Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 68, July 1949

Collared by Cornell Woolrich[9]

I knew something was up, because he came in nervous instead of just plain lit. He’d had his usual liquid transfusion, but his cooling system must have jammed; it wasn’t taking.

He didn’t bother looking at me. Me — last year’s moll, left-over around the place. I was just a part of the furniture. That was his mistake. Chairs don’t stand around waiting to get even on you.

The first six months or so I’d tried to run out on him, but I always got brought back feet first, and I usually had to have a new porcelain cap put on a tooth or two right afterwards. Since then things had changed. Now he was sick of me, but he couldn’t get rid of me for love nor money. I was staying until I could get something on him.

He started dialing a number the minute he came in the door, before he even took his hat off. When he wanted a number that fast and that early — five in the morning — it couldn’t be anyone’s but his mouth’s. So that meant he was in a jam.

I couldn’t read the slots as he spun them, because he was out in the hall and I was inside at the mirror fiddling with my nails, but I could tell by the length of time the dial took slipping back each time about which ones they were. The first three were short turns — the exchange and its subdivision. The next two were long hauls — the end slot. His mouth’s private number began with two zeros; that was it all right. Then he changed his mind, hung up instead of going ahead. So that meant he wasn’t sure whether he was in a jam or not; he’d just done something that worried him and was afraid he might be.

He came in instead, stiff-armed me by the shoulder, twisted me around his way so I nearly broke in two, and blew a lot of expensive Cutty Sark in my face for an atomizer. “Listen, Last Year,” he said. “I been here with you from about three on, get that? I been here with you from the time I left the club.”

“You been here from three on,” I repeated. I had more porcelain caps than I could carry now. He was bending over me and I couldn’t help seeing his collar.

“She’s got the damnedest aim,” I remarked. “Why don’t you hold still when you’re leaving her, so you get it on the kisser and not the Cluett Peabody?”

He yanked the collar off so hard and fast his whole tie stayed on around his neck. He looked at it kind of scared, and blew out a little breath, as though he were relieved I’d spotted it for him in time. He went into the bathroom. I heard a match scratch and I saw flame reflected against the tiles. I got a whiff of scorched linen, and then a lot of water ran down. He’d burned it.

That gave me a hint about what the jam was. He’d done something to her, whoever she was. Because he certainly hadn’t got rid of it on my account. He’d brought those same lipstick trademarks back with him before, and it hadn’t bothered him whether I saw them or not. They wouldn’t come out in the wash, I’d found that out; it was waterproof rouge and they just went a little lighter.

And if it bothered him, that meant he hadn’t meant to do it, whatever it was. Because what was a little kill to him? If he’d cut notches in a stick he’d have had a buzz-saw by now. But he always had it done by remote control, and this was one time he’d been very much all there, judging by his collar; that made a difference. That alone was positive proof to me that it was unintentional.

The way I figured it, one of two things had happened. Either he’d found out something, lost his head for a minute, and couldn’t control his trigger-finger in time, and now he regretted it; or it had been altogether an accident. Maybe she was one of those dumb twists that just had to fool with his gun to kill time between huddles, and had playfully pulled the trigger.

Either way it looked like my long-delayed payoff was coming up. So I just sat where I was and rubbed cold cream into my map as an excuse for staying up, to get all the dope I could. He came out again, collar gone now, and massaged the back of his neck. That meant he was trying to figure out whether to let the jam ride and take a chance on getting away with it, or do something to straighten it out.

He took off his coat and vest, and took a .32 out of one of the pockets. He took a sniff at the bore, and then tapped it against the palm of his hand a couple of times, worried. That wasn’t his gun; he would have used a caliber like that to pick his teeth with.

Finally he went out to the phone again, and dialed a different number, without any zeros. “Louie,” he said in a low voice. “I want you to come over here and do something for me.”

Louie made it fast. But that’s all he was geared for anyway, just one of his stooges. He brought him into the room with him. I was working on my neck now.

Louie said, “H’lo, Mae,” just to stay in good with Buck, not knowing for sure if I’d been scratched yet.

“Never mind her,” Buck said, letting him know I had. He gave me a traffic signal toward the bathroom with his thumb. “G’wan, get inside there and swaller some iodine or something until I tell you to come out again. And keep that door closed.”

I missed some of it that way, but not for lack of pushing my ear hard enough against the door seam. His voice rose irritably every once in a while, which was a habit of his whenever he was talking to his stooges, and that helped some.

“Naw, no one heard it and no one saw it, or I woulda gotten Mendes on the wire right off,” was the first thing I got, after a minute or two of static. Mendes was his mouthpiece.

More poor reception, and then: “Why didn’t I leave it there? Suppose it was hers! Don’t you think they’re gonna know someone was up there, you dumb lug? Her wrist was weaker than I thought it would be; I pushed it all the way back over her shoulder, and it hit something, turned aside, and the bullet went into her from the back!”

More interference, and then: “I wouldn’t wanna pass it off like that even if I could. I didn’t want to lose the kid, even after what I found out. I was just gonna slap her around a few times. I got somebody lined up for it. No one takes anything away from me without paying for it!”

A name was coming up. I shifted down to the keyhole, where the reception was better.

“The boy friend’s name is Frank Rogers; I got that much out of her before it happened. He came on here to take her back to her home town, when they’d heard she was getting in wrong. He’s at the Hallerton House, one of these men’s hotels. You know how to work it. Put a little vaseline on the gun, but see that you’ve got on gloves yourself. You be looking it over just as he comes along — in the hall outside his room, for instance. You drop the gun and it lands on one of your pet corns. You grab your foot with both hands and hop around, so you’ve got an excuse for not picking it up yourself. He’ll bend down and hand it back to you without thinking twice — any guy would. Then just keep it well wrapped up after that, so it don’t catch cold.”

Some low-pitched beefing I couldn’t catch came in from Louie at this point. Then Buck overrode him: “What you worrying about? You don’t have to go in there with her, you yellow belly. The body’s safe until ten; the woman that does her cleaning don’t come around before then. Just see that you leave the gun around inside the building some place where the cops can’t miss it, like he threw it away on the lam. Now get over there fast. He’ll be getting up early; he was figuring on taking her back with him on the early-morning bus. The six o’clock one. So hurry.”

I heard the outside door slam, I counted ten, and then I drifted out. “We’re kind of low on iodine in there,” I said meekly. “Should I have used a razor?”

He fired his shoe at me. It missed my head but busted the mirror. “Have a little bad luck on me,” he wished fervently.

There were still enough pieces left in the mirror’s frame to do piecework by, so I sat down at it again, for a stall to stay awake longer than him. He put on a pair of pajamas with zebra stripes. The last thing he said was, “You may as well quit that; it’s not gonna get you anything — even in the dark.” His yap dropped open and he started to breathe heavy.

I took another halfturn on the cold cream, to make sure he was asleep. I kept thinking, “I gotta find out who she is. Was, I mean. This is what I been waiting for six months. This is my chance to fix him good, and if I pass it up it’ll never come again, he’s too cagy. I’ve got the fall guy’s name. Frank Rogers. But I gotta find out hers, and especially where she’s lying dead right now.” Then a short cut occurred to me. “What the hell, this Rogers can tell me who and where she is.”

I had to work fast, but I had to work carefully too. One wrong move and I knew what my finish would be. And it wouldn’t be just another busted tooth this time either. He or some one of his gang would kill me. That was why there was no question of just anonymously ratting on Buck to the cops. I had to stay out of it altogether. They had to trace it back to him themselves. I had to find some way of making sure they did — and leave me in the clear, on the sidelines, when they did. Even with him in the death house, my life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if there was a leak afterwards.

I wouldn’t call it a frame. There was once a guy named Gordon, may his good soul rest in peace... Never mind that now.

I didn’t have much time. Those stooges of Buck’s moved fast when they were on his shift. That Louie must be practically at Rogers’ hotel by now. Here goes, I thought, and I tiptoed out to the phone, keeping my face turned his way so I could do a quick right-about-face if his eyes opened.

The dial made an awful clack. I tried to bury it against my chest, but it wouldn’t go around then. Finally I muffled it all I could by keeping my finger in the slot on the return trip each time, but I expected to feel a slug in the back of my neck any minute.

“Get me Mr. Frank Rogers and get him fast,” I said to the hotel clerk under my breath. They got him fast but not fast enough to suit me. He sounded sleepy too, must have just got up. Which was another bad break; it would have been bad enough talking to someone wide-awake.

I began: “I haven’t time to repeat what I’m going to say a second time, so don’t ask me to, get it the first. I’ve got a message for you from your girl friend.”

“Alma?” he said, surprised.

That was only one-third of what I needed. “To make sure I’ve got the right party, kick back with her full name and address. There may be another Frank Rogers in the same building.”

He fell for it. “Alma Kitteredge, 832 East Seventy-second. What’s the message?”

“Just put on your pants and pull out of town fast. She’s not coming with you, you’ll find out why when you get back home. Buy a two-cent paper and shut up about this call.”

I was going to warn him not to touch anything, not to pick up any guns for any strangers, but before I had time I had to hang up. Buck had just changed sides in the hay. “What are you doing out there?” he growled.

“Just bringing in the morning paper, dee-yur.”

It hadn’t come yet, but he was asleep again by then anyway.

I made a quick round-trip to the closet, grabbed up whatever was handiest, and got dressed out there in the foyer on the installment plan, stopping between each layer to see if I was still in the clear. I put on my checker-board swagger-coat. Black and white plaid; you could see it a mile away even with low visibility, but it had been on the end hanger. I wasn’t heading for an Easter parade, anyway.

The last thing I took was a clean collar of his, rolled it up small, and put it in my handbag. Then I edged over and fished his key holder out of his vest-pocket. He had an awful lot of them, but only three Yales. I stepped outside and found out which was the one to our place, and that left only two. One probably to his office at the gambling club, and the other one to her place. I detached both of them and took them with me.

I eased the door closed after me, and then I hot-footed it down to the street, scared up a cab, and gave Alma’s address. I hadn’t been out this early in the morning since I was a good girl in love with an honest guy.

I had the driver let me off on the corner instead of right outside the door. It wasn’t such a hot place. None of the trimmings. No doorman, nothing. I could tell Buck hadn’t picked it for her. Still, he already had the key. She’d been afraid to refuse it to him, I guess. Just like I’d been before Gordon had his “accident.”

The door key opened the street door too. The mail slot said 3-A. I walked up a couple of flights of stairs and found the door, a little to the left. I didn’t knock. I knew there was no one in there to hear me any more. The key I’d taken from Buck worked the door without any trouble, and I closed it quietly after me with a back-hand motion. The lights had been left on.

She had it nice inside. But she was spoiling the looks of it, even though she was a pretty little thing, lying slopped all over the floor like that.

I looked down at her. “Cheer up, kid,” I said softly. “He’ll get it hung on him, don’t worry.”

I went in to her dressing table, rummaged, and got out her lipstick. It was waterproof rouge. I took it back to where she was, bent down by her, lifted her head, and reddened up her mouth plenty. When I’d put it on so thick that it was practically caked on her, I picked up her hand and closed her fingers tight around the lipstick holder.

“Just so the dicks’ll know what you were trying to tell them,” I murmured to her. “If they don’t think it funny that a girl dying from a slug takes time out to rouge her lips, they oughta be out shoving street cleaners’ tea wagons around. Now spread yourself on this.” I unrolled his clean collar, held it out straight by both ends, and pressed it hard against her smeared mouth. The print came out perfect, a complete cupid’s bow.

“They’ll check the rouge, they’ll check the shape of your mouth. Oh, they’ll know,” I promised her softly. I rolled the collar up carefully again, put a little tissue paper around it so it wouldn’t blur, put it back in my handbag.

“Now just so they’ll know what to look for it on...” I said. I went over to the table and picked up a big glossy magazine lying there. I thumbed through the ads until I came to a full-page men’s collar ad, with a handsome he-model illustrating it. “Here you go,” I said. I held that against her mouth, so that the print came out on the collar in the photograph just about where it had on Buck’s. Then I dropped the mag on the floor near her, open at that particular page.

“Now if the cops are any good at all, that oughta bring them around where I live sooner or later — without me having to be filled full of buckshot for it either.” I looked back at her from the door, saluted her sadly. “Take it easy, Toots. And the next time you live, marry your Frank Rogers fast and don’t fool around with dynamite.”

I had my hand on the door knob ready to leave when I heard someone outside in the hall. A sort of tiptoey tread, the kind you notice all the quicker just because it’s trying not to be heard. I knew it was Louie, with his little gun all neatly fingerprinted now by Rogers. Louie must have come up through the basement, because I had Buck’s key. I got good and scared. I didn’t stop to think what a wonderful break I’d just had; if I’d left a minute sooner I’d have run into him head-on on the stairs. Or if he’d shown up a minute later. I was all right where I was. He was too yellow to come in here, and he didn’t have the key anyway.

The sound of his tiptoeing went down the hall to the back. There was a muffled clunk from a tin bucket, then his steps came back again, passed the door where I was holding my breath, and faded out down the stairs.

I gave him all the time he needed to get out of the building. Then I let myself out, closed her door, and went up there to the end of the hall. There was a fire-ax clamped to the wall, and there was a red fire-bucket on the floor under it. The gun was lying at the bottom of it.

I’d seen Buck clean his often enough. He always used a piece of chamois or kidskin. Of course this was different; this was to get prints off, but I figured the same thing would work. I took one of my own gloves, from my handbag, to it. That, and my breath, and — what a lady spits with. I worked until there couldn’t have been anything left on it. Then I laid it down again inside the pail.

I took a couple of swabs at the outside door knob too, just for luck, before I left. Not that I was particularly worried about myself, but just not to cloud the issue. The whole job must have taken about five, six minutes. Then I went downstairs and out of the building, and stood there for a half-minute outside the street door — like a fool, but the way anyone’s apt to do. Sort of taking a deep breath after finishing something. It was still early but it was good and light by now.

You know how you can feel it when anyone’s looking at you hard, even from a distance? Something pulled my head around in the opposite direction, and there was a figure in a light gray suit down at the next corner, on the other side of the street, sizing me up for all he was worth. It was Louie, same suit he’d just had on up at our place; he’d just come out of a cigar store that he’d gone into either to buy smokes or to report his success back to Buck over the wire.

My first thought was, “Take it easy. He can’t tell who you are from that far off.” Then I looked down at myself and I saw those checker-board black and white squares all over me. “Oh, Lord!” I gasped, and I stepped down from the doorway fast and went up the other way.

The steady way he’d been staring told me he already had a hunch it was me. And I knew what the next step would be. He’d phone back to Buck fast to see if I was there or not.

I jumped into the first cab I saw and I almost shook the driver by the shoulders to get some speed out of him. “Fast!” I kept whimpering. “Fast! I’ve got to beat a phone call.”

“I don’t see how it can be done,” he said.

I didn’t either, but it had to be. If Louie had only wasted time tailing me around to where I’d hopped the cab... If he’d only run out of nickels...

But if he’d already phoned Buck the first time and woken him up, then what was the use of all this? I was already finished. I threw something at the driver, I think it was a fin for a six-bit ride, and I never got up to a third floor so fast before or after.

It was ringing away, I could hear it right through the door while I was trying to get it open. And of course I would drop, the key on the floor in my hurry and have to dredge for it. I don’t know how I did it but finally I was in and had the damned thing at my mouth and ear, just as Buck came up for air in the other room and growled, “Are you gonna get a move on and shut that damn thing up or d’ya want a ride on the end of my foot?”

It was Louie, all right. “Who’s that — Mae?” he said. He acted surprised I was there. So was I.

“Sure, who else?” I couldn’t say much, I was too winded.

“I got three wrong numbers in a row, can y’imagine?” I thanked God and the Telephone Company. “I coulda sworn I seen you down on Seventy-second Street just now.”

“Whaddya think I do, walk in my sleep?”

“Well, this dame beat it away fast.”

“She probably got a look at your face. Listen, get through, will you? You just busted a dream Charles Boyer was in with me.”

“Just tell Buck: Okay.” He hung up. I got undressed right where I was standing, on the zipper plan; just dropped everything off together and stepped out of them. But he was asleep again, he didn’t ask who it was.

I got her door key and the other one back into his pocket. I hung that blasted checker-board coat as far back inside the closet as it would go, and made a mental note to sell it to the first old-clothes man that came around. The collar with her death kiss on it I rolled up at the bottom of the laundry bag.

The rest was up to the dicks.

They didn’t show up for three days. Three days that were like three years. It was in the papers the first day, just a little squib. Not a word about the lipstick in her hand or the smear on the magazine. That gave me a bad jolt. Had they muffed it? There was always the possibility that Louie had gone back inside, after he’d thought he’d seen me leave there that day, and rearranged my carefully planted setup. But if he had, I’d have been dead two days already.

What looked good about it was that, although the papers spoke of their sending upstate to have a Frank Rogers held and questioned, there was no follow-up. It stopped at that. The next editions didn’t say a word about his being brought back under arrest. His alibi must have held up. It should have, it was the straight goods.

The bureau drawer gave a crash at this point that was enough to split it in two, so I quickly dropped the paper. This was Thursday night, the second night after, around eight, Buck’s usual time for getting caked up to go down to the club. He was standing there across the room in suspenders, holster, and stiff shirt, but with a bare neck. “Well?” he growled. “What do I use for a collar? They’ve run out on me.”

My heart started hitting it up. “Ur-um-uff,” I said.

A shoe horn went past my left ear and a lit cigar butt sailed by my right. He didn’t wait to see if he’d hit me or not; he headed straight over for that laundry bag behind the bath door. “Now I’ll hafta use the same one twice!”

I managed to stay on my feet, but I was dying all over by inches as I saw his arm go down into it, scuffing things out. “Wait, hon,” I moaned. “Getcha nice fresh one at the haberdasher downstairs. Won’t take a minute, they’re still open.” I got the door open.

It worked. He quit burrowing, with his fingertips just an inch away from it by that time. “Well, get some life into your bustle, I gotta get down there.”

It was right in our same building, but you had to go out the street door and around to get into it. I was too frightened even to remember his size. I bought one of every half-size they carried, from fourteen up to seven-teen, to make sure of hitting the right one, and charged them. It was only when I ducked back into the house door again and saw people stopping dead and staring, that I realized I had on bell-bottomed pajamas and a brassier. It was better than a shroud, at that.

He let me off easy, just pushed me back over the arm of a chair. It stayed up, so I did too. He hadn’t fished up what lay curled at the bottom of the laundry bag and that was all that mattered.

That was Thursday.

Friday lasted 96 hours, but it finally ended. I kept worrying Rogers had spilled it that an anonymous woman had tipped him to get out of town. If that leaked, and it got back to Buck!

Friday night I got a sudden phone call from Buck, from the club, at two in the morning. He never did that any more; he would have been only too glad if I’d tried to cheat on him those days, so he could’ve tied the can to me.

I knew what it was, before he even said anything. They were on the trail at last. They must have just been over there to talk to him, for the first time. He was phoning to warn me ahead.

“Anyone been around?” he asked mysteriously.

“No.”

“In case anyone does, remember what I told you Tuesday night?”

“That was the night you came home early from the club, at three.”

I didn’t get any thanks for it. “Now listen, Last Year, if anything gets gummed, if there’s any slip-up, I’m going to know just who’s to blame for it. You better wish you’d never been born.”

He was right; I was probably his only alibi, from the moment he had left the club that night. That may sound as if it was bad for him, but I was the one it was bad for. He could always get out of it in the end, he’d got out of worse ones, and in this case there was the printed gun (so he thought!) and no witnesses. But if there was the least hitch, if he was questioned once too often or half an hour too long, he’d know the answer. That was curtains for me; there was no one else I could pass the buck to.

He’d hardly rung off than there was a knock on the door. I knew who it was. I knew I was going to have to handle the interview just as though Buck was present, or listening in the next room. That didn’t have me stopped. If they had any brains at all, maybe they could get it from what I didn’t say, instead of what I did.

But when I’d opened the door, it was only one guy. “Headquarters,” he said, and he tipped his hat and showed his badge. Only strangers tipped their hats to me any more, not the guys I associated with. “Are you Buck Colby’s wife?”

“Common law.” Buck didn’t even refer to me as that.

“Come in and talk to you?”

“Why, sure,” I said hospitably. “Help yourself.”

He looked around him casually. Suddenly he’d said, “About what time does Colby get back here at nights as a rule?” It was out and waiting to be answered before I’d even heard it coming. I was supposed to think he wanted to see Buck right now and wondered how long he’d have to wait for him.

“Never much before three. He’s kept busy at the cl—”

He cut it short with his hand. “How about after?”

“Seldom after, either.”

“Take Tuesday, for instance.” They were coming faster now.

“Tuesday was one of his early nights. He was here at three to the dot.”

“References?”

“You picked an easy one for me to remember.” I thumbed the busted mirror. “I was still sitting up there when he came in. If it had been any later than three I would have been in bed. And as a matter of fact, I remember asking him, ‘What brings you home so early?’ He said the take had been rather thin.”

“Where does that mirror come in it?”

“He was taking off his shoe, and he pulled too hard, and it flew out of his hand and landed over here.” I coughed deprecatingly.

He’d shut up all of a sudden. He kept looking at me as if he found me kind of interesting, all at once. The next time he spoke, it wasn’t a police question any more, it was more personal. “Been — married to him long?”

I slid my mouth around toward my left ear. “I’ve been with Mr. Colby two years now.” It sounded strangely sweet, coming out of such a bitter-shaped thing.

He was getting more and more interested in me personally, seemed to forget all about what had brought him up here. Seemed to. “Worked in one of his clubs, I guess, in the beginning?”

“No. Mr. Colby did urge me to when he first met me. But I was intending getting married at the time, so I didn’t feel free to accept. However, the party I — uh, had figured on marrying had an accident, and that left me much freer to accept, so I did.”

He looked at me. “Had an accident,” he said without any question mark.

“Yes. A rather large beer truck ran wild down a hill near where I was living and crushed him against a cement wall as he was on his way up to see me. I suppose even the first time would have killed him, but every time the frightened driver tried to reverse and extricate his vehicle, it would only back up a little and then go smashing in again. It happened three or four times. Like a sort of battering ram.

“The funny part of it was he never fell down. He stayed sort of stuck to the wall — partly. And partly to the fender and radiator. He even got all over the engine too, I understand. They had to whitewash the wall and scour the sidewalk with creosote.

“The driver felt very bad about it. It preyed on his mind, until a few months later he took his own life by tying his hands to his feet and jumping into the river. I don’t believe anyone remembered who he was by that time any more. I happened to, of course, but that was all. No one was to blame, you understand. How could they be?” I chewed the lining of my cheek and made my eyes hard as marbles. “No one was to blame.”

He just looked at me. After a while he said quietly, “Thought a lot of him, didn’t you?”

I let my eyes drift. “There was never any very great — feeling between us, compared to what there is between Mr. Colby and myself now.” I took my lower jaw and shifted it tenderly back and forth, as if to see whether it had been fractured or not lately.

He shook his head half pityingly and looked down at the floor. Finally he said, as if winding up the interview: “Then he was here from three o’clock on, Tuesday night?”

“From three on. I stake my life on that.”

He shuttered his eyes at me understandingly, as if to say, “I guess you do.” He got up. “I’m going to ask you to let me take a look in your laundry bag before I go.”

I shifted my eyes over to the bath door, then back to him again. “That’s a very strange request,” I said primly. “I can’t imagine what possible—”

He went over to it while I was still talking, stuck his arm down into it, and pulled the bottom up through the top without anything falling out. “Empty,” he said.

“I take it out on Mondays as a rule, but this week, for some reason—” I looked at him hard — “I put it off until just yesterday. Just yesterday Mr. Colby noticed it was rather full, and reminded me I hadn’t taken it out.” I rubbed my shoulder as though it still ached. “I can’t imagine what made me so absent-minded. If he hadn’t called my attention to it, it would have been still here.” Our eyes met.

He’d sat down again. I said, in my best tea-table manner, “Will you excuse me while I get a cigarette?” He held out a leather case from his pocket. I ignored it. He raised the lid of a box standing there right beside me, full. I didn’t seem to see him do it. I got my handbag and brought it back and dug out a crumpled pack. A little vivid green tab of paper came up with it “accidentally” and slipped to the floor. It had two ink-brush ideographs on it, and a couple of words of English — the laundry’s name and location.

He picked it up for me, looked at it, and handed it back. I put it back in my bag and put my bag back where I’d got it. The cigarette wouldn’t draw, was split from being battered around so much; it didn’t matter, I seemed to have got over wanting a smoke any more by that time.

He hitched his chair closer, dropped his voice until you could hardly hear it. Nine parts lip motion to one part of vocal sound. “Temple’s my name. Why don’t you come down and see me, if you’re leery about talking up here? We’ll give you protection.”

I clasped my hands in hasty, agonized entreaty, separated them again. “I beg your pardon?” I said in a clear, ringing voice. “Did you say something just then?”

“Take a walk, buddy!” Buck was standing there in the open doorway, Louie looking over his shoulder. I put on a great big relieved expression, like I was sure glad they’d finally shown up. Buck came on in, with his lower jaw leading the way by two inches.

“Now listen, you questioned me at my club oilier tonight, and I took it good-natured. I soitainly never expected to find you here half an hour later. How long does this keep up?”

“What does he want, hon?” I said with wide-eyed innocence. I could have saved myself the trouble, he didn’t even give me a tumble.

“Now if ya think ya got anything on me, out with it, and I’ll go anywheres you say and face it! If ya haven’t, there’s the way out and don’t lemme see ya around here again.”

This Temple dick took it meeker than I thought he would. He got up and went toward the door. He went slow, but he went.

“Nothing to get sore about,” he drawled mildly. “I’m just doing my job. No one said anything about having anything on you.”

“You bet no one did!” Buck blared, and slammed the door on him.

None of us said anything for a few minutes. Then Louie looked out to make sure he’d gone, and Buck opened up.

“Y’did better than I expected, at that,” he said to me. “It’s a good thing for you y’did.” He tapped his side meaningfully. “I heard the whole thing from outside the door. We been out there for the past ten minutes. There’s only one thing I don’t like about it. What did he want with that laundry bag?” He poured himself a shot, wiped the dew away on his sleeve. “I don’t get it. I burned—” He didn’t finish it. “How did he know? How did he get onto that?”

He came over at me and his finger shot out like a knife. “Hey, you!” I nearly died in the split-second before he came out with the rest of it. “Did you take any collars over with the rest of that stuff yesterday?”

“I don’t think there were any,” I mumbled vaguely.

“Yes or no?”

My next answer came from the other side of the room, where he’d kited me. “No,” I groaned through a constellation of stars. “They were frayed so I—”

“Just the same you get over there the minute that place opens up in the morning and get that stuff back here, hear me? If they want it, then I want it twice as bad.”

“Sure, Buck,” I said, wiping the blood off my lip. “I’ll bring it back.”

“Why you so worried about collars?” Louie asked him, puzzled.

Buck explained in an undertone, “She’s been kissing me on the neck and I been finding lip-rouge on ’em when I got home. That’s the only tiling I can figure he’s looking for. I burned one but there may be others.”

“Yeah, but how would they know?” said Louie with unanswerable logic. “You brought the marks back with you, they didn’t stay down there with her.”

His face had a look like something was within an inch of clicking behind it, and I knew what that something was: A loud checked coat leaving a dead girl’s doorway only a few minutes after he had the other day. If it’s possible to shrink inside your own skin and take up lots less room than before, I shrank. That fool Temple, I thought, he may have killed me by making that pass at the laundry bag.

But before the chain of thought Louie was working on could click, Buck saved me by cutting across it and distracting his attention. “There’s something ain’t working right. I don’t know why they haven’t jumped you-know-who by now. They went up and questioned him all right, but I notice there ain’t been a word printed about their bringing him back with them. He musta sprung an alibi that held up. Put your ear down to the ground and find out what’s up, for me, Louie. You got ways. If it don’t move, looks like we’ll have to put a flea in their ear about—” He pressed his fingertips down hard on the table to show him what he meant.

He was standing over me shaking me at seven-thirty the next morning. And when Buck shook you, you shook. “G’wan, get over there like I told you and get that wash back. I don’t care if it ain’t ironed or ain’t even washed yet, don’t come back here without it!”

The owner’s name was Lee. It was just about a block away, down in a basement. They were up already, three of the little fellows, ironing away a mile a minute; they must have lived in the back of the place. I tottered down from the street level, put the bright green wash ticket down on the counter.

I thought he looked at me kind of funny. He got it down from the shelf, done up flat in brown paper. “Two dolla’ fi’ cents,” he said. He kept looking at me funny even after I paid him. The other two had quit pounding their flat-irons, were acting funny too. Not looking at me, but sort of waiting for something to happen. I had an idea they were dying to tell me something, but didn’t have the nerve.

I started to pick up the flat package to walk out with it, and it wouldn’t move, stayed on the counter. A hand was holding it down. The string popped, the brown paper rattled open. I didn’t bother turning my head. Like the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I kept watching the sidewalk level outside the shop, murmuring “Thank God!” over and over.

Behind me, a voice said quietly, “Tie the lady’s bundle up again, John.”

I breathed, “Don’t take too long, will you?” I didn’t mean it for the laundryman, I hoped he knew that.

Temple knew everything. “Want to stay out?” he said softly. “I’ll cover you.”

“You’ll cover me with a rubber bib at the morgue. Sure I want to stay out — out of it.”

“I’ve got a look-out posted.”

“Can he beat a slug’s time into my girlish waist?” I wanted to know.

“If you need help before the lab checks this collar, lower one of the window shades.”

“That’d be about right. Lower one of the window shades, like when there’s been a death in the house.”

Somebody wedged the retied bundle under my arm, the laundryman I guess, and I walked on out and up the steps. Ostrich-like, I hadn’t seen Temple from first to last. I could be beaten to death, but I couldn’t truthfully say I’d seen him.

It gave me a funny feeling when I got back outside our place again. There should have been a sign over the door, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

That had been my last chance to lam, when I was sent out for that laundry. But I knew enough not to. It would have been a dead give-away, and meant certain death. When they want to get you, not all the protection of all the dicks in town is any good to you. The only way for me to play it was this: They mustn’t find out anything that would make them want to get me. So in I went.

He was pacing up and down the room a mile a minute. He turned on me and grabbed the package and slapped me back away from it. “What took you so long?” he griped.

“I hadda wait for them to show up and lemme in.”

He busted it wide open, rummaged through it, scattering it all over the place. Not a collar turned up. “Whew!” he said, and slid his finger across his forehead and flicked it off in the air. Then he thought it over. “But just the same he was after something in here. Let’s see if it coulda been anything else.”

He turned the wrapping paper over and before my glazing eyes yanked a bright green price list out from under it. You get one back with every package, a check list of what they’re charging you for. I’d seen too many of them before, I knew just what was going to be on it: 1 collar — 5c. With no collar present to match it. We’d both overlooked that, me and that voice back at the laundry.

“Eight shirts,” he mumbled, “all here. Six shorts.”

I could feel my cheeks puffing in and out like bellows. I reached down and hung onto the nearest piece of furniture, to brace myself for it when it came. He’d hit it in about a second more.

The phone rang. He dropped the laundry bill and went out to get it. I kind of swayed where I was. I couldn’t move fast, my knees were all watery. But luckily the party seemed to have a lot to say, held him out there long enough for me to pull myself together.

I got over to where his coat was hanging, across the back of a chair, and unclasped a pencil with a rubber on it. Then I staggered to where the laundry slip was, and rubbed out the pencilled “I” in front of the printed word collars and the pencilled “5¢” after it. Then I floundered into a chair, and finally got my stomach down where it belonged again.

He came in and finished up what he’d been doing. The list was badly wrinkled and that had covered the erasure. “Everything accounted for,” he said. “He overcharged me five cents, but the hell with that.” He wasn’t a tightwad. Just a killer. “Whatever that dirty name was after, he didn’t get.”

He hauled a cowhide valise out into the middle of the room. He thumbed it, and then me. “Start packing,” he said. “We’re getting out of here. I don’t like the way that dope sounded just now.”

So that had been Louie who’d called just now. Well, I didn’t like it either, any more than he did, but not for the same reasons. The lab would never kick back with its report on that collar in time to keep them from hauling me off out of reach with them. Temple would never be able to get to me once they took me out of here with them. And it was no good trying to stall either.

“Come on, yuh paralyzed?” he said, and gave me a shove. “Get a move on.”

Damn it, if I’d only emptied the closet first, while we were still alone in the place, and the bureau drawers later! But he kept cracking the whip over my head and I didn’t have time to think straight. I emptied out the drawers first, and before I’d got around to the clothes closet, Louie was already in the place. Even then, I was so busy listening to the two of them while I hauled things back and forth that I forgot for a minute what was in that closet. Didn’t realize what I was going to be in for, in just one more round trip.

“What’d you mean just now, it’s gone sour?” Buck was demanding.

“The gun turned up clean.”

Pokk!

“Don’t sock me!” Louie shrilled. “I done my part! Rogers wrapped his mitts around it right under my own eyes! Picked it up and handed it back to me. Somebody musta tampered with it after I planted it.”

I unslung a half-dozen dresses from the rack, and suddenly black and white checks were glaring malevolently at me from the depths of the closet! A chair creaked, and Louie had slumped down in one right on a line with the closet door, rubbing the side of his face where Buck had caught him. I knew I’d never be able to get it out of there without him seeing it, not even if I tried to cover it over with the dresses. It was such a big bulky thing.

“It’s got to stay in there where it is,” I heaved terrifiedly to myself. “That’s my only chance.”

I sidled out with the dresses, and gave the closet door a little nudge behind me with the point of my elbow, to close it more than it was so he couldn’t see in. I didn’t bend over the bags, I toppled over them from fright and weakness when I got to them.

I should have got away with it, the way they were barking at each other.

“You blundering fool! No wonder they never brought Rogers back! Mendes’ll have to go to bat for me now!”

“She ratted on you herself!” Louie protested. For a minute I thought he meant me and a drop of twenty degrees ran down my spine. “I heard she left some kind of a high-sign, but I couldn’t find out what it was; they’re keeping it to themselves. They found her with something in her hand. They put the kibosh on it, wouldn’t let the papers tell it. One story I heard was they’re out after some guy that poses for ads in magazines, but I think it’s just a bum steer they threw out on purpose. Anyway, one thing’s sure, she didn’t die right away like you thought.”

“She was dead when I left her!” Buck growled ferociously. “I oughta know, I tried hard enough to bring her back! Somebody’s framed me! C’mon, let’s get out of here fast. Hurry up, you, y’got everything?”

Louie’s face was working like he was trying to connect something up. “Y’know, I forgot to tell you,” he started to say, “Tuesday morning early, when you sent me over there—”

“Come on, I’ve got everything!” I interrupted frantically. “What’re we waiting for?” I picked up both valises, heavy as they were, just to break Louie’s chain of thought.

“Make sure you don’t leave nothing behind,” Buck said. He widened the closet door to take a last look in. His voice sounded hollow, coming from inside it. “Hey, you dope, what’s the matter with this coat?”

Clump went the two valises to the floor. I just stood there between them. Dead already, for all practical purposes, just waiting to fall down. I didn’t even turn to look, just waited for it to come.

Buck came out holding it up by one hand, and the room was suddenly full of loud checks. Louie gave a jolt out of his chair, like a tack had run up through it.

“That’s the coat!” he yelled. “I’d know it anywhere! That’s the coat I seen come out of the Kitteredge babe’s house five minutes after I left there Tuesday morning! So you wanna know who ratted on you! So you wanna know who! Ask her what she was doing down there. Ask her how the gun turned up clean. Ask her how the stiff come to give a high-sign when you left her dead.”

“Did I answer at this end when you called up right afterwards — did I or didn’t I? Tell him that!” I yelled.

“Sure — so out of breath you couldn’t hardly talk at all,” Louie said.

“Don’t let him put a knife in me, Buck. What’s he trying to tell you?” But I could tell by Buck’s eyes I’d lost the bout already. They would have cut window glass, they were so hard.

“He wouldn’t make up a thing like that,” he said. “Know why? He hasn’t got imagination enough. And there’s not another coat like yours in town; they told you that fifty times over when you bought it.”

Buck unbuttoned his topcoat, spaded his hand under his jacket, heaved once, brought out his gun, leveled it, squinted at my stomach. Gee, it was awful watching him do it, he seemed to do it so slow. He crooked his left index finger at me, kept wiggling it back and forth, and smiling. You had to see that smile to know how awful a smile can be.

“C’m over here and get it,” he said. “You’re not worth moving a step out of the way for. Come on, this way. The nearer you are, the less you feel it. This is where you came in, baby.”

I picked up one foot and put it down on the outside of the valise and stayed that way, straddling it. I noticed a funny thing; I wasn’t so scared any more. I wasn’t as scared as I had been just before they’d found the coat. I kept thinking, “It won’t take long, I won’t feel it. I’ll be with Gordon now, anyway.”

“Not here,” Louie said nervously. “What’d we go to all that trouble about the first one for if you’re only gonna pull a kill, big as life, where they can’t miss it?”

It was hard for Buck to put on his brakes, his blood was so hot for a kill. But Louie was talking sense, and he knew it. He put his gun away slow, even slower than he’d brought it out.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you’re right. And she’s not worth taking a rap for. We’ll go up to the place in the sticks. I’ll get in touch with my mouth as soon as we get up there. He can handle the Kitteredge thing easy; he’s handled worse ones than that for me.

“Let’s see, now; she’ll start with us, but she won’t get up there with us though. You and me, Louie, will have to hike it the last lap of the way in. We’re going to have an accident with the car before we get there. You know that hairpin turn, where the road twists around that bluff high over the river? It always makes me nervous every time I pass that stretch of road, especially the way you drive, kind of close to the edge.”

He gave another of those smiles of his, and Louie grinned back at him in answer. “That ain’t far from the place,” he said. “I don’t mind hoofing it from there in.” He thumped himself over the belt buckle. “Matter of fact, I don’t get enough exercise.”

“I like accidents,” Buck said. He kept on smiling. “You take the bags, Louie, I’ll take the body.”

He linked his arm through mine, like a guy often walks with a woman. Only the hand on the end of it stayed in his coat pocket, and the coat pocket stuck into my side, hard and heavy.

“Now if you’re in a hurry,” he said, “if you want it fast, right away instead of later, just sing out between here and the car. It don’t make any difference to me if you take the ride with us dead or alive. You’re just short-changing yourself out of about forty minutes of life, that’s all.”

The shade, I kept thinking, the window shade. My signal to Temple. It was as out of reach as if it had been on the window of a house across the street. “If I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go,” I said dreamily. “But won’t you let me take just one last look at the town from the window? You see, I won’t be seeing it again. You can keep the gun at my back; you can make sure I don’t try nothing.”

“Aw, let her take one last look,” Louie said. “It’ll hurt that much more, don’t you get it? Here, I’ll hold her hands behind her back, so she can’t signal with them in any way, and you keep the gun on her.”

They shoved me up in front of the window, keeping back out of sight behind the curtains. “Okay, Mae, say good-by,” Buck laughed.

The cord was hanging in a loop in front of me but Louie had both my wrists in a vise behind me. I had a lot of clothes to wear. I could have had on almost anything that day — anything that wouldn’t have done any good. But he’d hustled me out so fast to get that laundry I hadn’t had time to doll up. I’d shoved into a skirt and a blouse. A blouse with a couple of big flat buttons on each side of it.

I don’t know how I did it. I bet I couldn’t do it over again now if I tried. The cord was hanging in a loop that rested against my chest. “Gee, it’s pretty,” I said, and turned a little to look up one way. “It’s tough to leave it,” I said, and turned again to look down the other way. I couldn’t get a full loop into it, but I got it snagged around the button, which was the size of a silver dollar. He did the rest.

“C’mon, that’s enough,” Buck said, and he jerked me back and started to swing me around on my way to the door. The button took the cord with it and pulled it tight over my shoulder. Whirr! and the shade came all the way down to the bottom, so fast and hard it tore partly off the roller, creased, and wouldn’t go up again.

It looked so much like an accident they didn’t even tumble. He just gave me a clip on the head, and freed the cord by wrenching the button off. Then we went on out of the place and down to the street, him and me first and Louie behind us with the two bags.

If I had expected the shade stunt to get me anything, I was out of luck. The street was dead, there wasn’t a soul in sight up or down the whole length of it. Buck’s car was standing a few yards down from the door, where there were a couple of big fat leafy trees. He had a habit of parking it under them, to keep the sun from heating up the inside of it too much.

We went down to it and he shoved me into the back seat, climbed in next to me and pinned me into the comer with his shoulder. Louie dumped the bags in the trunk, got in and took the wheel. “So he had a look-out posted, did he?” I thought bitterly. “Where — over in the next county?”

We started off with kind of a thud, that didn’t come from the engine. “What was that?” asked Buck.

Louie looked out and behind us. “One of the branches of that tree musta grazed t he roof. I see it kind of wobbling up and down.”

We rounded the corner and started out for the express highway that later on turned into the upstate road we wanted. Buck had his gun on me the whole time, through the pocket, of course. I just sat there in the corner resignedly. It was too late for anyone to horn in now. Temple’s look-out had muffed it. Must have gone off to phone in the alarm just as we came out of the building.

There was more life on the avenue we were on now than on the street we lived on. Louie said suddenly, “Everybody walking along the sidewalk turns and rubbernecks after us. What’s she doing?”

“Nothing,” Buck told him. “I got her covered. You’re just jittery, that’s all.” Then he glanced back through the rear insert. “Yeah, their heads are all turned staring after us!”

His face worked savagely and he brought the gun out into the open, then reburied it in my side without any pocket over it. “I don’t know what ya been doin’, but you’re through doin’ it now! Step it up,” he told Louie, “and let your exhaust out, I’m going to give it to her right here in the car, ahead of the accident. She’ll never come up from the river bottom again anyway, so it don’t make no difference if she’s got a slug in her.”

He crowded me back into the corner of the seat, sort of leaned over me, to muffle it between our two bodies. My eyes got big, but I didn’t let out a sound.

Over his shoulder I saw something that I knew I couldn’t be seeing. A pair of legs swung down off the car roof, then a man’s waist and shoulders and face came down after them, and he was hanging to the roof with both arms. He hung there like that for a minute, jockeying to find the running-board with his feet. Then he let go, went down almost out of sight, came up again, hanging onto the door handle with one hand, drawing a gun with the other.

Buck had his back turned to that side, didn’t see him in time. But the man had darkened the inside of the car a little by being there like that, and Buck pulled his gun out of ray side and started turning. He never had time to fire.

The guy fired once, straight into his face, and then Louie swerved, and the car threw the guy who’d shot off the running-board and he lay there behind us in the street.

Buck’s head fell back into my lap, and it never moved again, just got a little blood on me. I saw Louie reaching with one hand, so I freed the gun that was still in Buck’s hand, pointed it at the back of his neck, and said:

“Pull over!”

The jolting of the car to a stop threw Buck’s dead head off my lap to the floor where it belonged.

I was holding Louie there like that, hands up in the clear off the wheel, when Temple’s look-out came limping after us. He was pretty badly banged up by his fall but not out of commission. He took over.

“They ought to be here any minute,” he said. “I tipped off Temple as soon as I caught the shade signal, but I figured he wouldn’t make it in time. That tree was a natural, for stowing myself away on the roof.”

Temple and the rest caught up with us five or ten minutes later, in a screaming police car. On the way back in it with him, safely out of earshot of the handcuffed Louie, I said: “Well, what luck did you have with that collar?”

“The lab just sent in its report before I came away. It checks all right. It’s just as well we got him this way, though, because we couldn’t have used it anyway. Frank Rogers’ testimony on the way he was tricked into handling that gun can take care of Louie as an accessory, and we’ll sweat the rest of it out of Louie himself, so you can still stay out of it like you wanted to all along.” He chuckled. “Pretty neat, the way you worked it. Our fellows have waded through more dirty wash since Tuesday morning...”

“But wait a minute,” I said, puzzled. “How’d you know I was the one worked it? How’d you know that the collar was planted?”

He winked at me good-naturedly. “You held it to her mouth upside down. The cleft of the upper lip was at the bottom.” He chuckled. “What was he supposed to be doing while she was kissing him — standing on his head?”