Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories

For most of his life, Chester Bomar Himes was a driven man. It is arguable that the only time he stayed still for any appreciable period was during the seven years, from 1928 to 1936, that he served in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery.

While he was serving his time, Himes began to write short stories and try to get them published. His models were Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, Damon Runyon, and the Black Mask writers, particularly Dashiell Hammett. He swiftly graduated from black weekly newspapers such as the Atlanta Daily World to Esquire, a magazine with a relatively progressive attitude toward race at that time (Esquire also published the clever cartoons of the black artist Campbell Simms).

Himes’s first sale to Esquire in 1934 was two stories: “Crazy in the Stir” and “To What Red Hell,” the latter an extraordinary mélange of savagery and hilarious farce set in a top-security hoosegow that is burning to the ground. This potent mix of black farce and violence, recounted in a deadpan style, became Himes’s hallmark. His one real financial success, though, was a sexual satire dealing with black-white relations called Pinktoes (1961), written for Maurice Girodias’s notorious Olympia Press in Paris. Other than that one great success, Himes was in many ways a prophet in his own country, almost entirely without honor. Even his famous series of Harlem police procedurals, featuring the characters Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, started and continued as a commission from the French publisher Gallimard for its Serie Noire, the celebrated line of hard-boiled thrillers with a distinctly existential edge.

Himes was often surprisingly modest about his own achievements. “I haven’t created anything,” he once said, “just made the faces black, that’s all.” But almost everyone who reads Himes would certainly disagree. Whereas most writers of the period, however gifted as stylists or character delineators, hardly did more than trot out insulting, stereotypical characters such as “dinge” sexual predators or Cab Callowayesque tap-dancing jesters, Himes let the reader in on the ethnic secret, with humor, vigor, and a faint but always discernible underscoring of anger.

His depiction of life at the rough end was unfailingly accurate and involving, most of all because he had been there and seen it all. This is no better experienced than in the sixty superb tales in his posthumous Collected Stories: 1933–1978 (1990).

On a first reading, it may seem as though “Marijuana and a Pistol,” which first appeared in Esquire in 1940, comes straight from the school of didactic “anti” propaganda, written by one who had never experienced the effects of marijuana at first hand but was simply writing from a government handout. Nothing could have been further from the truth. What Himes describes so graphically is precisely the effect of extremely strong “grass” going straight into the bloodstream. At fewer than 2,000 words, “Marijuana and a Pistol” is a little noir masterpiece of needle-sharp observation.

J.A.

Marijuana and a Pistol (1949)

Red Caldwell bought two “weeds” and went to the room where he lived and where he kept his pearl handled blue-steel .38 revolver in the dresser drawer and smoked them. Red was despondent because his girl friend had quit him when he didn’t have any more money to spend on her. But at the height of his jag, despondency became solid to the touch and attained weight which rested so heavily upon his head and shoulders that he forgot his girl friend in the feeling of the weight.

As night came on it grew dark in the room; but the darkness was filled with colors of dazzling hue and grotesque pattern in which he abruptly lost his despondency and focused instead on the sudden, brilliant idea of light.

In standing up to turn on the light, his hand gripped the rough back of the chair. He snatched his hand away, receiving the sensation of a bruise. But the light bulb, which needed twisting, was cool and smooth and velvety and pleasing to the touch so that he lingered a while to caress it. He did not turn it on because the idea of turning it on was gone, but he returned slowly to the middle of the floor and stood there absorbed in vacancy until the second idea came to him.

He started giggling and then began to laugh and laugh and laugh until his guts retched because it was such a swell idea, so amazingly simple and logical and perfect that it was excruciatingly funny that he had never thought of it before — he would stick up the main offices of the Cleveland Trust Company at Euclid and Ninth with two beer bottles stuck in his pockets.

His mind was not aware that the thought had come from any desire for money to win back his girl friend. In fact it was an absolutely novel idea and the completely detailed execution of it exploded in his mind like a flare, showing with a stark, livid clarity his every action from the moment of his entrance into the bank until he left it with the money from the vault. But in reviewing it, the detailed plan of execution eluded him so that in the next phase it contained a pistol and the Trust Company had turned into a theatre.

Perhaps ten minutes more passed in aimless wanderings about the two-by-four room before he came upon a pistol, a pearl handled blue-steel .38. But it didn’t mean anything other than a pistol, cold and sinister to the touch, and he was extremely puzzled by the suggestion it presented that he go out into the street. Already he had lost the thought of committing a robbery.

Walking down the street was difficult because his body was so light, and he became angry and annoyed because he could not get his feet down properly. As he passed the confectionery store his hand was tightly gripping the butt of the pistol and he felt its sinister coldness. All of a sudden the idea came back to him complete in every detail. He could remember the idea coming before, but he could not remember it as ever containing anything but the thought of robbing a confectionery store.

He opened the door and went inside, but by that time the idea was gone again and he stood there without knowing what for. The sensation of coldness produced by the gun made him think of his finger on the trigger, and all of a sudden the scope of the fascinating possibilities opened up before him, inspired by the feeling of his finger on the trigger of the pistol. He could shoot a man — or even two, or three, or he could hunt and kill everybody.

He felt a dread fascination of horror growing on him. He felt on the brink of a powerful sensation which he kept trying to capture but which kept eluding him. His mind kept returning again and again to his finger on the trigger of the pistol, so that by the time the store keeper asked him what he wanted, he was frantic and he pulled the trigger five startling times, feeling the pressure on his finger and the kick of the gun and then becoming engulfed with the stark, sheer terror of sound.

His hands flew up, dropping the pistol on the floor. The pistol made a clanking sound, attracting his attention, and he looked down at it, recognizing it as a pistol and wondering who would drop a pistol.

A pistol on a store floor. It was funny and he began to giggle, thinking, a pistol on a store floor, and then he began to laugh, louder and louder and harder, abruptly stopping at sight of the long pink and white sticks of peppermint candy behind the showcase.

They looked huge and desirable and delicious beyond expression and he would have died for one; and then he was eating one, and then two, raveling in the sweetish mint taste like a hog in slop, and then he was eating three, and then four, and then he was gorged and the deliciousness was gone and the taste in his mouth was bitter and brackish and sickening. He spat it out. He felt like vomiting.

In bending over to vomit he saw the body of an old man lying in a puddle of blood and it so shocked him that he jumped up and ran out of the store and down the street.

He was still running when the police caught him but by that time he did not know what he was running for.

Although a relatively prolific contributor to the pulps of the 1930s and 1940s, Norbert Harrison Davis was cursed with a sense of humor, the fatal flaw that some believed was ultimately responsible for keeping him from being published more regularly. His friend and collaborator W. T. Ballard explained that Davis could write “the best ‘writer to editor’ letter of anyone in the business,” but his main work was simply “too whimsical to fit well into the action pattern.” For this reason, Davis managed to squeeze only six stories past Joseph T. Shaw during his editorship at Black Mask. It seems that Shaw’s enthusiasm for Davis’s work was qualified, even though he did include Davis’s story “Red Goose” (1934) in his seminal Hard-Boiled Omnibus (1946). It appears that most of the stories by Davis that Shaw did publish were thoroughly worked over with the editor’s blue pencil.

Davis sold his first stories to Argosy and Black Mask while studying law at Stanford University. He never practiced law, but became a professional fiction writer instead, selling mainly detective and mystery stories as well as Westerns, adventure yarns, and the odd terror tale. The blurb for his “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake,” which he sold to Strange Detective Mysteries in 1937, reads: “Trapped in that horror mansion, Wade fought for a tortured child and a woman’s sanity — his only ally a hacked-off dead man’s hand, the jealous prize of a hopeless fool!” When one reads the story itself, it is difficult to believe that Davis’s tongue was anywhere but planted firmly in his cheek as he hammered away at his typewriter.

Probably his best and funniest characters are Doan and Carstairs, the latter a Great Dane that Doan won in a poker game and cannot, try as he might, get rid of. These two appear in Davis’s only solo novels, The Mouse in the Mountains (1943), Sally’s in the Alley (1943), and Oh Murderer Mine (1946), the second a glorious comic classic with a clever and workable plot — a real feat, considering that many of Davis’s plots became so entangled that even he lost track. Other fine creations include Max Latin, who operates out of a restaurant where the chef hates and insults his customers, and William “Bail-Bond” Dodd, who appears here, in a typically screwball story with a typically screwball title: “Who Said I Was Dead?”

Davis seems to have enjoyed his work; he found a good deal of success in his chosen markets and was well paid for his efforts. His stories appeared regularly in the Saturday Evening Post, whose payment for just one story would probably have kept an Okie family in clover for six months. But it appears that Davis’s private life was a bit less charmed, and at a certain point, things took a turn for the worse. Editors began to turn him down. In the end, Davis took his own life; as in most tragedies of this sort, no one was ever able to produce a satisfactory explanation.

J. A.

Who Said I Was Dead? (1942)

It was a very nice casket — all shiny black with bronze handles — and it sat on a bier at the end of the chapel under the long somber sweep of dark blue drapes that hung from the arched ceiling. There were flowers banked around it with loving care, blended artistically for shading, and their scent was cloying in the still, heavy air.

Dodd felt very bad about it all. He sat at the back of the chapel and blinked gloomily in the softly shaded light that came through one of the colored glass window panels. He was a tall man with a long, homely face that normally carried an expression of cynical and wary belligerence. He usually looked like he expected the worst. Now he looked like it had happened. He wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that had been patched across the bridge with a piece of adhesive tape.

He was all alone in the chapel except for Mr. Miltgreen, and Mr. Miltgreen didn’t count as a mourner because he was there for business and not for sorrow, unless you could say that sorrow was his business. He was the representative of the Valley Vale Cemetery. He was a stooped, cadaverous man with black hair slicked in scanty parallel lines across the top of his bald skull. He had a sadly benign, a patient, long suffering smile.

A concealed pipe organ played notes that lingered and sobbed softly, and now a liquid tenor voice picked up the thread of melody and sang it with beautiful, modulated feeling.

Dodd turned around and beckoned to Mr. Miltgreen.

Mr. Miltgreen tiptoed noiselessly forward. “Yes?”

“Who’s that singing?” Dodd asked.

“That’s our Mr. Pillsbury. He’s part of the service.”

“Oh,” said Dodd.

He listened until the song was ended and the music faded to a humming monotone.

Mr. Miltgreen leaned over him. “That’s the end of the chapel service, Mr. Dodd.”

“What?” said Dodd. “Oh. All right.”

He got up and followed Mr. Miltgreen down the thickly carpeted aisle and out through the wide front doors. The sunlight was so bright after the dimness inside the chapel that it hurt his eyes.

“You’re sure you don’t want to see the interment?” Mr. Miltgreen inquired sympathetically.

“No,” said Dodd.

“Perhaps it is better,” Mr. Miltgreen soothed. “It is sometimes distressing.”

“How much?” Dodd asked.

Mr. Miltgreen stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“How much do I owe you?”

“Oh,” said Mr. Miltgreen. “Well, it’s very difficult for us to keep within the limitations of an exact figure such as you set, Mr. Dodd. I’m sorry, but in this case it ran sixteen dollars and some odd cents over. There are certain charges and fees that vary...”

“That’s O.K.,” Dodd said glumly. “Who do I pay?”

“If you’ll step this way, I’ll take care of the matter.”

They went the length of the stone-paved chapel porch and down stone steps. Lawns swept away from them in beautiful undulating waves, and the grass was so green and smooth it was incredible. A sprinkler threw water in a glistening circle. A bird sang in a subdued way.

Mr. Miltgreen led the way along a mathematically curved white gravel path to a low building masked in shrubbery that looked like an early Norman cottage. He eased one of the side doors open and motioned Dodd into a small luxuriously furnished office.

“Sit down at the desk here, Mr. Dodd.”

Dodd sat down in a spindle-legged chair and took his check book from his hip pocket.

“You don’t mind taking a check?”

“Of course not,” said Miltgreen, offended. He found a slip of paper at hand in a drawer of the antique desk. “The exact sum is five hundred and sixteen dollars and eighty-six cents. Here is a pen, Mr. Dodd.”

Dodd wrote the check and tore it out of the book. Mr. Miltgreen appropriated the pen and wrote carefully and precisely on the slip of paper.

“Be sure you put his name on that receipt,” Dodd requested.

Mr. Miltgreen nodded. “Elwin Tooper. I’ve written it out carefully. There you are, Mr. Dodd. Thank you.”

Dodd read the receipt — all of it — and then read it over the second time to make sure. It was in order, and he folded it up and stowed it away in his wallet.

“The deceased — Mr. Tooper — was a relative of yours?” Mr. Miltgreen asked gently.

“He was not.”

“A very dear friend, perhaps?”

Dodd leaned forward. “It’s a damned good thing he was dead in that coffin, because if he hadn’t been I’d have hauled him out and slit his fat throat for him.”

“What?” Mr. Miltgreen gasped.

“You bet,” said Dodd. “That dirty rat. When you get him buried, I’m going to come around and dance on his grave.”

Mr. Miltgreen indicated the check timidly. “B-but—”

“You know what he did?” Dodd demanded. “I’ll tell you. I’m a bail bondsman. When guys get thrown in jail for this and that, I bail them out, if it’s possible, for a percentage of the bail I have to put up.”

Mr. Miltgreen nodded uncertainly. “Yes. But—”

“This guy Tooper,” said Dodd, “was a blue-sky salesman who doubled in forgery and other little stunts like that. Blinky Tooper, they called him, and he was a very smooth article. So he got slung in the hopper here in Bay City a couple of times, and he had references from other bondsmen I know from out-of-state, so I bailed him out. He squawked like hell about paying up both times, but I finally shook it out of him. So it got too hot for him here after a while, and he went away, which was just dandy by me. I never liked him.”

“But... but—”

“I’m coming to the payoff. The first of last week I get a telegram from an undertaker in Sparkling Falls, South Dakota, informing me that Blinky Tooper had just blown his head off with a shotgun there and that he had left a farewell note in which he said that he had deposited five hundred dollars with me for his funeral expenses and that he wanted to be shipped back and buried here.”

“And he hadn’t deposited the money with you?” Mr. Miltgreen asked, wide-eyed.

“No!” said Dodd violently. “Not a dime!”

“But you paid for his funeral.”

“Look,” said Dodd. “A lot of the guys I deal with are slightly on the dishonest side. And I’ll give you a tip about crooks. They go in heavy for funerals. They think funerals are very important. Now supposing my clients got the idea that I was trying to gyp Blinky out of his after he had laid the money by with me to take care of it. They’d treat me like I had the bubonic plague. My business would go ker-floo right about now.”

“But you could have denied that he left the money with you.”

“I’ll tell you something else about crooks,” said Dodd. “They think everybody is just as dishonest — if not more so — as they are. Nobody would have believed me for a second. They’d just have thought I was trying to hook Blinky’s five hundred now that the poor guy was dead and couldn’t beef about it. No. I had to pay. That’s why I was so particular about that receipt. I want to be able to show that I did.”

“It seems very strange,” Mr. Miltgreen observed vaguely, “and very hard on you. Of course, we appreciate your business, and if ever we can serve you again...”

“I’ll remember,” said Dodd.

When Dodd came in the front room of his office, he found Meekins, his runner, curled up in the big leather chair in the corner dozing peacefully. Meekins was a wispy little man with a sadly cynical face. He might have been almost any age, but he was young enough to be sensitive about his baldness, and he never removed his hat unless it was absolutely necessary. He had it on now, brim turned up front and back, collegiate style. He opened one eye and squinted at Dodd.

“Have a nice time?”

“Lovely,” said Dodd. “Why aren’t you over to the station tending to business?”

Meekins yawned. “Things are dead today. Hennessey will take care of anybody that comes in.”

“Hennessey is the desk sergeant,” Dodd said. “If they ever catch him writing bail bonds for us, they’ll give him the old heave-ho right off the police force.”

“They won’t catch him — not Hennessey.”

“I hope not,” said Dodd. “Give me a drink.”

Meekins leaned over and fumbled around under the big chair. “I wish you’d buy your own whiskey or else raise my wages.” He found a flat pint bottle and handed it over.

Dodd got a paper cup from the water cooler and poured himself a drink. He threw it down and grunted appreciatively as it hit bottom.

“The mail just came,” Meekins said. “It’s over there on the table.”

Dodd picked up the envelopes and riffled through them absent-mindedly. There were several bills, and he dropped them on the floor. The one remaining letter had his name and address written in neat print-script in green ink. Dodd opened it and unfolded the paper inside and read:

Dodd made a strangling sound.

Meekins looked at him in an injured way. “My whiskey ain’t that bad.”

“Read this!” Dodd choked. “Read it!”

Meekins took the letter and glanced through it and said, “Well,” in a mildly surprised voice and then read it again with dawning unbelief.

Dodd was pacing back and forth across the room. His eyes were narrowed, dangerously gleaming slits behind his glasses.

“Well,” said Meekins again, “I knew they had all the modern conveniences at Valley Vale Cemetery, but I never figured they’d put mail boxes in the graves.”

Dodd said things to himself in an undertone.

“It’s Blinky’s writing, all right.” Meekins observed. “I remember it well. He used to be a chemical engineer before he got to fooling around with phoney stocks and stuff, and it seems lots of engineers write in this sort of print style on account of lettering so many graphs and junk like that. Blinky used to curl his h’s like this here, too. Yup, Blinky sure wrote this.”

“Shut up,” said Dodd.

Meekins got out of the chair and picked up the envelope the letter had been in. “Yeah, and it was mailed at ten forty-five. Funeral was at ten, wasn’t it? This is sure mighty funny.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” Dodd said. “I don’t. That damned Blinky not only gypped me out of five hundred berries to pay for his funeral, but then he didn’t even die!”

“You figure Blinky ain’t dead?” Meekins asked.

Dodd just glared at him.

“Well,” said Meekins defensively, “it seems like it’s a mighty funny — I mean, peculiar — thing to do. What would he want to make you put out for his funeral for if he ain’t dead?”

“I don’t know,” said Dodd grimly, “but you can just bet I’m going to find out.”

He stalked into his private office, sat down on the edge of his cluttered desk and picked up the telephone. He dialed long distance, and when the operator answered, he said: “I want to put in a call to the police department of Sparkling Falls, South Dakota.”

“Yes, sir. Your number, sir?”

Dodd told her and said: “I’ll hold the line. Make it as snappy as you can.”

Meekins came in from the front room carrying the pint bottle of whiskey and sat down in the chair behind Dodd’s desk. “It don’t seem reasonable—”

“Shut up,” said Dodd.

Meekins shrugged and took a drink. Dodd waited, swinging one long leg and muttering profanely under his breath.

The operator said in his ear: “Your party is not there now, sir. Shall I try again later?”

“What?” said Dodd. “Wait a minute. I’m not calling any particular party. Just the police department.”

“There is no answer, sir.”

“You mean the police department doesn’t answer?” Dodd demanded incredulously. “Well, why not?”

“Just one moment, sir.”

Meekins said: “You didn’t try to reverse the charges on ’em, did you?”

“No,” Dodd answered. “Shut up.”

The operator said: “Do you wish to talk to his wife, sir?”

“What’s that?” Dodd said. “Look here, operator. I just want the police department of Sparkling Falls, that’s all. How can a police department have a wife?”

“Wait just one moment, sir.”

“You want another drink?” Meekins asked.

“No,” said Dodd.

The operator spoke again: “The police department of Sparkling Falls consists of one officer only — a constable. His name is Harold Stacy. He is not available now, sir. Do you wish to speak to Mrs. Stacy?”

“O.K.,” Dodd said. “All right. Put her on.”

The line clicked and clicked again, and then a tinny, raw-edged voice shouted: “Hello hello hello hello hello—”

“Hello!” Dodd said loudly. “I want to speak to Harold Stacy!”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know where he is!” Dodd shouted. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Oh, you liar! You dirty, filthy liar!”

“What?” said Dodd, startled.

The tinny voice screeched fiercely: “Oh, you can’t fool me! I know that miserable little wretch is sitting right there beside you grinning and gloating. Oh, you just wait until he gets back home, and I’ll make him regret the very day he was born! You tell him that! You tell him I’ll—”

“Hey!” Dodd interrupted. “Your husband isn’t here. I’m calling long distance from Bay City—”

“You’re lying! He didn’t have enough money to get that far! You tell him—”

“He — isn’t — here! I’m trying to find him because I want to find out—”

“Oh, you can’t get around me with your smooth talk! I know you’re one of his vicious, drunken friends trying to cover up for him! You tell him I’ll make him pay tenfold for all the suffering and disgrace he’s caused me! And don’t you dare have the impudence to call me again, or I’ll have you arrested and sent to jail for life! And Harold with you!”

The line clicked and then hummed emptily.

The operator said: “Just a moment, sir. There seems to be some difficulty....”

Dodd nodded at Meekins. “I’ll have that drink now.” He took it out of the bottle, holding the receiver to his ear.

The operator said suddenly: “Is this an official call, sir?”

“Oh, sure,” Dodd answered. “This is Lieutenant Bartlett of the Homicide detail. The message is very vital — a matter of life and death, you might say.”

“The operator at Sparkling Falls would like to speak to you. Shall I put her on?”

“Go ahead,” Dodd invited. “Why not?”

“Hello,” said a soft, shyly feminine voice.

“Hello,” Dodd said. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you. My name is Elsie Bailey.”

“I’ll write it down,” Dodd promised. “I hear you want to talk to me, Elsie.”

“Yes, I guess I do. I mean, I think I ought to. I heard you speaking to Mrs. Stacy. I couldn’t help it because she started yelling at you before I had time to see if the connection was clear.”

“Think nothing of it, Elsie. I have no secrets.”

“Hah!” Meekins observed skeptically. “Say, what kind of game is this?”

Elsie was saying earnestly: “I knew you weren’t fooling about Harold Stacy, because I knew you were really calling from Bay City, and of course he would never go that far.”

“Of course,” Dodd agreed. “But why not?”

“He only gets a hundred and nineteen dollars and fifty-three cents a month.”

“That’s as good a reason as any, I guess,” Dodd said. “Elsie, did you have anything in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”

“I am! About Harold Stacy. He’s married.”

“I gathered that,” Dodd admitted.

“His wife is really terribly strict with him, and sometimes he... he sort of has to blow up steam.”

“Blow off steam,” Dodd corrected. “Elsie, about this matter you wanted to tell me—”

“I am telling you! Harold Stacy got paid yesterday — he gets paid every two weeks — and he’s off somewhere now blowing up steam. What did you want to ask him? Maybe I can help you.”

“I wanted to talk to him about the suicide of a man by the name of Elwin Tooper.”

“Oh, wasn’t that awful!”

“Not nearly awful enough to suit me. That’s why I’m calling. Do you know how it happened?”

“He just shot himself. Blew his brains all over!”

“Who identified him?”

“Identified him? Why, everyone knew him! He’d lived here for months.”

“Do you know if Stacy printed him afterwards?”

“What?” Elsie said blankly.

“Took his fingerprints.”

“Why, of course not! What on earth for?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Dodd admitted wearily. “Did you see him after he was dead?”

“Why, what an awful thing to suggest! Of course I didn’t! They wouldn’t let anyone see him, because his head was all blown to pieces. Isn’t it too bad? He was such an awfully nice little man. We all liked him. I suppose Harold Stacy could tell you more about his death, if you really want to know.”

“I really do,” Dodd assured her. “How long do you think it will be before Harold gets through blowing up steam?”

“Well.... If I tell you something will you promise not to tell anybody?”

“Cross my heart,” said Dodd.

“Sometimes,” said Elsie carefully, “sometimes when Harold wants to blow up steam he goes to see a friend of his by the name of Doctor Herman Ramsey, who lives outside of Milesville, South Dakota. They fish and drink beer and play pinochle together. You might try to get him there, but you can’t call because there is no telephone.”

“A doctor with no telephone?” Dodd said skeptically.

“He’s a horse doctor.”

“O.K.,” said Dodd, giving it up. “Thanks a lot, Elsie. By the way, do you know what Blinky — I mean, Tooper — was doing in Sparkling Falls?”

“Why, he ran the paper.”

“He what?” said Dodd.

“He ran our newspaper. It comes out twice a week.”

Oh, said Dodd. “Thanks again, Elsie. If I ever come to Sparkling Falls — God forbid — I’ll look you up.” He put the telephone back on its cradle and looked at Meekins. “Blinky was running the newspaper in Sparkling Falls.”

“I don’t believe it,” Meekins said flatly. “Even Blinky wouldn’t be low enough to publish a paper. He was a high-class liar. What would he go clear out there and do it for, anyway?”

“That reminds me,” said Dodd. He found a telephone directory in the drawer of the desk and thumbed through it rapidly. He found the number he wanted and dialed it.

“Greater Pacific Railroad,” a voice answered.

“Have you got a complaint department?” Dodd asked. “I’ve got a beef with your railroad.”

“One moment, please. I’ll connect you with our Mr. Carter. He’s in charge of complaints.”

The line snapped, and then a smoothly polite voice said: “Yes? Carter speaking.”

“My name is Dodd — William Dodd. Day before yesterday you delivered a body to me. I mean, a corpse. I want to make a complaint on that.”

“Wait a second, Mr. Dodd, and I’ll look up our records on the matter. Hold the line.”

Dodd waited, and Carter finally came back on the phone again: “Yes, Mr. Dodd. I have the record here now. The body was consigned from Sparkling Falls, South Dakota, to you here in Bay City. Is there some trouble about it?”

“Trouble!” Dodd echoed. “Hah! You shipped the wrong body, and I’m not going to pay for it. I want my money back.”

“What?” said Carter blankly.

“You shipped me the wrong body. I’m not going to pay the fare for just any old corpse.”

Carter said frigidly: “Now just a minute. It happens to be the law that if a body is shipped in interstate commerce, the coffin in which it is shipped must be sealed and it cannot be opened at its destination. That coffin consigned to you was sealed before it left Sparkling Falls. Did you open it?”

“No,” said Dodd.

“Then how do you know the proper body isn’t inside?”

“The guy is writing me letters!” Dodd snarled. “You don’t claim he’s doing that inside a sealed coffin, do you?”

“If this is a joke, Mr. Dodd, it is in very poor taste.”

“It’s no joke! Not unless you can laugh off seven hundred and fifty odd dollars. If you don’t refund that fare to me I’m going to sue you.”

“Now look here, Mr. Dodd. You have no claim whatsoever against this railroad. We accepted the body at Sparkling Falls and delivered it to you as per our instructions and obligations as a common carrier and bailee. We didn’t guarantee the identity of the corpse. Both tickets have been validated and receipted, and we certainly are not going to return you your money.”

“What did you say about both tickets?” Dodd demanded. “Were there two?”

“Of course. It is a rule of railroads everywhere that if we accept a body for shipment, you must buy an extra regular passenger fare. And that’s what you did.”

“This is the first I’ve heard about it. Who used that extra ticket?”

“A woman who signed herself as Blanche Trilby.”

“I don’t know any Blanche Trilby!” Dodd said. “I’ve never even heard of her!”

“That’s quite possible, Mr. Dodd. If the deceased has no relatives who wish to accompany the body, then it is customary to make arrangements with some local person who will do so. It’s often just a formality.”

“A very peculiar one,” Dodd commented. “I have to pay for a funeral for a guy who isn’t dead and the fare for a corpse I don’t want, and on top of that I get nicked for another ticket for somebody I don’t even know!”

“You have no claim against this railroad, Mr. Dodd. If you think you have, I would suggest you take the matter up in court. We have an extensive legal staff. Good-bye.”

Dodd slammed the telephone back on its stand.

“Say,” said Meekins. “I just happened to think — why didn’t you take the railroad fare out of the five hundred bucks and give Blinky a cheaper funeral?”

“Because,” said Dodd bitterly, “there are a lot of guys like you, who are so dumb they don’t know you can’t ship a corpse by parcel post. They’d have all thought — when I showed them the funeral receipt — that I was cheating on a dead guy who trusted me.”

“I guess maybe so,” Meekins admitted. “There’s something wrong about all this, Dodd. It don’t look a bit good to me.”

Dodd turned his head slowly. “Say, what the hell do you mean by sitting around here and drinking yourself dumb? Get over to the police station and get to work!”

“Sure, sure,” Meekins soothed. “I’m going in a minute. Don’t get in an uproar. What are you going to do yourself?”

“Send telegrams to a horse doctor,” Dodd said.

Dodd walked past the long, glistening plate glass window and went through the door into the telegraph office. It was a narrow, deep room with a waist-high counter running across it about twenty feet back from the front.

Dodd found a pad of blanks and composed a message to Doctor Herman Ramsey and then tapped on the high counter with the pencil. A mousy little girl with dark, smooth hair and thick-lensed spectacles came forward. She accepted the blank and counted the words.

“Can you read it?” Dodd asked.

She quoted mechanically: “ ‘To Doctor Herman Ramsey Milesville South Dakota if Harold Stacy is there have him telegraph me collect a telephone number at which I can get in touch with him at once matter is urgent signed William Dodd.’ ”

“That’s right,” said Dodd. “How long will it take to get there?”

“The message will reach Milesville in about a half-hour. How soon it reaches your party after that will depend on the delivery service there.”

Dodd sighed. “All right. I’ll wait. Is there a bar near here anywhere?”

The girl looked up. “A what?”

“A bar. A grog-shop. A saloon.”

“There’s a place called Coon’s Cafe down the street a block and to your right on Sixth,” the girl said disapprovingly.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” Dodd promised.

Coon’s Cafe was down six steps from the street level. It was a dim, shadowy little place acrid with the sharp smell of ammonia from beer coils, and dust motes danced lazily in front of the horizontal slits that served as windows.

When Dodd came in, it was deserted except for a wizened little man with a long, drooping yellow mustache who was standing behind the bar.

“Hello,” he said in a discouraged voice. “You don’t look very good.”

“Well, thanks,” Dodd answered. “I don’t feel very good, either.”

“What you need,” said the bartender, “is a sherry flip. There’s nothing like a sherry flip to put you right. It’s tasty and nutritious and—”

“Bourbon,” Dodd said. “Straight. Leave the bottle.”

The bartender produced a bottle and a glass. “I’m telling you this for your own good. Whiskey is very bad for you when you have the megrims.”

Dodd ignored him. He poured a drink and swallowed it and shuddered.

“You see?” said the bartender, nodding gravely.

Dodd poured another drink, propped his elbows on the bar, and stared down at it gloomily.

“You sure you wouldn’t like a sherry flip?” the bartender asked.

“No!” Dodd said violently.

There was silence for about ten minutes, and then the telephone rang stridently.

“That’ll be me,” said Dodd.

The telephone was in a booth at the back of the room, and Dodd crowded inside and lifted the receiver.

“How did you know where to find me?” he asked.

“Hah!” said Meekins. “Deduction, that’s what. I just remembered what a sourpuss you had on you, and I started looking in the directory for the bar that was nearest the telegraph office and—”

“All right. So you’re smart. What do you want?”

“Well, listen, boss, do you remember that office you used to have in the Booth Building?”

“What do you mean — used to have?” Dodd demanded. “That’s where I have my office now.”

“No,” said Meekins. “Not now.”

“What?” Dodd shouted. “What are you saying?”

“Well, I pulled out of there about five minutes after you did. I got about a block down the street, and I heard a big boom. I thought maybe Hitler or Hirohito had dropped in to call, and I looked around quicklike, and I saw a lot of smoke and stuff coming out of a window, and it was the window of your office.”

“Go on, go on!” Dodd ordered tensely. “What was it? What happened?”

“Somebody chucked a bomb through the door, boss, and blew everything all to hell.”

“A bomb?” Dodd yelled. “A bomb! Are you crazy?”

“Not me. It wasn’t a very big bomb, they tell me, but it sure scrambled things around, and if we d have been in there it would have spread us out like strawberry jam. Dodd, do you know a tall, skinny dame with thick ankles who wears a wide-brimmed hat and a black veil and a moth-eaten fur coat?”

“No! Who’s she?”

“I wish I knew. She’s the one that chucked the bomb, I think. I snooted around and found out that the elevator guy carried such a party up to our floor, and she didn’t go to any other office on that floor or in the building, even. She was there about the right time, and she sort of disappeared about the time of the explosion. So what do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Dodd said in a stunned voice. “I can’t figure... Where are you now?”

“I’ll tell you where I am. I’m in the locker room at police headquarters. There are about twenty cops here with me and more coming and going all the time, and this is right where I’m going to stay. I didn’t hire out to catch bombs, and I’m not going to do it.”

“Our files!” Dodd said in sudden agony. “Our confidential files! You didn’t go away and leave—”

“Oh, I took care of that. I had Hennessey send a couple of flatfeet over to watch the joint.”

“Cops!” Dodd shouted. “You want cops to read what’s in those files, you half-wit?”

“I thought of that, too. I had Hennessey send Broderick and Mason over there. They’ll steal any bric-a-brac like fountain pens and stamps and stuff that ain’t blown up, but they won’t bother the files, on account they can’t read.”

“Are you punch-drunk?” Dodd asked. “You can’t be a cop unless you can read. You have to take a written examination before you can be appointed.”

“Naw. Broderick and Mason hired substitutes to take the examination for ’em. They pay Hennessey ten bucks a week apiece to write out their reports for ’em. It’s a fact. Now look here, boss, that was a very dirty trick somebody played on you when they hooked you for Blinky’s phoney funeral, but heaving bombs around is something else again. People ain’t fooling when they do things like that. You better lay off, or they’ll be scraping you off the walls.”

“The hell with that,” said Dodd bitterly. “Blinky can’t pull this kind of a stunt on me and walk off laughing. Take me for seven hundred odd bucks and give me the bird and then blow up my office on top of it. Just wait until I find him. I’ll give him a funeral, but I’ll make damned sure he’s in the coffin this time!”

“What do you want to act like that for? You’ll just buy yourself a big bag of trouble.”

“Don’t be so dumb,” Dodd said savagely. “Blinky or whoever did this wants to be cute about it — like he was in that letter. I’m supposed to be halfway smart. What will I look like when the guy starts spreading this story around?”

“It’s better to be dumb than dead,” Meekins warned. “There’s something more behind this than just somebody’s sense of humor. That bomb wasn’t funny at all, and remember that there was someone in that coffin. Somebody already got his brains spattered. You wouldn’t want to be next on the list, would you?”

“Phooey!” said Dodd. He hung up the receiver and went back to the bar.

“Did you get some bad news?” the bartender asked hopefully.

Dodd drank his whiskey in eloquent silence, flipped a half-dollar on the bar, and went out.

The mousy little girl with the thick glasses was still behind the high counter when Dodd came back in the telegraph office. She looked him over in a critical way and then sniffed twice pointedly.

“It’s whiskey you smell,” Dodd informed her. “Bourbon whiskey. Not very good. Did I get an answer to my telegram?”

The girl nodded. “It came through very rapidly, indeed. The charge is one dollar and sixty-three cents.”

Dodd paid her, and she gave him the telegram reluctantly. It was addressed to Dodd in care of the telegraph company’s branch office, and it said:

It was signed Ramsey. Dodd stared at the telephone number, scratching his head.

“That number sounds awfully familiar,” he said absently to himself. His head jerked up suddenly. “That’s my number! That’s the number of my office!”

“I beg your pardon?” said the mousy girl, watching him suspiciously.

“Never mind,” Dodd said, scowling at the telegram.

A telephone buzzed softly, and the mousy girl looked toward the clerks busy at the machines in the back of the office and then reached down and took the instrument from its shelf under the desk.

“Postal Union,” she said. “What? Who?... Oh, yes. He’s right here.” She pushed the telephone across the desk with an annoyed gesture. “It’s for you.”

Dodd picked up the receiver. “What do you want now?” he demanded.

But it wasn’t Meekins this time. It was a softly guttural voice that spoke very slowly, making a pause between words, but it was so indistinct that Dodd could hardly understand what it was saying.

“Is this Mr. William Dodd?”

“What?” said Dodd. “Oh, yeah. I’m Dodd. Who is speaking?”

“I can not give you my name yet, Mr. Dodd. Not until I talk to you personally. I am in trouble with the authorities. I wish to surrender myself, but I wish to make arrangements for my bail before I do so.”

“O.K.,” said Dodd. “I’ll have my man at the police station whenever you say.”

“No, no! You! I must talk to you personally about our arrangement. I wish to talk to you now. I am calling from a store just across the street from you. If you will step closer to the window, you can see me.”

The telephone had a long cord on it, and Dodd stepped toward the big plate glass window carrying the instrument with him. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Come just a little closer to the window, Mr. Dodd.”

Dodd took another couple of steps. “I don’t see any store where you could be.”

“Just a little closer...”

Dodd dropped the telephone and fell flat on his face. “Get down!” he yelled at the mousy girl.

There was a series of light snaps, and the big piece of plate glass quivered and jumped and groaned in its frame. Bits of broken glass sang lethally through the air, and the flat, fluttering sound of revolver shots rattled faintly from the street outside. From the back of the office, a clerk yelled indignantly.

The silence seemed to stretch like a thin, taut thread. Finally Dodd turned over and looked up at the window. There were four ragged, starred holes through the thick glass, all in a line, just about on the level of Dodd’s chest, had he still been standing.

He pushed himself up to his hands and knees and, heedless of splinters, crawled across the floor and through under the flap-gate of the counter. The mousy girl was crouched into a shivering ball, and she stared at him with fascinated horror.

“Got a gun?” Dodd demanded.

“Wh-wh-what?” she blubbered.

From the back, the clerk said angrily: “Say, what do you think—”

“Stay out of sight!” Dodd ordered. “Somebody’s gunning for me. Have you got anything to shoot with back there?”

“No!” said the clerk in a voice suddenly shaky. “Are... are you sure—”

“If I was any surer, I’d be dead,” Dodd answered.

Out in the street, a woman screamed and screamed again. Somebody shouted furiously, and then a police whistle trilled.

Dodd crawled out through the gate again, across the floor to the front door. He put his head out cautiously. On the opposite side of the street a yelling, gesticulating group of people milled around the solid blue core of a stocky policeman.

Dodd waited for a moment, looking all around, and then got up and ran for the crowd. He ducked into the edge of it and pushed himself forward toward its center.

A woman in a pink housecoat, her face smeared with cold cream until it looked like a weird Halloween mask and her hair screwed tight into scores of metal curlers, was screeching furiously at the policeman.

“Right in my apartment! Right up there!”

The policeman was trying to fend off the gaping crowd. “What, lady? What was it? What happened?”

“A woman in my apartment, I tell you! I was in the bathroom, and she opened the door and came right in! With a gun!”

“Get back,” said the policeman to the crowd. “Stand back there, can’t you? Yes, lady. What happened?”

“She told me to shut up! Right in my own bathroom! She pointed her gun at me! And she used my telephone! And then she fired shots right out of my window!”

“Stand back!” the policeman ordered. “Quit shovin’! Yes, lady. Did she rob you? Did she steal anything?”

“No! She came right in my bathroom and—”

“Yes, lady. But where is she now?”

The woman shook both fists at him. “I don’t know where she is, you big dummy! She ran out and slammed the door! What are you standing here asking questions for? Why don’t you find her and arrest her? What am I paying taxes for?”

“Yes, lady,” the policeman said in a pained voice. “But what did she look like?”

“She was a big, tall woman, and she had an awful old floppy hat and a black veil and an imitation fur coat that never cost more than nineteen dollars—”

Dodd wormed back through the crowd. He went down the block at a fast walk, turned the corner into Sixth, and trotted down the stairs into the Coon Cafe.

The wizened bartender with the drooping mustache was still the sole occupant of the place. “Now you sure do feel bad, don’t you?” he asked knowingly. “I told you so. You got the shakes, ain’t you?”

Dodd sat down on a bar stool and took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He breathed in deeply, trying to quiet the pounding of his heart.

“If you’d just take a sherry flip—” said the bartender.

“Bourbon,” Dodd said hoarsely. “The bottle.”

“You’re gonna be a nervous wreck,” the bartender warned.

“Go away,” Dodd requested.

He poured himself a drink and then wiped his forehead with his handkerchief again. He took out the telegram from Ramsey and read it three times, but there was no doubt about it. It said Harold Stacy could be reached at Parmlee 4142, and Parmlee 4142 was the telephone number of Dodd’s office. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. Finally he got up and went to the booth at the back of the room and dialed the number.

The instrument at the other end rang only once, and then a voice said cheerily: “This here is the Dodd Bail-Bond Company. Service any old time, any old place! What can we do for you, chum?”

“Who are you?” Dodd asked incredulously.

“What’s it to you, bud?”

“I’m Dodd!”

“Oh hello, Dodd, old pal. This is Broderick. Me and Mason is keeping tabs on what’s left of your joint for you. I’m takin’ care of the phone calls. How am I doin’?”

“Just dandy,” Dodd said bitterly. “I was hoping that telephone was out of order.”

“Oh, no. It got knocked around some, but it still talks good. I can even talk to my old man in Memphis, Tennessee, on it and hear him just as plain as if he was across the road. Say, Dodd, what is this about Blinky Tooper, anyway?”

“I’ll bite,” Dodd said warily. “What about him?”

“Well, I thought you buried him. What is he doing calling up your office, then?”

Dodd stiffened. “Blinky Tooper called me up?”

“Yup. He didn’t sound so very healthy, but on the other hand he didn’t sound so very dead, either.”

“What did he say?”

“He says, are you here. And I say, no. And then he says, where are you. I say, I ain’t got no idea. Then he says, can he leave a message. I say, sure. So he does.”

“Well, what was it?” Dodd demanded tensely.

“He says, it’s very important you should call him right away quick if not sooner.”

“Where?” Dodd yelled.

“Huh? Oh, wait a minute. Mason, what was that number I give you a while back — just before we ordered the second bottle?... Oh, yeah. I remember, Dodd, it was Garden 2212.”

“All right,” said Dodd.

“Now don’t go gettin’ worried about your business, Dodd. We got everything under control here, and we’re takin’ care of your customers like you wouldn’t hardly believe.”

“Good-bye,” said Dodd sourly.

He hung up and put another nickel in the slot and dialed the Garden number. He could hear the steady buzz that indicated the instrument at the other end was ringing, but there was no answer. After a while, he hung up, retrieved his nickel and dialed another number.

“Police department,” a voice said.

“Give me the locker room,” Dodd requested.

There was a pause, and then Meekins’ voice stated importantly: “This is the locker room.”

“Dodd speaking.”

“Hi, boss,” said Meekins. “I was just wondering where you were. Do you know how much money you’ve got in the bank — in your personal account?”

“Not exactly,” Dodd answered, puzzled. “Why?”

“You ain’t got enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To cover that check you wrote for Blinky’s funeral. It bounced.”

“It couldn’t!” Dodd exploded. “I’m sure I have enough to cover it, and anyway it hasn’t had time to bounce yet.”

“It did. There was a guy by the name of Miltgreen just over here crying to me about it. It seems he maybe didn’t think you looked so honest, so instead of sending the check through in the regular way, he takes it right over to your bank personally and tries to cash it. They tell him it’s no soap. You ain’t got enough in your account to pay it.”

Dodd said: “Why, I can’t understand... What did you tell Miltgreen?”

“I didn’t know hardly what to tell him, boss. I thought maybe you might have bounced the check on purpose or stopped payment on it or something. I gave him the brush-off by telling him I didn’t know anything about it and that he’d have to talk to you. I told him to go over to your office and wait for you. I figured I could tip you off if you didn’t want to see him, but you better had because he’s puttin’ out a hell of a squawk. He says he’s got to make the check good unless you do, and he’s got a wife and sixteen starvin’ kids. He nearly had me cryin’ before he got through.”

“I’ll go over to the office now,” Dodd decided, “and catch him there. I want you to—”

“Wait a minute,” Meekins requested. “I got something else to tell you. Did you ever think how Tooper was a very funny name for a guy to have?”

“Oh, very funny,” said Dodd.

“Yeah. Well anyway, me and Hennessey was talking about it, and he got to thinking that maybe he had seen a name that was something like it and just as funny somewhere kinda recently. You know them wanted posters they send out — with a guy’s picture and description and fingerprints and stuff on ’em?”

“Yes,” Dodd said patiently.

“Well, they get ’em by the bale here because the cops in Bay City is supposed to distribute them around to the other departments in the north end of the state, but of course they don’t.”

“Of course not,” Dodd agreed.

“Hennessey just turns ’em over to the junkman for wastepaper as they come in. He nets himself five-six dollars a month that way. Well, he had an idea he had seen this name on one of them wanted posters, and so we started calling up other police departments in New York and Chicago and Miami and places and sure enough we run it down.”

“What?” Dodd asked.

“Get this. A guy by the name of Colonel Hans E. Van Tooper of Batavia, Netherlands East Indies, married a rich widow by the name of Blanche Trilby in Lansing, Michigan, last August.”

Dodd jumped. “Blanche Trilby!”

“Yeah. Ain’t that the name you spoke when you was beefing with the railroad guy about gettin’ your dough back?”

“Yes!” Dodd exclaimed. “She’s the one who used the extra ticket — the one who came here with Blinky’s alleged body.”

“No, she ain’t.”

“What?” said Dodd.

“She ain’t the one, because she’s dead. Colonel Van Tooper went and cut her throat while they was on their honeymoon and walked off with all her jewelry and dough. He was very smart and didn’t leave no fingerprints behind him, but they got a good description of him on the poster, and it sure sounds an awful lot like Blinky Tooper to me.”

Dodd swore softly to himself.

Meekins said: “This looks worse and worse to me, Dodd. There’s altogether too many people running around here that are dead and don’t stay that way. Maybe they can get buried and still percolate, but I can’t. And another thing: You know Lieutenant Kastner?”

“I know him, all right,” Dodd stated.

“Yeah. Well, he’s the one that’s supposed to be investigating that bomb blast in our office. He’s been around here laughing like hell. He says he ain’t going to do nothing until that old gal makes a better job of wiping you out because if he started now it might discourage her.”

“That’s very thoughtful of him,” Dodd said grimly. “He may have to start sooner than he thinks. I’ve got a telephone number here — Garden 2212. Find out the name and the address of the party for me right away.”

“O.K. I’ll have Hennessey check it.”

“Call me at the office. I’m going over there now.”

“Take it easy, boss,” Meekins warned. “Somebody is mad at you, I think.”

It was dusk when Dodd drove his battered coupe slowly along the street past his office. He made a U-turn at the end of the block and came back again, watching closed store fronts and shadowy doorways warily. Now, after business hours, the street had a sinisterly deserted appearance that made him feel very uncomfortable.

He stopped near the corner and whistled to the newsboy who was sitting on the curb. The newsboy strolled over and put his head in the window.

“Hi, guy. What’s it?”

Dodd said: “I’m looking for a dame. I wondered if you’d seen her around here.”

“Seen lots of ’em. What kind you want?”

“This is an old dame,” Dodd explained. “She’s tall and skinny and she wears a ratty old fur coat and she’s got thick ankles.”

“Oh, that one,” said the newsboy. “I seen her just a minute or so ago. She was hangin’ around like she was waitin’ for somebody.”

A voice said softly: “Hello, Mr. Dodd.”

Dodd jumped so violently that his head hit the roof of the coupe and smashed his hat down over his eyes. He pushed the brim up shakily and stared into the round, dour face of Lieutenant Kastner.

“Well, if you ain’t the jumpy one,” Kastner observed. “You ain’t really scared of just a screwy old dame, are you?”

“You haven’t run into her yet, pop-off,” Dodd said angrily. “Just wait till you do. She may be screwy, but she knows how to make bombs and guns work.”

“Never mind. I’ll protect you.”

“That relieves my mind a lot,” Dodd told him. “Who’s going to protect you?”

Kastner opened the door of the coupe. “Tut-tut. Don’t get overwrought. Come on along up to your office. Hang on to mama’s hand.”

Dodd got out and slammed the door. He stalked across the pavement toward the darkened entrance of the office building with Kastner strolling along behind, chuckling to himself.

Dodd pushed through the heavy door. There was only one dim light burning in the lobby, over the elevators, and Dodd started in that direction. Kastner came in the door.

There was quick, furtive movement in the shadows of the stairs to Dodd’s left.

“Look out!” Kastner yelled. He whirled around and dove back out the door into the street.

Dodd was caught in the middle of the lobby with nowhere to go. He stood rigid, his pulse hammering a hard drumbeat in his throat. Nothing happened. After a minute that dragged like a century, Dodd swallowed and said thickly: “Who’s there?”

“Oh, Mr. Dodd!” a voice gasped. “Oh. Oh, Mr. Dodd!”

Slowly a head wavered into view above the railing on the staircase.

“Miltgreen!” Dodd exclaimed. “What are you doing there? What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, Mr. Dodd,” said Miltgreen in helpless agony.

“Are you hurt?” Dodd demanded.

“Mr. Dodd,” Miltgreen sobbed, “I haven’t got any trousers!”

“No what?” Dodd asked, advancing.

The front door squeaked open a cautious foot, and Kastner said: “Dodd! Hey, Dodd! Has she got another bomb?”

“Come on in, superman,” Dodd told him. “Everything’s under control. Miltgreen, have you turned nudist on us?”

Miltgreen was crouched woefully on the stairs, trying to pull his shirt-tails down far enough to hide green shorts and long, skinny legs.

“Mr. Dodd, I’ve never, never had anything as horrible as this happen to me before! She... she took my trousers!”

“Who did?”

“That awful woman. That awful, immodest creature. That Blanche Trilby. She pointed a gun at me and made... made me take off my trousers and give them to her.”

“Blanche Trilby!” Dodd repeated. “Do you know her?”

“Why, yes,” said Miltgreen. “That is, I’ve met her. She was at the station when I went to get Mr. Tooper’s body. She introduced herself to me.”

“That’s the bomb dame, huh?” said Kastner eagerly. “What does she look like?”

Miltgreen stared at him blankly. “Why, I don’t know. I mean, she’s middle-aged and thin and tall for a woman. She comes up to about here on me.” He indicated the level of his nose. “She’s very hard-looking, and she has a rough, hoarse way of speaking.”

“What do you care?” Dodd asked Kastner. “Or do you figure on spotting her a long ways away and getting a headstart? Miltgreen, what happened? Why did she take your pants?”

“To... to keep me from following her, she said. I told her I didn’t want to follow her, but she took them anyway. I had just come in the building, and I was over there by the elevator trying to figure out how it worked, and she jumped out of somewhere and put a gun right against my chest. She marched me down that hallway and... and made me undress. Mr. Dodd, what will I do?”

“Relax,” Dodd advised absently. “What did she do after she got your pants?”

“Just went out the front door.”

“Why didn’t you run out and yell for a cop?”

“Without any trousers on?” Miltgreen gasped. “Right out in the street where people could see me? Oh, no!”

“Say,” said Kastner uneasily, “you don’t suppose she planted a time bomb around here, do you?”

“We’ll find out,” Dodd informed him, “sooner or later. Look, Miltgreen, I’m sorry about that bum check for the funeral. There must be some mistake, but don’t worry about it.”

“Well, Mr. Dodd,” Miltgreen said grievously, “I just can’t help worrying. I’m not used to things like have been happening recently. I just don’t understand how people can... can act like you and the people you know do. It isn’t right at all.”

“Yes, yes,” said Dodd. He went to the door and whistled to the newsboy again. “Hey, Sam. Flag me a taxi, will you?” He came back to the stairs. “Now you take a taxi home, Mr. Miltgreen, and get some other pants and compose yourself. Everything is going to be all right, I assure you.”

“But that check—”

“I’ll take care of that. It’s too late to get into the bank now. After you get your pants, you go on down to Siegal’s Restaurant on Cable Street and wait there for me. Joe Siegal will cash a check for me, but he won’t do it for that amount unless I present it personally. I’ve got some other things to do right now, but I’ll be down just as soon as I can. Have dinner on me while you wait.”

A taxi pulled up in front of the building.

Miltgreen gathered his shirt-tails around him like a skimpy skirt. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel very hungry. Oh, this is awful! What will my wife think... And my poor children... Mr. Dodd, I hope — I sincerely hope — that you can make a satisfactory settlement of this matter at once. I wouldn’t like to resort to legal action—”

“It’ll be O.K.,” said Dodd.

Miltgreen craned his neck, trying to see both ways along the street, and then hopped across the sidewalk like some weirdly elongated bird. He ducked into the taxi, and the door slammed emphatically behind him.

“I think,” said Kastner, watching the taxi pull away, “that maybe I better scout around outside a little. That old dame might be hanging around—”

Dodd grinned at him wryly. “All right. If I find any bombs, I’ll yell so you can run.”

“It ain’t that I’m afraid—” said Kastner.

“Oh, no!” said Dodd.

He got in the elevator and punched the button for his floor. The elevator moaned and groaned and carried him up. He was halfway there when he heard the singing. Two voices were making very heavy weather of “The Old Mill Stream.” They were not in harmony.

Swearing to himself, Dodd got out of the elevator and went down the hall. There was a great jag-edged hole blown through the frosted glass panel of his door. The singing came from his office.

Dodd opened the door and stepped inside on glass that grated and crunched under his feet. The place looked like a newsreel shot from London. The walls were scarred in livid streaks, the water cooler lay shattered on its side, and papers and letters were drifted all over the floor in charred, sodden piles. One chair lacked its legs and another its seat. The center table was battered but still intact, and a policeman lay full length on his back on top of it.

He stopped singing and said cheerfully: “Hi, Dodd, you old fuddy-duddy. Here’s our host, Mason.”

Mason was seated in what remained of Meekins’ favorite leather lounging chair. It was tilted over sideways, and the stuffing was oozing out of the back cushion. Mason fixed his eyes on a point six feet to Dodd’s left and nodded solemnly.

“Glad to meet you.”

“You’re drunk,” Dodd accused, looking from one to the other.

“You hear that, Mason?” said Broderick, the policeman on the table. “He says we’re drunk. That’s the kind of a greeting he gives us after all our work and worry.”

“He’s just envious,” said Mason. “Pay no attention to him, Broderick. Ignore him.”

“Where’d you get the whiskey?” Dodd demanded.

“At the drugstore on the corner,” Broderick told him. “You know you got credit there, Dodd? It’s a fact. You ought to use the joint more. All you do is call ’em up and say you’re Dodd and tell ’em what you want, and they send it right up. Want I should show you how?”

“No,” said Dodd. “Thanks just the same.”

The telephone rang stridently.

Broderick said: “It’s your turn to answer it, Mason. I answered it last time.”

“Nuts,” said Mason grumpily. “Let it ring. See if I care.”

Dodd went into the shambles of his private office. The telephone was sitting on the floor where his desk had been. He picked it up. “Yes?” he said.

“Hello, boss,” Meekins said. “The address on that telephone number is 1702 Cottage Grove Avenue. The name is Peterson. They just had the phone put in last week.”

“O.K.”

“Wait a minute,” Meekins requested. “There’s another little matter.”

“My God!” Dodd shouted. “What next?”

“Well, it ain’t my fault. Long distance has been calling the station here looking for Lieutenant Bartlett of the homicide detail.”

“Well, so what?”

“You’re Lieutenant Bartlett,” Meekins said patiently. “At least that’s what you told the dame over the telephone this afternoon.”

“Oh, hell!” Dodd exclaimed, remembering. “I did, at that.”

“Yeah. There ain’t no particular party tryin’ to get you, as far as I could find out. It’s just long distance. You don’t suppose the telephone company is after you for impersonating an officer, do you, Dodd?”

“No,” said Dodd. “I think I know who it is. I’ll take care of it.” He depressed the breaker bar on the telephone, let it up again, and dialed long distance. When he got the operator, he said: “This is Lieutenant Bartlett of the homicide detail. I understand you’ve been trying to locate me.”

“One moment, please... Oh yes, Lieutenant. The operator at Sparkling Falls, South Dakota, wants to get in touch with you at once. Shall I call her?”

“Do that,” Dodd agreed. “I’ll hold the line.”

He waited through a long series of clicks and snaps, and then Elsie Bailey’s shy voice said: “Hello, Lieutenant Bartlett.”

“Hello, Elsie,” said Dodd. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. I got your name from the operator at Bay City. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, Elsie. What can I do for you?”

“I thought maybe you ought to know that Mr. Gillispie has had a nervous breakdown.”

“Who has had a what?” Dodd asked incredulously.

“Mr. Gillispie is the undertaker here at Sparkling Falls, and he has just had a nervous breakdown and is in the hospital and can’t see anyone — not anyone at all.”

“When did this happen?”

“Just this afternoon. Right after I talked to him.”

“Oh,” said Dodd. “You talked to him, eh? What about, Elsie?”

“Why, about you. I told him you had called up and inquired about Elwin Tooper, and right away he had a nervous breakdown.”

“I see,” said Dodd slowly. “I’m very grateful for this, Elsie. I wish I could do something for you.”

“Well — you can. I’m coming to Bay City next month on my vacation, and... and you could thank me personally.”

“Yeah,” said Dodd. “But I don’t think my wife would like that. I’ll tell you, though. I’ve got a friend. His name is Dodd. He’s a swell fellow. He’s got money, brains, personality, looks — the works. You’ll love him.”

“I’d rather — see you. You have such a nice voice.”

“Dodd has one just like it,” said Dodd. “You send me a telegram in care of Dodd — his address is in the Bay City directory — and I’ll have him meet your train. Good-bye now, Elsie dear.”

He hung up the receiver and put the telephone back on the floor. “Why didn’t I think of the undertaker?” he muttered to himself. “I must be getting feeble-minded.”

He went back into the front office. Mason was singing in a blurred, gentle monotone, keeping time with an empty bottle. Broderick was asleep on the table.

Dodd nudged him. “Give me your gun.”

“Sure,” said Broderick, without opening his eyes. He fumbled it out of the holster and extended it blindly.

Dodd looked to make sure it was loaded and then slipped it in the waistband of his trousers and buttoned his coat to conceal it.

“Take care of things,” he said sarcastically, going to the door.

“You can rely on us,” Broderick answered, his eyes still tightly shut.

Cottage Grove Avenue straggled off into the outskirts of the city north of the bay and petered out in a dead-end halfway to the summit of a steep hill. Someone had popped out the last street light, and Dodd parked his coupe at the end of the pavement and felt his way up a stony, weed-lined path in the darkness.

He had gone only about fifty yards when another car, its lights out, stole cautiously up behind his coupe and parked there.

Dodd had been looking for just that, and he stopped and watched a shadowy, furtive figure climb out of the second car, scout around for a moment, and then start up the path.

Dodd stepped into the weeds and waited until the figure was even with him and then said harshly: “Halt! Hands up!”

“Wah!” Kastner yipped in sheer terror. He raised his arms so violently his heels left the ground.

“Look who’s jumpy now,” said Dodd.

“Oh!” Kastner gasped. “You...you— What’d you wanta do that for? What’s the idea?”

“You tell me.”

“Well,” said Kastner defensively, “I just thought I’d follow you just in case—”

“Just in case I’d uncover something you could hog the credit for,” Dodd finished. “Now you’re here, you might as well tag along. I’m headed for number 1702. It must be that bungalow right ahead.”

He pointed to a darkened, spindly building that was crushed in against the side of the hill and braced there precariously with long timbers.

“What... what’s in there?” Kastner asked warily. “Not that dame with bombs?”

“I hope so. I’m going in the front. You dodge around in back and catch anything I scare out.”

“Well,” said Kastner reluctantly. “All right.”

Dodd went on up the path to the bungalow. He went quietly, but he made no effort to conceal himself. No slightest ray of light showed from the windows, and the whole place had a slatternly, decayed air that hinted at long vacancy.

Dodd climbed the long flight of steps up to the front porch, and the braced structure trembled uneasily under his weight. He felt around until he found the door knob. The door was unlocked. Dodd flipped it open and flattened himself against the wall beside it, Broderick’s gun held loosely in his right hand.

“Want to come out?” he asked conversationally. “Or do you want me to come in?”

There was no answer. The silence was so deep that it hummed in Dodd’s ears. He took a long breath and then whirled around away from the wall and jumped through the door. The air felt still and sticky against his face. He crouched tensely, alert for the slightest sound.

After a long moment, he straightened a little and groped along the wall behind him with his left hand. The light switch snapped under his fingers, and a dusty globe swung down from the ceiling on a long green cord suddenly jumped into brilliance.

Dodd gulped, swallowing hard against the pressure in his throat. Blinky Tooper was lying flat on the bare floor not six feet away. He was a fat, smooth little man, and the bulge of his paunch looked like a half-deflated balloon now. He was dead enough this time. His throat had been cut from ear to ear, and he had bled in a great semi-circular glistening pool.

Dodd took a step forward, and then the door on the opposite side of the room opened. Dodd caught a glimpse of the white sheen of a face under a black, floppy-brimmed woman’s hat, and then the mouth in the face opened and shrieked crazily at him, and the door slammed.

Dodd shot through it twice, aiming at the middle of the panels. Another shriek and a jangling crash answered the bellow of the reports. Dodd hit the door with his shoulder and knocked it open and half-fell into a scummy, stale-smelling kitchen. The dull oblong of another door loomed at his right. Dodd jumped for it.

He stumbled down two shallow wooden steps, and then he saw a grotesque, skirted figure flopping and stumbling through the brush twenty yards away up the hill. He aimed the revolver at it and then, suddenly changing his mind, pointed the gun up in the air and fired.

The skirted figure fell down. It screeched and rolled over and over and slapped at the weeds madly. Dodd approached it, circling warily, the revolver leveled. “Here, you!” he said loudly.

The figure sat up and looked at him. Then it screamed and fell over backwards and lay still.

“Hey, Dodd,” Kastner’s voice called cautiously from the corner of the house. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” said Dodd absently.

Kastner came up to him. “What were you shooting— Hey! It’s the bomb dame! But... but she ain’t a dame at all!”

It was true. Trousered legs extended out from under the wrecked tangle of skirt on the prone figure.

“What’s the matter with her... him?” Kastner demanded. “Did you kill him?”

“No,” said Dodd. “He’s just so stinking drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat. He’s passed out.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Harold Stacy. He’s the police force of Sparkling Falls, South Dakota. That is, he was. Blinky Tooper is up in the bungalow. He’s dead.”

“Blinky Tooper,” Kastner repeated stupidly. “Dead. Police force.”

“Never mind,” Dodd said. “I’ll explain it to you later. Go in the bungalow and call the wagon. There’s a telephone somewhere.”

“But I don’t want to eat!” Kastner said complainingly.

“I do,” Dodd told him. “Come on.”

Kastner got out of the coupe and tagged him across the sidewalk. “I gotta write a report, Dodd. I gotta know what this is all about.”

“Later,” said Dodd.

He pushed through glass and chrome swinging doors into the immense brightly white cavern of Siegal’s Restaurant. It was crowded now with workers going on night-shift, and the rattle and bang of crockery echoed like gun-fire.

Jack Siegal sat like a fat, bland Buddha behind his cash register beside the door. He nodded gravely at Dodd.

Dodd stopped to look around, and Miltgreen jumped up from behind one of the tables. “Mr. Dodd!” he called eagerly.

Dodd jerked his head at Kastner and walked over to the table.

“You remember Miltgreen, Kastner,” he said casually. “He’s the guy who lost his pants. He’s also the guy who bombed my office, took a few shots at me this afternoon, and cut Blinky Tooper’s throat.”

Miltgreen struck like a snake. He picked up the catsup bottle off the table and hit Kastner between the eyes with it. The bottle broke, and Kastner went sprawling in a welter of artificial gore.

Dodd kneed the table out of his way with a jangling crash and lunged forward in a driving tackle. Miltgreen tried to draw a gun from his hip pocket and sidestep at the same time, and one of Dodd’s swinging arms caught him and brought him down, but it didn’t keep him down.

Miltgreen was as lithely muscled as a snake. He squirmed out of Dodd’s grasp, hit him three times with a bony, rock-hard fist and then stuck his thumb in Dodd’s eye.

Dodd yelled in agony and rolled away, trying to draw his own gun. Miltgreen came up to his feet and ran for the door. He didn’t get far. A waiter behind the short order counter picked up a filled water carafe and threw it with force.

The carafe hit Miltgreen in the back of the head and burst like a bomb. Miltgreen slid ten feet on his face and hit the wall and stayed there in a crumpled pile.

Dodd got up, feeling his eye tenderly. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “I had no idea this monkey would start a riot like that. I figured he’d just wilt on us.”

“You’ll pay for the damage,” said Siegal, and it wasn’t a question.

“Sure,” Dodd agreed.

“It’s O.K., then,” said Siegal. “Meekins wants you to call him. You can do that when you call the cops.” He raised his voice. “Everything is all over, folks. Just sit down and mind your own business. Wash that catsup off Kastner before he comes to, Joe.”

Dodd dialed the number of the police station on the phone beside the cash register. “Send a radio car to Siegal’s Restaurant,” he said, when a voice answered. “And give me the locker room.”

“This is the locker room,” said Meekins.

“What do you want?” Dodd asked.

“Dodd!” Meekins yelped. “Where you been? I tried every place in town. Look, I got something red-hot for you! Me and Hennessey was talkin’ about this deal, and he remembered that Blinky Tooper was once hauled in for selling phoney lots in a phoney cemetery and he had a partner then that looked something like this bird Miltgreen.”

“Hennessey!” Dodd shouted. “That fat lame-brained rum-dumb! And you too! Why don’t either one of you get your smart ideas before I have to bat my brains out figuring the answers myself?”

“Well, we didn’t know... What? Did you say you had the answers? What are they, boss? I’m going nuts here with nobody but cops to talk to.”

Dodd said: “It all goes back to Sparkling Falls, South Dakota. Blinky Tooper holed up there after he knocked off the rich widow, Blanche Trilby. He had dough from her jewelry, so he bought the town paper. What would you think he would do if he had a printing press and a knowledge of chemistry?”

“I dunno, but he’d make himself some crooked dough if it was possible.”

“That’s what he did. Cooked up some counterfeit money — and the plates to make it with, I figure. The printing press should have tipped me off right away. He also made friends with this constable, Harold Stacy. Stacy got the same reward poster Hennessey did. He’d be just dope enough to notice the resemblance to his old pal Elwin Tooper and take the notice around and show it to him for a laugh. Blinky knew then that things were getting a little warm. He figured to check out — permanently. If people thought he was dead, no one would be looking for him.”

“Blinky was always a smart one,” Meekins observed.

“Yeah. So he went to work on Harold Stacy. Blinky could toss out a very smooth line when he wanted to. He told Harold Stacy how Blinky and I were great pals — always clowning and playing elaborate practical jokes on each other. They got the undertaker in with them and faked a suicide for Blinky. Blinky probably paid off heavy — in funny money. The idea was that they were going to ship the non-existent body to me and Blinky was going to ride along disguised as a woman and then hand me a hearty laugh.

“Blinky used the name of Blanche Trilby because he wanted to be connected with her — after he was supposed to be dead. Then the police would stop stirring around on her murder.”

“Well, what was in the coffin?”

“All the counterfeit money he could pack in there and the plates to make more. He picked Miltgreen to handle things at the cemetery — figuring to pick up the coffin from Miltgreen, after I had paid for the funeral, give Miltgreen a couple of bucks and a pat on the back and walk off whistling. But Miltgreen didn’t think so. Some way he found out what was in the coffin — probably opened it. He wanted a cut — about ninety-five per cent. He had Blinky right behind the eight-ball. Blinky couldn’t squawk even a little bit or all his elaborate scheme for dying and disappearing would blow off in his face.

“So now Smarty Blinky was struck with Miltgreen. But Blinky’s brain was still hitting on all cylinders. He wrote me that note. He knew that would make me hop like a flea on a griddle. He knew, also, I would start something, and Blinky hoped that would scare Miltgreen into a more reasonable frame of mind.

“But friend Miltgreen didn’t care. He’s a lot tougher character than he looks or acts normally. He dressed up in Blinky’s phoney woman’s outfit and chucked that bomb into the office to scare me into a more reasonable frame of mind.”

“He ain’t got no wife or kids, by the way,” Meekins put in.

“Lucky for them. In the meantime, back in Sparkling Falls, this Harold Stacy, dumb as he is, began to realize that he had bitten off something with a pretty sour taste. He headed for Bay City, leaving my number with a friend of his. He intended to get in touch with me and find out about this joke. But he went to the cemetery first and Blinky or Miltgreen found him and carted him off to the joint Blinky had prepared as a hideout. They told him he was in this with them, and he couldn’t get out. He drank himself dumb trying to figure what to do. And then you, you fat-head, told Miltgreen where I was when I was telegraphing.”

“No, I didn’t!”

“So,” said Dodd. “Then I’ve got another bone to pick with that butterfly-brained Hennessey. Miltgreen found out, anyway, and took a couple of shots at me. He missed, so he went over to my office to try again.

“He waited in the lobby, dressed in his woman’s outfit. Then he saw me pick up Kastner outside. Kastner looks so much like a cop nobody could miss.

“Miltgreen chucked his woman’s clothes into the alley. Only he didn’t have any pants on under the skirt, so he had to make up a story about Blanche Trilby holding him up. He did it well, too. I took it in — then. I was still after Blinky. I’ll have to give the guy one thing. He tried to call me and warn me when he found out Miltgreen was really after me. Miltgreen found that out, too. Anyway, he was tired of me running around. So he framed up a nice ending by killing Blinky and dressing Harold Stacy in the woman’s clothes and leaving him in the joint with Blinky’s body. Harold Stacy was one step off the D.T.s, and he could take the rap.”

Suddenly Meekins said: “Dodd, I just remembered something. I heard a while back that the Postal Union Telegraph Company slapped a suit on you today for malicious mischief.”

A waiter tapped Dodd on the shoulder. “Here’s a paper you dropped.”

“Thanks,” Dodd said absently, taking it. “Meekins! Did you say malicious—?”

“Yeah. They claim you caused one of their plate glass windows to be busted. The guy that’s got the process to serve on you is too lazy to go hunting for people. He just dresses like a waiter and hangs around Siegal’s Restaurant—”

“Oh!” Dodd moaned. “Oh-oh!” He looked reluctantly down at the paper the waiter had given him and read: “You are herewith informed that you have been named defendant in a suit instituted...”

“Dodd!” Meekins said. “When am I going to see you again?”

“At ten A.M. on May 7th,” Dodd answered bitterly. “In Department A of the Superior Court.”

Ask any aficionado of hard-boiled and noir fiction to compile a list of its best writers in the 1940s and 1950s, and chances are that John D. MacDonald’s name will not be on it. Despite his pulp origins and the numerous paperback originals he wrote, MacDonald’s work is generally considered to be upscale and literary, rather than wholly in the mean-streets tradition. Yet many of his stories for Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Tales, and other pulps are distinctly hard-edged, peopled with men and women who are anything but upscale. Two-thirds of the contents of The Good Old Stuff (1982) and More Good Old Stuff (1984), his two collections of pulp stories, fall into this category. His first novel, The Brass Cupcake (1950), is nothing if not a noir tale, as are The Damned (1952), Soft Touch (1958), One Monday We Killed Them All (1961), and several other nonseries novels; so are the early Travis McGee novels, most notably the first, The Deep Blue Goodbye (1963), and Darker Than Amber (1966). The latter title, in fact, has one of crime fiction’s hardest and most evocative opening sentences: “We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.”

“Nor Iron Bars” is vintage MacDonald in more ways than one: the story was bought in 1946 by his first editorial mentor, Babette Rosmond, shortly after MacDonald returned from his World War II military duty, and it appeared in the March-April 1947 issue of Doc Savage. Brief though it is, it is hard as nails; and it would be difficult to find a tougher — or more human — character in any pulp story of the period than Sheriff Commer.

B. P.

Nor Iron Bars (1947)

The appearance of Sheriff Commer’s hand as he sat in the office of the jail told as much about him as most people who had lived in that little Southern city all their lives had learned. It was a square heavy hand with a thatch of brown curling hair on the back and short knobbed powerful fingers, tanned by the sun and wind, yellowed by the constant cigarette. He sat listening to the angry crowd noises, yelling for Burton, roaring from the park across from the jail, his thumb and first finger clenched so tightly on the short butt of his cigarette that the damp end of it was only a thin brown line.

He glanced down at his hand propped against the side of the oak desk and marveled that his fingers didn’t tremble; secretly he always wondered at it. He respected and admired the independent nervelessness of his body, the way his brain could whirl in a mad haze of fear, his throat knotted, his heart thumping, and still his body, huge, ponderous and powerful, would go about its appointed tasks, with steady hands, calm eyes, quiet voice.

He kept safely tucked back on a secret shelf of his mind the thought that one day the body would break, the frenzied mind would have its way; and he would collapse into a quivering hulk, moaning over the imminence of pain and death.

The swelling roar of the lynching crowd faded from his conscious mind as he remembered the bright afternoon long ago when he had walked out of the group surrounding the Otis barn, walked steadily across the dark timbered floor, climbed slowly and heavily up the ladder until his head was above the floor of the loft, turned slowly and looked with chill impassivity into the crazed eyes of Danny Reneta. The only objects he saw in the dim hay-fragrant loft were those two shining eyes and the round vacant eye of the rifle which stared at him with infinite menace.

The room seemed to swing around him in a dizzy cycle of remembered fear as he recalled how he had calmly said, “Now, Danny. Better give me the gun,” had slowly reached out with a hand as firm as a rock and grasped the muzzle of the rifle.

The two insane eyes had stared into the two calm ones for measureless silent seconds until Commer thought he would drop screaming down the ladder.

Then a great rasping sob had come from Danny’s throat and Commer had pulled the rifle out of the nerveless fingers.

Now he dropped his cigarette butt on the stained floor and ground it out with his heavy heel while that incident faded with the others from the dark place in his soul.

He rose slowly to his feet, walked over to the window, stood and looked out into the park, saw dimly the shifting, growing crowd, heard the increased roar as they saw his bulky silhouette against the office light. He half-sneered as he realized who they must be: The drug-store commandos. The pool room Lotharios. The city’s amateur Cagneys.

But he felt also the slow certain growth of fear, an ember threatening to ignite the ready tinder of his mind. He realized what a lynching would mean to him and to the city. It would kill his pride and self-respect more certainly than the impact of lead would kill his stubborn body.

He sighed, trying to shrug off his fear, walked to the desk and brought out two large official thirty-eights. He held one in each hand and looked at them then tossed them back into the drawer, slamming it shut with his chunky knee. He fumbled in the wall locker and brought out a submachine gun. He held it and looked down at it, looked at its shining, oiled efficiency, fingered the compensator, tested the slide and then stood silently, testing his strength against the smoldering ember of fear.

He grunted as he stooped and hauled two heavy drums of fifty shells each out of the bottom of the locker. He snapped one onto the gun and then walked back toward the cells, the gun dangling from one blunt hand, the drum clenched in the other.

At the door of Burton’s cell he laid the gun and drum on the floor, unlocked the cell and walked in. The hanging bulb made harsh light and blocky shadows in the cell. Burton slid off the cot and made quick short steps backward until he was pressed against the far wall, his huge black hands pressed palm-flat, fingers spread, against the whitewashed concrete, his face a shining impassive mask except for the wide eyes, dark iris rimmed with white. He was straight and tall, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, a graceful and living creature, shocked and helpless under the pressure of the threat of sudden, violent death.

Commer stood for a few minutes looking at him, expression calm, eyes friendly. “Got a feeling you didn’t do it, Burton,” he said. “You look like a good boy to me.”

Burton licked his lips, the glaze of fear fading slightly from his eyes as he answered, “I swear to God, Sheriff, I didn’t do it. I ain’t a killin’ man. I hear em yellin’ out there like they goin’ to come in and get me any minute. Don’t let ’em do it. Don’t let ’em do it!” The last few words were a sob.

“Whether they come in or not depends on you, Burton.”

“On me, sir? On me?” His tone was incredulous.

“That’s right. Can I trust you?”

“Yes, sir. I do anything you tell me.”

“Would you run away if you had the chance and knew I didn’t want you to?”

Burton stood silently. Then he said, “No, sir.” Commer believed him, believed him because of the pause, the weighing of loyalty against the fear that he could almost see in Burton’s eyes. The man hadn’t answered too fast.

Commer walked out, picked up the gun and drum and went back into the cell. He threw the drum onto the cot and poked the gun toward Burton. The big man stared in silent wonder and then reached out and took the gun in shaking hands.

“Careful, now! This-here thing is the safety. I’ve set the gun so that each time you pull the trigger you get a shot. The drum comes off like this. See? When it’s empty the slide stays back and then you stick on the other drum like this.”

“Yessir, but...”

“Now I’m going to leave you with your cell door open so you can sight down the hall here. If they come in, they’ll come through that door there, the door to my office. Shoot first into the ceiling. If they keep coming put a few in the floor. If they still keep coming, lock yourself in quick. Here’s the key. Then drop behind the corner of the cot and shoot low through the bars at their legs. Understand?”

“Yessir.” Burton stood holding the gun, a glow of hope in his eyes, his face full of a gratitude so deep that tears formed along his lower lids. “I’ll do just like you tell me, sir. I couldn’t let you down after this, Sheriff.” And he held the gun out, cradled in his arms as though it were the present of kings.

Commer grunted, turned on his heel and walked out, leaving the cell door open, walking steadily and slowly down the corridor, through his office, out the front door and onto the porch. There he stopped and watched the crowd, listening to their animal growling, every fiber of his mind screaming to him to turn and run for shelter. But he stood and held his arms up, a travesty of a benediction, calling for silence. For long minutes there was no response, then the shouting died to a murmuring. He heard a few last shouts of “We want Burton” and “Bring him out or we’re a-comin’ in after him!”

In his deep slow voice Commer bellowed into the darkness, “You all can come in after him right now. I just give him a submachine gun and plenty of ammunition. He’s in there a-waitin’ for you. Come ahead, boys! He’s all yours!”

There was an angry mutter from the crowd. Commer imagined that those who had bolstered their frail courage with corn liquor now felt a sudden sobering chill. He was glad that he had always backed up his statements, never bluffed. Yet he could hardly see because of the dizzy spin of fear in his head.

Then a top-heavy man with a shock of light hair came striding out of the shadows into the dim glow of the street lamp. Commer walked heavily down the steps to meet him, recognizing him as Ham Alberts, itinerant handyman, loud-mouth and trouble-maker. But he was a bull in the strength of his youth.

They stared at each other. Commer saw through his film of fear that Ham was quivering with outraged righteous indignation. The offended honor of a taxpayer who had never paid a tax.

“Commer,” he said hoarsely, “you got no call to arm a killer. You’re paid to stay on the side of the law. What the hell you doin’?”

“Just saving a man from a bunch of corner loafers. Why?” Commer’s voice sounded flat and disinterested, but he wondered if Alberts could hear the beating of his heart.

“If any of us gets kilt goin’ in after him, it’s gonna be your fault!”

“Do I looked worried, sonny? I do my duty my own way. No call for you to try to tell me how to do it. Now go on in and get him. What you waiting for? Yellow maybe?”

“Why, you tin-shield copper...” and Alberts lifted a beefy fist back and poised it two feet from Commer’s jaw. In spite of the roaring in his ears, Commer looked calmly at the fist and then into Alberts’ narrowed eyes.

“Don’t know as that there is one of your best ideas, sonny. I’m going down to the corner for some coffee while you boys take care a this little matter.” He turned away from Alberts, jiggling a cigarette out of a crumpled pack as he walked away.

Inside he writhed with terror, but there was room in his mind to wonder at the sober, quiet way his thick legs carried him along down the street. He stopped at the corner and lit his cigarette, his fingers strong and steady, the flare of the wooden match lighting up his stolid cheek bones, his mild brow.

Then he glanced back and saw Ham Alberts under the light, hollering into the shadows, his arms spread wide in a beseeching gesture. Commer couldn’t hear the words, but he could see in the distance the vague forms of the men who had been clustered in the park melting back away from the jail, away from the deadly Burton, ignoring the furious Alberts.

Then Alberts dropped his arms helplessly and wandered after them.

Commer sucked in a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it in a long, blue column into the soft night air. He turned and headed for his coffee, knowing in his heart that the strong body had defeated the fear demons of the mind, this time.

But the next time...