Honest Money and Other Short Novels

Devil’s Fire

Ken Corning pushed his way through the gawking pedestrians who still loitered on the sidewalk. They had formed in a white-faced ring about the red pool which spread along the cold surface of the gray cement, reflecting the street lights until they seemed like glowing rubies.

“Who saw it?” Corning asked.

A uniformed officer extended a long arm.

“On your way,” he ordered. “It’s all over now. On your way. Keep moving. Nothing more to see.”

A man moved up to Ken Corning, sized him up with eager eyes.

When he spoke, his voice was whining.

“I seen it, boss.”

The officer singled out Ken Corning.

“Hey, you! On your way. There ain’t nothin’ more to see. Keep movin’.”

Ken Corning sized up the narrow shoulders, the glinting eyes, the lips that twisted back from the teeth.

“All right,” he said. “What happened?”

The officer barged into them.

“You heard what I said. Get movin’ an’ keep movin’. Just because there’s been a man hurt ain’t no sign that...”

“I’m collecting evidence,” Ken Corning told him.

“Huh? Collectin’ what?”

“Evidence.”

“Who you with?”

“I’m a lawyer. I’m representing the man that was arrested for the murder, George Pyle.”

“You’re a lawyer, representing George Pyle?”

“Right.”

“Who hired you?”

“A friend of Pyle’s. They told me to get here and get the facts, then to see what I could do for Pyle.”

The officer’s eyes showed doubt. The crowd, sensing some new diversion, surged in to a closer circle. The man at Ken Corning’s elbow said for him alone: “Let’s go some place where we can talk, bo.”

The officer restated his command, this time in a louder voice, as though he would make himself more certain by adding to his vehemence. Ken Corning took the man’s arm.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They pushed through the curious ring of spectators, heard in the dim distance the wailing of a siren, heard the officer, assured now of his power, ordering the curious bystanders to be on their way.

Ken Corning picked a rooming-house.

“We can go up here,” he said.

“Okey, boss,” the man told him.

They turned in under the illuminated sign and climbed a flight of dark stairs. A simpering landlady, well past middle age, pushed a buckram-backed book with frayed pages across an inclined desk.

Corning looked at the narrow-shouldered man.

“Got any place where you’re staying?” he asked.

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“Henry Lampson.”

“All right. Write it. I’m staking you to a room.”

The man wrote his name on the register. The broad-hipped landlady regarded him with shrewd eyes, then looked at Ken Corning.

“Something at twelve a week,” she suggested.

Ken Corning peeled off two fives and two ones from a roll of bills which he took from his pocket.

The landlady took down a key from a hook and labored slowly down the corridor. The men followed. She opened a door with something of a flourish. Ken Corning pushed Lampson into the room, followed him, and closed the door.

“All right,” he said, “what happened? When did it happen?”

The man looked around the room, turned to regard the closed door. His eyes slithered over Corning.

“About half an hour before I saw you in the crowd and heard you say you were hired for this guy Pyle. That’s right, is it? You’re the guy’s lawyer, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Nothing unless you tell the truth.”

“Then?”

“That depends on what the truth is.”

Lampson thought that over for a few minutes, then said: “Well, there were three or four guys walking down the street — the dead man, the man that got pinched, and a couple of others. They were ahead of me. There was some sort of an argument. I didn’t pay too much attention to what it was. Then I saw there was a fight, or it looked like it would have been a fight.

“You say you’re representing the guy that got the pinch, and that his name is Pyle?”

“That’s right,” Corning said.

“Who’s the dead man?”

“A chap named Frank Glover. He draws quite a bit of water in some sections of the underworld. Go on. Tell me what happened. I’m interested in that fight business.”

“Well, it wasn’t really a fight. The two guys were holding your man. The one that was killed was sore, but he was keeping his hands in sight, and not making any passes with his fists. Your man, the one that you’re actin’ as lawyer for, was talkin’ plenty. He was sore, too, and he was telling the whole cockeyed world about it. The two were holding him. He was trying to do something, either to reach a gun, or to swing his fists. There was a lot of argument.”

The man paused.

“All right,” Corning told him. “I’m listening.”

“Well, everything happened sort of quick like, then. Somehow or other this guy, that’s your client, got loose from the two guys. He sort of crouched, swung to one side, and then I heard a gun go ‘bang,’ Your man started to run, and the other guy went down to the sidewalk. Right through the heart, I heard it was, and with lead that mushroomed.”

“Go on,” Corning told him, as Lampson hesitated. “He started to run, and then what happened?”

“It was a police radio car that swung around the corner. Seems like it had been somewhere in the neighborhood, and somebody telephoned an alarm in to the police. Anyway, that’s the way I heard it from the guy on the car. The police car saw the man running, and they nabbed him.”

“How long was that after the shooting?”

“It couldn’t have been very long. The man had run about a block. It takes a guy a little while to run a block, not long.”

“And the two men who were with the murdered man. What did they do?”

“They seemed to huddle there for a minute, then they went down on their knees beside the stiff. They were pulling open his shirt, taking off his vest, and doing that sort of thing. They didn’t raise a yell, and they didn’t try to get the man that was running. They told the cops they didn’t have guns, and they wasn’t running after any murderers.”

Ken Corning paced the floor of the shabby room. The eager eyes of the narrow-shouldered man followed him.

“The dead man had a gun,” Corning snapped suddenly. “The police found it on him. Isn’t that right?”

“Sure that’s right. I seen it.”

“Why didn’t the two guys take that gun and stop Pyle?”

“I don’t know. Nobody asked them that question.”

“And they found Pyle’s gun?”

“Yeah. Pyle claimed lie didn’t do any shooting, that he didn’t have a gun and all that sort of stuff, but a broad from the apartment house on the corner saw him throw something back of a signboard. The cops started prowling around and found a gun. I heard one of them say that it was the gun that killed the dead man. I don’t know, only what the cops said.”

Ken Corning turned to stare steadily at the other.

“How did it happen they didn’t hold you as a witness?”

“Because I didn’t speak my little piece. I pretended I was just a guy who had come up after the shooting.”

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

The man fidgeted slightly.

“Because, brother, I don’t want the bulls prying around into my record, where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.”

He opened his coat. There was a leather case suspended under his arm. He snapped back a flap, pulled out steel tools which he dropped to the table. They gave forth dull, clinking noises as one of them dropped on top of the other.

Ken Corning regarded the pile with puckered eyes.

“Burglar tools, eh?”

“Sure.”

“Why did you come clean with me?”

“Because you’re a mouthpiece. I may need a good mouthpiece. I got a rod, too. See the point? I got a record. I ain’t clean on my last rap, broke parole if you want to know. I knew the bulls would take me to headquarters for questioning if I told my little story. So I kept mum. Then you came up and started talking, and I knew you could fix it so I got a little piece of jack, maybe, and didn’t get a police frame.”

Ken Corning picked up the burglar tools.

“Where’s the rod?” he asked.

The man who had given his name as Lampson pulled back the bottom of his coat, tugged a gun from his right hip pocket. It was a .22 Colt automatic.

“That’s it, brother,” he said. “You’re taking charge of it from now on.”

Ken Corning sniffed of the end of the barrel. He pulled back the mechanism until he could eject the loaded shell, thrust a thumb nail into the opening, holding it in such a position that it reflected light into the interior of the barrel. He studied the riflings with a thoughtful eye, sniffed of the end of the barrel again.

“Gee, you ain’t trying to pin it on me,” said the man, the whining tone of his voice once more in evidence.

Ken Corning raised his eyes, regarded the man over the top of the end sight on the barrel.

“What sort of gun was used in the killing?” he asked.

“Gee, boss, how should I know? The cops found the gun a good half block from where I was standin’, and...”

“Never mind that,” Corning told him, interrupting the whining flow of words. “You know all right. You were there, where you could hear everything. What sort of gun was it?”

Lampson’s eyes sought the floor. His face twitched nervously.

“Honest to gawd, boss...”

“What sort of gun?” bellowed Corning.

The answer was so weak as to be almost inaudible.

“A .22 automatic, boss; what they call a Colt ‘Woodsman.’ That’s why I’m going to need a mouthpiece, bad.”

Corning paced the floor of his office. Every few seconds he snapped his left arm around in front of his face and stared at the dial of his wrist-watch, then went on pacing.

A key made a metallic noise in the lock of the outer door. The bolt clicked back. Helen Vail, Ken Corning’s secretary, stood straight and slim on the threshold, her eyes filled with anxiety.

“Got here just as quick as I could, chief,” she said. “I didn’t get the telephone message until I got back from the picture show. What is it?”

Ken Corning took out a package of cigarettes, snapped out one, offered it to Helen Vail, took another for himself. She came close to him to share the flame of the match.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said, exhaling cigarette smoke as he extinguished the flame of the match. “I got a telephone call about eight o’clock from a man who said he was George Pyle’s bodyguard. He said Pyle had been framed, that there was a shooting out at Lincoln Drive and Beemer Street, and for me to get out there right away.

“I had the car here. I made it in nothing flat. The police had moved the body and taken Pyle to jail. I picked up a yegg who tells me Ms name is Lampson. He’s a witness to the whole thing. He thinks perhaps Pyle did the shooting, but he’s willing to shade his testimony our way if he can get a little cash. He was packing a .22 automatic. The police say it was a Colt ‘Woodsman’ .22 that killed Glover. A girl says she saw Pyle chuck one away. She’s a peroxide blonde cashier in a cheap restaurant. She’s positive as hell. I didn’t get to talk with her, but I talked with the girl who shares the apartment with her.

“Frank Glover was the man that got bumped. He’d been asking for it for a long while. Sam Gilman and Shorty French were with him at the time. They say Pyle got in an argument and tried to swing on Glover. Glover used some fighting language, but didn’t move his hands. They grabbed Pyle’s arms. He broke away, jerked out a rod and let Glover have it, right through the heart, just the one shot. That’s their story.

“The gun the cops found back of the signboard seems okey to them. It had been recently fired — one shot. I understand there were some fingerprints on it — not so awfully clear, but clear enough, and that those fingerprints were Pyle’s.

“The cops did the usual routine stuff. They kept people on the move, I went to a rooming-house with this witness, Lampson. When I came out, I went back to the scene of the shooting and did a little prowling. I found this.”

Ken Corning took a jagged-edged bit of tissue paper from his pocket and placed it on the desk. The girl leaned forward, touched it with her fingertips, then recoiled.

“Blood!” she said.

Ken Corning nodded.

“Sure,” he told her. “I found it lying in the pool of blood that was on the pavement. I picked it up.”

“Does it mean anything?” she asked, staring.

“I don’t know. It’s queer. Why should a piece of tissue paper be lying in a pool of blood. It’s not so very big — half an inch one way, by a quarter of an inch the other, but it’s something that isn’t explained; and, in a murder case, everything should be explained.”

Helen Vail’s lips pursed thoughtfully.

“Do you suppose that red color is due entirely to the bloodstains?” she asked. “The paper looks funny, somehow.”

“I don’t know that, either,” Corning said.

“What you want me to do, chief?”

He shoved his feet wide apart, standing as though he had braced himself against a blow. His jaw was pushed forward, the lips clamped into a firm, straight line.

“Those damned cops won’t let me talk with Pyle, and I’ve got to do it. I’m going to get out a writ of habeas corpus.”

“They won’t admit him to bail in a murder case,” she pointed out.

“I know that right enough,” he said, clipping the words short, “but they’ll let me see him. I want to talk with him.”

Helen Vail jerked the rubber cover from a typewriter.

“After that?” she asked.

“After that,” he said, “you’re going to find out something about that girl who saw the gun flung in behind the billboard,”

“All rightie. Give me elbow room while I fill out these blanks. What’s his name? Just George Pyle?”

“Right,” he said.

She looked up as she was pulling legal blanks from the drawer of her desk.

“How about other witnesses?” she asked.

“Plenty of them who saw Pyle running away after the shooting. They heard the sound of the shot, and looked around to see what it was all about. They saw Glover falling, Pyle running. There’s no one who saw him throw the gun over behind the billboard except the jane in the apartment.”

“Any question that the gun the police found is the one that did the shooting?”

“Too early to tell. But an expert can check it by firing test bullets. Those things are proven mathematically these days.”

She nodded, fed the legal blank into the typewriter and started swift fingers clacking the keys with the staccato effect of gunfire.

George Pyle stared through the wire partition which stretched across the long table in the visitors’ room in the jail. His eyes were red and bloodshot. His face was pale. Every few moments he licked his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue.

“Gawd, Corning, you’ve got to spring me on this rap.”

“It’s a frame-up?”

“Of course it’s a frame-up! Do you think I’m such a tripledamned fool as to shoot a man down, with four million witnesses staring at me?”

“It was your gun that did the killing.”

“That’s a damned lie. I never saw the gun in my life.”

“It’s got your fingerprints on it.”

“It can’t have.”

“That’s what the experts say.”

“What experts?”

“A fingerprint expert the police lured, and one that I hired.”

Pyle’s tongue flicked his lips. His eyes shifted from Corning’s, then returned with the look of desperation of a caged animal.

“Can’t you get me out of here? It’s those damned bars. They leer at me all the time. I see them everywhere I turn. They’re driving me nuts.”

Corning shook his head slowly.

“Keep cool,” he counseled. “You get yourself all worked up and they’ll trap you into some sort of an admission, and then it will be all off.”

Pyle sucked in a deep breath, as though he had been about to dive under a cold shower.

“Corning, can they... will they... is there any chance... do you suppose that they’d... the death penalty, you know, I wouldn’t get that, would I?”

Corning’s eyes were impatient.

“Listen,” he said, “you’re in here, charged with first degree murder. The D. A.’s going after the death penalty. There’s a case against you that looks black as hell. Now quit this damned yellow yammering, and get down to brass tacks. There’s only one way I can get you out of here, and that’s through the front door, and I can’t do that unless you use your head to think with instead of getting hysterical. Now tell me what happened.”

The man on the other side of the coarse wire mesh ran an apprehensive finger around the inside of his shirt collar.

“Gawd!” he said, hoarsely.

Corning waited, steady-eyed, remorselessly patient.

After a moment, Pyle began talking in a low, mechanical voice, his eyes fastened on the battered top of the long table.

“I was walking down the street with Sam Gilman, Shorty French and Frank Glover. Frank and I were due for a showdown. He’d been chiseling. I knew it. He was prepared to sit tight and fight it out. I didn’t want to do that.

“I didn’t intend to discuss things until we got to Glover’s apartment. I was supposed to be alone, but I’d planted three of my men in an apartment next to Glover’s. They were ready to shoot the door of Glover’s apartment into splinters and bust in, if they heard any sounds of trouble. And they were watching the elevators so that if any of Glover’s men marched me out with a rod in my back they’d get a surprise.”

Corning’s voice was impatient.

“Where was your gun?” he asked.

“I didn’t have any.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“That’s on the up and up, Corning. I didn’t have any rod. I swear I didn’t. That was one of the things Glover insisted on. I was to come alone and have no rod. We were to go to his apartment for a talk. What he didn’t know, was that I’d been working on a plant next to his apartment for three or four months. I’d moved some of my men in, and had Tommies up there and some grenades. I’d have pine-appled his joint in a minute if he’d tried anything funny.

“Well, we were walking along the street with everyone quiet-like, until suddenly, just at that place, Shorty French let a remark drop that showed me Glover had been two-timing with my girl. I saw red, I’ll admit that, He could have had a regiment around him, and I’d have called him just the same.

“I tried to swing on him, and Shorty and Sam Gilman grabbed me. Glover sneered at me and asked me what I was going to do about it. I’d have done plenty if I’d had the chance. Then I managed to break away, and just as I did it, there was a bang. I swear I don’t know who fired the shot, but it sounded as though it had come from right around me somewhere.

“It seemed like a half second after the shot before anything happened, and then I saw that Glover was sagging down to the ground. I knew it was some sort of a frame-up, and I guess I lost my head. I started to sprint.

“Then a cop car came around the comer, and I knew I was framed for the rap. But I didn’t throw any rod behind any billboard, and I didn’t have any rod on me, and I didn’t do any shooting.”

Ken Corning stared steadily at his client.

“You heard the shot?”

“Sure.”

“It was right near you?”

“Yes.”

“And you figure it must have been either Sam Gilman or Shorty French that fired that shot?”

“Of course.”

“But you didn’t see any gun, and you couldn’t swear that either of them made even so much as a threatening motion?”

“No.”

Ken Corning’s stare was that of a doctor who must give unpleasant news to a patient. “Pyle,” he said, slowly, “do you think any jury on earth is going to believe that story?”

Beads of perspiration glinted from the prisoner’s forehead, but his eyes met those of the lawyer.

“No,” he said, in a voice that was filled with terror.

Corning stood, feet planted wide apart, eyes staring steadily at Harry Lampson.

“Get this,” he said, “and get it straight. I’m representing George Pyle. He comes first. You can’t drag me into your troubles, or pull a double-cross on Pyle. I’ll help you out of your jam, if I can help my client by doing it. Otherwise I won’t.”

The man who had been so meek and appealing was now cold and hard.

“Where the hell do you get that noise about me being in a jam? I ain’t in any jam. I came clean and told you the low-down that would help your client. If I don’t get a cut, I kick through with the real stuff.”

Ken Corning eyed the man with evident distaste.

“Meaning?” he asked.

“Meaning that I’ll switch over and tell the bulls about your man flinging the gun away as he ran, about seeing the rod in his hand just before the shot was fired.”

“Like that, eh?” Corning asked.

“Like that,” Lampson told him.

“Seems to me you’re independent as hell all of a sudden.”

“Does it?”

“It does.”

The man shrugged his shoulders.

“Well,” he said, “there’s the dope. Take it or leave it. I’m sitting pretty.”

Ken Corning walked to the window of the room. It was dingy and narrow. The lace curtain which covered it seemed indicative of the fact that the occupants of the room were usually more concerned with keeping the public from seeing in, rather than seeing out themselves.

Corning’s eyes, staring down at the shadows of the street, caught the swing of heavy shoulders as a big man pushed his way into the door of the rooming-house. Another man stood, loitering in a doorway across the street. He seemed strangely immobile.

Ken Corning whirled on the man who was watching him with ratty eyes.

“What kind of a double-crossing game—?”

He had no chance to finish the question. Feet sounded in the corridor outside of the room. Heavy knuckles pounded the panels of the door.

“Jeeze,” said Lampson in a strained, choking voice.

He got to his feet, scuttled across the room in an ecstasy of haste, twisted the key in the lock. A man on the other side of the door pushed it open, barged into the room.

“So,” he said.

Police detective was stamped all over him, from the broad-toed shoes to the heavy neck, the accusing eyes, the thick lips that held a cigar clamped at an aggressive angle.

“Hello, Maxwell,” said Corning, casually.

Maxwell held Corning with his eyes.

“You got a hell of a crust, tampering with a state’s witness.”

Ken Corning laughed.

“In the first place,” he said, “I wasn’t tampering with him. In the second place, he isn’t a state’s witness. He’s my witness. I found him on the street after the shooting, and I brought him here. I was with him when he registered, and I paid for the room.”

The detective twisted his heavy lips.

“Says you!” he grated.

He turned to Lampson. “What’s the low-down?” he asked.

Lampson’s voice was low, rapid and toneless, like the voice of a frightened child speaking a piece at a school entertainment.

“He came in here and told me I had to swear that Shorty French had a gun in his hand and that I seen it. He said I had to swear that the man that ran away couldn’t have done any shooting, that his arms were held until after the gunshot was fired, until after Glover hit the pavement. He said, if I didn’t swear that, he was going to plant a rod on me and frame me for the murder rap.”

“Subornation of perjury,” remarked Maxwell in a voice of rumbling accusation.

“Baloney!” snapped Corning.

“If you think it’s baloney,” Maxwell told him, tugging handcuffs from the back of his belt, “try and laugh this off.”

Corning looked at the handcuffs.

“What the hell do you think this is?” he asked.

“A pinch,” Maxwell said.

Abruptly, Corning laughed. “Gentlemen,” he said, “let’s not have any misunderstanding about this. Let’s agree upon the date and the time; also the persons present. This is Wednesday, the eighth of the month. The hour is exactly seven and one-half minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon. There are present in this room, Henry Lampson, myself, and Thomas Maxwell, a police detective, who has just recently entered the room. There are no other persons in this room. Is that right?”

Maxwell stared with suspicious eyes at Ken Corning. Lampson looked at the police detective with the look of helpless interrogation which a tenderfoot gives to a guide in the forest.

“What the hell you trying to pull?” asked Maxwell.

“Nothing,” Ken Corning told him, “except that I want to get the time and the place established beyond dispute. Have I said anything that wasn’t the truth?”

“Aw, go jump in the lake!” Maxwell growled. “You can’t run a bluff on us with all that line of hooey. You’re going to headquarters.”

“Got a warrant?” Corning asked.

“Got enough to take you in for questioning,” Maxwell remarked with emphasis. “After I get you in for questioning, Lampson here is going to swear to a charge. Ain’t you, Lampson?”

“Sure,” Lampson said.

“And there’s no mistake or misunderstanding about the time and the place and the persons present?” Corning asked.

“Hell, no!” the detective exploded. “Have that your own way; but you’re coming with me now.”

“Fine,” said Ken Corning with evident satisfaction. “Put those bracelets away. They don’t frighten me any. You aren’t going to use them, anyway, until you’ve got a warrant. I’ll pay the taxi fare to the jail.”

They walked from the room. Lampson locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Maxwell took Ken Corning’s arm in a firm grip. Ken Corning laughed.

“You fellows are going to hear more of this,” he said.

“Yeah, I know that line of hooey,” the detective told him.

They filed down the stairs. I here was a taxicab waiting at the curb. They entered it and went to the jail. Lampson scrawled a signature upon a legal blank that had already been typed. He held up his right hand and mumbled an affirmative to the oath which was administered.

“How about getting bail?” asked Corning.

“Sure,” said Maxwell. “You won’t have no trouble on that. We don’t want to throw you in. We’re just getting you where you ain’t tampering with witnesses. You can get out on your own recognizance if you want.”

“Well,” Corning said, “let me get to a telephone, and then I’ll fix up a bail bond.”

“You ain’t going to make application for a release without bail?” Maxwell inquired.

“No.”

“All right then. Have it your own way. I was just trying to be nice to you. Hell, you don’t have to get high hat! You’re playing a game, and so’m I. I caught you off first base, an’ I tagged you with the ball. There don’t need to be hard feelings.”

“Thanks,” said Corning, sarcastically. “When I want your advice I’ll ask for it. Let me get to that telephone.”

He was shown a telephone booth. He dropped a coin, closed the door, and gave the number of his office. Helen Vail’s voice answered the telephone.

“Listen,” he told her, “this is important as the devil. You’ve got to have some help. Get Johnson from the Intercoastal Agency to help you. There’s a rooming-house at Beemer Street near where Glover was murdered. A chap named Lampson has a room there. He’s out. Get a pass key. Get into the room, put in a dictograph some place where it’s concealed behind a picture or something. Run the wires into the adjoining room. I rented that room yesterday under the name of Ragland. I thought it might come in handy. Set up a plant there. Have a notebook filled with pothooks. Use an old one.

“Take this down, and put it in the notebook as the last thing that was said... Ready?... All right. Here we go. ‘And there’s no mistake or misunderstanding about the time and the place and the persons present?’ ‘Hell no. Have that your own way, but you’re coming with me now!’ ”

There was a moment of silence, then Helen Vail’s voice over the wire: “Okey, chief, I got that. What else?”

“Just use your head,” he told her, “and sit tight. I’ll be there some time. I don’t know when. Stick there, even if it’s a week. Have meals sent in if you have to. Sleep in a chair; but don’t leave that room.”

“I gotcha,” she told him.

Ken Corning hung up the telephone, walked from the booth.

“I’m having trouble getting bail,” he said.

Maxwell shrugged his shoulders. “Any time you want to ask a favor,” he said, “I’ll get hold of the D. A.’s office, and they’ll send a man down and agree you can go on your own.”

“I,” said Ken Corning, “will see you in hell before I ask a favor.”

“Okey, have it your own way,” said Maxwell, and grinned.

Ken Corning walked back to the telephone booth. “I’ll try another angle,” he said.

He got a bail bond company on the line, a company to whom he had given a fair share of business from various clients. “I’m in the can,” he told them, “on a charge of subornation of perjury. It’s a frame-up to blow up one of my witnesses in the George Pyle case, and give the witness a good background for switching over to the prosecution. The witness is a crook with a criminal record, and they want the publicity of getting me for subornation of perjury to make it look okey for the witness to make a switch. The bail’s ten thousand dollars. I’m stalling. Wait for about half an hour, then bring over a bond and spring me. Got that? Fine.”

Ken Corning hung up the telephone, waited around the jail office. Maxwell yawned, frowned. “We’re not waiting all night,” he said. “I’ve offered you an out. You won’t take it. You either raise bail in the next thirty minutes, or you stay here overnight.”

“It’ll be here inside of thirty minutes,” Corning told him.

“It’s just a matter of business all around,” Maxwell said, his manner propitiating.

“Go to hell,” Corning advised him.

At the expiration of the half hour, a representative of the bail bond company bustled in with the bail bond. Maxwell checked it over.

“Why didn’t you want to go out on your own?” he asked. “What’s the idea of all the fuss?”

Ken Corning regarded him with cold, watchful eyes. “Can you keep a secret?” he inquired.

Maxwell looked suspicious, but nodded.

“You see,” Corning explained, “I wanted to get something on the police. I wanted to show that the police were framing up cases, and show that they were trying to railroad George Pyle by intimidating his lawyer and his witnesses.”

Tom Maxwell sprawled out in the chair. He stretched his feet far out, slid down on the small of his back, yawned prodigiously.

“Yeah,” he said, “a fat chance you got, under arrest for subornation of perjury.”

Corning nodded.

“You see,” he went on, speaking in a patient tone, as though explaining an elemental matter to a small child, “I wanted to be certain that Lampson actually went on record under oath before I sprung my side of the case. Otherwise, I’d have taken you into the room where my witnesses were, before we went down to the jail.”

Maxwell was half way through another yawn. Abruptly, his jaws snapped shut. His body became rigid with attention. Slowly, he hoisted his weight on his elbows until he was sitting upright in the chair.

“Witnesses?” he asked.

“Sure,” Corning told him. “You don’t think I’m a big enough fool to walk into a police trap with my eyes shut, do you? I had a dictograph wired into that room, and every word that was said was taken down by a shorthand reporter who sat at the other end of the dictograph in an adjoining room. That was why I was so anxious to have it straight just exactly who was present, just exactly the time and place, and who was talking. Remember that don’t you?”

Maxwell came out of the chair as though it had been electrified. He stared at Corning with wide, bulging eyes. Then he strode across the room, jerked open a door, and said: “A couple of you boys come with me. We’re going to make a fast ride.”

He came back towards Corning, his face flushed, lips twitching.

“Damn you,” he said, “you can’t pull a line of hooey like that. You’ll plant witnesses by tomorrow, but this is the time we call you, and call you cold. Come on. If you’ve got any dictograph in that room, show it to me, and show it to me now!”

Ken Corning became reluctant.

“I’m a free man now, out on bail. You can’t order me around.”

Maxwell laughed sneeringly, “Thought it was all a damned big bluff. But it don’t make any difference what it was. You’re going right back there and point out any alibi you’ve got, and you’re going to do it now.”

They loaded Corning into a police car, took him back to the rooming-house, up to the room where he had been when Maxwell had made the arrest.

“Show us,” said the detective.

Corning shrugged his shoulders, walked across the room, looked out of the window, down into the darkness of the street, and said: “Go to hell!”

Maxwell’s laugh was gloating. “Search the dump, boys,” he commanded.

He started the search, jerking down a cheap, framed chromo. He pulled a calendar from the wall, flung it to the floor, pulled out another picture, and suddenly paused, eyes wide, mouth sagging, staring into a metallic circle.

“Jeeze,” he said, “a dictograph!”

“I told you,” Corning remarked, lighting a cigarette.

Maxwell pushed his way from the room, into the corridor, turned the knob on the door of the adjoining room, flung his weight against the door, and sent it banging inward.

There was a couch over near the window, on which lay a man, snoring peacefully. At a table in the center of the room, sat Helen Vail, hair somewhat rumpled, her eyes weary. About her were cigarette stubs, empty beer bottles, a litter of bread crusts from sandwiches. The room looked as though the two occupants had been there for a week.

In front of Helen Vail was a shorthand notebook filled with pothooks and straight lines. There was a receiving end of a dictograph suspended above the table.

Helen Vail turned tired eyes towards the door. The man on the couch gave one last explosive snore and sat up, knuckling his eyes.

“Johnson,” explained Corning, “of the Intercoastal Detective Agency.”

Johnson slid his feet to the floor, grinned sheepishly, and said: “Hello, everybody.”

“Did you get it, Helen?” asked Ken Corning.

Helen Vail stared at him. “I got everything,” she said.

“What’s the last thing you’ve got?”

She thumbed back through the pages of the notebook, saying mechanically: “You mean the last thing before this last bunch of conversation when the detectives took you into the room, searching for the dictograph?”

“Yes.”

She marked a place, started to read, using a toneless, artificial articulation: “Question by Mr. Corning: ‘And there’s no mistake or misunderstanding about the time and the place, and the persons present?’ Answer, by officer, ‘Hell, no. Have that your own way; but you’re coming with me now.’ ”

She looked up questioningly.

“That what you meant?” she said. “It’s the last of the conversation. The door slammed right after that and we heard you going down the corridor. I heard some words as you went past the door, but I didn’t try to take them. You said you wanted only the conversations that took place inside that room.”

Corning nodded.

She picked up the pages of the notebook, pinched them between thumb and forefinger, and riffled them. “There’s an awful lot of stuff here,” she said, “all the conversations, you know.”

Ken Corning glanced over at Maxwell, then turned once more to Helen Vail, and said: “Never mind those, not now. You can write up your notes later and Johnson can support them with an affidavit.”

Maxwell took two swift strides towards Corning. His face was flushed, the eyes glittering, veins on the sides of his forehead stood out like small ropes.

“Damn you!” he gritted. “Think you’re — damned smart, don’t you?”

“I think,” Corning told him, “that when the police rely on the testimony of an ex-convict to frame a charge of subornation of perjury on a reputable lawyer, and a charge of murder on George Pyle, that they’d better be damned certain they aren’t going to get in over their neckties before they start rocking the boat.”

Maxwell granted a comment to the two men who had accompanied him.

“Come on, boys,” he said, “there’s nothing for us here.”

The men filed out of the room, the door slammed. Helen Vail grinned at Corning. Johnson sighed.

“A good plant?” asked the girl, indicating the remnants of sandwiches, the butts of cigarettes.

“I’ll tell the world,” Corning gloated. “You must have been busy!”

“We raided the garbage pail in the lunchroom of the office building,” she told him, “and we dumped all the ash trays into a paper. It took a little while to rig the dictograph, but we worked it as fast as we could. The Intercoastal had a set, so we didn’t lose time there. It wasn’t connected up with anything except dead wires. I was afraid they were going to test it. If they had, it wouldn’t have worked.”

Corning chuckled.

“It was the build-up that did it. Maxwell got such a shock that he lost his grip.”

“Want me for anything more?” Johnson asked.

“Better stick around,” Corning told him. “There may be something that’ll turn up.”

“What’ll they do now?” Helen Vail wanted to know.

Corning studied his cigarette smoke.

“That’s hard to tell. They had planned to make Lampson a star witness, to spread the news of my arrest, and the attempt to ‘fix’ the prosecution’s witness. Now they’ll have to crawl in a hole. Probably they’ll let Lampson sneak out of the picture. They’ll dismiss the charge against me.”

“But,” protested the girl, “why don’t you be the one to bust into the newspapers with the whole story and make them see that the police are framing on Pyle?”

He shook his head.

“Because then I’d have to go on record as claiming we had verbatim reports of the conversations in that room. As it is, we made a good enough plant to bluff Maxwell. Hell let sleeping dogs lie, and wonder when and how I’m going to raise my point. It’ll make them jumpy all through the case. But, if we busted into print, some of the wise guys would demand a transcription of the conversations. We could fake them, but they wouldn’t be exactly right. Some smart bird would see the discrepancy, start in checking up on details, and catch us in a hell of a mess.

“I’d rather act on the sleeping dog principle and keep mum about the entire affair.”

Johnson nodded.

“My agency would go as far as it did,” he said, “but no farther. We couldn’t afford to be mixed up in a mess if someone should start checking back on the facts.”

Helen Vail suddenly gave a little exclamation, slipped open the pages of her shorthand notebook, and took out a bit of colored tissue paper.

“Lookee what I found,” she said.

Ken Corning examined the piece of paper, a bit of crumpled red tissue, upon one side of which was a dark encrustation. It was about the same size as the other bit of paper he had found in the pool of blood on the sidewalk.

“Where’d you find it?” he snapped.

“Same place you found the other.”

“What is it?” Johnson asked.

Ken Corning kept his eyes on the piece of paper.

“Damned if I know,” he said, “but I’m going to find out.”

Helen Vail crossed her knees and made little smoothing motions with her fingers as she pressed her skirt over the curve of the uppermost knee. “I can’t get a thing on her, chief. Her name’s Mary Bagley. She has a corner apartment on the second floor. She works as cashier in the Big Disc Restaurant Company’s Ninth Street restaurant. She doesn’t seem to have any men friends to speak of, doesn’t flash around in expensive clothes, seems just like any ordinary working girl. She’s positive as the very devil. Says she didn’t see the shooting, but she did hear the noise of the shot, and that she looked out of the window and saw Pyle running down the street towards her apartment house. She says she saw Glover lying on the sidewalk, and the two men standing beside him.

“She saw the men stoop over and start loosening Glover’s collar, and about that time Pyle was abreast of the billboard on the opposite corner of the street. She says he ran diagonally across the street, drew back his hand, and flung something that glittered just the way blued steel glitters in the light. Then he started running down the cross street, the police car swung around the corner, and picked him up. She says she got a good look at his face as he ran down the street, and it was Pyle, without the shadow of a doubt. She’ll identify him anywhere. She picked him out of a line-up at the jail.”

Ken Corning frowned, paced the floor thoughtfully.

“Her apartment’s on the second floor?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve become friendly with her?”

“Yes. And I know Esther Ogier, the girl who shares the apartment with her. Esther wasn’t there at the time. She’s ushering in a picture show and doesn’t get off until after eleven every night.”

Ken Corning absently took a cigarette from his pocket, tapped it on the edge of the polished silver case, lit it, exhaled a stream of smoke.

“It doesn’t check,” he said.

The girl stared at him. Abruptly, he whirled on her.

“You think she’s telling the truth, don’t you? You think Pyle did it. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know what I think,” she told him. “You told me to find out certain things. I found them out. I’ve never talked with Pyle. I don’t know his side of the story. But I do know that there’s lots of witnesses. There are a half dozen different people whose attention was attracted by the shot and who saw Pyle running.”

Corning shrugged his shoulders.

The telephone rang. Helen Vail lifted the receiver, said: “Hello” in a low voice. After a moment she nodded, held the instrument out to Ken Corning.

“It’s the jailer speaking,” she said. “He said Pyle has something important to tell you.”

Ken Corning scooped the receiver up in a single motion, held the transmitter to his lips. “All right,” he said, “this is Corning speaking.”

Pyle’s voice was low-pitched, cautious.

“You remember the thing you was asking me about — if it was mine?” he asked.

“Something heavy?” Corning inquired.

“That’s it.”

“All right. What about it?”

“I just happened to think how fingerprints might have got on it.”

“Okey. Be careful what you say. Spill it.”

“Well, I had an argument with a certain person. I had to take something away from him, something he was threatening me with. I gave it back to him, later, when I’d emptied it.”

“Same general description?” asked Corning.

“Yeah, the same thing — ‘Woodsman,’ you know. Ain’t many around yet.”

“Okey. Who was it?”

“His name’s Pete. They call him Pete the Polack. It was a while ago and I haven’t seen him since. But you can locate him through the shooting galleries. He ran a gallery for a time out at the concessions in Cedar Street Park.”

Ken Corning thought for a few seconds while the telephone line made buzzing noises.

“Know anything more?” he asked.

“Nothing that’ll help. I thought you’d want to know about this.”

“I do,” Ken Corning told him, and hung up the receiver.

He swung back in the swivel-chair, clasped hands behind his head, and fixed his eyes on Helen Vail, although by their expression he seemed to be looking through and beyond her.

“Just had a glimmer of light,” he began slowly. “There were two things that seemed to tie Pyle to the shooting. First, the sound of the shot, which Pyle himself admits was close to him; second, his fingerprints on the .22 ‘Woodsman’ which was found behind the billboard Pyle passed and which the ballistic experts say fired the fatal shot.

“Pyle has just explained, reasonably, if true, how his prints might have been on that gun, and he has given me the name of a man who should be an expert shot with that particular calibre.

“Now, supposing another man than Pyle shot Glover — and we can eliminate the two other men in the group, for they could not have placed the gun where it was found—”

Ken Corning was speaking more rapidly; there was a gleam of growing excitement in his eyes.

“Supposing another man did the shooting — where could he have been? He must have been in the close vicinity of that billboard and — remember, Pyle said that everything was quiet until, unexpectedly, just at that place on the street, one of the men made a remark that started the fight.

“All right. A building close to the billboard, with windows overlooking the scene of the shooting and the cross street around the comer, is that building where the ready-to-order witness, Mary Bagley, has a room.”

“And her room,” interjected Helen Vail softly, “is on the corner and has a window on either street.”

“Exactly,” snapped Ken Corning. “And I’m starting right from there.” The swivel-chair made a sharp thump as he leaned abruptly forward.

“Another thing — I’ve examined the gun that did the killing, the ‘Woodsman’ .22, one of the most accurate of the smaller calibres in the hands of an expert — say a man familiar with shooting galleries. The muzzle of that gun has marks such as a friction coupling of a silencer could have made.”

He stood up abruptly. His eyes were bright and hard. He reached for his hat.

“But,” said Helen Vail, “how about the sound of the shot — right close to Pyle?”

“I think,” Ken Corning said, “you and I have solved that.”

“I!” said Helen Vail incredulously.

Ken Corning smiled down at her. He clamped his hat on his head. “Going out,” he told her “Don’t look for me back until you see me.”

“Anything Johnson can do instead?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. It’s got to be handled with gloves. I want to do it myself. I want to coax a couple of people into my hands right. What’s the name of the apartment house where this Bagley girl hangs out?”

“The Catalina. That’s the name above the door.”

He nodded, strode to the door of the outer office.

“Keep in touch with things,” he said. “Better have someone come in here to stick around the telephone nights. I don’t know when I’ll be back, and I want it so I can call in at any time and get service. Maybe that redhead that we had before can help out.”

She smiled at him, a smile that was almost maternal, despite the fact that she was ten years his junior.

“And have her get things all twisted the way she did before! No, thanks! I’ll have them bring in a cot, and my meals, and I’ll stick around here on a twenty-four-hour shift until the case is over.”

He started to say something, changed his mind, grinned at her and closed the door as he went out. He went at once to the Catalina Apartments.

“I want something in a corner apartment,” he told the tired eyed woman who acted as manager.

She looked at him appraisingly.

“The corner,” he went on, “that’s on the northeast.”

She shook her head slowly.

“I don’t think there’s a thing.”

“No vacancies?”

“None that I can rent. Three of them are vacant, but the rent’s paid until the first of the month. The tenants moved out some days ago rather suddenly. One of them took some of the personal belongings he had there. The others just moved, and I haven’t seen them.”

“Rather strange?” asked Corning disinterestedly. There was a sudden bright gleam in his eyes.

The tired eyes surveyed him with weary caution.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m paid to rent apartments: not to speculate on the affairs of the tenants.”

Ken Corning turned on his heel, walked out of the apartment house, taxied to the want-ad department of a morning newspaper and made arrangements for a quarter column ad. Then he went out to Cedar Street Park.

A thin chap with high cheekbones, thin lips and bright eyes was running the shooting gallery concession. Ken Corning paid a quarter for a gun full of shells, knocked down moving ducks, shot three times at a ball which spurted up on a jet of water, and, when he had the attention of the proprietor, said: “I want to pull a publicity stunt.”

“Yeah?” asked the proprietor, the voice toneless, the eyes sharp with interest.

“Yeah... Fill her up again.”

The man tilted a tube of cartridges into the magazine of the repeater.

“Ever hear of a guy named Pete the Polack?” asked Corning.

The man’s hand jiggled. Shells spilled to the floor. He cursed in a high-pitched whine, stooped to the floor.

“No,” he said, when he had straightened.

“Used to run a concession out here,” said Corning, carelessly. “I thought he’d be glad to help me. I know some friends of his.”

The man slipped the loose shells into the gun, kept his eyes away from Corning’s.

“Used to be a heavy guy with a mustache out here. He sold out to me. I think they called him Pete, but I ain’t sure. He’s been gone for a while now. I never did get to know much about him. He ain’t ever been back since I bought in.”

He slid the tube into place, cocked the gun and handed it to Ken Corning.

“What sort of a publicity stunt was you figuring on?” he asked.

“Going to put up a prize for the best blonde working-girl shot in the city. She’s got to shoot at a regulation target. Gets one hundred dollars and a loving cup. The shots are free if she makes over a certain score, otherwise she pays. She should get about half price.”

“Profits all gone now,” the man said. “Things ain’t gone down in this game, costs are still high... Where do I come in on the free shots — the ones that go over a certain score?”

“You’ll pay that in return for your publicity,” Ken Corning said, knocking down a moving duck. “I’m going to give the thing a lot of space in the newspapers. It’ll bring a lot of people in here, spectators.”

“To see the shooting?” asked the gallery man skeptically.

Ken Corning held the trigger back against the trigger guard, worked the pump of the gun with swift motions of the forearm.

“No,” he said, as the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, “to see the blondes.”

The proprietor of the gallery looked at the vacant spaces in the places where the imitation clay pipes had been.

“You ain’t bad with a rifle yourself, brother.”

“Not so good. A little out of training,” Corning told him. “A month or so would get me back so I could do something worth while. How about it?”

“What’s the publicity?” asked the man back of the counter.

“I’m going to start a selling campaign on a hair-bleaching process that makes silky blondes out of brunettes and restores natural color to hair and all that sort of stuff.”

“So that’s why you want ’em blondes,” said the man. “What’s the rest of it.”

“And the winner of the big prize,” Ken Corning told him, “is going to be the sales manager of my company. She’s going to get a lot of free publicity first. The best blonde shot in the city.”

“Sounds goofy to me,” the man said.

“All publicity schemes are goofy,” Corning assured him; “the idea is to think up something new, so you can get the advertising. All of the logical things have been thought of already. The new things you think of are goofy.”

The man back of the counter said nothing, but continued to look at Corning.

Corning took a dollar from his pocket, and slid it across the counter.

“Now listen,” he said, “I don’t want any misunderstanding about this. I’m going to have a bunch of blonde working-girls come in here to shoot. I’m going to have a crowd around the place. The shoot is going to be advertised as between the hours of seven o’clock and eleven o’clock tomorrow night, first come, first served. At eleven o’clock the girls who have had the two highest scores are going to shoot off the finals — and the one who’s going to win that final shoot is going to be my sales manager, do you understand?”

“Just how do you mean?”

“Just what I say — she’s going to win.”

“Suppose the other girl should be a better shot?”

“She probably will. My sales manager can’t hit a flock of barn doors.”

The bright eyes watched Corning with feverish concentration.

“How the hell is she going to win if she can’t shoot?”

“Because,” said Corning, “she isn’t going to be shooting at the target at all. She’s going to be shooting at the backstop, but the target she’s shooting at is going to be one that’s been prepared in advance. You’re going to pretend to put a plain target on the carrying wire that takes the target back, but it isn’t going to be a plain target. It’s going to be one that’s had six shots put right through the black bull’s-eye in the center of the target. Each contestant is going to fire six shots. Naturally, my girl’s going to win. She’s going to have the highest score.”

“A frame-up, eh?” said the man.

“Of course it’s a frame-up,” Corning told him impatiently.

“I’ve got to get some coin out of it, then,” the man told him.

“How much coin?” Corning asked.

“Fifty bucks, and the shots have got to be paid for at full price.”

“You’d be getting rich,” Corning protested.

“The hell I would,” the man said. “In the first place, you ain’t going to have over a dozen girls to compete — not if they have to pay for their own shots if they don’t make better than a certain record. There ain’t a dozen women in the city who know how to handle guns. You should know that yourself. Watch a woman come to a shooting gallery. She never does it unless there’s some man who drags her in, then, most of the time, she shoots with her eyes closed.”

“All right,” Corning told him, wearily, “have it your own way. I can’t be bothered with a lot of details.”

Corning opened a bill fold and took out five ten-dollar bills.

“My name’s Steve Richey,” he said.

The man on the other side of the counter extended his left hand for the money, placed his thin, feverish right hand inside of Corning’s palm.

“My name’s Ted Fuller.”

“The shoot,” said Corning, “starts tomorrow night at seven o’clock and lasts until eleven. There’ll probably be a crowd. My girl is going to show up for her qualifying shoot just a little before anyone else gets here. We’ll fake the qualifying target, and it’s up to you to see that she wins.”

“Don’t worry,” Fuller said, pushing the money into his pocket, “she’ll win. It may look kind of raw, but she’ll win.”

“I don’t give a damn how raw it looks,” Corning told him. “I want the publicity.”

Corning found a rooming-house which suited his purpose, at 329 Maple Avenue. He registered under the name of Stephen Richey, then he rang up his office and heard Helen Vail’s voice over the telephone.

“Listen,” he told her, “you had a blonde friend who used to come into the office once in a while. I’ve forgotten her name. She was the kind that would photograph well. I think her name was Marian, but I’m not sure.”

“That’s right,” Helen Vail told him, “Marian Sharpe. She’s a good scout.”

“All right,” Corning told her, “I want her. I want her to go to a rooming-house at 329 Maple Avenue, and ask for Stephen Richey. That’s the name I’m registered under. I’ll be waiting for her. Think you can get her?”

“Sure; she’s out of a job and needs money.”

“Okey,” Corning told her. “Now here’s another one. You’ll notice that all of the newspapers are carrying an ad in the ‘Help Wanted — Female Department’ announcing a competition to determine the best shot among blonde working-girls in the city. I want you to see that Mary Bagley has her attention called to that ad.”

“Want me to suggest that she try for the prize?” Helen Vail asked.

“That’s exactly what I don’t want,” he told her. “I simply want you to see that her attention is called to the ad. Then, if she decides she’s going to try to win the prize, I want to know it. But I don’t want you to bring any pressure to bear on her. Think you can do that all right?”

“Sure. I can find that out all right.”

“Okey. Now if she decides to go into the competition, let me know’ here at this rooming-house. The telephone number is Plaza 6-7931. You can simply ask for Mr. Richey and they’ll put me on the line. I’ve already got the girl spotted so that I won’t need you to point her out.”

“You want to know right away?” asked Helen Vail.

“Just as soon as you can find out.”

“Okey, I’ll call you back.”

Corning had dinner, read the evening newspapers, and was sitting in silent concentration, staring at the curling smoke from his cigarette, when there was a knock at the door. He opened it, and encountered the laughing blue eyes of a twenty-five-year-old blonde, who said, all in one breath: “I didn’t delay any, but came right over just as soon as Helen told me that you had a job for me.”

“Come in,” Corning told her.

She walked into the room, sat down on the chair which he placed for her, and watched him with eyes that were no longer smiling, but were keenly attentive.

“What is it you want?” she asked.

“Can you shoot a gun?” Corning inquired.

“Just a little bit. I could probably kill a husband if I had to, but I couldn’t hit any smaller game.”

Corning reached for his hat.

“All right,” he said, “you’re going out and learn.”

He took her to several shooting galleries, giving her instructions in the holding of the rifle. Then he took her to Ted Fuller’s shooting gallery.

“This,” he said, “is Marian Sharpe, the woman who’s going to win the contest tomorrow night.”

Ted Fuller’s bright eyes surveyed the young woman in swift appraisal.

“Let’s see you shoot,” he said.

“Nix on that noise,” Corning told him. “She can hit the backstop and that’s all that counts.”

“It’s going to look like a fake,” Fuller said. “A good shot can tell by the way a person holds a gun whether they’re holding on a target or not. Then, the paper target always makes a little jump away from the back-stop when a bullet hits it...”

“What the hell do I care how raw a deal it is, or what it looks like?” said Corning. “Let the loser squawk all she wants to. I’m going to get the publicity, ain’t I?”

Fuller shrugged his shoulders.

“I was just telling you, brother,” he said.

“All right,” Corning said, “I don’t want you to tell me anything. All I want you to do is listen.”

“Go ahead,” Fuller told him, “I’m listening.”

“We’re going to fake up a couple of targets right now,” Corning said. “Straight bulls’-eyes. Six shots and six dead centers for the target we use in the finals, and not quite so good a group in the one that represents the qualifying shoot.”

“Listen, brother,” Fuller said, “you’ve got to fix the thing up so it doesn’t look quite so phoney; otherwise...”

“I thought you were listening,” Corning said.

“I am,” Fuller replied, “but you’ll be listening about this time tomorrow night.”

Ken Corning picked up a rifle.

“Put up a couple of targets,” he said. “I want to fix up the fakes, and put ‘em good and close. I don’t want to waste shots.”

It was nine thirty when Mary Bagley came into the shooting gallery of Ted Fuller.

“This the place where the contest is going on?” she asked, taking a newspaper clipping from her purse.

Fuller nodded. “Meet Mr. Richey,” he said, “the guy who’s running the show.”

Ken Corning stepped forward and bowed. “You wish to enter as a contestant?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Fill out this blank,” said Corning, handing her a printed blank and a pencil.

Mary Bagley filled in her name, address, occupation, and looked at Ken Corning with cold, hard eyes.

“Is this on the up-and-up?” she asked.

“Sure it’s on the up-and-up,” he said.

“And there’s a cash prize of one hundred dollars?”

“That’s right,” Corning told her. “And a loving cup.”

“I’m not so strong for the loving cup,” she said, “but I can use the hundred.”

“All you’ve got to do to get it, is to win,” Corning said. “Just sign the application blank showing that you’re to be governed by the rules of the contest, as established by the manager.”

“What are the rules?” she wanted to know.

“Simply that you shoot a qualifying target any time between now and eleven o’clock tonight. At eleven o’clock, the two best targets are picked out, and there’s a final test in which six shots are fired by each contestant. Then the prize is awarded.”

“Now listen,” she told him, “if I shoot in this thing, I’m likely to win, so I don’t want any misunderstandings.”

“There won’t be,” said Corning, handing her a gun. “If you don’t make a certain score, you have to pay for your own shots. If you go above that score, I pay for the shots.”

The girl picked up a rifle, squinted down the sights, raised and lowered the hammer in order to get the pull of the trigger.

“Any practice shots?” she asked,

“No practice shots,” he told her.

“All right, put up the target.”

Ted Fuller clipped a pasteboard target on the carrier, looked at Corning significantly, and by a swift tip of his wrist, sent the target down the long, dark tunnel, until it finally came to rest against the back-stop, with a diffused electric light showing the target in bright illumination.

The gun snapped to the girl’s shoulder. She shot with both eyes open. The six shots came belching forth from the gun in rapid succession She laid down the gun and turned to Corning.

“All right,” she said, “pay for the shots.”

Fuller pulled on the carrier wire, which started the target fluttering back towards them.

“Wait until I see the target,” Corning said.

Fuller held up his hand, caught the target as it came along the ware, gave it a single swift glance, then turned to Corning and grinned.

“Pay for the shots,” he said.

Ken Corning flipped a coin on the counter.

The girl looked at her wrist-watch.

“The final is at eleven o’clock?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Corning told her.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

A crowd of curious spectators that had formed in a semi-circle around the back of the shooting gallery opened to let the girl through as she went out.

Ted Fuller moved over towards Ken Corning, handed him the target.

“You’re going to have trouble,” he said, out of the side of his mouth.

Ken Corning said nothing, but slipped the target into the pile of targets.

The crowd grew in size.

Two uniformed policemen appeared to hold them in line. Fuller did a rushing business in between times, the gallery echoing to the sound of shots. Toward eleven o’clock another policeman appeared. The three officers kept the crowd back.

At ten fifty-five, Mary Bagley returned to the gallery.

“Who shoots off the finals?” she asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Corning told her. “It isn’t eleven. Somebody may show up in the next five minutes.”

Mary Bagley shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know who I’m going to shoot against,” she said, “but I’m going to be in at the finals.”

Corning stood with his watch in his hand. At precisely eleven o’clock he slipped it back into his pocket.

“All right,” he said, “pick out the two best targets, Fuller.”

Ted Fuller’s thin, restless hands pawed through the pile of targets. In the background, five or six young women with blonde hair, and of various ages and sizes, surveyed each other with silent hostility. Back of them surged the crowd of spectators.

“These two,” said Fuller, pointing to Mary Bagley and to Marian Sharpe.

“All right,” said Corning, “let’s shoot off the finals.”

Fuller clipped a target on the carrier.

“You shoot first,” Corning said to Mary Bagley.

She looked at Marian Sharpe with keen appraisal, then turned and picked up the gun.

“All right,” she said.

Once more she shot with both eyes open. The spectators surged forward, against the line which had been extended by the police. The unsuccessful contestants stared with a disdainful scrutiny.

Mary Bagley shot more slowly this time, but her shots were spaced evenly and regularly. As she snapped back the pump mechanism of the rifle she did it with a forceful regularity which punctuated the interval between shots. They were as evenly spaced as if timed.

As she fired her sixth shot, she set down the gun on the counter, turned to Corning.

“This other jane uses the same gun and the same sights,” she said. “Understand?”

Corning nodded affably.

“Certainly,” he said.

Ted Fuller flipped his hand and brought back the target. As he handed it to Corning and Mary Bagley, and as they leaned forward to study it, Ted Fuller put the new target on the carrying mechanism. He stood so that his body shielded the target from the gaze of the spectators, then he sent it scurrying and fluttering along the long, dark tunnel, until it came into position at the back of the tunnel, against the back-stop, full in the field of light.

By the time Mary Bagley looked up from a contemplation of her target, Marian Sharpe was shooting.

Mary Bagley watched with wary eyes; saw the manner in which the girl slid back the repeating mechanism; saw the almost imperceptible wince as the gun was fired. Her eyes became scornful and her lip curled.

The girl fired the sixth shot, set down the gun, and looked at Ken Corning. There was something pleading in her eyes.

Ted Fuller stepped back and gave the wire a quick, sharp pull. The wire rolled over the pulleys, and the target came fluttering back. Ken Corning was careful to wait until it had reached a point almost directly in front of Mary Bagley, before he brought it to a stop. He stood in full view of the spectators, unclipped the target, then whistled. He pushed it towards Mary Bagley.

“Look at that!” he said.

Mary Bagley looked at it with eyes that slowly widened.

Ken Corning raised his voice.

“Miss Marian Sharpe,” he said, “wins the prize of one hundred dollars and the loving cup.”

“I,” said Mary Bagley, slowly and distinctly, “will be a dirty name!”

Corning passed over the ten ten-dollar bills to Marian Sharpe, and glanced significantly at the crowd, then started to applaud. The crowd caught the hint and broke into a spattering chorus of applause. Before it had finished, Mary Bagley was standing in front of Ken Corning, her eyes blazing.

Her first words were snapped out before the applause had finished, and the crowd, sensing the purport of her remarks, became instantly curiously silent.

“What kind of a skin-game is this?” she demanded. “That target’s a fake and you know it! There isn’t a shot in the world that could shoot that kind of group at that distance, and hold the gun the way that broad held it. She damn near closed her eyes every time she fired. That target was a frame-up!”

Corning shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“You signed the application blank,” he said, over his shoulder, “and said that you agreed to abide by the rules of the contest and the selection of the winner. Miss Sharpe has been selected as the winner.”

“Baloney!” blazed the girl. “You can’t pull a stunt like that. I’ll have you arrested!”

Corning kept his back to her, but took the arm of Marian Sharpe, and piloted her through the crowd.

On his way to the rooming-house on Maple Avenue Ken Corning stopped to telephone the police.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t want my name used in this and I don’t want anybody to know who I am. I’m just giving you a tip. You can take it or leave it, but I’ve got a room in a rooming-house at 329 Maple Avenue. There’s a couple of guys in a room on the same floor who have made a dicker with a fellow to give them some counterfeit money and a bunch of dope. I heard them make the deal. They’re going to make a delivery some time within the next hour. The room is number 49, and there’s a closet in that room. The guys are out now, but if you can get a couple of men to hide in the closet, you can catch them right when they make the delivery. But don’t ever let on that you had a tip, or they’ll know who gave it to you.”

He slammed up the telephone, took a taxicab to his rooming-house, but did not enter at once; instead, he went across the street and stood lounging in a shaded doorway, watching.

Within a matter of ten minutes, a light coupé slowed down and pulled in to the curb. Two tall, square-shouldered men pushed their way purposefully from the coupé, and entered the rooming-house. The coupé moved away.

Corning waited another five minutes, then went up the stairs of the rooming-house, unlocked the door of his room, went in, sat down, turned on the light, and started to read a newspaper.

Fifteen minutes passed, while Corning smoked and read. Then there were steps in the corridor, and peremptory knocks on the door.

“Come in,” said Corning.

The door pushed back. A squat, heavy-set man with black mustaches stood glaring at him. Behind him, and slightly to one side, was Mary Bagley.

“This the guy?” asked the man.

“That’s him,” said Mary Bagley.

The heavy-set man pushed his way into the room, waited a moment until Mary Bagley came in, then kicked the door shut.

“You’re the guy that put on the shooting contest,” said the heavy-set man.

“Who are you?” asked Corning. “And what business is it of yours?”

“Never mind,” said the man. “I came here to see that this jane gets a square deal. That thing was the crudest kind of fake, and you know it. You can’t pull anything like that and get away with it. I’ve been in the shooting gallery business myself, and I know just how it was done. This winner was picked in advance. She didn’t even shoot at the target, but shot at the back-stop. The target was a frame-up all the way through. The whole thing was put on ice...”

“You,” said Ken Corning, speaking in a cool, calm voice, “seem to know a hell of a lot about it. If you know so much about how that was done, maybe you can tell me what these are.”

He reached his hand in his pocket, took out a wallet. From the wallet he took two pieces of tom paper.

“Know what these are?” he asked.

The man stared with black, glittering, hostile eyes.

“What the hell do I care what they are?” he asked.

“They’re bits of red tissue paper that are stained with blood,” Ken Corning explained.

The black eyes lifted from a contemplation of the torn fragments of paper, to stare glittering menace at Ken Corning.

“They are,” went on Corning, “bits of paper from the torpedo which was exploded to make it seem that the shot which killed Frank Glover was fired from the group of men who were near Glover at the time he fell.

“The real shot was fired from a .22 automatic in Mary Bagley’s apartment. You fired the shot, and then slipped out and placed the gun back of the signboard. Mary Bagley posed as a witness.”

The glittering black eyes became ominous, with a slight reddish-brown tint suffusing the pupils.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said Pete, the Polack.

“Oh, yes you do,” said Ken Corning slowly. “That’s the reason that all of the tenants in the corner apartments were moved out. You didn’t want anyone to hear the sound of the shot. I figured you were back of it because it took an expert shot to fire a single shot from the window of that apartment, and be certain Glover was killed. The other men were your accomplices. They baited George Pyle into losing his temper, then were careful to hold him in such a position that he was out of the line of fire, but so that you could shoot to one side of him, and make it appear that the bullet had come from his general direction.

“You thought there was a chance you might be looked for, because it was your gun. Pyle had left his fingerprints on it when he took it away from you and you had carefully preserved those fingerprints. But I figured Mary Bagley for your friend, and knew that if she had been your friend, she’d have hung around your shooting gallery and learned how to shoot pretty well. I also figured that if she got a raw deal she’d be pretty likely to hunt you up to champion her cause, so you’ve walked into my little trap.”

“You can’t prove a damned thing!” said Pete.

Corning shrugged his shoulders.

“I can raise a reasonable doubt in front of a jury,” he said, “so that they won’t convict Pyle, and I rather think they’ll convict you.”

Pete’s right hand suddenly flicked to his shoulder. There was a glitter of motion, and Ken Corning found himself staring into the black muzzle of an automatic.

“Well,” said Pete, “I’m not so sure that you’re going to keep in good health, myself. You look unhealthy to me.”

Corning stole a glance back to the closet door.

Nothing happened.

Little glittering lights played across the dark surface of the eyes which bored into his.

“Don’t, Pete!” said the girl in a hissing voice. “You can’t get away with it.”

“The hell I can’t!” said Pete.

“Not here! Not here. Take him for a ride.”

The lights continued to play about the eyes, but a look of cunning came over the face.

“That,” said Pete the Polack, “isn’t a bad idea. Get your hat, guy, and start walking out. Walk easy and natural.”

Ken Corning got his hat, started for the door. Pete the Polack moved up close to him. Corning reached for the knob of the door.

“Never mind,” said Pete. “The broad will open the door. Go ahead, Mary.”

The girl pulled the door open. Pete moved close to Ken Corning, Ken Corning started through the door, scooped out his right arm, caught the girl about the waist, and flung her back against the man with the gun.

Pete cursed, jumped to one side. Corning side-stepped before Pete had the gun free. He fired. The bullet ripped a hole in the side of Corning’s coat as it went past. The girl screamed, dropped to the floor.

Corning lashed out his right fist. The girl cursed, rolled over, grabbed Corning’s left leg and sunk her teeth into the calf.

Pete the Polack reeled backward under the impetus of the blow, but flung up the gun again. Corning tried to kick his foot loose from the grip which held it. The girl clung to him tightly, her arms locked around Corning’s leg.

There were swift steps in the corridor behind Corning. A voice shouted: “Stick ’em up!”

Corning ducked. Pete fired. The girl’s grip weakened. A gun behind Corning roared booming reverberations. Pete flung his weapon slightly to one side, fired again. Corning was conscious of someone behind him stumbling, lurching against the plastered wall, then slowly slumping downward with fingers scraping along the plaster.

Corning leaped over the girl’s kicking legs, faced Pete the Polack. He saw the gun coming up, lashed out with both hands, trying to catch the hand which held the gun. Pete jumped back, and Corning flung himself forward in a tackle. He heard the roar of two shots fired in rapid succession, felt the jar of lead thudding into the huge torso, heard Pete groan, felt him sway, then heard a peculiar sputtering noise as blood bubbles came to the lips of the man and broke. The form went limp in his arms.

Ken Corning turned and straightened. One of the plain-clothesmen stood in the room, his face twisted with hatred, an automatic in his hand.

“The dirty — killed the squarest dick that ever walked in shoe leather!” he said.

Mary Bagley sat up and screamed. The plainclothesman grabbed her wrist, dragged her across the floor. Pete the Polack made gurgling noises and tried to talk.

“I think,” said Corning, “he wants to make a confession. You’d better listen.”

“I don’t give a damn what he confesses to!” the officer said.

“He killed my pal. If my bullet hasn’t killed him, he’s going to get the death penalty.”

“Well I care,” said Corning. “This man killed Frank Glover.”

A look of infinite weariness took the glitter from the hard black eyes. The head nodded. More blood sputtered from the lips, and the eyes glazed.

“Grab that girl!” said Corning. “She can give us the whole story.”

Mary Bagley got to her knees, stared at the face of Pete the Polack.

“My God, he’s dead!” she screamed.

It was one o’clock when Ken Corning got Helen Vail on the telephone.

“You can go home now,” he told her. “It’s all over.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“A frame-up,” he said. “Glover’s own bodyguard wanted to get rid of him and take over his lay. They wanted to frame the crime on Pyle whom they also wanted out of the way. They worked the frame-up and exploded a torpedo at the same time a crack-shot plugged Glover from Mary Bagley’s apartment. That was Pete the Polack who had his own grudge against Glover and jumped at the chance. They’d decoyed the radio car into the neighborhood by a fake call. Pyle was framed all the way along.”

“Was that why you pulled the shooting gallery stuff?” she asked.

“Yes. It was a thousand to one chance, but I had to get Mary Bagley’s boy-friend out in the open and just where I could work on him.”

“Any action?” asked Helen Vail.

“A little,” he told her. “I gave the cops a tip that should have had them in my room. They got the numbers mixed and got in the wrong room. It wasn’t until the shooting started that they got into action. Pete plugged one of the dicks right through the heart.”

“Did you get a confession?” asked Helen Vail.

“Yes, from the girl. After Pete fired the shot he knocked the silencer off the gun, ran down stairs, and when he saw Pyle go by, planted the gun behind the billboard and disappeared.”

“You coming back to the office?” she asked.

“No,” he told her. “I’m going out and hunt up Lampson. He’ll tell the truth now.”

“You mean about the crime?”

“No. I mean about the frame-up they tried to work on me.”

“He won’t dare to talk,” she told him. “Not with his record.”

Ken Corning laughed grimly.

“When I get done with him,” he said, “he won’t dare to keep silent. These fellows started this funny business and now I’m going to start fighting the devil with fire.”

“Be careful your fingers don’t get burned,” she warned.

“I,” he told her, “am the one guy in this hookup that’s got asbestos gloves.”