Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories

Jayson Burr and Gabby Hilman in Death Rides a Boxcar

When the leg gave its first warning twinge, I stood still for a while and let the rest of the crowd stream on past, up the sloping passenger exit of the big Los Angeles terminal, up to the place where friends and relatives, wives and sweethearts waited in a roped-off space.

It was going to be a job, remembering to favor that leg, but anything was better than hanging around the insipid routine of the hospital.

“Gabby” Hilman was coming by bus. He was to meet me at the Palm Court Hotel around ten o’clock. Until then I was just killing time. I could have started a little celebration over my release from the hospital, but I didn’t want to do it without Gabby. He’d been my buddy, and I wanted to start even with him.

There was no such thing as getting a cab to yourself these days. They piled them in two, three, and four at a time. A starter grabbed the light bag I was carrying. “Where to?” he asked.

“Palm Court Hotel.”

“Get in.”

He held the door open, and that was when I saw class waiting in the cab.

She moved over as I got in. For a moment her eyes rested on mine — large dark eyes that were built to register expression.

I was careful about getting into the cab. “Sorry if I’m a little awkward,” I apologized. “I’m nursing a knee back to life.”

She smiled, but she didn’t say anything.

The cab starter said abruptly, “Where to, sir?” and a man’s voice answered, “The corner of Sixth and Figueroa Street.”

The cab starter said, “Hop in.”

A woman came through the door first, an elderly, white-haired woman with a beaming cheerful face and kindly gray eyes that blinked at me through silver-rimmed spectacles. The man with her looked to be somewhere around 70, so I pulled down the jump seat and moved over. It was rather a slow process because I didn’t want to throw the leg out, and I thought the girl on my left watched me with just a little more interest than she’d shown before.

The elderly woman moved over to the middle of the seat, the man got in on the right side. The cab door slammed, and we were off.

It was a short run to Sixth and Figueroa. The man and the woman got off. The girl said to me, “If you’re going much farther, you’d better come back to a more comfortable seat.”

“Thanks,” I told her, and moved back.

Her eyes were solicitous as she watched the way I moved my leg. “Hurt?” she asked.

“It’s just a habit,” I told her. “It will take some time to get accustomed to throwing the leg around.”

She didn’t say anything more for a while, and not knowing just how far she was going I decided I’d have to work fast. I took a notebook from my pocket, pulled out a pencil, and said, “I’m an investigator gathering statistics for a Gallup poll. These are questions we have to ask in the line of duty. Have you purchased war bonds? — Not the amount; just yes or no.”

She looked at me with a peculiar, half-quizzical expression, and said shortly, “Yes.”

“Question Number Two,” I went blithely on. “Do you feel sympathetic toward the personnel in the armed forces?”

“Of course.”

“Question Number Three. Recognizing the fact that members of the armed forces whom you may encounter are frequently far from home, inclined to be lonely, and with no personal contacts, do you feel it is not only all right, but commendable, to let them make your acquaintance and perhaps, under favorable circumstances, act as your escort for an evening?”

I looked up at her expectantly, holding the pencil poised over the page.

There was just a twinkle in the dark eyes. “You’re asking this question impersonally, of course?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Only as an investigator?”

“That’s right.”

“Collecting statistics?”

“Correct.”

“Therefore, I presume you ask these questions of every woman you encounter who is over eighteen and under thirty?”

She had me there. I saw a bit of triumph in her eyes. “That’s not exactly correct,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Over sixteen and under eighty,” I told her, without smiling. “My employers want the field thoroughly covered.”

She laughed, and just then the cab made a little lurch as it swung in to the curb over on the left side of the street. “I’m sorry, soldier. Here’s where I get off.”

“Question Number Four,” I said, hurrying the pencil down the page. “Correct name, address, and telephone number.”

She just laughed. The cab driver came around and opened the door for her.

“Good night,” she said.

I closed the notebook and slipped it back in my pocket. Gabby could probably have done better. He’s a whiz at pulling a line out of thin air and getting by with it.

She flashed me a smile. I raised my hat.

In a few minutes we pulled up in front of the Palm Court. I paid the driver and started easing my weight out of the cab.

My hand, resting on the seat cushion, felt something. I looked at it. It was a woman’s black leather purse. Returning that purse might give me a chance to begin all over again — starting where I had left off.

I should have said to the cab driver, “That woman left her purse,” but there’s no use insulting Fortune when she gives a fellow a second chance. I simply slid the purse under my coat and held it there with my elbow.

“Leg bothering you?” the cab driver asked.

“A little stiff, that’s all.”

The first thing I saw when I opened the purse in my hotel room was a long thin strip of paper about 12 inches long, an inch and a half wide, and covered with a string of figures written with a soft pencil. First was the figure 6, with four straight lines just below it; then the figure 23, four lines, and a tally; then 10 and three lines below that — and so on down the entire strip of paper. On the other side a message had been written in the same soft pencil: “Puzzle No. 2 a little after midnight.”

That meant nothing to me, so I placed the strip of paper on the bed and turned so the light would shine into the purse.

There was a wad of greenbacks in there that would have stuffed a sofa cushion.

I felt my heart start pounding as I pulled them out and dumped them on the bed. They were in twenties, fifties, and hundreds, with a small sprinkling of tens and fives.

I started counting. It added up to $7523 in currency, with a coin purse containing $1.68 in small change.

Then a disquieting thought struck me. The girl who had been in the taxicab had paid her fare when she got to the sidewalk. I distinctly remembered seeing her hand the cab driver the fare. And I was almost certain she was holding an open purse in her hand as she did so — come to think of it, I was certain. This, then, must be the purse that belonged to the white-haired woman.

I started digging down into the lower regions of the purse.

I found a small leather key container which held four keys, then I took out a lipstick, a compact, four cleansing tissues, a small address book of red leather with a loop in front which held a little pencil, and an opened envelope which evidently contained a letter. The envelope was addressed to Muriel Comley, Redderstone Apartments, Los Angeles.

Then I reached for the telephone book.

The voice that answered the telephone sounded very much like that of the girl in the taxicab.

“Is this Muriel Comley?”

An interval — just long enough to be noticeable. Then the smoothly modulated voice said, “Who is this speaking, please?”

“Before I answer,” I said, “I’d like to ask you a question. Did you lose something tonight — within the last hour?”

I felt her voice freeze. “I’m sorry, if you can’t give me your name, I... oh, you mean you’ve found the purse? Oh!” That last exclamation was filled with sudden dismay. “Will you hold the phone a moment?”

After a while I began to think it was just some sort of runaround. Then she was back.

“Yes. I lost my purse. Do you have it?”

Her voice sounded different from what it had been before — as though her throat had gone dry. I could imagine how she’d feel when she realized she’d lost a wad of dough like that. “I have it,” I said, “and it’s all safe.”

She asked, “Is this, by any chance, the man who is collecting information for the Gallup poll on how women feel toward servicemen?”

“None other.”

“I’m so relieved. If you’ll just send—”

“I’ll deliver it in exactly twelve minutes and thirty seconds,” I interpolated, and hung up before she could argue the point.

I found the name Muriel Comley on the list of names to the right of the apartment-house entrance. She was in Apartment 218.

I pressed the bell, and almost immediately the buzzer announced that the door was being unlatched.

I pushed through the door and into the lobby. It wasn’t the sort of apartment house in which one would have expected to find a tenant who carried a small fortune in cash in her purse.

I went up to the second floor, found 218, and pressed my finger against the door button.

The girl opened the door, smiling at me with her lips. Her eyes were wide and dark. When she turned so they caught the light, I saw she was afraid. There was terror in those eyes.

Her lips kept smiling. “Won’t you come in? I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink, but the apartment seems to be fresh out of drinkables... So you found my purse? It certainly was stupid of me.”

I kept the purse under my coat, holding it against my body with my left arm. I said, “I really couldn’t believe it was yours.”

“Why?”

“I thought you opened a purse when you paid off the cab driver.”

She laughed. “Just a coin purse. I happened to have it in my pocket. Do sit down.”

I stretched my left leg out in front of me.

“Is it bothering you?” she asked solicitously.

“No. Just habit... Of course, there are certain little formalities. You can describe the purse?”

“Of course. It’s black leather with a silver border. The metal at the top has polished silver roses.”

“And the contents?”

Her face went blank.

I kept waiting.

“You opened it?”

“Certainly. I had to get your name and address.”

She said, “Surely, Mr. — I don’t believe I have your name.”

“Burr — Jayson Burr.”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Burr. Surely you don’t doubt that it’s my purse,” and she was laughing at me now, actually making me feel uncomfortable.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to describe the contents.”

“Well, let me see. There was my lipstick, my compact, and — yes, I left my keys in there.”

“Have any trouble getting into the apartment?” I asked casually, and watched her.

She said, without batting an eyelash, “I always keep a duplicate key in my pocket. I’ve lost my purse before. I’m a bit absent-minded.”

“All right. So far we’ve got lipstick, compact, and keys. What else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m afraid that’s too general an inventory. It would describe the contents of any woman’s purse.”

“Well, let’s see,” she said archly, as though playing some very interesting game. “Since I’m accused of stealing my own purse — or am I accused of stealing it?”

“No accusation,” I smiled, “no stealing. Simply for my own protection.”

“That’s right; you are entitled to some protection. Well, let’s see. There was my address book in there, and some cleansing tissues, and — and a coin purse.”

“Can you tell me how much money?”

“I’m sorry, I simply can’t. I always carry an extra coin purse in my pocket. Sort of mad money, you know, and then carry the balance in — oh, I suppose there’s ten or twelve dollars probably, altogether, but I can’t be certain at all.”

“And was there anything else?” I asked.

She frowned. “Really, Mr. Burr, I can’t remember all the little details. Surely I’ve identified the purse well enough... You have it with you?”

I looked her squarely in the eyes and lied like a trooper. “I decided I’d better leave it in the hotel until you’d identified it.”

“Why, what a strange way to—” she broke off and looked puzzled, a frown furrowing her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but, you see, you failed to describe the most important thing that was in the purse.”

She was silent for a matter of seconds, then, abruptly, she got to her feet. “Mr. Burr, I’ve tried to be patient. I’ve tried to make allowances. But don’t you think that, in the first place, you should have returned the purse to the cab driver? In the second place, you should have carried your investigation of the contents of the purse only far enough to have ascertained my name and address. In the third place, I have described the purse to you — in the greatest detail.”

“The exterior.”

“The exterior!” she repeated with icy dignity. “And that should be enough in dealing with a gentleman."

I just grinned at her.

She said angrily, “You know I could have you arrested for taking that purse.”

“Why don’t you? Then I’ll tell the judge to turn it over to you just as soon as you’ve described the contents.”

“That wouldn’t help you any.”

“I don’t know much law, but I think you’d have to convince a jury that it was your purse before you could convict me of stealing it, wouldn’t you?”

Suddenly she was sarcastic. “Very well, if that’s the way you feel about it I would prefer to lose the purse than put up with your insolence.”

She swept toward the door and held it open.

That wasn’t the way I had planned the interview to go at all. “Look here,” I said. “All I want is a reasonable assurance that—”

“Thank you, Mr. Burr,” she interrupted. “All I want is my purse. You admit that you came over here without it. Therefore, no matter what I may say, you can’t deliver my purse to me here and now. Under the circumstances I see no use in prolonging the discussion. I will say this, that if you don’t have that purse in my hands before tomorrow morning I’ll have you arrested.”

“You can have your purse just as soon as you—”

“I don’t care to discuss it any more.”

She was watching me as I stood holding my left arm against my side. She must have realized that the purse was under my coat, but she said nothing.

I walked out of the door and said, “Good night,” without looking back. I heard the vicious slam of the door.

I was halfway to the elevator before I was aware she was following me.

The elevator was waiting there at the second floor. I pulled the door open and stepped to one side for her to get in.

She walked in ahead of me, chin up, eyes cold. I got in, closed the door, and pushed the button for the ground floor.

Neither one of us said anything.

The cage rattled to a stop. I opened the door, waited for her to get out. She was careful not to touch me as she walked past.

A man was sitting at the horseshoe desk behind a sign reading manager. He was a narrow-shouldered chap with thick-lensed spectacles which gave his face a look of studious abstraction. He blinked owlishly in my general direction, and then lowered his eyes to a daybook in which he was making some entries.

The girl cleared her throat loudly, then said, “Pardon me.”

The man at the desk looked up.

When she was sure his eye was on her, she grabbed for my left arm, which was holding the purse firmly against my body on the inside of my coat.

I was ready for her, and lowered my shoulder.

Her body struck against the shoulder and glanced off. Her hands clawed at my coat.

The clerk at the desk said, in mildly bewildered reproof, “Come, come, we can’t have—”

The girl hung onto me. “Will you please call the police! This man has stolen my purse!”

The clerk blinked.

I smiled at him and said, “I’ve found a purse. She says it’s hers, but she can’t identify it.”

She said to the clerk indignantly, “I’ve described it in detail. Please do as I say. Call the police!”

The clerk looked at me, then looked at her rather dubiously. “You’re with Mrs. Comley?” he asked. “Aren’t you the lady who just moved in?”

That question did it. She was licked the minute he asked her that question.

The clerk seemed surprised by her sudden surrender. “Oh, all right,” she stormed. “Take the purse if you think it will do you any good.” She flounced toward the elevator.

I raised my hat. “Good evening,” I said, and walked out.

I was dozing in the hotel lobby and didn’t see Gabby when he came in. The first I knew, I woke up with a start, and there he was looking down with that good-natured grin of his.

“Hi, soldier,” he said.

I came up out of the chair, forgetting everything the doc had told me about the leg. Gabby thumped me on the shoulder and I made a quick pass at his chin. Then we shook hands.

We went up to the room. Gabby splashed around in the bathtub and I told him all about the purse.

“Where you got this purse now?” Gabby asked.

“I did it up in a bundle and told the hotel clerk that the package contained important military documents, to put it in a safe, and to be darn sure no one else got it.”

Gabby, pulling clean clothes out of his bag, thought things over while he got dressed. “This jane is class?” he asked.

“With a capital C.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell you what was in the bag?”

“She didn’t know. She isn’t Muriel Comley.”

“Then what was she doing in Muriel Comley’s apartment?”

“I don’t know. Seemed like she was visiting, from what the clerk said.”

“Seems like we’d ought to do something about this,” Gabby said, and winked.

“That’s the way I felt.”

“Maybe Muriel’s good-looking,” Gabby suggested.

“Could be.”

“What,” Gabby asked, “are we waiting for?”

“You.”

Gabby grinned, struggled into his coat, and said, “Let’s go.”

At the apartment-house entrance I rang the bell of 218 and we stood there waiting, tingling with that feeling of excitement which comes from doing something interesting and not being quite certain what is going to happen next. After a few seconds I pressed the button again. When there was still no answer I said to Gabby, “Perhaps she’s been expecting this and decided nothing doing.”

“Perhaps she’s gone to bed.”

I said, “Oh, well then, we wouldn’t want to get her up. Oh, no! We’ll go right on back to the hotel.”

Gabby laughed.

I moved over to the front door, pressed my face against the glass, looked inside, holding my hands up at the side of my face to shut out the reflection of the street lights. There was no one at the desk. The lobby looked deserted.

“Anything doing?” Gabby asked.

“No. Evidently the clerk’s gone to bed and this outer door is kept locked at night.”

I pressed a couple of other buttons. On my second try the buzzer on the door whirred, and Gabby, pushing against the door, stumbled in as the door opened. We walked up the one flight of stairs.

Just as I raised my hand to knock on the door of 218, Gabby caught my wrist. Then I saw that the door lacked about a sixteenth of an inch of being closed. The apartment was dark behind it and from where I was standing, the door looked to be securely closed. Standing over at Gabby’s angle, you could see it wasn’t.

We stood there for a second or two in silence, looking at the door. Then Gabby pushed the door open.

I went in. We found the light switch, snapped on the lights, and Gabby heeled the door shut behind us.

The apartment was just as I had last seen it. Nothing seemed to have been touched or moved.

Gabby tried a door which led to a kitchenette. While Gabby was prowling around in there, I opened the other door.

“Gabby!” I yelled.

Gabby’s heels pounded the floor, and his fingers dug into my shoulder as we stood looking at what lay there on the bed.

The body was sprawled in that peculiarly awkward position which is the sign of death. By the weird, unreal light cast by a violet globe in the bed lamp I could see his features. I had the feeling I’d seen him before, and recently too. Then I remembered. “It’s the clerk at the desk downstairs,” I said.

Gabby gave a low whistle, moved around the end of the bed, paused, looking down at the floor.

“Don’t touch it,” I warned as I saw him bend over. I moved around and joined him, looking down at the thing on the floor lying near the side of the bed.

It was a club some two feet long, square at one end, round at the other, and covered with sinister stains which showed black in the violet light. There were three rings cut in the billet, up near the round end, and, between these rings were crosses; first a cross like a sign of addition, then a conventional cross with the horizontal arm two-thirds of the way up the perpendicular, then another cross of addition.

We searched the rest of the place. No one was there.

“I think,” I said, “someone’s putting in too many chips for us to sit in the game.”

“Looks like it to me,” Gabby admitted.

We left the door slightly ajar, just as we had found it. We couldn’t be bothered with the elevator, but went tiptoeing down the corridor at a constantly accelerating rate. I wanted to get out of the place.

Suddenly down at the far end of the corridor a dog barked twice. Those two short barks made me jump half out of my clothes and sent a chill up my spine. Gabby moved right along. I doubt if he even heard them...

We didn’t say any more all the way to the hotel. We went up to our room. Gabby sat down in the big chair by the window and lit a cigarette. I pulled up my bag and started scooping up the stuff on the bed and cramming it in. When I had my clean clothes packed, I spread out my soiled shirt so I could wrap clothes in it for the laundry. A slip of paper fluttered to the floor.

“What’s that?” Gabby asked.

I picked it up. “That’s the piece of paper that was in the purse. I put stuff from the purse out on the bed, and I’d also dumped my bag—”

“Let’s see it.”

I handed it over.

Gabby frowned. “ ‘Puzzle No. 2 a little after midnight.’ That mean anything, Jay?”

“Not to me.”

Gabby’s eyes were cold and hard. “Never heard of a switch list — or a puzzle switch?”

“No.” I knew then, just from the way Gabby was looking at me, that we were in for something.

“You see, Jay, there’s just a chance this is a trap we’re being invited to walk into.”

“Sort of will-you-walk-into-my-parlor-asked-the-spider-of-the-fly?” I inquired inanely.

“Exactly.”

“So what do we do?”

Gabby’s lips were a thin line. “We walk in. Come on, Jay. We’re going to the freight yards. I have to see a man down there anyway, and this is as good a time as any.”

We got across the yards in a series of jerks and dashes to a big wooden building. Gabby led me up a flight of stairs, down a long corridor lined with offices, and pushed open a door.

A man who had been writing down figures on the page of a book glanced up. An expression of annoyance gave way to astonishment. Then the swivel chair went swirling back on its casters as he jumped to his feet.

“You old son of a gun!” the man exclaimed.

Gabby gave that slow grin of his and said, “Fred, this is Jay Burr,” and to me, jerking his head toward the man in the green eyeshade, “Fred Sanmore.”

Just then a train came rumbling through and it sounded as though the building was within a half mile or so of a heavy bombardment. Everything shook and trembled. The roar of sound filled the room so there was no chance to talk. We simply sat there and waited.

When the train had passed, Sanmore went back of the desk, took off his eyeshade, and said to Gabby, “You old so and so, you want something.”

“How did you know?” Gabby asked.

“Because I know you. You’re here on furlough. This is your first night in town. You’ve been here for a couple of hours. By this time you’d be buying drinks for a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead — if you didn’t want something. What is it?”

Gabby pulled the strip of paper out of his pocket. “List of cars going past the puzzle switch?” he asked.

“Probably coming on a switch from over the hump.”

“What,” I asked, “is a hump?”

Sanmore started to answer me, then turned to Gabby instead. “Why do you want to know, Gabby?”

“Just checking up.”

Sanmore sighed and turned back to me. “Sorry, Burr. A hump is the high point on a two-way incline. You push cars up to the hump, then cut ’em loose, and gravity takes ’em down across the yards. It saves a lot of wear and tear, a lot of steam, releases a lot of rolling stock, and handles a cut a lot faster than you can any other way.”

“And a cut?” I asked.

He grinned. “Any number of freight cars taken from a train and switched around yards. Even if it’s a whole train. The minute a switch engine gets hold of it, it’s a cut.”

Gabby said, “Any idea whose figures these are?”

Sanmore shook his head. “We might be able to find out.”

“You’re certain that’s what this list is?” I asked.

“Positive.”

“Would it be too much to ask just what makes you certain?”

He said, “Well, in the first place, notice the numbers. There aren’t any of them higher than ninety-seven. We have ninety-seven numbers on our terminal card index. Whenever a train comes in, a switch list is made up, and numbers are put on the cars for different destinations.

“For instance, here’s Number One, and underneath it are three lines. That means there are three cars in a row for T N O Manifest. Then here’s two lines under Number Eleven. That means two cars in a row for Indio. Then there are two lines under the figure four, which means two successive cars for the El Paso Manifest.

“Now then, loosen up and tell me what brings you two goofs in here at this hour of the night to ask questions about railroading.”

Gabby said awkwardly, “Just got curious, that was all. Jay thought it might be a code.”

Sanmore kept looking at Gabby.

Gabby reached for the strip of paper.

Sanmore started to hand it to him, then idly turned it over.

Gabby grabbed for it.

Sanmore jerked his hand back and read the message on the back: “ ‘Puzzle No. 2 a little after midnight,’ ” I saw his eyebrows get level.

Gabby didn’t say anything.

Sanmore slid down off the corner of the desk. “Come on, you birds.”

He led the way down the stairs, out through a door, and up along the tracks bearing off to the left.

“This is a bit tricky,” Sanmore said, as the tracks began to converge. “Watch your step along here.” Abruptly he reached out, grabbed our arms. “Hold it!”

I couldn’t see what had stopped us, when all at once a great bulk loomed out of the night. It was so close and seemed so ominously massive I wanted to jump back, but Sanmore’s grip held me. And I realized then that another big shape was moving along just behind me.

“Putting cars over the hump,” Sanmore explained.

As the car passed I could hear the sound of its wheels rumbling over the steel rails. But its approach had been as quiet as though I had been in the jungle and some huge elephant had come padding softly up behind me.

“All right,” Sanmore said, and we went forward again.

“This is dangerous,” Sanmore said. “You get one of those big boxcars rolling along by gravity and it’s like a fifty-ton steel ball moving slowly down an incline. You can’t stop ’em; you can’t turn ’em. They don’t have any whistle or any bell. They don’t make very much noise against the background of noise from the yards, particularly when they’re coming toward you... Okay; here we are, boys. Here’s one of the puzzle switches.”

A man sat at a complicated switch mechanism, a slip of narrow paper in his hands similar to the one I had found in Muriel Comley’s purse. A seemingly endless stream of cars was rolling down the tracks that fed into the intricate mechanism of the switch — a remorselessly steady procession which called for carefully coordinated thought and action.

Sanmore said, “He’s too busy to talk now. Let’s go find the hump foreman.”

We started moving up the tracks. I paused as I saw a line of men seated by a stretch of track. In front of them was a string of holes and in many of these holes there were billets of hickory, substantial clubs some two feet or more in length, identical, as nearly as I could tell, with the club we had seen on the floor by the murdered man.

Sanmore answered my unspoken question. “These are the men who ride the cars down,” he said. “The hump is back up here. We put the cars over the hump. The pinmen uncouple the cars in units according to the numbers on them. Then one of these boys — notice that chap on the end now.”

Two cars came rumbling down the track. A man swung lazily up out of a chair, picked up one of the hickory clubs, stood for a moment by the track gauging the speed of the oncoming cars, then swung casually up the iron ladder, climbed to the brake wheel, inserted his billet to give leverage on the wheel, tightened it enough to get the feel of the brakes, and then clung to the car, peering out into the darkness.

The car moved onward, seeming neither to gather speed nor to slow down as it moved. The man at the puzzle switch flipped a little lever. The car rattled across switch frogs, turned to the left, and melted away into the darkness.

A stocky competent man, who looked hard and seemed to have a deep scorn for anything that wasn’t as hard and as tough as he was, came walking down the track.

Sanmore said, “Cuttering, couple of friends of mine looking the ground over... Whose figures are these?”

The man took one look at the long list of figures on the slip of paper; he looked at Sanmore, then he looked at Gabby, and finally at me.

"They’re my figures,” he said in a voice that had an edge of truculence. “What about it?”

Silently Sanmore turned over the slip and showed Cuttering the writing on the back.

“Not my writing,” Cuttering said.

“Know whose it is?"

“No.”

"Any idea what this message means?”

“No. Look here; there’s a half a dozen of these old lists lying along the tracks. We throw ’em away after a cut has gone over the hump and through the switches. Anyone who wanted to write a message to someone and wanted a piece of paper to write it on could pick up one of these slips.”

There was an uneasy silence for half a minute.

“What’s so important about this?” Cuttering asked sharply.

“It may be evidence.”

“Of what?”

I met the steady hostility of his eyes. “I don’t know.”

I reached for the strip of paper. “You’ll have to make a copy of it,” I said. “This one is evidence.”

Wordlessly, while we watched, Cuttering copied off the string of numbers with the lines underneath them. Then, just before he reached the end, he frowned and said, “Wait a minute. We put this through yesterday night about eleven fifteen.”

Sanmore didn’t waste any more time. His voice was packed with the authority of a man giving an order. “Get me everything you have on that, Bob.” Then he turned to Gabby. “We’ll check those cars through the Jumbo Book, Gabby, if you think it’s that important.”

Gabby said simply, “I think it’s that important. We’re at the Palm Court. You can phone us there.”

Gabby said to the cab driver, “Go a little slow in the next block, will you? I want to take a look on the side street.”

The driver obligingly slowed. “This the place you want?” he called back.

“Next street,” Gabby said, swinging around to look at the Redderstone Apartments.

Then Gabby and I exchanged puzzled looks. The apartments were dark. The street in front showed no activity. There was no unusual congestion of vehicles parked at the curb.

“Okay?” the driver asked as he crawled past the next side street.

“Okay,” I said.

We went on to the Palm Court, paid off the cab driver, stood for a moment on the sidewalk. Neither of us wanted to go in.

“What do you make of it?” Gabby asked in a low voice.

I said, “We’ve got to tip off the police.”

“We’ll be in bad if we do it now.”

“We’ve got to do it, Gabby.”

“You don’t think the police have been notified, cleaned up the place, and gone?”

I didn’t even bother to answer.

“Okay,” Gabby said. “Let’s go.”

We went into the lobby, nodded to the clerk on duty, and I walked over to the telephone booth. Gabby stood by the door until I motioned him away so I could close the door tightly.

I dialed police headquarters and said, “This is the Redderstone Apartments. Did you get a call about some trouble up here — about an hour and a half ago?”

“Just a minute,” the voice said at the other end of the line. “I’ll check with the broadcasting department... What was it about?”

I said, “You’ll find it all right — if it’s there.”

“Okay. Just a minute.”

I held onto the line while the receiver made little singing noises in my ear. Then the voice said, “No, we haven’t anything from the Redderstone Apartments. Why? What’s the trouble?”

“Apartment two-eighteen,” I said, “has a murdered man. You should have known about it an hour ago,” and hung up.

Gabby was waiting for me in the lobby. His brows raised in a question.

“They know nothing about it.”

“You reported it?”

I nodded.

Gabby and I went over to the desk to get the key.

The clerk took a memo out of the box, along with the key. “Some young woman’s been trying to get to you. She waited here nearly half an hour.”

“A good-looking brunette with large dark eyes,” I asked, “about twenty-two or twenty-three, good figure?”

“Easy on the eyes,” he said somewhat wistfully, “but she isn’t a brunette. She’s a redhead, blue eyes, dark red hair — guess you’d call it auburn. A quick-stepping little number.”

“She didn’t leave any name?”

“No name.”

“Want to wait?” I asked Gabby.

He said, for the clerk’s benefit, “Time was when I’d have waited all night on a hundred-to-one chance a girl like that would come back, but now I want shut-eye.”

“Same here,” I told him.

We went up in the elevator and hadn’t much more than unlocked the door of the room when the telephone rang.

I picked up the receiver, and the voice of the clerk, who was evidently taking over the switchboard on the night shift, said, “She’s here again. Wants to come up.”

“Send her up,” I told him, hung up the phone, and said to Gabby, “A redheaded gal is about to cross our paths.”

Gabby walked over to the mirror, hitched his tie into position, ran a comb through his wavy hair. “Let’s not fire until we see the whites of her eyes. Perhaps she has a friend.”

Knuckles tapped with gentle impatience against the panel of the door.

I opened it.

The girl was something to take pictures of and then pin the pictures up on the wall.

“Won’t you come in?” I asked.

She walked in as easily and naturally as though this was where she lived. She took off her gloves, smiled affably up at me, and said, “Which one of you is Mr. Burr?”

I nodded. “I have the—”

“Honor,” Gabby finished.

We all laughed then and the tension let down. She said casually, “I’m Muriel Comley.”

“You are!”

The blue eyes widened in surprise. “Why, yes. Why not?”

I said, “You aren’t the Muriel Comley I saw earlier.”

She looked puzzled for a minute, and then said, “Oh, you must have seen Lorraine.”

“Who’s Lorraine?”

“Lorraine Dawson.”

“Tell me a little more about Lorraine.”

“Lorraine was looking for an apartment on a fifty-fifty basis. I had this place on a lease. It was too big for me, and too much rent. Lorraine came in with me about a week ago.”

I said, “You might tell me how it happens Lorraine got hold of your purse.”

“She didn’t get hold of it. I merely left it in the taxi. I got out. Lorraine stayed in.”

“And how did you know where to come for your purse?”

“The taxi driver said you had it.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You see,” she said, “I called up the cab company. The purse hadn’t been turned in. They got hold of the cab driver. He said he remembered you had picked something up from the seat of the cab when you got out. He thought it might have been the purse.”

“I didn’t know you had been in that cab.”

She sighed. “Lorraine and I went to the depot,” she explained. “I got out and went to meet a train. Lorraine was coming on home, and wasn’t going to wait. I waited down there at the depot for the train to come in. The person I expected to meet wasn’t on it. Then suddenly I realized I didn’t have my purse. I thought back, and remembered that I must have left it in the cab. That was when I called the cab company. Now do I have to explain to you anything more about my private affairs in order to get what belongs to me? After all, Mr. Burr, your own actions are subject to considerable question.”

Gabby said, “He’s just trying to be sure, that’s all.”

She turned to him, and her eyes softened into a smile.

I said, “I’m not interested in your private affairs. But, under the circumstances, since you’re the second person this evening who has claimed to be Muriel Comley, I’d like some proof.”

“Very well,” she said, dropped her hand to the pocket of her light coat, and pulled out a transparent envelope which contained a driver’s license.

The driver’s license was made out to Muriel Comley. The description fit her to a T.

“The purse,” she said, “is of black leather with a smooth glossy finish. The mountings are silver with narrow borders stamped around the edges of the metal, silver curlicues embossed against a dull-finished background. The handles are of braided leather. Is that enough?”

“The contents?”

“You looked inside?”

“Naturally.”

She met my eyes. “The purse,” she said, “contained something over seven thousand five hundred dollars in cash, in addition to having my lipstick, keys, a small coin purse with about a dollar and a half in change, an embroidered handkerchief, some cleansing tissues, an address book, and a compact.”

Gabby sighed. “I guess,” he said to me, “she gets the purse.”

I hesitated.

“Well?” she demanded.

“All right,” I said.

At length, after I had signed my name on a receipt, being the receiving end of suspicious scrutiny from the clerk, the package was returned to me.

Back in the apartment I unwrapped the purse, handed it to her, and said, “Please count the money.”

She opened the purse, took out the money, spread the bills on the floor, and counted them carefully. Then she said, “Thank you, Mr. Burr,” snapped the purse shut, and started for the door.

Gabby opened it for her. Her eyes caressed his. “Thank you very much, Mr. Hilman,” she said, and was gone.

I stood looking after her. “I don’t like it,” I said.

“For the love of Mike, Jay! Snap out of it! She owns the purse. You’ve got her address. You—”

“And there’s a murdered man in her apartment.”

“Well, what of it? You can see she doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t be too certain,” I said.

I was just getting into bed, and Gabby, in his pajamas, was sitting on the edge of the chair smoking a last-minute cigarette, when knuckles tapped on the door.

Gabby looked at me in surprise.

Suddenly I remembered. “She’s back after that slip of paper, I bet.”

“My gosh!” Gabby said. “You got a robe, Jay?”

“Gosh, no,” I told him. “You’re decent. Go to the door.”

“What do you mean I’m decent?” Gabby demanded, looking down at his pajamas.

The light tapping on the door was resumed. “Stick your head out if you’re so damned modest,” I said. “After all, she’s been married. She must know what pajamas are. Tell her you’re going to get dressed and take her down to a cocktail bar.”

“That’s an idea!” Gabby barefooted across to the door, opened it a scant three inches, cleared his throat, and said, in the very dulcet tone he reserved for particularly good-looking women, “I’m sorry — you see, I was just getting into bed. I—”

The door pushed open as though a steam roller had been on the other end of it. Gabby jumped up in the air, grabbed his left big toe, and started hopping around in agonized circles.

A tall competent-looking man in a gray suit, a gray hat to match, with a face that was lean and bronzed, pushed his way into the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Gabby managed to sidetrack the pain of his skinned toe long enough to get belligerent. “Say,” he demanded, “who the hell do you think you are? Get out of here, and—”

“Now then,” the man announced, “what kind of a damn racket are you two guys pulling?”

“And just who are you?” I asked.

“Inspector Fanston, Headquarters. What’s the idea?”

“The idea of what?”

“Who was the jane who was just up in the room?”

I said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Inspector. Her mother and I are estranged and she came to get me to go home. But I told her nothing doing. I shouldn’t have married a woman who was forty-five years older than I was in the first place, and I should never have had a daughter who was only five years younger. It makes for a terrific strain on family life. Or don’t you think so?”

“Do you,” he asked, “think this is a gag?”

“Why not? We’re over twenty-one. And if a woman can’t pay us a five-minute visit in a hotel room without some house dick—”

“Forget it. I’m not a house dick. I’m from headquarters. I want to know who the woman was, and when you get done making wisecracks I want to know what the hell the idea was ringing up headquarters and telling them a murder had been committed at the Redderstone Apartments.”

Neither Gabby nor I said anything for a minute.

The Inspector grinned, settled down on the edge of the bed, and said, “That makes it different, doesn’t it, wise guy?”

“That makes it very much different,” I told him. “How — how did you—?”

“Easy,” he said. “When the desk sergeant told you he was consulting with the broadcasting system he was tracing the call. The hotel clerk remembered you going in to telephone, and there’s been a cute little number dropping in... What the hell’s the idea? What are you two guys trying to do?”

I cleared my throat. “About the purse,” I said.

“Let’s talk about the murder first, if you don’t mind.”

I said, “I — er — thought—”

“Did you?” he interrupted. “Well, try thinking it out straight this time. I suppose you boys are on the loose for a little night, life, and it’s okay by me just so you don’t start pulling practical jokes about murders.”

“Practical jokes!” I exclaimed. “A man had the back of his head caved in.”

“What man?”

“The man in 218 at the Redderstone Apartments.”

He said, “Get up and get your clothes on,” and nodded to Gabby. “You too.”

We went to the Redderstone Apartments and up to the second floor. An officer in uniform was on guard in the living room of 218. The bedroom was just as we had left it, except now the bed was a spotless expanse of smooth counterpane.

I had been bracing myself for the shock of being called on to identify the body — perhaps being accused of having had something-to do with the crime, and wondering just how I could establish an alibi. But the sight of that smooth bed was too much for me. I stood there for a good two or three seconds.

“Any old time,” Fanston said.

Gabby and I both started talking at once. Then Gabby quit and let me tell the story. I knew there was only one thing to do. I told it right from the beginning, with the uniformed cop looking at me skeptically and Fanston’s eyes drilling tunnels right into my brain.

“You sure this was the apartment?”

“Absolutely.”

Inspector Fanston didn’t give up. “All right, let’s concede that he looked dead — that you thought he was dead. Those things don’t just happen, you know.”

“It happened this time.”

“Wait a minute until you see what I’m getting at. Suppose it was all planned. A purse is planted where you’ll be certain to find it. There’s enough money in it so you’ll really start doing something about it. It’s a foregone conclusion that you’re coming to this apartment — not once, but twice. And the second time you come back you find the outer door open. A man is lying sprawled on the bed. There’s a violet-colored bulb in the lamp over the bed. That would make anyone look dead as a doornail.

“My best guess is that it’s either some new racket or a frame-up to get you two guys on a spot because you two guys just happen to be you two guys. If it’s a racket, you look old enough to take care of yourselves. If either one of you has any particular military information, or is here on some secret mission — well, I think that now would be a good time to take the police into your confidence.”

He looked at Gabby. “Right, soldier?”

Gabby just looked innocent. Then he took a leather case from his pocket and handed it to the Inspector. “Keep it to yourself,” he said.

The Inspector turned his back. I saw slight motion in his shoulders as he opened the leather case. Then he was motionless and silent for a few seconds.

I heard the snap of a catch, and the Inspector turned, poker-faced. He handed the leather case back to Gabby.

“Then you don’t think there really was anybody?” I asked.

Fanston said, “Hell, no. Now, go home. If you start buzzing these janes in the morning, be careful — that’s all.”

Gabby snorted. “They’re so dumb they think they’ve fooled us. Do you want to go back to the hotel now, Jay?”

“No. Let’s find out some more about that stick — and what’s happening at Puzzle Number Two shortly after midnight.”

We found Fred Sanmore still on duty, tired to the point of utter weariness, but still shoving traffic through the yards.

“Look, Fred.” Gabby said, “those brake sticks the men use — does it make any difference which is which?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can any man pick up any stick?”

Sanmore laughed. “Gosh, no. That’s a sure way to pick a fight. Each man has his own stick. When a shift comes on duty, they’ll bundle up all of the sticks and heave them out as far as they can throw them. The man whose stick goes the farthest puts it in the last hole. He’s the last one out.”

“How do they tell them apart?”

“Oh, various markings.”

Gabby said, with what seemed to me just a little too much innocence, “I don’t suppose you happen to know who owns the stick that has three rings out near the end with a series of crosses between the rings?”

“No, but I can find out for you.”

“If you could do it quietly,” Gabby said, “so your inquiries didn’t attract too much attention, that might help.”

“Come on,” Sanmore said.

We started up toward the place where the men were sitting in front of the line of pegs. There weren’t so many of them now. The cut that was going over the hump was getting down to the last ten or fifteen cars.

Sanmore left us and talked with two or three of the switchmen in a low voice, then was back to say, “As nearly as I can tell, it’s a man named Carl Greester. He went off duty at midnight, but he’s still around somewhere. He has a friend visiting him in the yards.”

“What do you mean, a friend?”

Sanmore grinned. “I mean a friend,” and holding up his hands in front of him he made an hourglass outline of a woman’s figure. “She came down with a pass from headquarters. And she had another woman with her. Greester is having a confab with them.”

“You don’t know where Greester lives, do you?” I asked.

“Gosh, no. But I can find out.”

“Look, Fred,” Gabby said suddenly. “Could Jay and I ride one of these cars down to its destination, just to see what it’s like?”

“Absolutely against the rules,” Sanmore told him brusquely. “If I saw you do it, I’d have to jerk you off the car and have you put out of the yards.” And then he deliberately walked away.

A big freight car came lumbering down the incline. One of the switchmen, moving with lazy coordination, picked up his stick and swung aboard the front of the car.

Gabby and I, acting just as though we had received formal permission from the foreman, walked over to the back ladder.

“You first,” Gabby said.

I favored the leg as much as possible, taking it easy up to the top of the car.

“Hang on,” Gabby said, as his head came up over the edge of the boxcar. I looked ahead and saw we were right on the puzzle switch, and braced myself, expecting that I would be thrown from one side to the other as the trucks went over the frogs; but the big loaded car moved along in majestic dignity. There was only a little jar as the wheels underneath us made noise. Then we were gliding out from the well-lighted area into the half-darkness, then out to where it was completely dark.

We clicked over a couple of other switches, then veered sharply to the right and were coasting along when I heard a scream coming from almost directly beneath the car.

Gabby was where he could look down on the side. Then he was climbing down the ladder. “Come on, Jay!”

I looked back and caught a glimpse of two girls. A man was with them. Evidently he’d put his arms around them and jerked them back out of the way of the car.

I forgot all about the leg as I came down the iron ladder, but Gabby was running alongside and eased me to the ground on that last jump.

My knee gave me a little twinge just as we passed a couple of boxcars on a track on the left. I dropped back and said, “Go ahead, Gabby. I’ll catch up.”

Gabby turned to look at me, and then I saw him stiffen. At what I saw on his face I forgot about the leg and whirled.

Three men, armed with brake sticks, were right on top of us. A year ago I’d have been frightened into giving ground and making useless motions, but I’d learned a lot since then. The man who was nearest me raised his club. I shot my left straight to the Adam’s apple. I saw Gabby pivot sideways to let a blow slide harmlessly past him, grab the man’s wrist, give the arm a swift wrench, then heave. The air became filled with arms and legs as the man went flying through the darkness, to crash against the side of a boxcar, then drop limply to the ground.

The man I had hit was on the ground. He made a wild swing at my shins with the brake stick. Automatically, and without thinking, I tried to jump back out of the way. The injured knee gave way without warning. Then the brake stick cracked against my shin and I went down on my knees. Suddenly I lost balance and fell forward. As I fell I spread apart the first and second fingers of my right hand and jabbed the fingers toward his eyes. If he wanted to play dirty I could teach him something about that. I’d specialized in it.

I heard a faint swish. Something — perhaps the sixth sense which wild things have and which we develop under the spur of life-and-death conflict — warned me. I jerked my head to one side, but not soon enough and not far enough...

The next thing I remembered, I was in a warm musty darkness with a sore head and an aching sensation at my wrists. I tried to move my arms, and realized my hands were tied behind my back.

From the stuffy thick blackness I heard Gabby’s voice. “How’s it coming, Jay?”

“What,” I asked, “happened?”

“The guy from behind,” Gabby explained. “The one who was with the two girls. He caught you on the head just as you went down. I smeared his nose all over his face with a straight right, and then the guy behind me hit me just over the kidneys with everything he had.”

“What about the girls?”

Gabby said, “The redhead ran away. I think she’s gone for help. The other one just stood there watching. The damn spy.”

My head was feeling a little better, although it still ached. I said, “If you ask me, it was the redhead who was the decoy. They wouldn’t have let her run away if she hadn’t been. Where are we?”

“Inside a boxcar.”

“What,” I asked, “is it all about?”

Once more Gabby was silent, but this time it was the tight-lipped silence of a man who is carefully guarding a secret.

I tried to roll over so I could take some of the pressure off my wrists. My shoulder hurt and it was hard to keep my balance.

Gabby heard me move. “Take it easy, Jay. I’m getting this knot worked loose, I think.”

After a minute or two Gabby said triumphantly, “I’ve got it, Jay. Just another minute and we’ll be loose, and then we’ll be out of here.”

I heard his feet on the planks, heard him starting toward me—

With an ominous rumble the door slid back along its tracks. The beam of a flashlight stabbed into the darkness.

Gabby flung himself flat on the floor, keeping his ankles crossed, his hands behind his back.

There was a peculiar scuffling sound from the outer darkness, then the sobbing breathing of a woman.

I got my head around to where I could see a little more of what was happening.

Lorraine Dawson was literally lifted and thrown into the car by three men.

The beam of the flashlight swung around and then suddenly stopped. “Do you,” demanded a voice, “see what I see?”

I looked along the beam of the flashlight. It was centered on the pieces of rope that Gabby had untied from his wrists and ankles.

The three men were bunched there in the doorway, the beam of the flashlight holding Gabby as a target like a helpless airplane caught in a vortex of searchlights.

Gabby made one swift leap and hit the group feet first.

I heard the thud of his heels striking against flesh. The flashlight was jerked up, looped the loop, hit the side of the boxcar, hesitated a moment at the edge of the door, then fell to the tracks. The sounds of bodies threshing around in a struggle, the thud of blows filled the night. All of a sudden there was a lull, then shouts and curses as our assailants piled out of the boxcar. Good old Gabby had given them the slip and was leading them away.

Almost immediately the rumbling noise from the trucks indicated that the car had been banged into rapid motion. The door was still open. I could feel the fresh night air coming in through the opening to eddy around the interior of the boxcar.

“You all right?” I asked the girl.

“Yes... Who are you?”

“Believe it or not, I’m Jayson Burr, who wanted to return the purse you lost. That was when you were masquerading as Muriel Comley. Remember?”

I heard the quick intake of her breath. “How did you get here?” she demanded.

“It’s a long story. Would you mind telling me just what your name really is?”

“I’m Lorraine,” she said.

“And who’s Muriel?”

“Believe it or not. I don’t know. About all I do know is that she had an attractive apartment and wanted a roommate to share expenses. I moved in.”

I swung around and managed to get into a sitting position. “Would you,” I asked, “mind telling me something of what this is all about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then perhaps you can tell me why you don’t know.”

She said, “I only moved in with Muriel a few days ago. She seemed nice, and. just recently secured a divorce. Tonight Muriel was to meet someone who was due to come in on a train. I don’t even know whether it was a man or a woman. We were in town. I wanted to take a cab to the apartment, so I dropped Muriel at the depot. They said the cab had to take on a full load before it started back. You know the rest. I never realized Muriel had left her purse until she telephoned me at the apartment; then, just after she’d hung up, you telephoned.”

The cars were rattling and hanging over switches, lurching crazily.

“And then you said you were Muriel?”

“Yes, of course. I didn’t know who you were, but you had Muriel’s purse, and I wanted to get it back for her. I thought it was easier to pretend to be Muriel than to do a lot of explaining, and then have you insist on waiting for Muriel to come back to claim the purse.”

“And when I got up there,” I said, “you were frightened.”

“I’ll tell the world I was frightened.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She said, “There was a man in the apartment all the time, hiding in the bedroom. I didn’t know it until after you’d telephoned.” The freight car gave a series of short quick jerks and bangs, slowed almost to a stop, then slammed in another string of cars, and after a moment the whole string began to roll.

“Sounds as though we’re making up a train,” I said. “Look here, do you suppose you could lie over on your side and I’d get over as close to you as I could? We’d lie back to back, and you could work on the knots on my wrists with your fingers, and I’d try to untie your wrists.”

“We could try,” she said.

We rolled and hitched along the floor until we were lying back to back. Somehow I couldn’t get my fingers working. The cords around my wrists made my fumbling fingers seem all thumbs. But she was more successful. I felt the knot slip, heard her say, “I’m getting it, all right — ouch! I’ll bet I lost a fingernail there — hold still, it’s coming loose.”

A few moments later my wrists were free. I sat up and untied her.

Abruptly, with that jerking lurch so characteristic of car switching, the engineer applied the brakes. Lorraine was thrown up against me, and I kept from falling only by grabbing at the side of the car. The partially opened door slammed back until it came up with a bang against the end of the iron track, leaving the square doorway wide-open. The whole string of cars abruptly slowed.

Suddenly our view was cut off. The doorway seemed to be pushed up against a solid wall of darkness.

“What is it?” Lorraine asked. “A warehouse?”

At that moment the train slammed to a dead stop.

I saw then that our car had been stopped directly opposite another string of boxcars.

“Can you jump across to the ladder on that car opposite?” I asked quickly.

She didn’t even bother to answer, simply leaned out of the car, caught the iron ladder on the car opposite, and stepped across. I had to wait a second for her to climb up, so as to leave me a handhold, and in that second the engine gave a snort and a jerk. The car started forward.

“Quick!” Lorraine shouted.

I just missed her leg as I grabbed an iron rung of the ladder and leaned out. It seemed that the car was literally jerked out from under me.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Yes, I took the shock on my other leg.” I started down the ladder. “Watch your step,” I warned. “The—” I broke off, as I saw the flash of a red light, heard a little toot from the engine whistle, and saw the whole string of cars ahead slide to an abrupt stop. I saw the gleam of a flashlight, then another. Then a beam came slithering along the string of cars.

“Quick!” I said. “Get up to the top and lie down. They’re searching for us.”

I heard the slight scrape of her feet on the iron rungs as she scampered up the ladder, and I followed, making the best time I could. We flattened out, I on one side of the walk on top of the car, she on the other.

There were voices after that. Shadows danced along the side of a concrete warehouse just above us. I listened, trying to determine if these men were friends, sent by Gabby to rescue us, or if they were our captors returning. Then, within ten yards of me, a man’s voice said, “This is the end of the cut. They must have swung off while it was moving. They’re not in the car. You can see the ropes there on the floor. Why in hell can’t Jim tie ’em so they stay tied!”

Another voice: “You can’t hold things up any longer without making everybody suspicious. Give them the high-ball. We’ll have to catch ’em as they leave the yards. We’ll spread out. They can’t get away.”

Once more shadows danced. The switch engine gave two muted toots of the whistle and started the string of cars into rattling motion.

“Now what?” Lorraine asked.

“Now,” I said, “we get out of here just as fast as we can. Come on, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back to the Redderstone Apartments. Unless I’m mistaken, we’ll find a police inspector by the name of Fanston somewhere in the building, and we can got action out of him a whole lot quicker than we can explain to some strange cop. Tell me one thing. You said there was a man in your apartment?”

“Yes. He heard me talking on the telephone. I don’t know whether you noticed it or not, but I gave an exclamation and then asked you to hold the line a minute.”

“I noticed it,” I said. “What happened?”

“A man stepped out of the bedroom. The first thing I knew I felt the cold circle of a gun muzzle sticking in the back of my neck. Then the man took me away from the telephone for a minute or two, and demanded to know who was talking. I told him it was just someone who wanted to return Muriel’s purse.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Marched me back to the telephone with instructions to get you up there at any cost and to insist that I was Muriel.”

“And when I came up,” I asked, “where was he?”

“In the bedroom. He had the door open a crack. He wasn’t where he could see — only listen. That’s why I took a chance and slipped out after you. All I wanted at the time was to get out. Later on, downstairs, when I saw the clerk on duty, I got the idea of trying to make you give up the purse. I was sure you had it under your coat.”

“You knew that Muriel came to the hotel and got it back?”

“Yes, of course. She told me you gave it to her.”

“Did she tell you what was in it?”

“No. What was in it?”

“Would you,” I asked abruptly, “be shocked to learn Muriel is an enemy agent?”

“Good heavens! She can’t be. Why, she’s just a young married woman who found out she made a mistake and—”

“And what does she live on?”

“I don’t know. She said she was looking for a job. I supposed she had some money — alimony, perhaps.”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds, letting Lorraine get herself adjusted to the idea I’d given her. Then I said, “Just when did you meet Muriel?”

“A little over a week ago. She had an ad in the—”

“No, no. I mean tonight, after I left.”

She said, “I pretended to go back up to the second floor to the apartment. That was just to fool you and the clerk. Actually, I just took the elevator all the way up to the top floor, waited for five or ten minutes, then went back down and walked out.”

“The clerk was at the desk then?”

“No. No one was in the lobby.”

“Where did you go?”

“There’s a little tearoom down the block where Muriel usually drops in before she comes to the apartment to go to bed. I went there and waited, frightened stiff.”

“How long did you wait?”

“It seemed like ages.”

“But you don’t know exactly how long it was?”

“No. It was quite a while.”

“And she finally came in?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That was before she had been to see us?”

“No, afterward. She had her purse.”

“And you told her about what had happened in the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“What did she do?”

"She seemed quite disturbed. She said she’d notify the police, but it would have to wait until tomorrow, because she had an important appointment to keep.”

“And how did you happen to come down here to the switchyard?”

“I didn’t want to go back to the apartment alone. Muriel said she had arranged for a pass and that I could come with her. She didn’t seem particularly anxious to have me, though.”

“Then you and Muriel came down here without first going back to the apartment?”

“That’s right.”

“Hadn’t it occurred to you to call the police as soon as you got out of the apartment?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

“Because — well, Muriel’s rather secretive about her affairs and somehow I had an idea she wouldn’t like it. You see, she’s had a divorce and — well, you know how those things are. I thought perhaps it might be something that was connected with the divorce, or an attempt on the part of her ex-husband to get evidence so he could get out of paying alimony, or something of that sort.”

“Did Muriel tell you who she was meeting?”

“Yes, a man named Greester, but he never showed up.”

“And what did he want?”

“Apparently it was something about her husband. Greester wasn’t there, and Muriel didn’t tell much. We started to walk down the tracks, and then the next thing I knew that car was almost on us. I think I screamed. I remember a man’s arm around me, pulling me off the tracks; then I saw you and this other man jump off the car and start toward us. Then three men started toward you — there was that awful fight I tried to help and — well, they grabbed me and tied me up.”

“And Muriel?”

“Muriel got away.”

“Anyone try to stop her?”

“I think one of the men did. He made a grab for her, but she jerked herself loose.”

“It may have been an act?” I asked.

“It might have been an act,” she said wearily.

I said, “All right, sister. Now I’m going to tell you something. Muriel is an enemy agent, and in case you want to know what was in that purse it was a great big wad of currency totaling seven thousand five hundred dollars. And that’s why I was so cagey about delivering it.”

Lorraine sat perfectly still on top of the boxcar, looking at me, her eyes wide and startled. After a while she said, “I can’t believe it.”

I didn’t argue about it. I peered over the side of the car that was against the warehouse. “I think,” I said, “we can manage to squeeze through here. We’ll walk back down the length of the train, keeping behind these cars; and we’d better start. I’m going first.”

It was dark as a pocket in the narrow space between the cars and the warehouse. There was just room to squeeze along, and I knew that if the train jerked into motion we’d be caught and rolled along between the moving cars and the warehouse until we dropped down under the wheels; but it was our only way out.

Halfway down the string of cars I crawled under and looked back at the track. I could see little spots of light that stabbed the darkness, then they were snuffed out, only to glow again. They were still hunting for us.

“See anything?” Lorraine asked as I crawled back to the dark side of the cars.

“No,” I said. There was no use scaring the kid to death.

We worked our way down to the end of the cars. There was a stretch of open track, curved rails running up to an iron bumper. Back of that was a concrete wall.

We were trapped.

I felt my way along the wall, hoping I might find a door. That was when Lorraine saw the flashlights.

“Look,” she whispered. “Lights! I think they’re coming this way.”

I simply pulled her in behind the protection of that steel and concrete bumper.

We huddled there for what seemed five or ten minutes. The lights were coming closer. We could see shadows on the concrete wall.

The lights were swinging around now in wider arcs, making bright splotches on the concrete wall, intensifying the shadows. Then, when they must have been within twenty yards of us, they quit.

I got to my hands and knees, held my head low down, and peeked out. The track was a vague, distinct ribbon vanishing into a wall of darkness. I looked for several seconds and couldn’t see anything. I decided to chance it.

We turned off the tracks when we came to the end of the warehouse, walked across the yards, and found a gate that was locked from the inside. We unlocked it and went out without seeing a soul.

“You have a key?” I asked Lorraine when we reached the Redderstone Apartments.

She opened her purse, fumbled around for a moment, and handed me a key.

I hesitated before putting it in the lock. “Someone on your floor have a dog?” I asked.

“Yes. I don’t know which apartment it is. A cute little woolly dog.”

“I heard him barking.”

“Yes, he barks once in a while.”

“Which end of the corridor from your apartment? Toward the front of the house or the back?”

“The back.”

I fitted the key to the lock, held the door open, and Lorraine and I went in. The dimly lit foyer was silent as a tomb.

Halfway to the elevator I paused. “Look, Lorraine, you wait here. If you hear any commotion upstairs, get out just as fast as you can. Go to the nearest telephone and call police headquarters. If you don’t hear anything, wait for me to come back and pick you up.”

The door was locked with a night latch. I carefully inserted the key that Lorraine had given me and silently slipped back the latch. Then I eased the door open, ready to leap forward and go into action if necessary.

Gabby was sitting in the overstuffed chair, his feet propped up on a straight-backed chair, smoking a cigarette. He was all alone in the room.

“How,” I asked, “did you get here?”

He turned and grinned. I saw, then, that his left eye was all puffed up. His lip had been cut, and when he grinned it opened up the cut and a few drops of blood started trickling down his chin. I closed the door behind me. “How’d you make out?”

“Okay,” Gabby said. “Did the Military find you?”

“No one found me. I rode a train out of the yards. What about the Military?”

Gabby said, “I sewed that place up. Nobody gets in or out, and they’re going through it with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Where,” I asked, “did you get all that authority?”

“I didn’t, I haven’t, I ain’t,” Gabby said. “But in case I forgot to tell you I’m sort of working under a colonel here, and we’re checking up on certain things that happened to freight shipments. At first we didn’t think it could have happened in the freight yards, because the records were all straight, but now we’re changing our minds mighty fast. I came here to start tracing this stuff from the time it hit the terminal yards until it was delivered.”

“Yes,” I said, “you neglected to tell me.”

Gabby grinned again. “I was afraid I had. Where’s the girl spy?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“Cripes!” Gabby said, frowning. “I thought you’d be able to keep her lined up.”

“You mean you didn’t see her?”

“No. What happened to her?”

“Just that she took to her heels is all I know.”

Gabby straightened up. “Say, who do you think I’m talking about?”

“Muriel.”

“Muriel nothing!” Gabby snorted. “Muriel’s little roommate, Lorraine Dawson, is the one I mean.”

“You’re all wrong, but we won’t argue that now. Where is Muriel?”

“In case it’s any of your business,” Gabby said angrily, “she’s in the bedroom changing her clothes.”

I started for the bedroom door.

Gabby said, “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s a decent kid.”

I said, “She may be a decent kid, but she’s an enemy agent,” and flung the door open.

Gabby came out of the chair and toward me fast, but something he saw in my face made him turn toward the bedroom.

It was empty.

“You see?”

Gabby walked across the room to the bedroom window and looked out to the iron platform of the fire escape.

After a minute I said, “Look, Gabby, we’re going to get her back. She can’t get away with it. I think Lorraine can help us.”

Gabby turned. “Where is Lorraine?”

“Down by the elevator. I left her there while I came up to see that the coast was clear.”

Gabby said, “Go get her. We can’t wait.”

Lorraine wasn’t there.

I walked over to the door and looked out on the street. She wasn’t there. I came back and climbed the stairs. No sign of her on the stairs.

I went back to the apartment.

Gabby looked up. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Suppose you and I quit making damned fools of ourselves. There was a dead man in that bedroom. I don’t know what the big idea was with the police claiming it was a plant. You call the law in on a murder case and right away they start telling you it’s all a pipe dream.”

“I know,” Gabby said.

“All right; it was a body. You can’t pick up a body and carry it downstairs under your arm. You can’t change the mattress and the sheet and the blankets and the spread and the pillows on a bed in the middle of the night. The way I see it, there’s only one answer.”

“The adjoining apartment?”

I nodded.

Gabby said, “How’s your leg?”

“Okay.”

Gabby said, “Remember, I’ve got my automatic, so in case the party gets rough let’s not break any legs over it.”

“We won’t,” I said.

Gabby said, “If you’d come down to earth and be reasonable — I could tell you what happened — just so you won’t crack the wrong girl over the head.”

“I won’t crack the wrong girl.”

“Look, Jay, when Muriel came to her apartment this evening she found a man’s suit hanging in the closet. It looked as though the suit had just come back from the cleaners. She noticed a bulge in one pocket which turned out to be the seventy-five hundred.”

“So little Muriel figures finders keepers.”

“Muriel happens to be a gal who can look out for herself. The whole thing struck her as fishy, so she decided to sit tight until she discovered what was going on — or at least part of it. It seems there was quite a splash in the papers when her divorce came up and she’s allergic to publicity. She had sense enough to realize that either by design or accident she had become involved in something, and she couldn’t be sure her husband didn’t have a hand in it. Unless it became absolutely necessary she didn’t want the cops in on it.”

“I still don’t see why she carried all that around with her.”

“She wanted to get it to a place of safekeeping, but a guy started to tail her when she left the apartment. She was almost sure she had lost him, but just as she was stepping out of the taxi she thought she saw him again. Apparently without Lorraine seeing her, she slipped her purse back on the seat and then got out. As soon as she was certain she had lost the tail she telephoned the cab company to see if the driver had found her purse.”

“How come she didn’t tell any of this to Lorraine?”

“I didn’t ask her, but my guess is that she thought it would be best all around if she didn’t.”

“And the switch list with the message?”

“Don’t be so damn sarcastic. A railroad friend of hers gave her that, earlier in the afternoon, and arranged for a pass. In case you want to know all about her private life, her husband made a property settlement prior to the divorce. Then he ran out on her and quit paying. This man tipped her off that a chap was working on the night shift at the hump who owed her husband a wad of dough, and told her that she could go down there tonight and he’d take her to this man. She wanted to get the rest of the money her husband had promised her on the property settlement and then forgot to pay.”

“Who was this friend,” I asked, “and will he corroborate her statement?”

Gabby said stiffly, “I haven’t had a chance to get her entire story.”

I started for the window and got out onto the steel platform of the fire escape. The window which opened on the farther edge of the platform was closed. I slid my knife blade under it and found it wasn’t locked.

“Step to one side as soon as you raise it,” Gabby whispered.

I got the window up, and was too mad to care about anything. I slipped under Gabby’s arm and went in headfirst. Gabby was behind me with the gun, and he could take care of anything that happened.

Nothing happened.

We were in an apartment very similar to the one we’d just left, only arranged in reverse order. The window opened into the bedroom. I could see the bed. It was clean and white, and apparently hadn’t been slept in. For all I could see, there was no one in the apartment, and then somehow I had an uneasy feeling that the place was occupied. You could feel the presence of human beings.

We moved on a few steps from the window.

“The light switch will be over by the door,” I whispered.

“Think we dare to risk the lights?” Gabby asked.

“Gosh, yes. This place gives me the willies.”

“Stick ’em up!”

The beam of a flashlight sprang out of nothing and hit my eyes with such a bright glare that it hurt. I saw Gabby’s wrist snap around so that his gun was pointed toward the flashlight. Then Inspector Fanston’s voice yelled, “Hold it, soldier! This is the law.”

Gabby said, “Put out that damn flashlight. What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” the Inspector asked.

“There’s no one here?” Gabby asked.

Fanston said, “Switch on the lights, Smitty.”

The light switch clicked the room into illumination.

“Where’s the girl?” I asked.

“What girl?” the Inspector asked.

“The one who came through the window a few minutes before we did.”

“No one came through that window.”

“For how long?”

“Ever since we came over here with you. I doped it out that if you saw a body it must have been moved. It looked as though it must have moved out the window to the fire escape, then across to here. I made a stall to get you boys out of the way, then Smitty and I went to work.”

“And you’ve been waiting here all that time,” I demanded, “simply on a hunch that the body might have been—”

“Take it easy,” the Inspector interrupted. “Show him what we found, Smitty.”

The cop opened the closet door.

I looked inside and saw a bundle of bedclothes wadded up into a ball. There were red splotches on the bedclothes — blood that wasn’t old enough even yet to get that rusty-brown tint. It looked red and fresh.

“I’ll be damned,” Gabby said.

“That’s the only way they could have come in,” Fanston said. “It’s perfectly logical. What’s more, there are bloodstains on the iron ribs of the fire-escape platform.”

“And why,” I asked, “are you guarding the bloody bedclothes and letting the other apartment take care of itself?”

Fanston looked at Smitty, and the look was a question.

“Why not?” Smitty said.

Fanston decided to tell us. “Because when we looked through that other apartment, we found something. I’ll show you.”

Ho led the way back through the window out to the fire escape and then to the girl’s apartment. Over in a corner of the bedroom was a fine sprinkle of plaster dust on the floor near the baseboard.

Gabby was the one who got it first. He moved a mirror back out of the way. Behind it was a neat little hole in the plaster and the diaphragm of a dictograph.

That point established, we returned to the other apartment.

“The receiving end of the installation is in here,” Fanston continued; “also, the bloody bedclothes are in here. You can figure what that means. Having put up that dictograph, with the receiving end in this apartment, they’re naturally due to come back to watch it — if you fellows haven’t messed things up so that you’ve scared away the quarry we’re after.”

Suddenly I remembered something. Without waiting to explain my hunch, I hurried out of the room.

I walked down the long corridor, looking at numbers on the doors. I found the apartment I wanted down at the far end of the corridor. The place was dark and silent. The hallway had that peculiar clammy feel which clings to crowded apartment houses along toward morning. A dog yapped once, then quit.

I gently turned the doorknob. When I felt that the latch was free I pushed tentatively against the door.

The door was jerked open from the inside. Before I could let loose, I was thrown off balance and came stumbling on into the room.

A man’s voice said, “All right — you asked for this.”

It was dark in the room, with just the faint hint of distant lights seeping through the windows.

They had fed me enough carrots and vitamins to improve my night vision and taught me enough about rough-and-tumble fighting in the dark, so that what came next didn’t bother me at all. It was just like going through a training routine.

I knew a blackjack was swinging for my head somewhere in the darkness. I sidestepped, felt a swish of air as something whizzed past where my head had been, saw a dark object in front of me, and, somewhat off balance, figured out where his bread basket would be, and hit him where he was thickest.

I felt surprised muscles collapsing beneath the force of my blow, heard a whoosh as the breath went out of him.

Someone cursed behind me. A flame split the darkness wide open. I could feel the hot breath of burning gunpowder against my cheek. I never did hear the bullet crash. My ears were numbed by the sound, but I whirled and struck out with my left.

It was then the knee gave way. I went down in a heap. But they’d taught me all about that in the Army too. I caught the man’s knees as I went down. He struck at my head in the dark with the gun barrel and missed by a couple of inches. I grabbed for his wrists and didn’t connect. He kicked me in the shin and broke loose.

There was a quarter second of silence. I realized then he had enough light to show him where I was. He was going to shoot.

I flung myself into a quick roll, kicking as I came over. My heel grazed against his knee. A dog was barking frenziedly.

I heard running steps in the corridor. The beam of a flashlight danced around the opening of the door. There were scrambling steps, someone barking an order, a back door opening, and a pell-mell of stampeding feet running down a staircase.

The two officers went storming past me, following the beam of the flashlight. I saw Gabby’s long arms raise the window, saw him slide matter-of-factly out to the edge of the sill, and heard him say, “All right, boys. That’ll be enough. Stick up your hands.”

The windowpane above him split into fragments of glass as two bullets crashed through.

I saw Gabby’s arm swing the automatic.

“You all right, Jay?” he asked.

I rolled over on my hands and knees and started getting up. The knee felt weak, the way a thumb feels when you’ve bent it all the way back and all the strength is gone out of it; but I could hobble along all right.

“Okay,” I said.

I went into the bedroom. Before I found the light switch, I could see two long rolls of something stretched out on the bed. Then I found the switch and clicked on illumination.

They were tied up in sheets, their lips taped shut. Two pair of eyes looked up at me — large expressive dark eyes and big blue eyes.

I reached over and tried pulling off the tape from their lips. I held the side of Lorraine’s cheek, got a good hold on the tape, and gave it a quick jerk.

“Hurt?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “Not much.”

I went around the bed to Muriel, worked a corner loose, and then gave her the same treatment.

“You would have to do it the hard way!” she flared.

I started untying sheets.

From the outer room I heard Inspector Fanston saying in an odd voice, “Good Lord! How did you do it, shooting in the dark? Knocking the legs out from under them.”

Gabby didn’t even bother to answer the question. He said, “Listen, Inspector, this is purely civilian, see? We don’t figure in it at all. We’re just witnesses who happened to be in an apartment in the building. Here’s a number. Call this number and make a report. They’ll tell you what to do. As far as you know, it’s a gang of housebreakers that had headquarters here. You even keep the railroad angle out of it. Get me?”

I waited, expecting to hear Fanston ask Gabby who the hell he thought he was. But, instead, Fanston’s voice sounded meek and subdued. I knew then the shield in the leather case Gabby was carrying in his pocket was big stuff.

The Inspector said, “I get you. Smitty, go out in the hallway and get those people back where they belong. Tell them there may be more shooting. And don’t let anyone talk with the prisoners.”

I heard the whir of a telephone and Inspector Fanston’s voice saying “Police Headquarters,” then Muriel Comley saying, “Leave that sheet where it is. All I’ve got on is underwear.” Her eyes went past me to the doorway and softened. “Oh, hello, Gabby!”

Gabby said, “We can stay right here until things quiet down, and then you can go and—”

“Not in this room,” Lorraine said.

“What’s the matter with it?” Gabby asked.

I looked at Lorraine’s eyes, got up and walked across to the closet door, opened it a few inches, and then hastily pushed it shut.

Gabby took one look at my face and knew the answer.

“Oh, Fanston,” he said, “the body you’re looking for is in here.”

Over a breakfast of ham, eggs, and coffee, Gabby told us as much as he ever told us.

“For a long time,” he said, “we’d been running into a peculiar type of trouble. Machinery would be tested and double-tested. It would be put aboard freight cars, shipped to various Army camps, and tested when it got there. Everything would be all right, but after a while, usually under the stress of combat, the machinery would suddenly go haywire. Part of it we found was due to the old familiar sabotage of putting a little acid on critical metal parts, and then carefully covering up the slight discoloration.

“But the other part of it had us completely baffled. A machine would get into combat and suddenly fail. Later on, we’d postmortem, and find sugar had been introduced into the gasoline. You know what that does to an internal combustion motor.

“After a while we found out that all the machinery with which we had this trouble had come through the yards in this city, but that in itself didn’t seem to mean anything, because the machinery was tested on arrival at destination and everything was seemingly all right. But we still kept coming back to the peculiar coincidence that our troubles came only with stuff that went through these freight yards.

“I’d had some railroad experience, and I was sent up here to check the whole situation. In the meantime, Carl Greester was working on the hump, and he stumbled onto what was going on. The enemy agents had duplicate tags slightly larger than the regular numbered tags which went on the cars as they came through the switch. By putting on those phony numbers they’d have the cars they wanted switched down to a siding where they had sufficient opportunity to do their work. And it didn’t take them long.

“After the cars had been entered and sabotaged they’d be resealed, the phony numbers taken off, a couple of dummy cars added, and a switch engine sent down to pick up the cut and redistribute it.

“When Greester found out what was happening, he didn’t go to the F.B.I. He went to the men who were mixed up in it. They bought his silence for seven thousand five hundred dollars. But Greester was afraid to take a bribe in the ordinary manner, and they weren’t foolish enough to just park seven thousand five hundred somewhere and go away and leave it for him to pick up. Greester kept insisting that the money be given to him under such circumstances that if there was a double-cross, the F.B.I. couldn’t claim he had accepted a bribe.

“Finally they agreed that Greester would send a suit out to be cleaned. When the suit came back, it was to be given to the clerk to hang up in Greester’s apartment. The bribe money would be in the inside pocket. In that way, if anyone suspected what was happening, Greester could have a perfect alibi. He’d sent his suit to the cleaners. The cleaner had returned the suit to the clerk while Greester was at the yards.

“But when the go-between picked up the suit at the cleaners, planted the seventy-five hundred bucks in the pocket, and handed the suit to the desk, he either got mixed up on the numbers, or the clerk did. No names were mentioned, merely apartment numbers. The suit went to two-eighteen instead of two-eighty-one.

“Greester came home, looked for the suit and the bribe money. No suit, no money. He asked the clerk if anything had been left for him at the desk. The clerk said no. The gang knew the suit had been delivered. They thought the clerk had got the dough.

“They got the thing straightened out, finally. The clerk was a little nincompoop who was always getting figures mixed up. They decided he must have delivered the suit to the wrong apartment. One of the men got into Muriel’s apartment with a passkey and found the suit; but the money was gone. He was in there when Lorraine came in, and he had an idea the money might have found its way into Muriel’s purse. That’s why he was so interested in the telephone conversation.”

“And the clerk?” I asked.

“The clerk kept thinking over Greester’s questions, finally remembered about the suit, and wondered if he hadn’t put it in two-eighteen instead of two-eighty-one. He went up to two-eighteen, let himself in with a passkey, and found a man boring holes in the wall and installing a dictograph. We know what happened to the clerk.”

“Why the dictograph?” I asked.

“Don’t you see? They didn’t know whether Muriel was a government agent and they were leading with their chins, or whether it was just a mixup. Naturally, killing the clerk hadn’t entered into their plans. They had to get rid of the body.”

“They knew we’d discovered that body?” I asked.

“Sure they did. They were on the other end of the dictograph when we stumbled on it before they’d had a chance to remove it. They evidently waited a while to see if we were going to report it. When they found out we didn’t, they tried to whisk it away.”

“But Greester must have thrown in with them,” I said. “His apartment was two-eighty-one—”

“He didn’t throw in with them,” Gabby said. “Greester tried to play smart. It was unfortunate that he did.”

“You mean—?”

“The police discovered his body about daylight this morning, when one of the gang confessed.”

“But,” Muriel said, “Carl Greester seemed so nice. He told me that a man who owed my husband some money was working down at the switchyard on a night shift, that if I’d come down and see him I could arrange to get the balance of the money that was due under the property settlement with my husband. He wrote out where I was to meet him shortly after midnight. I... Oh, I guess I see now.”

Gabby said, “He found out about this man and tipped you off just as a favor, but all the time he was playing with this personal dynamite. He thought he was being smart. He was signing his own death warrant.”

“So they took over Greester’s apartment?” I asked.

“Sure. It was bad enough finding Greester’s suit in the girl’s apartment. But when the girls came down to the switchyard to join Greester around midnight, they became suspicious. They made an excuse to grab Muriel, jerk her out of the way of a freight car, and frisk her purse while they were doing it. As soon as they found out that the purse contained seventy-five hundred dollars, the girls were on the spot. Then you and I put in our two-bits worth.”

“What’s become of the money?” I asked.

“The money,” Gabby said, “is in the hands of Uncle Sam. Three men were placed under arrest for tampering with the seals of freight cars. One of them started talking. He’s talked enough so Fanston can pin the murder of the clerk and Carl Greester on the two other men. And the third, who turned state’s evidence, will get life as an accessory after the fact.”

“How about the man who owed my husband money?” Muriel asked. “Is he one of them?”

Gabby shook his head. “I think you’re okay on that. His name is Gulliver. He works under Bob Cuttering. Cuttering’s a grouch-face who is pretty much overworked, but he’s a good egg just the same.”

I said, “I don’t see why this man in the bedroom didn’t stick me up for Muriel’s purse—”

“Because you said you didn’t have it with you. Lorraine could toll, from the way you were holding your left arm against your body, that you did have it. The man in the bedroom could only hear what you’d said. He couldn’t see. That’s why Lorraine was able to get out of the apartment — talking as though she were slamming the door indignantly on her visitor, but actually slamming herself on the other side of it.”

Lorraine said, “I was never so frightened in my life. While I was waiting down there, a man poked the muzzle of a gun into my back and marched me down the corridor.”

“The dog was a sort of watchman?” I asked.

Gabby nodded. “When they moved into Greester’s apartment they took the dog with ’em. The dog had been trained on one of those inaudible dog whistles. Whenever he heard it he’d bark and try to get out. Whenever anyone entered the place who might make trouble, a guy posted outside would blow the whistle, and the dog would bark. The dog had also been taught to give warning when anyone came near the apartment.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess that winds up the case.”

“Of course,” Gabby said, “the colonel insists that he’s going to hold us responsible to see nothing happens to these girls — my buddy and me. I told the colonel it might be a little embarrassing. But you know the colonel; he just barked into the telephone, ‘Keep those two girls lined up. I don’t want them going out with anyone except you and Jay!’ ”

“You mean we can’t have any dates,” Muriel demanded, “unless—”

“Exactly,” Gabby said sternly. “Those are orders direct from the colonel.”

Muriel lowered her lashes. “Well,” she conceded, “if it’s for my country.”

I looked at Lorraine.

She said, “He’s got the idea now, Gabby, so you can take your foot away. It’s my toe you’re on.”

“What are you two talking about?” Muriel demanded.

“Our patriotic duty to our government,” Lorraine said self-righteously.