Hara turned to the girl, “Come on then, let’s go.”

In the switchboard room Joe Moxon was saying pleadingly into the telephone, “Will you please, please get me reconnected to that hospital.” There was no reply. “Hello there,” he shouted.

Buster Marks had been holding the receiver too close to his ear. He was almost deafened. “Please do not shout, Mr. Moxon, I am doing my best to reconnect you,” he said reprovingly.

His girl friend, a little bored with the joke, was looking at herself in a glass. Buster took another piece of Turkish delight.

When the girl walked up to give the message to O’Hara, Lancing got out of his seat and joined the crowd of boxers, managers, and hangers-on standing around the entrance. From there he saw O’Hara’s reluctance to leave the Arena, saw Dain’s approach to the promoter, and pressed his nails into his palm.

Was it possible that O’Hara would ignore the police summons? Trained in the German tradition of respect for authority, and aware of the terror that a police call had meant in Nazi Germany, he had never seriously considered that as a possibility. For seconds that seemed like minutes, he watched the four figures standing there, saw Baxter leave them, Dain sit down, and then — yes, O’Hara was coming.

Lancing walked quickly into the passage outside the Arena. As he stood waiting, his fingers curled and uncurled themselves round the small blackjack in his jacket pocket.

The girl brought O’Hara up to him. Lancing could see her looking at him, afraid now that she might have done something wrong. She wouldn’t forget his face — but what did it matter? Remove the red wig and the prawn-whisker eyebrows, and she would never be able to make a positive identification.

Besides, by the time that any investigation was made, Art Lancing would be back in New York and could go under cover for a month or two if necessary. There was no way in which the British authorities could trace Jimmy Dain’s death directly to an American source, and if the investigation did move to New York, probably Charlie Black could pull some strings.

“Mr. O’Hara? I’m Inspector Greenside of the C.I.D. Could I have a word with you privately?” The girl was standing there. What did she want? She had got her money. “You can go,” he said to her. She went, but unwillingly. For a moment a danger signal flashed in Lancing’s mind. Then he forgot it.

“A plainclothes cop,” O’Hara said. “Where’s your proof of identity?”

Lancing smiled. “I don’t blame you for being suspicious. You’ve got some reason to be.” He opened his wallet and showed the card that had been forged for him. It wasn’t a particularly good forgery, but it was good enough to satisfy an Irish-American who knew nothing about the English police force.

O’Hara nodded. He was still watchful, but no longer suspicious. “What’s the trouble? Something about a car, the girl said.”

“Yes.” They began to walk toward the exit. “You hired a car a few days ago from the Uneeda Car Hire Company.”

“How do you know that?”

“I rang them up, gave them the car number, and they said it had been hired to you. Rang your hotel and they told me your party was here.”

“I don’t mean that. How did you connect my car with the Uneeda Company in the first place?”

“Their label was in it. This way.” He led the way round to the left. O’Hara stopped abruptly.

“My car’s in the parking lot, over there.”

Lancing laughed again. “Not any more. We have put it round here, out of harm’s way.”

Outside, the Arena was deserted and would remain so until the fight was over. A solitary doorman watched incuriously as they walked under a covered way and turned round by some administrative buildings.

“What do you mean, out of harm’s way?”

At the other side of the administrative buildings there was a quiet, dark recess that would do very well. Another 50 yards and they were there.

“Mr. O’Hara,” Lancing asked, “has anybody in your party got any enemies? Real enemies, I mean, who want to kill you?”

O’Hara’s head jerked as though he had taken a punch. “Why?”

“Somebody put a time bomb in your car tonight.”

O’Hara sucked in his breath. He was now completely convinced. Beautiful, Lancing thought, beautiful to see how a man always reacts to the right stimulus.

“Did you catch the man who put it there?” O’Hara demanded.

“He got away. The attendant saw a man bending down over the trunk of your car, and he seemed to be trying to force it. When the attendant came up, the man seemed to lose his nerve and ran. The attendant had a look in the car, saw a box there, heard it ticking, and got in touch with us.”

Now they were there, right at the back of the buildings. There was nobody in sight. The recess was to the left. Lancing slipped the blackjack out of his pocket. “Just over there.”

O’Hara turned his head to look, then cried, “There’s no roadway. You couldn’t put a car over there. You—”

Lancing struck. The blow was not a good one. Perhaps O’Hara’s last-moment suspicion made him move a fraction, perhaps Lancing was more excited than he knew. The blackjack struck a glancing blow on the neck and shoulder, instead of on the head.

The blow brought O’Hara to his knees, but did not knock him out. He butted forward, hit Lancing in the stomach, and threw him back right into the recess. In another moment O’Hara was on him, his hot breath in Lancing’s nostrils, his knee pinning down one arm, his strong fingers round Lancing’s throat.

Lancing tried to pull the fingers away with his other hand, but failed. The man seemed to have hands made of steel. Lancing had a desperate consciousness of failure, bitter because it was so utterly unexpected.

There was one chance. He twisted round so that with his free hand he could get at the knife in his hip pocket. Then, with his head roaring as though a railway train were running through it, he struck upward. He struck three times.

O’Hara did not cry out. He gave a kind of grunt, that was all. The fingers round Lancing’s neck slowly relaxed. Lancing pushed the warm, inert body aside scrambled up. He felt dismay, vet mixed with it was a wild, strange exhilaration.

He had not meant to kill O’Hara, merely to knock him out. But now he was dead, and Art Lancing felt something of the joy that Max Hoven had known in the prison camps. The knife had been for Jimmy Dain, but now—

Lancing dropped to his knees again and pulled out the knife. Deliberately he wiped it on the dead man’s jacket, then replaced it in his hip pocket. A little unsteadily, like a man slightly drunk, he walked back toward the Arena.

He looked at his watch and saw with astonishment that only two minutes had elapsed since he had begun to talk to O’Hara. Even so, he had lost time; the fight must be almost about to start. He broke into a kind of shuffling run.

When he reached the Arena again, he stopped suddenly, seeing himself in a glass in the passage. His collar was undone, his tie askew. He put them straight with hands that still trembled a little, adjusted the red wig, and was about to move away when he saw the blood.

There were spots of red on his shirt, a dark stain on his jacket. He would have to change them before going to the airport, but fortunately he had a complete change of clothing in the suitcase which was in the car he had parked around the corner.

In any case, he could not give up now. There was no question of giving up.

At just the moment when Lancing took the blackjack from his pocket, Lily Jacobs finally made up her mind.

She knew what she ought to do, although she was frightened of doing it. She walked up the gangway again, went to Billy Baxter’s seat, and said, “Mr. Baxter, I’m ever so sorry to be a bother, but I must speak to you.”

The fight promoter looked up in astonishment.

“Stone the crows, it’s you. Now, girlie, run away, will you.”

“But, Mr. Baxter, I think he’s a crook. That man who asked me to give the message, I mean. He gave me £5 and told me it was just a joke, but then he said he was a police inspector—”

Baxter got up reluctantly.

“The things I do for boxing,” he said. “Come on, then, girlie. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say. Quick.”

Lily Jacobs told her story. When she had finished the promoter shrugged.

“What’s it add up to, girlie? You take money from this man — which is what you’re strictly not supposed to do — and he’s working some sort of fiddle. He’s not back in his seat, eh?” She shook her head. “But he’s got a ticket, he’s free to go in and out. Don’t see I can do much about it. Same time, we don’t want any trouble, and that’s a fact.”

He called one of the attendants on duty to check tickets. “You stay with him, girlie, tell him when you see this joker come in. And you too,” he prodded the attendant in the stomach “if you see him up to any funny business, come over and tell me, pronto. Got it?”

They nodded.

“Now perhaps I can get a bit of peace to watch this fight I’m supposed to be promoting.”

In the ring the boxers’ gloves had been fitted and inspected by the referee and the seconds. The fighters sat in their corners, patient and calm, looking much less nervous than the seconds who were talking to them urgently. The timekeeper was looking at his watch.

In the switchboard room Joe Moxon had passed beyond frenzy into speechlessness. He merely listened as Buster Marks said, “I am sorry. I am still trying to make the connection.”

“Shall I see if I can help?” the switchboard girl asked sympathetically. She took the receiver. “Hello.”

Buster, at the other end, was so startled that he almost dropped the telephone. In his normal East End Cockney accents he said, “Where’s Moxon, Mr. Moxon that is? Where’s he gone?”

The girl said incredulously, “What’s that?”

Buster recovered his telephone operator manner. “Will you ask Mr. Moxon to come to the telephone? I think I have his call coming through now.”

The switchboard girl put her hand over the receiver and whispered to Moxon, “I think this is some sort of trick, I don’t believe it’s a telephone operator at all on the other end. Keep him talking, and I’ll get the number checked.”

Moxon looked at the receiver with hatred, as if it were a man, but he held it in his great hand and said something, while the impersonal voice soothed him from the other end. Then the girl came over again. “It’s a trick. Somebody calling from another London exchange. The police say keep him talking.”

Moxon stared at her unbelievingly. Then he gave a great roar of anger and pain, flung the telephone down, and ran out of the room.

Buster Marks heard the roar. “Hello, hello,” he said cautiously. There was silence. He took another piece of Turkish delight, looked at the girl, and gently replaced the telephone receiver.

“Sweetie pie, I think we’d better get out of here quick,” he said.

Jimmy Dain, in his ringside seat, might have been wondering where Joe Moxon and Mike O’Hara had got to, but in fact he had forgotten them completely. Watching an important fight was for Jimmy the perfect form of earthly enjoyment. He was conscious of nothing but the two men in the ring who were so soon to exchange blows, of the peculiar, charged emotional atmosphere compounded of resin and sweat, the heat of the lamps and the excitement of the audience.

If Jimmy Dain had known that his life was in danger, as it was, he would have been physically unable to move from his ringside seat.

Lancing paused in the corridor. He was uneasily conscious of the spots of blood on his shirt, the stain on his jacket. Should he go back to the car which he had parked in a nearby road — he had rejected the Arena’s parking lot as too dangerous — and change his clothes quickly, now?

But of course that was a perfectly ridiculous idea. His timetable did not begin to allow for it. He must have been more upset than he had realized by the trouble with O’Hara. Illogically upset, which annoyed him. Logically there was no reason to be upset. In spite of the awkwardness about O’Hara, everything had gone to plan.

He took a deep breath and moved forward out of the passage into the noise, heat, and smoke of the Arena. An attendant said, “Your ticket, please, sir.”

Lancing hesitated. It had come into his mind suddenly that there was blood on his hands, and that the attendant would see it when he produced his ticket. Then he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, pulled out the ticket. The attendant glanced at it, nodded.

Lancing could not prevent himself from looking down. There was no blood on his hand. Then he saw the blue-coated attendant to whom he had given £5 for passing on the message to O’Hara. She was staring at him. Perhaps he had given her too much money — it was not easy to translate a dollar bribe into pounds. Again he had that prickly feeling of danger.

He put it away from him, went to his seat in Section N. It would take him no more than a few seconds to reach the spot where Jimmy Dain sat, a vacant place on either side of him. Lancing took out of his pocket, and pulled onto his hands, a pair of thin cotton gloves.

Lily Jacobs said to the attendant who had checked the ticket, “Did you see?”

“See what?”

“There were red spots on his shirt. Blood.”

“You’re excited.” The attendant was sympathetic but skeptical. “Letting things get to you. Don’t want to do that.”

“I tell you he had blood on his shirt! And where’s the man who went out with him?”

“Couldn’t say. I only know what Mr. Baxter told me — let him know if this geezer does anything queer. Couldn’t say he’s doing anything at the minute, just sitting in his seat. Excuse me, sir. May I see your ticket?”

Joe Moxon had just come up to him, head lowered like a bull.

The timekeeper tapped his bell. The two boxers, like puppets moved by the sound, rose. The stools behind them were whisked away. On their toes like ballet dancers, they moved into the center of the ring. The great Arena was perfectly quiet.

Bantamweight Billy Murphy, the slim “unknown” from Eire, hitched his red-and-gold trunks and stepped smartly toward the dark, square-shouldered figure of Paul Rangeri, champion of the world from Canada. Their scarlet gloves touched in salute. The fight was on.

Rangeri, peeping from behind close-cupped gloves in the generally accepted fashion, tried a left to the ribs. Murphy danced away. Rangeri carried the fight to a neutral corner, bore his man to the ropes, and shot another left. Murphy tossed an exploring right — and missed.

All very orthodox — with no possible hint that, eight rounds later, the champion of the world was to suffer his first defeat at the hands of this underdog, Murphy.

The people around Lancing sat with their eyes glued to the ring. He felt for them the kind of contempt that a man with work to do has for those who are merely enjoying themselves. He got up from his seat, a dark shadow in a dark scene, and began to move toward the ringside and Jimmy Dain.

Joe Moxon, caught by the excitement of those opening exchanges, was still standing beside the ticket-checking attendant and Lily Jacobs. Only Lily saw the dark shadow move. She gripped the attendant’s arm. “Look.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s out of his seat — going down towards the front.”

“So he is.” Reluctantly the attendant said, “Reckon I’d better tell Mr. Baxter.”

It was all beautifully simple, Lancing thought. Pass by Dain in the rich, concealing darkness. Lean over, unrecognizable, and then — one stab, one accurate stroke.

Then briskly walk away, out of the Arena, out to the waiting car. The lights would not go up until the end of the round. It would be five minutes at least before pursuit was organized.

Before that time he would be well away. By tomorrow midday he would be back in New York.

His gloved hand closed on the thin knife.

“Hell,” Joe Moxon said. He began to run down the gangway. The attendant, moved by his urgency, walked down the aisle, toward Billy Baxter.

“Oh, very good,” Jimmy Dain said with a chuckle. His gaze was fixed on the ring. “Good boy, good boy.” He never saw his attacker, was utterly unprepared.

Lancing moved unnoticed along the front row, paused a fraction of a moment when he reached Dain, leaned over, and in one smooth movement drove the knife with his right hand into Dain’s body.

Jimmy Dain gurgled slightly in his throat, and slumped back in his seat.

Lancing had been conscious of some resistance to his blow, but he felt the knife go in, and he could not wait to see the result. Nor did he withdraw the knife. He turned and walked back briskly the way he had come, confident that he had killed Jimmy Dain and that he had done it unobserved.

His second supposition was correct. The people behind and to the side of Jimmy Dain, absorbed in the fight, had not seen the blow struck. But Lancing had not killed Jimmy Dain. The blow glanced off his silver cigar case and missed the heart, leaving a wound that was painful, but not, as it proved later, fatal.

Joe Moxon did not see the blow struck, but he did see the shadow move along the front row, bend over, walk back. As Lancing walked briskly back toward the exit, Moxon barred his way.

“What were you doing down there?” Moxon asked. His voice was a growl, deep in his throat. “Doing to Jimmy?” He was still just a little hesitant, not quite sure of what he had seen.

That hesitancy was his undoing. Lancing drove his gloved right fist hard into Moxon’s solar plexus. The big man doubled up with pain.

Lancing was past him, pushing past the men round the gangway, out into the passage. In his mind, though, there was the sickening realization that something had gone wrong. He no longer believed in the impeccable logic of the enterprise. Buster had failed him, the stupid little program girl had failed him — or was it that he himself had failed? He was, anyway, hardly surprised, when he had reached the emergency exit door, to hear a shout behind him.

He turned for a moment and saw his enemies — the program girl, Baxter himself, a couple of quite obvious policemen. The game was up, but he refused to believe that it was lost. He slammed the door behind him and ran out into the night air.

He had only a few yards’ start, but he had the advantage that his pursuers would not know where his car was parked — would not know, even, that he had a car. He ran round to the left, skirted the spot where he had killed O’Hara, doubled back into the main road. Here he forced himself to a normal walk.

The narrow road in which he had put the car was the first turning to the left. He risked a quick look behind and saw that he had lost them for the moment. It could not be for long, but it might be long enough. He turned into the road.

It was not well lighted and at first he did not see the car. He must have left it farther down the road than he had thought. He ran down some 50 yards, then stopped. He could see the road from one end to the other.

There was no car in it.

He felt the utter bewilderment of a man whose whole world has turned upside down. He must be in the wrong road — but he knew he was not. Or perhaps he had not brought a car here at all — but he knew he had. He was walking up and down in an aimless way when the policeman saw him.

“Looking for something, sir?”

It would be a crowning absurdity if the police helped him to find the car. “Yes. It is ridiculous, but I have lost my car.”

The policeman nodded. He did not seem surprised. He pointed to a No Parking sign on the other side of the road. “Do you see that notice?”

Had he seen it? Lancing could not remember, but if so he had paid it no attention. What did a summons matter to him? “I don’t know. Do you mean you know where my car is?”

The policeman said heavily, “Your car, sir, has been towed away by the police, because it was causing an obstruction. This road is used considerably when an important event is taking place at the Arena and ’as to be kept clear.” He took a breath. “Powers to remove ears are vested in the Metropolitan Police under the Traffic Act, but ’ave previously only been used in Central London. Tonight they have been extended to Harringay. If you wish to reclaim your car, six, you may do so by going—”

But Lancing was laughing. Great tears of laughter rolled down hi* cheeks. “You have taken away my car for a traffic offense. It is really very funny. Do you knew, I think that for the first time I can appreciate English humor.”

At the end of the road a little knot of people appeared. He recognized Moxon and then the program girl.

“There he is,” she cried. “Don’t let him get away.”

“I am a logical man,” Lancing said to the bewildered policeman. “But logic must be defeated by your humor.”

He took from his waistcoat pocket the tiny box he had kept for years awaiting such an occasion, opened it, and quickly put the pill in his mouth.

This ultimate logic, at least, did not fail him.